Downtown Denver

(Buckley AFB, Aurora, CO)  Hi 100 Lo 68 – I guess we forgot to explain what’s wrong with our car. The noise we were hearing was in the “variable valve timing” system. Apparently the mechanism that pumps oil into the valve train when the engine starts wasn’t working properly, causing the rattling noise on startup. Once the momentum of the running engine got oil into all the proper places, everything was fine. So they’re having to replace some parts in the valve train. The service rep said it’s a known problem with that engine in our model year car, and they have a service bulletin on it. And the good news is, it’s covered under warranty. And they were nice enough to give us a rental car to use.

Since this isn’t a workday we thought it would be a good day to go into Denver and check out the 16th Street Mall. It’s an eight-block long section of downtown that’s blocked off for pedestrians and bicycle traffic only, no cars. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

The centerpiece of the pedestrian mall is the clock tower. Its chimes made some beautiful music a high noon.


The tree-lined street makes for a beautiful environment for strolling and window shopping.





Street art can be found all around Denver.


They love their buffalos in the West.


We also walked a few blocks around the downtown area and enjoyed the scenery.







Even among the modern buildings there’s evidence of Denver’s 19th century roots, as these buildings show.



These murals added a colorful touch to this building.


If you look closely you can see a green garden on one of the upper floors of this 20-story apartment building.


Another piece of community art. This one is, um, interesting… and huge!


After a couple of hours of walking around on asphalt streets among all those concrete buildings we were ready to get back to our air conditioned car. The official high in the area was 100, I’m sure it was probably 10 degrees higher in the city due to all the concrete. We're feeling a lot better then we did last week, thanks to drinking a lot of water.

We returned to the RV to relax for the rest of the afternoon. I did some reading and Dee played on her computer. Another great day of seeing new things!