CO Day 4 - Gardens, Gods, and Grand Old Courthouses
Today started with a trip to a beautiful little coffee shop called the Little Owl. The coffee scene in Denver has proven to be as impressive as its breakfast offerings. As excellent as the coffee was, the thing I was most excited about was the unexpected appearance of a glazed coconut donut at the pastry counter that caught my eye and my heart.
My next stop was a short drive farther up into the clouds to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. This jaw-dropping National Natural Landmark consists of dozens of breath-taking, massive Red Rock formations that surge and twist out of the Earth in remarkably strange and lovely shapes that look so magical next to the surrounding greenery as if they really had been placed there by ancient gods. Even the view from the parking lot across the street was out of this world.
Before heading into the Garden proper, I decided to check out the visitor center, which was a beautifully modern building with huge glass windows overlooking the park. Inside was a series of galleries about the wildlife, geology, and human history of the area, all of which were spectacularly curated to create the impression of immersive 3-D environments. The most exciting bit of natural history from the park was that in 1887 paleontologists discovered a partial dinosaur skull in the park that belonged to a totally new species that had never been encountered before, Theiophytalia kerri.
On a human level, researchers believe that Native Americans first came across the Garden in 1330 BCE, and I can only imagine how shocked they must have been. The park became a popular campsite for different tribes because the rock formations provided natural shelter and plenty of access to wildlife and plants to hunt and eat. European explorers first came across the Garden in the 16th century and wrote about it in extensively in their journals and letters because they just couldn’t believe it. When western settlers began building cities in Colorado in the late 19th century, naturally their first thought was “This land is so beautiful… how do we monetize it?” so they started trying to make it a tourist destination to great success. The name of the park is even attributed to one of the most ridiculous and stupid historic dialogs I’ve ever heard, when one surveyor came across the rock formations and said to his partner that this would “make a capital place for a beer garden”. Blow away by this moronic understatement, the other surveyor said “Beer garden?! Why, it is a fit place for the Gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods,” and the name just sort of stuck. These settlers might not have been the most reverent of the land, but I begrudgingly have to admit that the decorative plates they would eventually make to encourage tourists were surprisingly neat pieces of art, and also the current conservation and protection of the land might not have happened without these early entrepreneurs putting the Garden on people’s radars.
After learning a bit more about the area, I was finally ready to venture into this mythical land for myself. It was simply one of the single most astonishing places I’ve ever been. The rocks were either bright red sandstone or a more stoic gray color, and some of them towered over 300 feet tall. The poet Helen Hunt Jackson described the formations as coming in “every conceivable and inconceivable shape and size... all bright red, all motionless and silent, with a strange look of having been just stopped and held back in the very climax of some supernatural catastrophe,” and there’s no way I’m going to come up with a description more beautiful or apt than that. I just walked around with a perpetual look of wonder at each new view I encountered. My look of amazement only occasionally disappeared when I childishly giggled at particularly phallic rocks or looked on in horror of people who felt the need to try to climb these bad bad boys. It’s impressive for sure, but just kind of unnecessary. Other than that, I’ll just let the images speak for themselves:
Every single formation was amazing in its own way, but for whatever reason these four in particular stuck out to me for having shapes that both improbably well balanced and eerily reminiscent of spectral hands of god-like creatures:
I’m not sure if I didn’t hike up far enough to see it or if my phone died or I just stupidly missed it, but probably the most famous formation in the park is the exceedingly precarious Balanced Rock, and I didn’t get a photo of it. Luckily the internet was kind enough to fill in my journalistic shortcomings:
After all that hiking and nature, I did two things much more characteristic of me. I took a nap in my car, and then set sail for nearby Manitou Springs to play pinball at the old timey Manitou Springs Penny Arcade. The arcade is totally functional for fun and games, but it also serves as a museum capturing a snapshot of long gone time in family amusement when arcade games varied from one penny to $1.25 at the most. There’s over 50 games there, and while I stuck to my beloved pinball until I ran out of loose change I was happy with everything I saw.
To go full childhood nostalgia, after the arcade I got some delicious homemade ice cream from Pikes Peak Chocolates and Ice Cream. I got a cone of almond joy which featured coconut based ice cream, rich dark chocolate chunks, and some namesake almonds, and it was like a shot of pure joy that really hit the spot on this hot day.
A cool feature of Manitou Springs is that it boasts 8 different fountains for getting free access to the healing waters the town was named after. Each fountain is a pretty amazing of work of art in its own right and each location has its own unique flavor based on its particular mineral content. I wasn’t in town long enough to find all 8 springs, but I stumbled across Navajo Spring and Shoshone Spring and I was very impressed.
After sampling the local waters, I made my way back to Colorado Springs and refueled with some good coffee from a place called the Wild Goose Meeting House, which was funky pub and cafe with a wonderfully homey, welcoming environment.
Re-energized, I decided to soak up some local history at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, which is housed in the gorgeously restored El Paso County Courthouse. It sure does cut a pretty stately picture:
Inside was just grand as out, with magnificent marble columns, crown molding, and chandeliers giving an impression of opulence throughout.
