Colorado Day 1 - Creepy Hotels, Climbing Mountains, and Casa Bonita
My first full day in Colorado started with a trip to Denver’s Huckleberry Roasters, which might just be one of the most aesthetically pleasant coffeeshops I’ve ever been to. I wasn’t awake enough to think to take a picture, but the strong single colors, quirky art, and clean angles just made the environment really soothing. It helped that their coffee lived up to their visuals.
Luckily when my tired brain fails, the internet can provide
My first post-caffeine stop of the day was a short drive up to Estes Park to see the inspiration for the Shining’s Overlook Hotel, the Stanley Hotel, before hitting the Rocky Mountains. When I say a drive up, I don’t just mean north of Denver but literally up because Estes Park has a whopping elevation of 7, 522 feet above sea level! When you’re that high up, even the views just the views from the parking lot were pretty spectacular.
The high elevation is actually key to the Hotel’s existence as the wealthy steam car magnate Freelan Stanley (of the original Stanley Steamer) was diagnosed with tuberculosis and the only known cure at the time was to just stick him on a mountain with lots of clean, dry air. He got better, but he also got bored so he decided to spruce up the rustic mountain town by building an extravagant resort for wealthy invalids and just regular wealthy people to improve his own social life. Stanley designed the hotel himself with the some logistical help from top Denver architects, and it’s really an incredible piece of work. It was also one of the first fully electric hotels, which required Stanley also building a hydroelectric plant nearby which happened to also power the town’s electricity almost solely as an afterthought to his own ambitions. For all the excess that went into it, you’ve gotta admit it cuts a pretty damn fine figure though.
Inside it was equally opulent with gorgeous wood furnishings and elaborately decorative rugs everywhere. It felt like walking through a portal into another time, which was certainly helped by a vintage Stanley Steam powered car in the lobby. The story goes that Stephen King stayed here with his wife right as they were getting ready to close for the winter, so they were the only two people in the entire palatial estate. He spent hours just walking around the empty hallways and by the time he got to bed he claimed he had the entire plot of The Shining fully formed. It was originally going to be set in an amusement park, before this visit but he was struggling to make that premise not campy so horror fans were lucky inspiration struck when it did. In the Kubrick film, that other Stanley chose to use the Timberline Lodge in Oregon as his inspiration, which was one of the many things King disliked about that whole unfaithful albeit absolutely amazing film. When King got the chance to make his own television adaptation of the work, the Stanley actually let the production film most of the movie on location. Interestingly, it was never suspected of being haunted before the Shining came out, but now it’s a big part of their tourist lore which is probably both a testament to people’s suggestibility and the shrewdness of advertisers. The hotel was also the shooting location for scenes in Dumb and Dumber which for some inexplicable reason they don’t advertise nearly as much.
Unfortunately since it is still a functioning hotel, I felt a little weird about continuing to stroll around the insides of the building. Luckily, walking around outside still had plenty of joys to behold. There were impressive water features and even a hedge maze which was installed to satisfy visiting Shining fans who were continuously disappointed by the real hotel’s lack of one. Fortunately, this maze was a lot less spooky than the one where Jack Nicholson ended up becoming a popsicle.
My favorite outdoor feature though was this lyrical sculpture overlooking a small reflecting pool:
After appreciating the hotel, I made my way to one of the most famous Colorado features: Rocky Mountain National Park. The park covers 265,461 of land with elevations ranging from 7,860 to 14,259 feet above sea level leading to some awe-inspiringly sweeping vistas. The park contains 60 of the over hundred peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the head waters of the Colorado, and five distinct ecosystems giving you plenty to explore while you’re there. Unfortunately I chose to visit on a particularly overcast day, which maybe takes a little of the beauty out of my photos but none of the grandeur. The whole time you’re in the park you just feel how wild and untamed the landscape it, and it’s really jaw dropping to be so many feet up in the air and still not be able to see the mountain peaks through the clouds.
I think I joked to friends about seeing moose and deer in the park, but it really is a vibrant ecosystem so I was shocked by just how much wildlife I did catch glimpses of. Because I was driving through large swaths of this mighty wilderness, I didn’t actually capture a lot of the beasts and critters I saw but somehow these gentle does were just chilling and grazing and didn’t seem to mind a little company:
For a nice illustration of just how high up I’d gone, I stopped at a scenic overlook of some rushing waters in the basin below which was a combination of stunningly beautiful and terrifyingly dizzying.
