Second Annual Mama Daughter Trip: Denver 2017!

Hannah and I met in Denver for our second annual mama daughter city trip last Wednesday!  We covered a lot of ground (over 20,000 steps one day) and saw so much of Denver.  I even tried to talk Hannah into all of us moving there in a year or two.  We are tentatively planning to move back to Wisconsin when Hannah starts having babies but Colorado is warmer!
Our first stop after the hotel was Starbucks, I found another mug to add to my collection.

We walked around and found the blue bear at the convention center.  On our last day we ran back there to each buy a little blue bear for this year's ornament.

We started at the aquarium and then we went for ice cream to Little Man Ice Cream.  It was a walk uphill to get there and there was quite a line!  It was delicious though.

After that we went to Union Station and Lodo to explore and found The Tattered Cover bookstore.

 It just so happened there was a panel and we stayed for that and got autographed books"Anatomy of Innocence Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted" edited by Laura Caldwell and Leslie S. Klinger.  Since we stayed for that we had to change our dinner plans.

We went to Adrift, a tiki hut place and shared some Hawaiian food and each had a fun drink.

Thursday we went to the Denver Zoo and saw lots of animal babies.  It is really a nice zoo and the tiger exhibit was just updated.  The tigers can walk over the people and they had paper towels all over their homes for that days enrichment.  They had a fabulous seal show too!  One of our favorite things was the lorakeets. They were not hungry while we were there so I like the ones here at the Ostrich Ranch better but these were just as pretty.

We stopped for lunch at Jelly.  I had a salad...and a donut hole since that is their specialty.  We went past this place again on Saturday and the line was out the door.  We got super lucky since we went in late for lunch.

We went to the Molly Brown Historic Home Museum but did not have time for the tour since we had tickets to the US Treasury at 3:30.  After that disappointment, we went to the Brown Hotel and looked around.  It was a stunning building, in fact we decided Denver really had a lot of nice old buildings.  We then dashed back to the hotel to drop off our purses before hitting the treasury.  After that back to the hotel to change and walk to the p!at!  We saw The Secret Garden, the musical.  We found a great Indian place for dinner, then walked back to the hotel...see how we got record breaking steps?Friday we hiked Red Rocks and saw the amphitheater.  It is breathtaking out there.

I had to buy this cool rock!

Hannah surprised me by telling me we could check out the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum so we did that next.  Just in time as there was a downpour while we were.  I bought a few fun things for quilty gifts and about two yards of fabric, neutrals and a cheddar!  The show was about the Wild West.  This was one of our favorites though.  This butterfly looked like it would fly right off the quilt!  I had to really resist just touching the gorgeous threads.  People have such amazing talent!

We went to Casa Bonita for lunch since we ran out of time our first night.  It was an experience like no other restaurant! They have a huge waterfall in the restaurant and people, divers, lo! dive into it.  They also have gunfights and gorillas and lots of crazy entertainment.  Apparently the show is featured on South Park.

Next up was the fast version of the Denver Art Museum.  We took so e fun pictures, made and mailed some postcards and checked out the gift shops.  We wanted the little blue bears, but they were out...so we returned to the hotel and put our feet up for a few
On Friday night we went to the botanical gardens with Hannah's newly approved car2go.   We decided they were the best ones we had ever seen.  Water, waterfalls, flowers, rabbits, greenery. Bonus was at sunset on Friday night few people were there too!

We then decided to skip dinner and go have a flight of ice cream at High Point Creamery.  I had basil blueberry and earl grey I've cream.  Super fun!  

Saturday morning we had planned to do the Amazing Race type adventure but we were exhausted and worried we would not have enough time.  We decided for future cities we would do that first thing!  So instead we got coffee and returned to the Molly Brown House Museum!  

This time we toured the inside.  Really learned a lot of history and now I want to find a biography of Molly Brown.  We stopped in at a Fire Museum and bought Kathy a patch since she collects them, did some quick shopping on 16th, ate lunch at Mad Greens then got our luggage to go.  Uber had issues...or our drivers did which put us a bit behind schedule.  We had to catch the train to the airport and Hannah missed her flight.  I was at my gate. Before she even got up to the luggage counter.  Luckily they rebooked her to Chicago and all was well.  We are super excited for next year already!