On this edition of The Moose On Vacation:

Way back at the end of January I was in Colorado for personal reasons, as some of you may know Colorado was my former home state of ~16 years before moving to Washington in 2010. Needless to say I know a lot about Denver and Colorado as a whole, even places not on the map.

Well, since Me and the Hubby were going to be there over the weekend a pup friend made plans to join us in Denver to get “the tour”. 

Who is this pup? He is: “The Pup With No Name” or as he likes to call him self some times “NoNamePup”

We started the tour out with showing The Pup With No Name around Denver, taking him to all the good places to eat. (Denver might not have a lot of things, but it has some fucking fantastic food!)

On Saturday we strapped The Pup With No Name in to the car and we headed up to Blackhawk/Central City, two of Colorado’s three Gaming/Gambling towns.

But why here? Colorado mountain towns (except the ski towns) are all quite old, some are older than Denver, this is because of the rich Gold mining history of the state, meaning there are lots of cool things to see. It’s also quite scenic! After dragging The Pup With No Name around there we took one of the few back roads the connects Central City to Idaho Springs, If you don’t know they are there you won’t find em, no signs tell you where these roads go. They normally aren’t passable in winter either so this was a nice treat. 

While The Pup With No Name was out exploring when we parked, I decided to join in

Ear-play and other pup-ness ensued!

And when The Pup With No Name wouldn’t get back in to the car….

Well I just had to take matters in to my own hands! 

Next we headed down through Idaho Springs (Yes still in gear!) and up towards Pikes Peak, alas due to it being January we were only able to get about 3/4 of the way up the highway to the park entrance (its closed from Oct – May/June anyway). But when we found a pull off  we decided to take more pics!

 Isn’t The Pup With No Name so cute?

I love the this image, but then again, I do love art. 

“What are you looking at?” — The Pup With No Name

Kink of the mountain! Or “Strongest Pup in the world!” 

Pups will be pups! We can’t resist snow

“I am not cute or petable!” — The Pup With No Name. 

After that we had dinner a local place in Idaho Spring, Beau Jo’s pizza If you don’t know who they are look em up! And if your ever in Colorado, be sure to stop by here it will not disappoint!  Then homeward, err, hotelward we went.

On Sunday we made a few more local stops in Denver, but three of them are worth noting here:

• Best Cuban Sandwich you will ever have. (some would say period, others say outside of Miami) — Head to: Buenos Aires pizzeria While your there, have an empanada too! Mmmm now I’m off point and hungry too! 

Next is a Colorado institution, not for its food, but what it is! Casa Bonita, thanks to South Park many of you know of its name, but few know its a real place (yes, the show doesn’t lie about whats inside either, there are a few child hood memories for many a Coloradoan that relate to this place).

Taking this picture was a bit interesting, you see, Casa Bonita sits in an “interesting” part of Denver off Colfax, where the hookers, pimps and drug dealers are!  The Pup With No Name got more then a few interesting looks and even honked at while we took these! But the next photos were even more interesting….

The Blue Bear. A Denver icon since about 2005, started its life as part of the SCFD (Sciences and Cultural Foundation) Funding Ballot initiative who’s logo was a light blue polar bear. This Bear sits looking in to the Colorado Convention Center main lobby in the heart of Downtown Denver.

So, not only is this in Downtown, but on this particular weekend there was a huge ski/snowboard conference going on, just to re-affirm that Colorado snowboarders are none to bright was a comment we got while walking from the car to the bear (about a block) in a large crowd of people: “Wow man, he looks like a Leather Dog” Umm … no shit?! If I had been more on top of it I would have responded: “Sure, want to go next? I’ve got locking paw-mits in the car….” 

Well, that concludes this update. As Always, tune in again soon for the next Edition of The Moose On Vacation, Who knows where the fuck I’ll turn up