Red Rocks Park, Golden, Colora

     We were in Golden a couple years ago and toured a few of the many great tourist sites.  Folks who have been here told me we missed an important spot: Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater.  Our campground is only a couple miles from this park so we took off in a slightly cooler morning to visit this park.  I thought that we would drive around for fifteen minutes and then be off to our next spot.
    I can only say, "Wow!" what a great place.  I wish that we had scheduled ourselves so that we could enjoy a concert in this amazing outdoor concert hall.  Two huge rocks - three hundred feet high - frame a natural amphitheater.  The site was once listed as one of the seven wonders of the world.
    Like so many places that we have visited, the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) helped to build the structure during the 1930's when so many young men were unemployed and needed a work program to help their families.  The young men (18 - 25) were directed by engineers and architects from the WPA (Works Public Administration).  The construction took twelve years and the first event was an annual Easter Sunrise service in 1947.  Since that time some of the best music performers have held concerts on this stage.  The list included The Beatles, U2, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, John Denver, Moody Blues, Santana - all the oldies that Rick and I remembered.
   The park has a very active fitness program with hiking trails, biking trails, Yoga programs, fitness trainers and daily workouts up and down the stairs of the amphitheater.  It is a beautiful sitting with 64 rows of benches and at 6400' of altitude it is easy to get a good workout.  I expected to find the park mostly empty, but there were hundreds of folks there - touring, but also working out.
    We went back to Golden to once again visit the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum.  The display now is of modern and historic quilts that were machine quilted. (For you non-quilt lovers, this means the decorative  stitching the holds that back, filler, and front of the quilt together).  Some of the quilts were from 1880 - 1930.  I had no idea that sewing machines could produce some of the fancy stitching that I saw on these old quilts.  So cool!
    We intended to take a tour of the Miller/Coors Brewery as our final stop for the day.  We scheduled it after lunch.  Our pre-lunch wine tasting sort of blew the day for us so we thought we would do the beer tasting in the afternoon.  So did a whole lot of other folks.  The line was very long.  Longer than Disney World long.  So we didn't take the tour this trip either.  Next time - Coors tour and Red Rocks concert, I promise.