The first gallery was small but super cute display of vintage toys from some of region’s youngest pioneers over the years. I particularly enjoyed the weird tin toys like a fat man yelling into a megaphone or a very well dressed monkey.
Across from the toys was a fantastically powerful photograph of two strong willed early Pikes Peak natives walking along a railroad track. I’m not sure who took the photo, but it does make for a particularly striking image:
The first major exhibit was a special gallery about an incredible but not super-well known group of Colorado natives, The League of Wives. Founded by five Colorado military wives whose husbands had either gone missing or were captured in Vietnam, this group of strong, brazen women decided that if the government wasn’t going to do enough to get their loved ones home than they were were going to take matters into their own hands. They organized other POW/MIA families, they lobbied the government on local and national levels to negotiate the release of POWs and investigate MIA soldiers, the started strategic media campaigns to make sure the public knew what they were going through, and most amazingly of all they managed to code secret letters and correspond with their husbands in North Vietnam. It’s an astonishing story of unsung bravery, heroism, and resilience, and it was told with a wonderful mixture of art, artifacts, and period 60s-70s setpieces that helped bring the story to life.
My favorite part of the exhibit though was this picture of the 5 first wives meeting with Richard Nixon. Nixon looks like he’s trying to be charming, and they all look they want to absolutely kill him because charming just isn’t something he could really pull off.
The next gallery was all vintage war effort posters from WWI, which were both fascinating windows into history and really great pieces of art all at once.
While some of the posters tried to encourage fundraising by inspiring hope, others opted for the more batshit terrifying approach:
Transitioning to the next gallery, there was a neat piece by a local artist simply and elegantly depicting a flock of birds with expertly sculpted steel. I particularly like the shadows the sculptures cast on the walls making the piece almost seem to be bigger and more complex than it really is.
The next gallery featured collection of early vintage photographs (some of them are probably not technically photographs but I wouldn’t be able to articulate the differences between materials and techniques). These pieces showcased an astounding diversity of lives and landscapes found in the region from as early as the technology to take photos existed. The landscapes were all breathtaking, but I really loved the smaller scale slice of life photos, and I particularly liked seeing so much ethnic diversity from so early in the town’s history because it furthers a point I’ve made countless times that the history of the West was way more multicultural than Westerns might have you believe. I also thought it was pretty admirable that museum added a little note to be at least a little skeptical of all the old photos of Native Americans, because there’s always a chance the (usually) White photographer had the subjects dress or pose a certain way to help create a narrative for whomever the pictures were to be sent. In this way, a lot of “historical” photos are really complete fictions, and it’s a good reminder to not just believe something because there’s a picture of it.
Of course my favorite photos were of big goofy babies. The standouts for me were a baby sharing a gigantic beer with a be-cowboy-hatted man at a diner and a disturbingly muscular baby giddily swinging from a clothes line. I call them The Sharpshooter and the Daredevil respectively. Not sure why, but it just seems to fit.
Up next was regional history gallery with a nifty curatorial flourish called Colorado Springs A-Z. The galleries featured 26 alphabetized displays of interesting and unique items that paint a portrait of different historical and cultural moments from the area’s history. My favorites included: some beautiful art glass windows; an authentic Olympic Torch symbolizing Colorado Springs’ role as the home of the Official US Olympic Training Center; a dreamily impressionistic painting commemorating the history of mining in the town; and a wagon full of fake grasshoppers meant to epitomize the crazy but true story of a time in 1937 when a grasshopper plague in the area got so bad (7 billion grasshoppers per 10 sq. miles!) that the local national guard waged war against the hoppers using flamethrowers and dynamite until deciding that pounds and pounds of poison was the best route to go. In the end, the war was one but over $3 million in crops were lost and an additional million spent on manufacturing and distributing the poison. Life is pretty strange sometimes.
My favorite alphabetical features were about celebrities with ties to the area. These displays featured a delightfully motley crew including: Man with a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney, who revolutionized what was possible with film makeup by stretching and shading his own body to its absolute limits; Nikola Tesla who built a laboratory in Colorado Springs to study the effects of high altitudes on electrical transmissions; and Cassandra Peterson, who you might know better as Camp-cinema icon (and my personal pinball rival) Elvira, Mistress of the Dark!
The next exhibition featured an expansive collection of pieces from Van Briggle Art Pottery, a local company that operated from 1901-2012 making it the longest continuously operated art pottery studio in American history! The pieces were all exquisitely painted and crafted, featuring magical shades and textures that I’ll never understand how people are capable of making. It’s a beautiful local legacy, and I’m happy the museum was able to celebrate over a century of the company’s incredible handiwork.
The next gallery was dedicated to the culture and crafts of the local Native American Tribes. I gravitated more towards the artsy side of these displays as opposed to the more historical stuff, because the Beadwork, pipe-making, pottery, and weaving are just stunningly impressive but the history as you can imagine is more on the sadder side of things unfortunately and for whatever reason today I just wasn’t feeling as up for the heavy stuff. I fully acknowledge that it’s a privilege to get to ignore even for a short museum visit some of the more upsetting parts of American history, but today I was willing to take advantage of it.
