Golden and Beyond!

Greetings from Lakewood, Colorado, fourth graders! Wow! Yesterday afternoon was really fun! This is your intrepid traveling reporter, Brownie, reporting to you again from

After our walking tour of Denver and our trip out to Wheatridge, Cousin Don and I had lunch (Yum! Lunch!) at a drive-in restaurant. It was warm enough that we ate with the windows open. Cousin Don says that is one of the things he loves about Colorado. It snows and the snow piles-up like it would back there in Minnesota, but then it gets nice out, the weather warms up, and unless you are up in the mountains. The snow melts away and you can ride your bike or go play in the parks.

Our first stop after we left the drive-in was the town of Golden, Colorado. Golden is the county seat of Jefferson County (where Cousin Don and Saga live) and is a lovely little town. It sits on the slopes of the front range. Oh, don’t worry about this… I’m okay, the dragon and I were only playing!

The brass dragon sits in a park on Cold Creek in the center of the town. Golden is what you would expect to see in a western frontier town. Bits of the town have been restored to what it would have looked like when the state was settled.

After our walk in the park, we went into the mountains. As we crossed the “hogback” a ridge “Pennsylvania” sandstone that juts out of the ground at a nearly vertical angle, we pulled over at a place called Dinosaur Ridge. The Pennsylvania Sandstone layer was laid down millions of years ago when what is now Denver would have been under a shallow sea.

The ripples that the water made lapping against that ancient shore are still visible on the tilted rock here. But what gives this particular part of the hogback the name Dinosaur Ridge are the multitude of dinosaur tracks that can be clearly seen crossing that ancient beach.

About a half a mile and millions of years further back in time is a layer of rocks called the Fountain Formation. This layer notable for its deep red color, tilts up all along the Rockies. At Morrison, Colorado, one of the three major places that this prominent feature has been made famous is here at Red Rocks Park. (The other two are north of here at Boulder – the Flatirons, and south here at Colorado Springs – The Garden of the Gods.)

In the early part of the last century, the City of Denver took advantage of the natural formation of the weathered rocks to form the shell of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Lots of famous musicians have played here and on summer evenings, the city has a free film series where people bring their blankets and picnic dinners to watch free movies.

As the afternoon wore-old, we took a look to the west and saw that the snow had started to fall east of us back over the piedmont. It was time to head home…

I hope that this report finds all of my friends back in Minnesota well!

Brownie – Still in Colorado