I knew that I couldn’t go to the Rocky Mountains without going on at least one hike or I’d lose all credibility as a millennial. I decided on the Bierstadt Lake Trail, because it was both highly recommended and relatively easy at only 3 miles round trip. Plus it was named after my boy Albert Bierstadt, who’s landscape paintings have been a pleasantly constant companion across the many art museums across the country I’ve whiled away my non-comedy time in. The lake was going to have some steep competition though, because I saw one of the most majestic sights I’ve encountered in the country thus far in the trail head parking lot. I’d heard of van art before, but I never expected to be graced by such a glorious sight as Chuck Norris holding two cats in front of a fiery backdrop.
While the trail wasn’t particularly long, it was pretty steep (you can see the street in some of the photos for context) so I was depressingly winded very early on. Luckily, the panoramic views and the strikingly white birch trees kept the hike interesting even while it was kicking my ass.
After a little over a mile of going uphill, things abruptly plateaued into a flat forest floor. It was such a weird and magical feeling to so suddenly be on completely flat land nearly 1000 feet up. It was sort of eerie, but mostly just serene.
When I did finally reach the titular lake, it was simply astounding. The glacial waters were so crystal clear, the treeline was pristine, and the reflections of the towering mountains in the water added just the right amount of whimsy. You can see how this would be a landscape painter’s dream come true, especially in the 1800s when most people had never seen anything like it before.
While I was hiking down, I noticed that anyone else who passed me gave me really funny looks and it wasn’t until I made it back to my car that I realized that between my long khakis and converse I wasn’t exactly dressed like a mountaineer:
While there were was still hundreds of thousands of acres of Park to see, I had to head out after the hike to make it back to Denver in time to meet a friend for dinner. It might have been too brief, but I was still happy with my little sojourn to the Rockies.
One particularly nice thing about Denver as a traveler on a budget was that it was really easy to find low cost hostels to stay at if you don’t mind a little communal living. Even better for me, tonight’s hostel happened to be just across the street from a snazzy craft coffee shop called Sonder Coffee & Teas. They specialized in fancy floral teas and coffees, and I ended up going with the cherry almond cold brew which was a mix of rich and a little tart on top of your standard coffee flavor. It was really unique, but also really tasty.
After checking in at my Air BnB and taking a little nap, I set out to meet my friend Katie, who by pure coincidence happened to be in Denver for a family wedding. There was only one place I wanted to go: Casa Bonita. This fantastically inauthentic Mexican restaurant was once a chain started in Oklahoma, but for various reasons the Denver location is the only one that remains standing out as wildly unique from the other properties in its strip mall for it’s beautifully gaudy, bright pink faux-Pueblo exterior. It’s like a castle of 70s kitsch, a lasting monument to a time when going out for fast food was thought of as an adventure and the idea of eating Mexican cuisine still a novelty. I was excited about it long before arriving in Colorado, because it prominently features in one of the funniest and most twisted episodes of South Park that the very funny and twisted show has ever produced, but as I was asking for suggestions of things to do in the Mile High City it was probably the single attraction that was most recommended to me (which tells you how well my friends know me). All my friends from the area said the exact same thing “The Food is Terrible, You Have To Go” (it should be their slogan really). I was ecstatic.
My friend Katie had never seen this particular episode of South Park, so she was completely unsuspecting and more than a little curious about why I was so giddy to be going to a bad Mexican restaurant. The answer is because Casa Bonita is not really a restaurant, but a uniquely wild experience. As soon as you step into the big pink castle, reality cease to exist as you stumble across an entire sprawling fake-Mexican village. You go through a long buffet style line to order your food because it’s requirement for entrance lest the place be bespoiled by frivolous thrill-seekers. Once you’ve placed your order, you’re taking to your seats and everything goes batshit crazy. In the center of the dining area is a 30 ft. water fall where performers put on a little plays before making dramatic dives. Mariachi bands saunter from table to table. The walls themselves can’t be trusted to provide you with stability as they are periodically augmented with singing animatronic puppets. There are also magicians, gunfighters, people dressed like dancing animals, an entire arcade, a gift shop, and naturally a haunted cave. It’s an eyepopping experience well worth the price of the food.
In terms of food, Katie and I both got margaritas which added to the whole heightened surreality of the place. She got a respectable taco salad, and I got an enchilada platter with a beef enchilada, a cheese enchilad, a taco, and rice and beans. It was a lot of food, and while it was not as terrible as I may have feared it is definitely not the main reason anyone really goes there. They do give visitors free sopapillas (fluffy fried bread with honey) before every meal and those were actually super delicious.
All bonkers scenery and interesting dining aside, the best part of the whole experience was that I had a good buddy to spend it with. Katie was one of my earliest friends in the University Band as we bonded over a shared love of ska and folk music and dry Irish humor. I hadn’t had a chance to see her since college though, and it was so fun to get to catch up in perhaps the strangest environment possible. I think we both had a blast, and after having experienced it I was eternally grateful not to have had to be the one weird dude eating by himself in Casa Bonita.
