I'd never used it before, but Clovis, New Mexico does have an airport. It's mostly a general aviation airport, used by non-commercial pilots flying privately-owned planes, but it is serviced by one airline, Denver Air Connection, which runs three flights a week to Denver and three more to Dallas/Fort Worth. For the long MLK weekend in January of 2023, I found I could get a great deal on a round-trip flight to Denver. I wanted to do some snowboarding up there and I'd just gotten an Epic Pass which made lift access at certain expensive mountains considerably cheaper.
Friday, January 13, 2023
It may have been Friday the 13th, but nothing unlucky happened to me that day. Driving to the airport only took about 20 minutes. Being at a small municipal airport, the terminal building was quite small, not much bigger than a typical one-story house. I checked my luggage, took a few steps to the left through security, then waited in the living-room-size waiting room until it was boarding time. That's when everyone walked outside in a line and then up some stairs into the jet.
I can see my house from here! That's the small city of Clovis, New Mexico seen from the east just after takeoff, looking west-southwest.
55 minutes later, here's Denver International Airport seen from the east with the Rocky Mountains far in the background.
I got lunch at one of the airport's many restaurants, a chicken salad sandwich with walnut and cranberry, before reclaiming my suitcase and snowboard.
Unlike the first trip, two weeks earlier, this time I would be staying at a hotel that was much more easily reachable by public transit, a Days Inn on East Colfax Avenue. I got a discount on the hotel cost with Wyndham's "go fast" deal, in which I could just pay half the money while also spending half the reward points I would have to spend to get the room entirely for free.
I rode the A-line commuter train from the airport to Union Station. This trip must have lasted at least half an hour, since the airport is a bit far outside the city. From there I rode one bus, probably the free-of-charge Mallride, down 16th Street to the bus hub at the Civic Center, where I caught bus 15 which goes down East Colfax and took me right to my hotel.
That Days Inn was in a real convenient location, especially compared with the place where I was staying two weeks earlier, with a 7-Eleven next door and several other shops and restaurants within walking distance.
First, while walking around East Colfax I found my way to a great place for coffee, St. Mark's Coffee House, where I had an Americano and a banana. This place was a couple blocks north of Colfax, near 17th & Race in a mostly residential neighborhood. This was something else I was seeing more and more in Denver, and growing to like: establishments like this coffee house right next to the houses where people live. In most parts of the country where I've lived, this is too rare.
For dinner I went to Cheba Hut, which I'm sure has a lot of great food, but the salad I had was unsatisfying.
My last stop of the night was an Illegal Pete's location on East Colfax. Like I mentioned in my last blog about Denver, Illegal Pete's is a local Mexican-ish restaurant chain that is similar to Chipotle or Qdoba, but much better, and with a full bar inside. Here I first had a Ratio Beerworks dark lager, which I thought was OK but a little bitter. Finally, after a Coors Light I had a mixed drink which was a house original: a Chauncey Margarita. Not bad!
Saturday, January 14, 2023
This would be my first day of snowboarding on this trip, and I'd booked a bus known as Snowstang to the Loveland ski resort. With my early bus departure time, I had to wake up well before dawn and get something for breakfast at the 7-Eleven next to the hotel. One of the items I got was something I'd never seen before, an "instant pancake" which came in a plastic cup. Pour water in it and heat in in the microwave, and the raw dough inside will inflate into a bready ball you can eat with a spoon, and tastes just like a pancake.
I put my boots on, gathered up my snowboard, and walked across the street where I caught bus 15 which took me straight to Union Station. There was still plenty of time left, enough for me to hit up another 7-Eleven downtown and get a latte to help me wake up. Back at Union Station, I found my way to the bus terminal to wait for the Snowstang.
The bus terminal at Union Station is underground, with a long indoor waiting area in between two tunnels where the buses park next to glass doors, from which you get to your bus from the waiting area. I quickly found mine, where plenty of other snowboarders and skiers were loading their gear up and boarding the bus.
