Denver Vacation 2012

Last year, we had planned on going to Colorado Springs because Sam wanted to go up Pike's Peak.  That was after our trip to San Diego, and felt like we could save Colorado for this year.  Well, Denver was in the plans the first two days and Colorado Springs the last two.  With the wild fires in Colorado Springs, we didn't even attempt to go to Colorado Springs.  Instead, we lengthened out stay in Denver and got home a day earlier.  Sam didn't even mention Pike's Peak.  Maybe someday...........

We had a great time at the Denver Museum of Natural History. 

The museum has huge displays depicting different climates and parts of the Earth.

The Denver Zoo is pretty cool!

The Aquarium downtown is one of the best I've seen in the country.  Having seen the aquariums in Oregon, California, and Oklahoma, this is a really neat aquarium.

Old Town Fountains

Old Town has some fountains that the boys enjoy playing in.

Sam enjoyed chopping the water.  Whenever he "chopped" the water it went down.

Sam waiting for another squirt of water

Drying out and relaxing

Camping

We enjoyed camping last night.  It was a perfect night for camping.  Ben found this little orange cube thing that unfolds and looks like a cross.

There was a little dirt hill next to our tent that the boys enjoyed playing on.

Time for smores

Movies under the stars

Weekend

Sam enjoying some spaghetti

Ben playing on the water slide and Grandma and Grandpa Shaffer's

Sam, Ben, and Dad went to the rip off dinosaur deal at Century II today.  Thankfully, we had a Visa gift card we used form a rebate to pay for the tickets.  The mechanical dinosaurs were cool, but the inflatables were $6.00 per kid per turn and about everything else took three tickets at $2.00 per ticket.  Let's just say we didn't stay very long. 

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Anakin Skywalker

A real Jedi

Dad's loaner car for the day while the CRV was in the shop.  A 1990 Buick Century.  For some reason, I seemed to drive slower in this car, probably because it's a Buick

Summer Saturday

Futon Night

Ben and Sam built a wooden airplane from the new Madagascar movie

We haven't been to the annual "Walk With Wildlife" and the fishing clinic at the Great Plains Nature Center in a couple of years.  We had a really good time.  Both Sam and Ben caught a fish pretty quickly.  Ben's fish was tiny and Sam's was a little bigger. 

Sam built up the nerve to throw the fish back in the lake.

We walked around the nature center and completed a scavenger hunt.  The different stations had skunks, falcons,  turtles, insects, birds, and here Ben is picking up a large crawfish.  They were quite large with big pinchers, but Ben learned the correct way to handle them. 

This is an 85 year old snapping turtle.  He's the biggest ever in Kansas.  Weighs about 45 pounds.

A Free Ride

Tuesday night we ventured down to the River Festival where there were free paddle boat rides.  It was a nice evening with a fair breeze.  The line wasn't very long either.  We had a really good time.  These boats were easy to paddle, much better than the beasts at Watson Park.  We got about twenty minutes in the boats.  The volunteers were great, church members from Aviator Church.