And here's a close up of the castle rock butte that was formed by a volcanic eruption about 37 million years ago.
We stayed a few days at Larry and Kathy's house during a week-long trip with Pete's sister Denise. Here are cousin Kathy, Denise and Kristina.
Kathy and Larry's daughter Diana came to visit us, along with lots of other cousins. Kristina and Diana get along splendidly!
For months we have been looking forward to making a trip to Colorado with Denise (whom we affectionately call Niecy). Here she's braiding Diana's daughter Bailey's hair.
Pete offered to help with the grilling during the Sunday family get-together.
Then Larry took over grilling while cousin Cherry decided on a jalapeño sausage.
Here's a photo of the three fun Fenczik guys: Les, Johnny and and Pete. In case you're wondering, Cherry is married to Les, and Johnny is married to Chrissi.
During the family gathering we laughed a lot while playing games. Here are Diana, Mel and Sam. Sam is Diana's brother, and Mel is his lovely girlfriend.
Kathy is the best grandma, she has tons of games, toys and dress up goodies for her grand kids. The kids put on a show for the adults and Pete made a movie that you can watch. We helped ourselves to her tiara drawer and posed for Kathy. From left to right are Kristina, Kye, Everett, Denise and Pete with Bailey in front.
Aubry is Johnny and Chrissi's grand daughter and Kye's sister.
Kristina is pretending to kiss the cow-jumping-over-the-moon art in front of Kathy and Larry's house. We really enjoyed our time there, as Kathy and Larry are awesome hosts!
We visited an antique and tschotke store in Castle Rock and saw this sign that was clearly made for us.
All over Colorado we've been seeing Super Bowl champion Broncos displays like these.
Kathy and Larry took us on a Castle Rock tour. Here's Kathy in front of the library where she works part time. Her knowledge of the Dewey Decimal system is vast and awe-inspiring.
What a coincidence, Kathy and Denise have matching jackets. We are bundled up for the park because it was quite chilly.
The park has awesome swings, as Larry and Pete are demonstrating. There's footage of us swinging in Pete's movie.
The B&B Cafe has been in business since 1946, so it's got history (we heard rumors of bullet holes from shootouts but cannot confirm). Their breakfast menu is five pages long, so we were busy trying to choose.
Kristina was happy with her banana bread french toast topped with pecans, bananas and syrup with a side of bacon.
On Monday we visited cousin Les and Cherry at their home in Colorado Springs.
Les showed us this photo from when Denise visited about 30 years ago. From the left is Kathy and Larry, Denise holding Diana, and Les and Cherry.
Les plays in a rock and roll band called The Fishtank Piranhas. We didn't see them perform this visit, but we enjoyed hearing Les and his band during a previous visit.
Here's a link to a video of the Fishtank Piranhas playing David Bowie's Golden Years. Since we were out of the country when David Bowie passed away earlier this year, we are including an excerpt from Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffeld's tribute, "Planet earth is a lot bluer without David Bowie, the greatest rock star who ever fell to this or any other world. He was the hottest tramp, the slinkiest vagabond, the prettiest star who ever shouted "You're not alone!" to an arena full of the world's loneliest kids. He was the most human and most alien of rock artists, turning to face the strange, speaking to the freak in everyone..."
We visited Pete and Denise’s Uncle Les. He is their Dad's brother.
Niecy couldn’t resist playing diva and pretending to tinkle the ivories of the lovely grand piano.
It was so nice to spend some time with Uncle Les. He made jokes that cracked us up.
On the wall in his apartment is a Hungarian stamp that he had enlarged about 30 times. It features Rakoczi Var, which is the castle in which he and his family lived for years before World War II. He told us stories about the end of the war when his family left Hungary.
Next Denise, Pete and Kristina went to Denver for a few days. We walked around in the downtown, enjoying the Denver Art Museum architecture. Behind Niecy and Kristina is the 2006 Extension designed by Daniel Libeskind.
Pete and Denise are in front of Mark di Suvero’s Lao Tsu sculpture from 1991.
This is Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Big Sweep. It's over nine meters tall.
This area of Denver is clean and modern.
The Denver Library was designed by Michael Graves. It's the largest library between Los Angeles and Chicago, and over a million people visit each year.
We enjoyed the Gates Western History Reading Room. The Symbol of the West timber form dominates the space.
There was an exhibit about PBS, complete with Big Bird’s Mom.
Kristina posed with Sesame Street puppets.
We saw lots of interesting artwork in the library, like this 2nd place winner in the Hand Drawn (book) Cover Art competition by 12th grader Eliza Weber.
This is Patti Hallock’s Horses, Algodones, NM 2009 that are photographic prints. The only animal that Niecy loves more than horses is dogs, so we took a photo.
Donald Lipski's Yearling sculpture is near the library, a reminder of Denise's extensive model horse collection she had as a girl. The three of us had a great time exploring Denver together!
We also enjoyed some good meals. Here are Pete and Denise in front of Avanti Food and Beverage, a high-end food court.
The restaurants in the food court converted shipping containers into their kitchens.
Here's the view from the deck.
