Denver

Denver was the end of the road. We had come down from Bozeman the long way, and after a week of tents and motels the first city hotel of the trip had a record player in the room, a library of records to choose from and a pool on the roof. Relaxing was a large part of the plan. We applied ourselves, starting with an afternoon by the pool.

We did leave the roof. Denver is flat and exactly a mile high, built on the join between the plains and the Rockies, with the sun out on more than 300 days a year. The Front Range starts rising about fifteen miles out, so from downtown the mountains are scenery rather than neighbours. The nearest of them that matters is Red Rocks, twenty minutes' drive west in the foothills, where Ship Rock and Creation Rock, red sandstone more than 300 feet high, stand either side of an amphitheatre dedicated in 1941. The rock is 300 million years old, which puts 1941 in perspective. Go early, before the day heats up.

Cherry Creek, where we stayed, is the smart, shopping end of town, with Cheesman and Washington parks close by. The hotel lent bikes, and the path beside the creek took us under the trees and past walls of ivy all the way to Union Station, the restored Beaux-Arts station of 1914 in LoDo. Mercantile is inside, a café by day and a dining room at night. We ate there, and in Denver we ate well.

On foot, Downtown and LoDo make the easier base, with Larimer Square, the city's oldest block, and LoDo's bars after dark. The galleries and street art are in RiNo and Five Points, the old industrial streets to the north; the ice cream is in LoHi, at Little Man.

We went in June, the mildest of the summer months: hot, sunny and cool by evening, and with July the busiest and dearest time to come. September keeps the mild afternoons and sheds some of the crowds and the prices.

One evening went to Coors Field to watch the other Rockies, from seats high enough to see the downtown towers. The twentieth row of the upper deck is painted purple at a mile above sea level, so in Denver even a ball game comes with an altitude reading.