We kicked off our vacation with five nights in Colorado, which allowed us to spend time with friends, see some sights, and break up the drive to Nebraska. We spent most of our first day driving and stayed the night in Pagosa Springs. Pagosa Springs is a small town where most businesses close up at 5 pm, so we didn’t have a chance to walk around “downtown”. We did have a nice dinner by the river at Riff Raff on the Rio and spent the evening in the hot springs pools at our motel. We stopped at the Pagosa Baking Company on our way out of town the next morning and it was delicious.

We would be staying with our friends in Monument for the weekend and on the way there Friday we stopped in Pueblo for the afternoon. We did a tour of the Rosemount House and it was terrific. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed inside the house, otherwise we would have taken many of this 37-room mansion built in 1893. Amazingly, 85% of the original furnishings are still there, which is impressive. We had lunch by the riverwalk at Brues Alehouse, checked out a few farm stores, then were on our way to Monument.

We had a great time with our friends - which consisted of a lot of chatting over good food. Saturday we spent our quarters at Manitou Springs Penny Arcade, delighting in both games old and new. Graham put on a master class in Ms. PacMan and Norah finally hit the jackpot on Jumpin’ Jackpot. We had lunch at Border Burger and walked around Manitou Springs - our favorite was seeing an emu named Dennis. How random! Sunday we did a short hike at Red Rock Canyon Open Space and had New Mexican enchiladas at La Casa Fiesta afterwards. Time spent with friends is always time well spent!

We were up early on Monday to go to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science - we spent most of our time in the mazes, gemstones, and health exhibits. In the late afternoon we checked in at our adorable urban bed and breakfast - the Queen Anne near downtown. It was a super cute place with friendly hosts (we stayed in the Aspen Room). We had an early dinner at Campfire and ice cream at Frozen Matter (too bad Norah wasn’t old enough to go in the speakeasy, accessed through the freezer door - the ice cream was tasty though!) before heading to Meow Wolf: Convergence Station. This completed our Meow Wolf Trifecta (we previously experienced Santa Fe’s The House of Eternal Return and Las Vegas’s Omega Mart) and while we loved them all, we concurred that Convergence Station might be our favorite (partly because it was so big with a lot to explore). Suffice to say, we loved it!