There are more than 70 breweries in Denver, but we decided to check out just The Great Divide. Niecy and Kristina are under their cool sign.
With about 15 different beers on tap, we had lots of choices.
We sampled most of them. We were still able to walk out under our own power.
And we admired their bottle cap artwork.
Walking from The Great Divide we spotted this classic Cadillac.
Love the fins! Reflected in the chrome is The Lobby building.
We noticed lots of beautiful brick buildings in Denver.
Kristina and Denise are on the couch in our Airbnb apartment.
One day we had Torchy’s Tacos for lunch, which is a small chain that started in Austin, TX.
We agree with their motto.
We went to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCAD). Designed by David Adjaye, it is LEED Gold (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design). Adjaye and Associates describes the building as "the nation’s first LEED certified contemporary art museum; pioneering sustainability and taking a leadership role in the reduction of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and use of raw materials."
Notice the dripping blood from whimsical pierced heart sculpture entitled Toxic Schizophrenia by Tim Noble and Sue Webster. It's near the museum entrance atop a tall steel pole.
We enjoyed The Neighbors show by Arne Svenson at MCAD. Svenson received a huge telephoto lens and used it to photograph his neighbors, so issues of privacy are raised in the exhibition. This is The Neighbors #28.
Brian Bress' ten year survey exhibition called Make Your Own Friends included a video called Ridley-Tree Sleeper #1; The video includes an elaborate puppet headdress worn by a person making minimal gestures, akin to what the audience might do when looking at Bress' video.
The puppet in the video was also on display.
This is Beadman, and there was a fun video of a guy in this costume jumping!
Pete and Denise are enjoying the tactile nature of this soft-sculpture piece by Laura Shill.
We even found swings in downtown Denver, but these were not as fun as the swings in Castle Rock.
We drove around Denver to look at the interesting architecture like the Denver Union Station. The building dates back to 1914 when it was just a train station, but today it has been modernized to include train, light rail and buses, along with a hotel and restaurants.
We spotted this big blue bear peaking into the Denver Convention Center and had to stop and check it out. I See What You Mean was created by Lawrence Argent, who wanted to include Colorado's signature mountains in the urban downtown.
The bear is made of 4,500 kilograms of concrete.
Nearby in the Denver Performing Arts Complex Kristina spotted Victor Contreras' sculpture Infinite Energy and went for a closer look.
The lampposts in the historic district look great against the blue sky in the Mile High City.
We ate dinner at Telegraph restaurant and started with their charcuterie plate.
Pete ordered duck for his main course, which included duck breast and rillettes - yum!
From Denver the three of us drove to Aspen Snowmass. The scenery was beautiful as we got into the mountains.
We can see why the state is named Colorado, which means red in Spanish.
There had been a rockslide on I-70, but we were able to get through on the one lane that re-opened.
In Snowmass we met up Kathy and Larry, and spent together a few days in a condo on the golf course.
We went cross country skiing right from the condo, because in winter they groom trails on the golf course. We saw this beautiful barn on the Owl Creek trail. There are 40 kilometers of groomed trails in Snowmass, and they are all free!
Kristina is near the Two Creeks chairlift at Snowmass.
Pete has just climbed up the Iron Curtain, a steep but short section of the trail.
There are large groves of aspen trees here. We learned that aspens grow in clonal colonies and spread through their roots, which can live for many thousands of years.
Denise and Kathy look so cute in this huge chair.
The town of Aspen is charming sitting right at the foot of Aspen Mountain ski resort.
We had fun walking around and checking it out.
Niecy and Kathy are modeling their awesome boots and giving the camera plenty of fashion-attitude. It was a treat to spend time with them and Larry. We shared a lot of laughs!
This is City Hall.
We've noticed more fat-tire bikes this season, and we saw our first fat-tire unicycle in Aspen.
This is the Aspen Chapel, which dates back to the 1960s.
On our last night Pete made Zuni Chicken for dinner, and then all too soon it was time to say, “Love you and hope to see you soon” to Kathy, Larry and Denise.
Then Alex and Diana and their kids joined us for four nights at the condo. Here they are in the gondola at Snowmass.
Their kids Everett (6) and Bailey (4) were really excited to ski.
Once we got off the gondola, they went to the bunny slopes called Meadows.
Here’s Bailey modeling her skis. She especially liked how her helmet matched her boots.
Alex is an expert snowboarder, but he has his snowboard on his back so he can hold Bailey up as she was learning to ski.
The Snowmass chair lifts have maps, making it easy to plan where to ski next.
Some of the chairlifts also have artwork like this Takashi Murakami art.
Kristina and Everett are in front of a Darth Vadar ice sculpture near the bunny slopes lift.
Everett is rocking his pizza wedge snow plow!
And here’s the whole family getting off the Meadows lift. Diana, Everett and Bailey did great learning to ski!
Together Everett and Bailey had fun riding on their sled. In case you missed the earlier link to Pete's movie, click here.
The kids were able to sled right from the condo.
We've had a great time in Colorado, and we hope to return with our tandem bike in the summer.
Next we head to Utah to continue our ski road trip at Alta Snowbird.
