Today went a little differently than planned, but that’s probably for the best. Last night, technical difficulties with my host prevented me from publishing yesterday’s update on schedule, and kept me up until close to 3 AM. When I woke today at 8, I felt like poop. So I wanted to make good time so that we could crash early tonight, while still seeing the things we had planned. We quickly packed everything up, ran the car through a quick wash, and hit the road.

Today’s goal was Denver. The only stop I decided to skip was the first one, Jim Bishop’s Castle. The other two stops prior to Denver, Royal Gorge Bridge (the world’s highest suspension bridge), and the Tesla Museum of Science, we still planned to see.

On the way there, while transiting through Colorado, we stopped at one scenic overlook for Beth to get some pics.

I have a few things to say about Colorado so far. First, it is much more beautiful and green than I expected. I kind of expected a more mountainous Arizona, but so far I have been pleasantly surprised.

Second, the temperature is very nice right now. It’s in the 80’s with reasonable humidity, which is a welcome relief from the 90-100’s with 60+% humidity we have been enduring in the south (I’m starting to sound like a Californian now).

Third, drivers are mostly very good about moving over after passing and keeping to the slow lane except when passing. However, they all seem to be incredibly afraid of exceeding the limit by more than 3-4 MPH, and seeing someone going 76 pass someone going 74 in a 75 zone is way too common. I spent half my day frustrated that people were completely laid back about getting around slower (marginally) drivers. When someone doing 95-100 MPH comes up on you doing 76, you would think that the first instinct would be to get out of the way, but apparently not.

Anyhow, we skipped lunch and made real good time, hitting our first stop at around 2:30PM. Unfortunately, Waze and Roadtrippers had us about 45 miles from where it actually was, in a housing development off a dirt road, no less. I checked the actual website for the Royal Gorge Bridge and found the real address, but at the same time found out that it wasn’t open. Bummer.

So we went to try and hit the second stop, the Tesla Museum of Science. Looking at the description on Roadtrippers, it seems like a cool place. Who (well, other that Edison) wouldn’t like a museum devoted to Nikola Tesla? Unfortunately, if you check the actual website, you’ll see that it isn’t really ‘official’ at all, and appears to be run by a kook. I still wanted to go, however, but the website also says they are strictly by appointment only. Sigh.

Having whiffed on both stops, we just did our best to get into Denver and try to recover in prep for tomorrow. I did manage to get one picture of the GT500, however, and it will give car lovers nightmares:

Keep in mind that this car was spotless 8 hours prior to this picture. This is solely due to 400 or so miles of Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado driving. Most of the damage was done in Texas, however, and I officially declare Texas the hardest state I’ve been in to keep a car clean, beating Florida by a landslide.

Anyhow, we ate our one meal today at Euclid Hall in Denver, which has an amazing number of positive Yelp reviews. I will say that the décor, while very trendy, was very nice, and the presentation of the food was excellent. Unfortunately, those are nearly the only positive things about the place. This is not to say it was bad, really, just mediocre, disappointing, and overpriced.

I started out with the fishwich, which is supposed to be a gourmet fish-based slider. For $6 for a single slider, I expected something exceptional, but what I got was a decent tasting fried fish patty on a decent tasting toasted bun. Not exactly earth-shattering.

I then progressed to a sausage sampler (they make their own sausages and mustards), which came with four sausages and four types of mustard, and a Colorado Lamb plate, containing several cuts of lamb on a mashed potato bed. The sausages were decent, but Ditmer’s in Mountain View is much better. The mustards are nothing special, and pretty bland overall. The lamb was cooked decent, but basically unseasoned (the sauce it’s in is tasteless, more or less), and the potatoes, while maybe the best thing overall, were worse than most places we’ve ate at.

Beth got the chicken and waffles, which is a dish raved about on Yelp, but which she said was ‘meh’. And pricey for so little food.

Overall, we were so disappointed that we didn’t eat desert, despite not eating all day. So, yeah….Sometimes Yelp whiffs too.

At  least we are getting in bed early, however, so we should be reenergized and ready to attack tomorrow.