More things to do in Denver when you're not dead

I always try and get out of the city when we're at Educause in the little spare time we get, and this time a group of us hired a couple of cars for a short drove out into the Rocky mountains. Denver sits at the edge of a very flat, very barren desert area, but nestles at the bottom of the Rockies, and you can see their snow covered tops from most of the city.

We aimed for Georgetown, a small, old ( by US standards) settlement which has been preserved. Lovely old houses, most decorated for Halloween.






And a lovely old main street where we had enormous burritos for lunch in a Mexican cafe.



Seem stunning views of the mountains as we drove over a very high pass, went rises to nearly 12,000 feet above sea level and the effects of the altitude were felt by many of us.



We were lucky ( I think) that we were in the US on the day of the presidential election. TV adverts were more boring than usual in the run up to it as the two parties continually criticised each other, but being there for the vote was great fun. We headed down to a bar about 6pm, and got a Brit table, and watched it on the giant flat TV screens. We had a map to colour in as states were called - not declared, that's done much later. The calling is done by the media as results come in based on estimates. We were watching different states being called by different media organisations, and it was also odd to us that results were coming in from the Esat Coast before the West Coast had finished voting. Not long after Ohio was called for the democrats, the media declared Obama the winner and we saw the famous "four more years" tweet. Much cheering in the bar, from us and the democrats who seemed to make up the majority of the customers, and it was over. We stayed in the bar to celebrate, the Americans went home. And we all made the 8am session the next day!


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