After dinner, Katie came with me to the first open mic of the night at a fun little Irish pub, called the Irish Rover (I think every major city must have one bar called that) and she invited her cousin along too so we had a fun corner of the bar to ourselves to just drink and share funny stories before the mic which was incredibly nice. It was also a little extra neat for me to be able to show off a little bit and do new jokes for someone who’d seen me before because she’d be able to actually see how much I’d come along since I started.
My favorite comic at this mic was a Philly transplant named Wes Williams, who I’d also really enjoyed at the mic yesterday (and spoiler alert would continue to really enjoy throughout the week). My favorite joke of his was “I’ve had a lot of odd jobs. At various points in my life, I’ve been in the army. I’ve been a construction worker, and I’ve been a policeman. At this point my resume just looks like a list of the Village People”
Other Highlights:
Sammy Anser- I’m a high school teacher, and a creepy thing that always happens to me is People ask me if the older girls have a crush on me and then get disappointed when I say no.
Al Powell - I went to lunch with a vegan and it was actually a very good sermon. Is it more progressive to eat the dumb animals? You know who ate Einstein? Maggots
Ben Copper - (he did a reading of a fake modern children’s book called If You Give a Mouse an Oxy)
Emily Crock- (did a funny but tremendously dirty extended bit about how she’s never had an orgasm and all the ways she tried. I thought it was a solid set, but it might have surprised some of the people at an Irish bar on a Monday night)
My own set went pretty solidly for doing mostly new jokes, so it was a little confidence boost that I hadn’t become a worse writer over my travels and I was happy that my friend and her cousin got to see me put a good foot forward.
I didn’t stick around as much after my own set as I normally would have partially so I could say goodbye to Katie and her cousin, and partially because I’d heard really good things about a later open mic at a place called the Lion’s Lair, and I wanted to check it out. I was a little sad saying my goodbyes, but really happy I got to see a friendly face in a city I wasn’t expecting to.
Lion’s Lair was a much looser and divier bar, but it had the kind of authentic grit and charm you can only get from being a really beloved place for drinkers, musicians, and comics over several years. I really liked it there. I think in terms of energy, it was a much more fun and weird mic where the audience might not like you at all but the comics are given a good amount of room to be strange and goofy whereas the previous mic, while good, was more of a normal bar.
My favorite comic of this mic was a guy named Basil Farrage who did a really funny impression of if Chris Rock lived in the Harry Potter Universe which was impressive in how spot on it was while also being super silly and featuring the line “There’s Black people, and then there’s wizards”
Other Highlights:
Byron Graham- I I like making people's significant others laugh harder than they do. I call it Chuckolding
Grayson Knight- Middle aged women hit on me a lot. They have a type and it's their nephew
Michael Isaacs - I had a terrible shit today. It was like world war number two
Max Presley- Being a mom is the only job where you're encouraged to put a nipple in a kid's mouth
Ben Bryan - People at the gun range don't like it when you use a picture of yourself as the target
It is a testament to how much I liked the bar and the other comics that I overall enjoyed this mic, because boy did I not do particularly well. I think I thought in the moment that it would be fitting the general vibe of the place to just do all my dirtiest jokes, but doing them all back to back really didn’t have any flow to it and also took away any surprise factor of the dirtiness. A few jokes still landed but for the most part, I really did a weak job relative to myself and I think the set got exactly what it deserved. I did get to have some nice conversations with the other comics some of whom thankfully saw me do better yesterday so they didn’t judge me too harshly. Considering there was also about 5 hours of driving in there, it felt like a pretty jam packed day.
Favorite Random Sightings: The Big Wonderful (an adorably named festival being advertised with not quite enough context all over the place); “Get It in a Garage” (no clue what this ad was going for); The Lazy Moose; The Mad Moose (not related); Laughing Grizzly; and the crazy wifi name I’ve ever seen pop up on my phone: “Comcast gave me AIDS”
Regional Observations: The amount of shops and restaurants that have Moose somewhere in the name skyrockets the closer you get to the mountains.
Albums Listened To: Ugly Cherries by PWR BTTM (a very good debut album by a band that imploded after revelations of predatory behavior and assault from the lead singer in past relationships); Ultimate Collection by Jimmy Cliff (a fun greatest hits from a legend); The Ultimate Escape by Tsunami Bomb (just Russian Roulette); The Ultimate Otis Redding by Otis Redding (another Legend); Uncanned (disc 1) by Canned Heat (a great 60s blues band)
People’s Favorite Jokes: None today but here’s one from the internet:
Man: "I don't even know what the cloning machine does!"
Scientist: "Well, that makes two of us.”
Songs of the Day:
Knocked it out of the park
Incredible performance even with the dumb watermark