How to see Denver in 3 days or less

Friday we were on the "bright-and-early" Air Tran flight from Cleveland to Denver.  You're not going to believe me when I tell you our tickets were free.  Well, not FREE, we paid the taxes, but the actual ticket was free.  Wendy's offered a promotion and we took it!

As soon as we flew into Denver (which is a very nice, clean, well-organized airport) we went right downtown.  I regularly crave huevos rancheros so we stopped at the busy little diner just down from the mint.  YUM!  After breakfast we toured the U.S. Mint.  After the tour we walked down to the statehouse, around the block to a fire museum, and on to the rehearsal dinner that ended up in the hotel TGI Fridays for a few of us.

Red Rocks Park

Saturday, again, up bright and early.  My husband had never been to the Rockies before and I wanted to take him at least a little ways into the mountains.  Our first stop was a scenic point of interest where we read a bit about the formation of the land (which is cool if you're a geology dork like us).  Then on to Red Rocks Park.  All I can say is BREATHTAKING!  I would LOVE to see a concert there.

Red Rocks is cool, but just not quite "mountain" enough so on we went to Idaho Springs.  Here we went up into a working gold mine, which was  NEAT trip!  If you're out there, DO THIS!  After the tour through the mine and a short lesson on panning, we were climbing up the mountain and panning for gold.  After getting nothing but sludge (Well, okay, I found a TEENSY piece of silver) we decided we probably better not make a life out of this and went into town for pizza and fellowship at the local Elks club.  We got back just in time to get changed and to the wedding / reception.