With a free day in Denver before getting ready to send Matt back to school in Pennsylvania, I scoured the Chamber of Commerce publications to see what the not to be missed things to do in Denver. The Colorado State Capitol building and the Cussler Auto Museum made the top of the list for this trip.
At the State Capitol we made use of the free public tours so that we could get the view from the rotunda. It was an educational tour of a beautiful historic building. The crown is covered with gold leaf mined in Colorado and makes for a great photo. Colorado is interesting in that the Governor is Democrat and currently, the Assembly is split with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate. The information about the history of the building and the materials used to construct it is worth taking the one-hour tour.
Plus you get a great view of the city from the rotunda!
As Denver is the mile high city it is appropriate that the mile high designation is on the front steps of the Capitol. The exact step has changed slightly over the past 100 years as our technology and ability to determine exact elevation gets better.
Our next stop – after checking out the food truck rally nearby the Capitol – was the Cussler Auto Museum.
For those fans among you, Clive Cussler is an adventure novelist and underwater explorer. Along with over 70 books, he is also the founder and chairman of the real-life National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), which has discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and numerous other notable underwater wrecks.
And more importantly for our visit this day he is a collector of rare historic cars that are often featured in his novels.
The Cussler Museum was kind of out of the way and not so easy to find but definitely worth the visit is you are a car or Cussler fan. Some really incredibly rare and beautiful cars all flawlessly restored.
While in Denver we camped at Cherry Creek State Park. A great Colorado State Park that offered a lake, and a wide variety of other recreational opportunities such as a shooting range, model airplane site, biking and hiking trails and campground (with tent sites as well as full hook-ups) all very close to the Denver’s population center.
I’m jealous that you got to go to Cussler’s museum. I’m a big fan. He always puts a picture of one of his cars on the back and works it in to the story.