The next galleries were about the different types of early Western pioneers in the Pikes Peak region, including miners, prospectors, homesteaders, fur traders, and even poets and writers, probably most notably Helen Hunt Jackson, who like many, moved to Colorado Springs after being diagnosed with Tuberculosis. She took great inspiration from the natural beauty of the land, and also some of the more unsavory things she saw, deciding from then on to also use her position of relative fame to also be an activist for Native American rights. She was a lovely writer, and an all around cool woman, and the museum gave her a little extra love by featuring a small reconstruction of her home home in Colorado Springs.
As I was leaving this gallery, I was greeted by some more great local art (unfortunately I didn’t get the artist’s name) depicting some whimsically wild and domesticated horses and an older Native American man quietly proud of his his heritage:
Up next, I paid a visit to the incredibly grand and immaculately restored Court Chambers. It would suck to be sentenced to prison, but I guess it would be some small consolation to do it in a place as gorgeous as this:
Even the water bubblers were shockingly ornate, featuring little goldleaf water dragons on them!
The last major gallery was about about post-20th century history in the region. There were: saxophones and jazz club signs proudly announcing that Everybody was welcome as a not-so-thinly veiled hint at the prevalence of segregation; old vintage Drug store cabinets telling hundreds of little stories with different old-timey medicines of varying authenticity; beautiful travel posters meant to encourage tourism; lots of guns, some of which were pretty artistically designed in their own right; convalescence beds to reference the history of people fleeing their tuberculosis life-sentences in the high altitudes; and different photos and artifacts specially highlighting major breakthroughs in Black representation within the region such as the badge and nightstick of the first African American policeman to serve on the local force. It was a bit of a hodgepodge of interesting things with not a ton of connective threads beyond the geography but I guess that’s not so different from what it’s really like to live anywhere.
My favorite thing was a fully restored tuberculosis huts where invalids could live in both isolation and community amongst dozen of other little huts in Sanitoriums. It was such an unnerving mix of cute and homey as well as deeply eerie.
In the main lobby before leaving there was a shiny, restored vintage horsedrawn carriage protected by a wonderfully grumpy photo of Helen Hunt Jackson.
Lastly around the stair cases, there was a simply fantastic mural of the history of the Pikes Peak region by Eric Bransby which combined the classical stylings of the court house itself with a fractured modernist approach that called to mind pop art and comic books. It was just an amazing piece of art tucked away in this weird little gem of a museum.
After working up quite an appetite, I stopped at the wonderfully rustic Odyssey Gastropub. Not being able to decide amidst all the good looking food, I got a sampler platter of burnt ends (ribs), chicken wings in a spicy asian BBQ sauce, and fried pork rinds. Everything was perfect pub food, and it was all deliciously complimented by the fantastically named Psycho Penguin Vanilla Porter from Odyssey Beerwerks (interestingly no relation)
After dinner, I learnt that my open mic for the night was was canceled but I wasn’t too bummed out because I was exhausted and the day had been worth the trip anyway. Tired though I was I didn’t want to pass about before 9pm so I did one more coffee run to the closest place to my Air BnB, a drive thru coffee hut called Babe’s Espresso. I thought nothing of the name just assuming it was named after a lovable talking pig, but when I pulled up to the drive-thru and saw that my barista was just wearing a bra and panties I realized a little too late that it was more in a Hooters vein of creepily unnecessary sexual overtones/food pairings. I was glad I ordered an iced drink, just because the idea of making steamed espresso drinks with so few clothes seems like a health risk. Luckily, the barista was amused and not offended by how surprised by her skimpy outfit and since there was no one else in the drive thru we had a pretty funny talk about how creepy some of the other clientele can get but how it’s not a bad job if you don’t mind the ogling because the pay is a little better than a normal coffee shop and the tips are a lot better. It was very surreal, but not the worst possible outing to end a day with.
Favorite Random Sightings: “Get your wax on” (not as appealing a proposition as the ad implies); JP Fizzy’s (very dapper sounding); Red Dog Coffee (their logo had a cat)
Regional Observations: I saw so many blue jays today, which I don’t know if that’s an indicative thing of Colorado Springs in particular, the region, or just the changing of the seasons
Albums Listened To: Unexpected Guests by MF DOOM and various artists (a nice collection of random singles Doom either did vocals or production on over the years); Unknown Album by Ray Parker Jr. (just the Ghostbusters theme which is a must); Untethered Moon by Built to Spill (their most recent work, a great musically dense rock album); Untitled by Sammy Kay (a punkier album than his more folky and ska stuff)
People’s Favorite Jokes: none today but here’s a silly one from the web:
"Do you believe in life after death?" the boss asked one of his employees.
"Yes, Sir." the new recruit replied.
"Well, then, that makes everything just fine," the boss went on. "After you left early yesterday to go to your grandmother's funeral, she stopped in to see you
Songs of the Day:
jazz rap
Wonderfully goofy vintage music video
a perfect blend of 90s grunge and 60s psychedelia