Weekend With Wife

Saturday, September 29th

Sheila Marie arrived late Thursday night - just in time! We hadn't seen each other since St. Paul.

Friday we walked around downtown Denver. Our first stop was the Colorado State Capitol. Denver's famous mile high elevation is marked on the steps of the capitol. It's actually marked on three different steps (as surveying technology has evolved, the marker has moved up and down).

Mile High JV

We tagged along with a tour group from the UK for a tour of the capitol. The Colorado State Capitol is, like the other capitols I've visited, a place with a very formal beauty. It houses the two state legislative bodies, the Governor's offices and the former chambers of the Supreme Court. It is decorated with lots of carved wood and native stone. The central rotunda is capped with a giant gold-clad dome.

SM at the base of the grand stairs in the Colorado State Capitol

From the capitol, we explored the city's "Golden Triangle". The US Mint was closed for tours (bummer), but we did visit the Colorado History Museum. The history museum featured a whole bunch of neat dioramas created by artists during the Great Depression. The dioramas served as a sort of WPA project to employ the artists and illustrated all kinds of historical settlements, forts and Indian life. The museum also had a great display of mining equipment and practices.

Friday night after the show we headed to "LoDo" (Lower Downtown - the hip, warehouse district here in Denver) to check out Denver's Oktoberfest celebration. For the event, several blocks were closed down. At one end of the street was a rock'n'roll stage and a polka band held court at the other end. In between were several beer tents, food vendors and a midway. We settled in near the polka band and hung out with Francesca and Ryan for the evening.

Right outside the apartment I'm renting is the 16th Street Mall. The mall is a shopping district lining 16th Street. The street is closed to traffic and features a free shuttle bus running from the capitol to the river. In addition to the stores, there are all sorts of performers and carts along the mall. Right outside my apartment is a cart selling "New Orleans style Snowballs." These snowcones come in an enormous variety of flavors and Sheila Marie and I sampled many during her stay here. The mall also offered Sheila some easy entertainment while I worked. As has become customary, Sheila Marie's suitcase was a lot more full returning to NYC than it was coming out to visit.

Sheila Marie and her Snowball

Saturday between shows we were able to catch the end of MSU's victory over hapless Notre Dame. So fun to see East Lansing on TV and to be able to celebrate with another Spartan. (Actually, I have a couple of Spartans on tour with me: Chris Sutton (Prince Herbert) graduated from the theatre department just ahead of me and Justin (our new Head Carpenter) also attended MSU, so there are several of us keeping tabs on Saturday afternoons.)

After the show on Saturday we went back over to Oktoberfest for some more fun under the stars. I had talked the event up a bit at work and roped a few more company members into attending. We had a blast! We sat and talked, danced to the polka band, drank and danced some more. I learned the words to a new polka song: There Is No Beer in Heaven (that's why we drink it here).

Patrick and Nigel attempt to balance beers on their heads (a la the bottle dance in Fiddler)

We're dancing in a circle and toasting.

Silliness.

Nigel, Patrick, Jen, Justin, Piper, Angelina & Jager.

Sunday we laid pretty low. We went for our, now traditional, steak dinner between shows.

Monday we had a wonderful day together. We drove south from Denver through Colorado Springs and to Manitou Springs. In Manitou Springs we caught the Manitou & Pikes Peak Cog Railway train to the top of Pikes Peak. The Manitou Springs Depot is at 6,571 feet and the Summit Depot (8.9 miles down the track) is at 14,110 feet. The temperature at the base of the mountain was 65 degrees and at the summit it was 25 degrees! Along the way the train climbed grades of 25% (an average train loses traction on a grade of 4%). The railway is specially built for these grades: the train is powered not by wheels on the tracks, but by a cog wheel locked into a center "rack rail". The rack rail locks the train to the track and pulls it both up and down the mountain.

The rack rail.

Along the way up the mountain we passed through beautiful stands of Aspens that had begun to turn bright gold. (Fun facts: a stand of aspens is all one organism. The roots spread out horizontally and sprout up into new trees but remain connected below the surface. The bark of the aspen also produces a white powder with sunscreen properties!) We also passed by several bristlecone pine trees - one of which was more than 2.500 years old! After we passed the tree line we encountered some yellow-bellied marmots. These little guys are like cuter groundhogs. When they sit up on "alert" they whistle to their buddies.

We arrived at the top of the mountain and disembarked into the cold. The change in altitude left me feeling dizzy, but the view was amazing. You can see more than 250 miles! Pikes Peak isn't the tallest peak in Colorado, but it is the tallest in the area, so you can see all the way to the Continental Divide. There was no snow left on the peak, but there was ice on some of the metal surfaces and in the cracks of the rocks.

JV & SM with the 14,110 foot marker.

At the summit with the Rockies in the distance.

At the summit there is, of course, a gift shop that made a great place to warm up. They also made some very tasty donuts and hot chocolate for our trip back down the mountain.

After our trip up Pikes Peak, we spent the rest of the afternoon in Manitou Springs. It's a cute little tourist-y town that must really be hopping in the summer season. Our visit fell at the tail end of the season, so many of the stores in town were closed, but we had a really nice meal beside one of the crystal clear mountain creeks. We bought a few souvenirs and split a malted.

SM beside the creek in Manitou Springs.

Tasting the water from one of the natural soda springs in Mantiou Springs.

On the way back toward Colorado Springs, we stopped to visit the Garden of the Gods. Neither of us was familiar with the place, Francesca suggested we stop. It was spectacular. The Garden of the Gods is home to some enormous pieces of sandstone that were heaved up out of the earth when the Rockie Mountains were formed. Several of them are not much wider than me, but stick up into the air hundreds of feet. The erosion of wind, rain and time has carved them in interesting ways. We were there in the late afternoon with the sun setting behind the mountain lending the light a really special quality. Sheila Marie took some amazing pictures!

Garden of the Gods

The sun setting behind Pikes Peak

SM at Garden of the Gods

We encountered lots of wildlife at Garden of the Gods: 5 groups of mule deer (including this buck who let us get within 15 feet of him), rabbits, chipmunks, rock pigeons and hawks.

Tuesday morning came too quickly and Sheila Marie was back on the plane to NYC much too soon after she had arrived. Her visits are like mini-vacations within the tour and I really look forward to them. I'm already counting down to her visit in Seattle!

JV

P.S. - Sheila Marie took so many great pictures during her trip! I posted some of my favorites here, but I also put a bunch more on Snapfish.