A WEEK IN COLORADO

MY WEEK IN PHOTOS: NOVEMBER 12-18, 2018! (PART 1)

A week in Denver, Colorado for a museum technology conference (yay) and a lot of visits to museums, historic houses, and touching snow whenever possible.

Enjoy!

Good morning, bright and early flight out to Denver, Colorado with Tristan for a work conference.

Wow, blessed by airline snacks!

Snow on the ground in Denver

Successfully arrived at the hotel

Bundled up and heading out to face the snow.

Who are we kidding, we were psyched about the snow. So much so that Tristan kept touching it with his bare hands.

Tiny Christmas tree

We decided to walk from Downtown to “RiNo” (River North?)

I’ve been to Denver once before last year. I came here with a co-worker so this time I tried something different.

Cashew pesto and cheese and tomatoes and all kinds of good stuff.

Tristan thriving

Made a tiny snowman on the corner

After walking around RiNo for a bit, we stopped at Epic Brewing.

Already getting dark!

After a few hours in our hotel rooms, we reconvened to head out to try an izakaya place called “Mizu Izakaya”

Squid!

Black cod! (My fav!)

Pork belly buns (probs my least fav of everything)

In 19 degree weather, I still wanted some coffee ice cream at Little Man

Cold, but worth it.

This hotel had themed levels, so mine was I think Rock and Roll? Tristan’s was Chick Flick’s. There was also a horror level on 13. But the worst thing of all was the elevators had custom jingles for each level of the hotel as you arrived at the floor…and they played everything you were in the elevator. Sometimes I’d be in there with like 10 people, 6 different floors and it was a bit maddening. A weird circle of hell.

Preparing for conference that starts in the morning.

Conference day 1! We signed up for a field trip up to Boulder, Colorado to see the University there, and three on campus museums.

An exhibition that looks at the changing climate of the region through visual culture, but *oops* nobody thought to include any POV of the people native to the region. Hey, it happens, museums. But when you ask people questions, they’ll tell you whatever they want in response!

Art Museum at the University of Colorado, Boulder

We got to peek into their collections vault storage.

And their workshop!

Looove the pantone swatches everywhere.

Such a beautiful campus!

We walked over to the campus Planetarium next.

Waiting for the show to start

We watched a show about our solar system/universe (mind-blowing) and also saw other applications to the dome—some 360 videos that can bring students to archaeological sites and even oops when it breaks, the 24 computers restarting at the same time.

Behind the dome!

Walking from the planetarium over to the Media Archaeology Lab.

Media Archaeology Lab! It’s a technology learning space with all working early personal computing devices, desktops, office computing devices, video games, and more.

So many things to touch

(She made it to Oregon!)

I shared this on my Instagram, but this is where I discovered the game I was trying to find from my childhood was not “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” It was “Where in TIME is Carmen Sandiego!” So happy to remember the title. Need to find a place to play it.

A great field trip day, now back to Denver.

Wednesday. The conference begins.

Made prints at the Denver Art Museum later that night at the opening event. But I left them there oops.

Enjoying the Denver Art Museum’s exhibition about animals in art.

I’ll leave it here with this great cow.

Gnome

1UP, arcade bar

Left with a high score on my fav, Burgertime.

Thursday, I helped throw together a scrappy DIY place to learn some user experience techniques to integrate into museum work. Chilled there in that space all day.

Got to Facetime with Tweedy, finally

Friday! Walked over with Tristan to Sam’s 3 diner near the hotel. We were exhausted at this point, the last day of the conference always feels this way.

So much to choose from

Gotta have my chorizo and eggs.

Took a break from the conference rooms and decided to head out to see some museums. Started at the Clyfford Still Museum.

Looks like my dad!

Tiny beautiful courtyard

Enjoy some Clyffords

I had visited this museum last year but these were a new set of paintings up with new interpretive audio commentary from the artist’s daughter.

The ice was like nature’s abstract painting outside the museum.

Across the street from the Clyfford Still was the Byers-Evans House Museum, and we thought, why not? I love a historic house.

The house was built in 1883 and only two families ever lived in the house. The second family lived there until the 1980s, I believe. The furniture, wallpaper, art, and decor is 90% original from the family. It’s staged to look like the early 1910s period of the home.

The first rooms were the original home before a big addition was added to expand the living quarters.

Obsessed with this wallpaper

One of the daughters was really into leather-working and weaving. Some of her work is still around on display in the house.

Cute bathroom

Wallpaper ahhh

One of the women who lived in the house was really interested in Native American textile and pottery and she traveled across the Southwest to collect pieces. Not sure much more about how that went down, but we were told her collection was donated to the Denver Art Museum, conveniently directly next to this house.

Our guide demonstrating an early hand-cranked vacuum in the background

Ended the tour in the kitchen, the most updated room in the home. I really had a blast ogling all the wallpapers and imagining being a rich daughter weaving in my fancy Colorado house on the frontier.

From one historic house to the next…

The Molly Brown House aka “Unsinkable Molly Brown” (we were told nobody really called her that and she never went by Molly only Margaret). She survived the sinking of the Titanic and went on to become a philanthropist (she also loved traveling and had some cool things from her travels in her place).

The golden wallpaper ahah, let’s appreciate.

Bye bye

The sun was setting as we traveled back to the conference hotel.

After the last few conference things, had a few hours to just decompress and have some Sarah time. Looking tired.

Bundled once again.

We noticed a Christmas market near the hotel and wandered over there.

An entire booth with chocolate made into different life-like objects: cameras, wrenches…

Sausage?

Pick your player.

Pretzel and mustard and cheese

Great selfie

Great selfie 2

Bought a mulled wine and got this tiny mug

Larimer Square? I think?

From conference hotel to Steuben’s

Lickin’ chicken

I’m going to split this post in half because I have 400 photos to share from this week (sorry!) Also, I know this is a bit late, I’ve been busy with some freelance work, settling back after this week away, and Thanksgiving. Hope you’ve all been well.

Other half is here! 

Much love friends!