The state of Colorado owns and operates a statewide bus network called Bustang, for which Union Station in Denver is the central hub. One of its routes is branded "Snowstang" because it primarily serves ski resorts. This one was going west from Denver on Interstate 70. This trip should have just barely lasted an hour, if that, because of how close the Loveland Ski Area was to Denver. Should have...
In retrospect this seems ridiculously obvious, but I didn't expect it because I had never traveled on I-70 west of Denver on a weekend morning during ski season. The traffic jam was ridiculous. I don't remember how long it took to finally get to Loveland but it was at least twice as long as scheduled, and all that time spent just barely crawling in endless bumper-to-bumper traffic. But there was still plenty of morning left when I finally made it there.
Sure was a great day to be on the mountain.
Loveland isn't nearly as big as its more famous nearby ski resorts like Keystone and Copper Mountain, but there were still plenty of trails to spend a day on the mountain without too much repetition. Some of them had plenty of moguls which were quite a workout for me.
Loveland also has a great restaurant/bar at the mountain base with some great food options. For lunch I had a great plate of fettuccine with chicken. There was some great local beer there, too...
That's 12 ounces of Telluride Ski In Ski Stout.
The bus ride back to Denver wasn't quite as long as in the morning, since there wasn't nearly as much traffic. After all the time spent snowboarding, I slept through most of the bus ride.
One of the small towns between Loveland and Denver, on the south side of I-70.
When I stepped of the bus at Union Station, I was really hungry, and as we learned two weeks earlier, Union Station is full of great, if a little pricey, restaurants. From one of these, Acme, I got a great Waldorf salad with salmon. Thankfully there was enough space for me to sit at a table with my snowboard leaning against it without blocking anyone's way.
After showering at the hotel I did some bar hopping on Colfax, the closest thing to après-ski I was going to get. First I went to a bar called Squire. There I had a pint of PBR while a band was playing, but the place was rather seedy and I decided to leave after finishing that pint. My next, and last, stop was called DNVR Bar. They had a good beer selection; I had a Breckenridge Avalanche Amber and a Ratio American Ale, which were both pretty good. That was going to be the end of my night, since I had to wake up early again the next morning.
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Today was going to be another snowboarding day, but this time spent at a mountain I'd been on before: Keystone Resort. I'd earlier bought an Epic Pass which was good for three days, but only at select resorts, and most of them in the Northeast. Keystone was one of the few in the Rockies I could use this pass at.
The Epic Pass cost me $223, which meant that since it was good for three days, I was paying $74.33 for each day. When you consider that a one-day lift ticket at a resort like Keystone will typically cost at least $100, and definitely more on a weekend, this Epic Pass was a real bargain.
I had the same breakfast as yesterday, with the instant pancake, but didn't have time for a latte. Bus 15 brought me to Union Station where I boarded my Snowstang bus. This bus wasn't taking me directly to Keystone, though; it was only stopping at Loveland, Arapahoe Basin ("A-Basin"), Breckenridge, and Copper Mountain. That wasn't a problem, since Summit County has a free-of-charge local bus system, Summit Stage, connecting the resorts with the county's towns. My Snowstang ticket was for A-Basin where I planned to ride a Summit Stage to Keystone.
The Snowstang left Union Station at 6:15am. Like on Saturday morning, there was a traffic jam on the highway, but not quite as bad as before.
At A-Basin I had some time to kill before I could catch a local Summit Stage bus to Keystone. While waiting, I finally got some coffee at the mountain base restaurante to fully wake up. First I had a latte, and then with still more time left, a coffee with Bailey's. I also needed some new gloves, since the ones I had were falling apart, so I bought a pair at the shop there too.
Finally at 10:10 I stepped on a Summit Stage which took me to Keystone. With the extra time needed for these local bus rides, I wasn't going to be on the slopes for the whole time they were open. Especially not with the long lines I encountered at Keystone.
Great view from the top of one of Keystone's slopes. Off in the distance you can see all the trails of another ski resort; that's Breckenridge.
