Golden Colorado

We took a recent trip to Golden Colorado, to visit the Colorado School of Mines. It was one of the many colleges we visited in the Spring of 2009. The school specializes in all kinds of Engineering degrees. It is located in the tiny little town of Golden, not far from the Coors Brewery.



We arrived in February, and got a room at a really nice La Quinta Hotel. It was really cold (at least for us wimpy Californians), and that night, it started snowing. Of course, we had to get a shot of me shivering on the balcony in the freezing night, just so we could have a personalized snapshot of the snow collecting on the ground.


Besides taking the college tour, we planned to spend some time with my Colorado family members. Here is Carl and me with my brother and his son, my sister and brother-in-law, and their granddaughter. The visit was painfully short, because we had to catch a flight home, but it was great to catch up on who's doing what, and to see my brother's son for the first time.



This is the Mountain that looms over Golden. Walking around the beautiful but icey campus while on our tour, my eyes kept wandering towards this gorgeous sight. I think its called Table Mountain. The School of Mines has a great tradition for incoming freshmen. Their first week at school is loaded with traditional activities. One of them requires that they all bring a 10 pound rock from home. They then are expected to scale a tall mountain, up to where the big white M is located, high above the campus. There, they leave their rock, and together they work to give the big M a whitewashing. At the end of their 4 years at Mines, they again scale the mountain to retrieve their rock and take it home with them. For some reason, I really got a kick out of that tradition. It reminded me of when Carl was a little guy. Wherever we traveled, he always found a rock that he wanted to bring home as a souvenir. We've got little rocks from Canada, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and umpteen other places, laying around the front steps at home.



For years, we have been tormented by repeated Sonic commercials. I say tormented, because the commercials had us convinced that we just HAD to drive up and order one of the many great cold drinks that flashed across our TV screen. Trouble was, we didn't have a Sonic to drive to. So when we planned our trip to Golden to visit the school, I googled Sonic to see if they had one there. And they did! You should have seen the look on Carl's face when I told him we were going to finally get to a Sonic. After getting lost, and subsequently driving around in circles due to some bad Mapquest directions, we finally found it. There it was. The Sonic! Here is Carl, finally standing at the Sonic menu.



Now, I have to admit, the food is not so hot. It kind of reminded me of the snack bar food we had at the Midway Drive-in Theater, long gone from San Diego. But the drinks. Oh, the drinks. There were so many to choose from, we actually went back the next day to try some more.



This was Carl's drink. Some kind of Berry slurpee-type of thing. The first time we went, I had a drink that tasted sort of like a grape milk shake. Delicious. The next day, I had a Coconut Creme Pie Milk shake. Even better.



A closing shot of a frosty, freezing fast rushing body of water heading through downtown Golden. The shot was taken at dusk. It was freezing cold with snow flurries, and getting colder by the minute. But out on a big rock in this cold river, barely visible in this photo, a small group of people stood watch while a young couple exchanged wedding vows amid nature's harsh elements. I thought about the venue and the weather that these young people were getting married in. And my conclusion was that these people wanted to acknowledge that life will not be all sunny and warm. That circumstances will test their strength. And they are willing to meet life's tests head on. Together.

Golden is a town full of friendly people. They have a great University, a huge brewery, some famous landmarks like Buffalo Bill's grave, and the cool "Howdy Folks" sign. I wish we could have had another day or two to really explore the area. But, it just gives me another town to put on my "Gotta go back there" list.