Garden of the Gods

April 16, 2014 1 Comment read Attractions, Colorado, Mountain, The Great Outdoors, Travel, USA, West

As I drove into Manitou Springs, the change in landscape was so astounding that I could have been convinced I was driving on Mars. Red, bulbous cliffs suddenly rise up and tower over the road, with fingers of silvery brush clinging to them. While you can see this landscape anywhere in the Manitou Springs area, the best place to be awed by nature is in the (free!) city park, Garden of the Gods. Its 1300 acres contain an abundance of plant and animal life, as well as a number of enormous sandstone rock formations, many of which are over 300 million years old! The Garden of the Gods was originally purchased by Charles Perkins in 1879, and upon his death, it was gifted to the city of Colorado Springs to be used as a park, with the stipulation that it remain free for all visitors. Sadly, their Segway tours are summer-only, so this won’t turn into a story of me careening off a cliff…this time. Near the entrance to the park is Balanced Rock, which shares a name with another, more famous balanced rock in Utah. I can only hope that one day these two rocks will have a balance-off, so as to determine which is the balancingest so they can change their names to “Most Balanced Rock” and “Not Quite As Balanced As the Most Balanced Rock,” respectively. The important thing is that it makes for a fine photo opportunity.

Only a couple of these photos accurately reflect the sandstone’s redness; my camera basically looked at these walls of red and said “No, ma’am!” so you’ll have to take my word for it. It probably didn’t help that we were there on an overcast day that was threatening to snow–I bet the colors are even more dazzling in bright sunshine.

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Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs

April 15, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Colorado, Masticating With Mellzah, Mountain, Travel, USA, West

If you tell me a restaurant has a variety of exotic meat, I’ll make it a priority to eat there, and my visit to Denver was no exception, as I planned a meal at Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs.

Biker Jim’s started as a street cart and eventually expanded into a restaurant, and frankly (ahem), I can see why. They’ve got a number of exotic meat sausages on the menu as well as a standard beef dog, and I think the only miss is the duck cilantro if only because I wouldn’t cry if all cilantro was eradicated from the face of the Earth. Die, devil weed! But I will never say no to a fried pickle, so they have that going for them as well.

I decided on a reindeer sausage topped with “the conspiracy”: stilton bleu cheese, bacon red onion marmalade, lemon aioli, and french fried onions. Yes, I flew to Denver to get something shipped from Alaska. Shut up. Jason decided on the Jack-a-lope topped with cream cheese squeezed out from a caulking gun and coca-cola soaked caramelized onions. I took bites of both and they were excellent. The Jack-a-lope was sweet and spicy while being comforting and familiar. The reindeer had a more adventurous flavor profile with the slight gaminess of the sausage, the richness of the stilton bleu being cut by the slight tart of the lemon aioli, with the crunch of the onions adding an excellent texture and the sweetness of the marmalade lingering on the palate. If I didn’t have to save room for another exotic meat adventure later, I would have liked to have tried more. Should I find myself in the Denver area again, I’d definitely go back.

It’s cold and there are wolves after me: The Manitou Cliff Dwellings

April 14, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Colorado, Everything is Terrible, Mountain, Travel, USA, West

When I visited the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, The Manitou Cliff Dwellings were specifically called out by the employee as being completely fake and nothing more than a tourist trap. At the time, I didn’t have the resources to investigate this claim properly, and I figured that since we were already in the area, we should still go see it. Their promotional materials were a mixed bag, part of them stating that at least the gift shop and museum portion were “faithfully designed and constructed in the architectural style of the Pueblo Indians, descendants of the Anasazi” and part of them stating that they are “a rare historical treasure. Preserved under a protective red sandstone overhang, authentic Anasazi cliff dwellings, built more than 700 years ago, await you here.” Of course they want you to believe that the cliff dwellings themselves are authentic, they even throw in some mumbo-jumbo about “feel[ing] the spirits of the people who lived, worked, and communed in such spaces centuries ago.” A little research uncovered that the truth of the matter is that no Pueblo peoples actually dwelled in these particular cliff dwellings, or even anywhere near the area–the Manitou Cliff Dwellings were constructed in the early 1900s from stones shipped hundreds of miles from a collapsed site in Southwestern Colorado, in the style of the dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. This would explain why this “rare historical treasure” is not a national monument, and is instead privately held. Additionally, many of the contemporary Pueblo peoples do not like being referred to as the Anasazi, which is Navajo for “ancient enemy,” so I guess really nothing about this site is respectful. And I gave them money. Damn it!

In the museum, Jason said “I made one of those!” “What, you did an entire stone-rubbed pot?” “No, I never got it past the coiled turd stage. But it was a magnificent pot all the same.”

The best part by far was not even cliff dwelling related, it was paying an extra five bucks to pet and photograph the Timber Wolf hybrids on site to promote Colorado Wolf Adventures. All of their wolf dogs are rescues (they don’t and won’t breed, only rescue), and their aim is to provide wolf education to the general public, who mostly view them solely as predators, so people will get excited about protecting and conserving this necessary part of the food chain.

Overall verdict: Colorado Wolf Adventures is a worthwhile organization, and you shouldn’t feel badly about giving them your money. The Manitou Cliff Dwellings, on the other hand, are constructed from real stones on a web of lies, and if you’re looking for actual historical Pueblo structures, go to Mesa Verde instead.