Being as big as it is, Keystone has plenty of on-mountain dining options. These are the restaurants I like to eat at the most at ski resorts, because being on the mountain they require at least a little bit of skill to reach. I love looking at a trail map, seeing a restuarant in a hard-to-reach corner of the mountain, deciding to eat lunch there and figuring out how I'll get there from where I'm at.
Labonte's Smokehouse BBQ might be considered hard-to-reach by some people. It's in a part of the resort where there are no easy-rated (green circle) slopes, so the least-difficult way to get there is by way of an intermediate-rated (blue square) slope named Mozart. The food was certainly worth the trip; I had a spicy chicken sandwich with spicy slaw on a toasted roll. Only thing I didn't like was that there wasn't any free space to sit down at any table inside the restaurant, so I had to eat outside in the cold.
This is early in the afternoon, as snow started falling more heavily. Riding the Summit Express lift, with the River Run gondola on the right.
Keystone is one of my favorite Colorado ski resorts, and I had a great day there, but couldn't stay as long as I wanted. Because of the extra bus ride, not only did I arrive at Keystone over an hour after opening, I had to leave just as long before closing. It was probably sometime between 3 and 3:30 when I stepped back on board a local bus bound for A-Basin. There, I got a refreshing frappe while waiting for the Snowstang back to Denver.
Of all the traffic jams I experienced that weekend, this one was absolutely the worst. I-70 east of A-Basin was so cram-packed with traffic, the bus moved at a snail's pace for miles as one road after another, full of cars, merged with the Interstate. It wasn't backed up for the entire distance to Denver, I think we started to move after the last merging, but the bus was stuck in that traffic jam for so long that the trip lasted about four hours, and the time was 8:30 when I stepped off the bus at Union Station!
After a day of snowboarding I was definitely hungry, especially after sitting on a bus for four hours after leaving the slopes. That night I got my dinner from the same place as the night before, Acme, in Union Station. This time I had a gyro.
And then it was back to the hotel on bus 15 for a shower and change of clothes before going out for more bar hopping. Well, there was only one bar this time. It was called Parkers, and it was on N Marion St just a few steps north of E Colfax, a really short walk from the Days Inn where I was staying.
Parkers was a great place to finish the night off. I didn't try any new beers though, just New Belgium Fat Tire, Miller High Life, and Shiner Light Blonde. They also served these shots called green tea shots made with whiskey, peach schnapps, lemon-lime soda, and sour mix; I had two of those.
Monday, January 16, 2023
On Monday morning I could finally sleep as late as I wanted, since I didn't have any early buses to catch. I got a sausage biscuit, a banana, and a latte for breakfast from the 7-Eleven next door to the hotel. Then, I packed my bags and checked out of the hotel, where they graciously allowed me to store my stuff there while I spent most of the rest of the day exploring Denver.
I took a light rail train to the Louisiana and Pearl intersection, then walked over the bridge over I-25 to the Whole Foods where I had done some grocery shopping two weeks earlier. But this time, I wasn't here to do any shopping, just to buy a mocha coffee from their coffee bar.
While sipping my mocha I walked around the surrounding neighborhood a bit. This is definitely the kind of neighborhood I'd like to live in. Not only are these houses within walking distance of a Whole Foods, but there's also Pearl Street, which is something of a main street for this neighborhood, with some dive bars and other such businesses you'd expect to find in the middle of a small town.
And then there's Washington Park. This huge green space is full of so many recreational amenities, although with the weather being as cold and icy as it was, no one was using the tennis or basketball courts, or doing anything in the ponds. There was quite a length of walking and biking trails around the park, and best of all, even in the cold and icy weather, there were plenty of other people walking and biking on these paths. This really is a neighborhood I'd like to live in.
From the northern edge of Washington Park I rode a bus some distance to the north. Wherever I stepped out of the bus, I found my way to 6th Street where there was another strip of cafés and restaurants.
One of these restaurants was a great sandwich shop called Mr. Lucky. This is one place I'll highly recommend! This is where I got my lunch, which was a Bird and Basil Sandwich made with turkey and basil cream cheese, along with lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, to which I added avocado. Mr. Lucky's seems to be a local chain, and this location was at the intersection of Washington and 6th. If you're on 6th St. and you're hungry, this is where to stop.
Also on 6th I found a great place for coffee, Pablo's. I got a delicious Kenya coffee there, along with some grounds to take home.
From Pablo's, I continued my wandering northeast to another big green space, Cheesman Park. This space was the same kind of wide, open green space as Washington Park, although about half the size, with just as many people walking around. There was also this scenic structure:
On the eastern edge of Cheesman Park I found the entrance to the Denver Botanic Gardens. This was the "Member Gate," though, so I couldn't actually get in.
At this point I had had enough of walking through parks. Colfax was just a couple blocks north of the northern edge of Cheesman Park, so I walked up there and took bus 15 to Union Station. There was one more stop I wanted to make before leaving the city, but this stop took way longer than I anticipated.
That last destination was the Wynkoop Brewery which is on Wynkoop St. across from Union Station. I'd visited this place about five years earlier, during a brief look at Denver in between landing at the airport and riding a Snowstang bus to Silverthorne. On this day, I just wanted to have one beer and leave, but instead I got sidetracked drinking more, while talking to someone else at the bar.
Here's what I drank at Wynkoop. First, a Rail Yard Ale which was a tasty amber. Second, a Wobbling Monk Belgian Dubbel; it was supposed to be a Trappist ale and I thought it was close enough. At that point I probably should've left to get my luggage and head to the airport, but I ended up staying longer, because there was something else on the menu that I'd never had before and wanted to try: Oink Ale, which was a rice ale. It was rather smooth. Time was ticking away, but I still thought I could go for a fourth! Dinger's Golden Ale, which tasted like a light lager. Whoever it was I was talking to there, and what we were talking about, I've long since forgotten. Probably something to do with living in Germany, because we both did a shot of Rumpel Minze, a 100-proof peppermint schnapps, before I finally saw myself out.
I seemed to have enough time when I finally left Wynkoop, rode the bus back to the hotel, and reclaimed all my things. As I left the hotel, I realized going back to Union would be inefficient so I took bus 12 up Downing St., and it was as I was riding this bus that I started to wonder if I was going to miss my flight. By the time I boarded the A train at the 38th-Blake station, the sun had set and I was starting to worry a little. If only I hadn't stayed at Wynkoop for so long...
The train seemed to take so long as it steadly moved east from one stop to another, with the airport seeming so far off. At last I arrived, and there was still time before my flight left...but not for my snowboard, which, as I learned at the luggage-checking counter, would have to stay there until the next flight to Clovis on Wednesday.
Alright, I can finally get to the plane, right? Nope, the security line was a mile long and barely moving! By the time I made it through security, there was hardly any time left and I had to run! Of course, the Denver Air Connection gates were as frustratingly far as possible from the security checkpoint. Like at most airports there's a train system connecting the terminal buildings and I had to run to catch one of those, ride the train to another terminal, and then after stepping off, break out sprinting because my gate was at the absolute furthest point from the train.
I was so tired and out of breath when I finally made it to the gate, something like a minute or two after the plane was supposed to take off, but miraculously it was still there! I had a few minutes to get a sandwich from a nearby stand, and enjoy that for dinner while catching my breath. When the plane took off, I was on it.
Well, except for that panicked rush at the end, that trip went pretty well. Denver is a lovely city with some delicious food, delicious beer, plenty of expansive parks, and a short distance to some of the best ski mountains in the country. If I lived in Denver, I already know what some of my favorite restaurants would be, and I have an idea of where I'd look for a home. I probably wouldn't ride the Snowstang to the mountains, because of the traffic jams; instead I'd just get a hotel room in a town near the resort, and drive when the roads are clearer.
Also, that Clovis airport is really conveniently located. Now, if only the flight times were as convenient. Thus far, this weekend in Denver has been the only time I flew directly out of Clovis instead of driving all the way to Lubbock, Amarillo, or Albuquerque.
