Nikki Post: Babi Yar Park

Babi Yar Park is a small memorial park located behind my apartment complex in Southeast Denver. In case you can't tell by its design, it's a Holocaust memorial. The park was founded in 1971 and is currently under construction, which can be frustrating on days when I want to sleep in. ;) Here's the official page for Babi Yar Park, sponsored by the Mizel Museum.

A month or so ago (when it was still closer to autumn than winter here in Denver), I took a walk around the park, snapping pictures. The leaves were changing colors, and it had snowed a few days before. Perfect photo weather! Take a look at my photography Facebook page for a few more pictures. And click on the pictures below to see full-size versions.

Looking at the orchard

"Desert" plants in the snow. What a neat concept!

The orchard

Love that you can see the mountains in the background.

There's a plaque in front of a fountain by the orchard in Babi Yar Park that reads

"In this grove at Babi Yar, each tree stands tall. Each a living memorial to men, women, children - the majority Jews with Ukrainians and others.

In every leaf, their lives; in every branch, their families; in every rooted trunk, their past.

Life courses even when leaves have fallen. Memory persists even after presence parts.

Can we not learn from the trees? Each stands alone - yet flourishes in the benevolent shade of others.

Seasons change; so must we. Winter's madness must not dry the sap of loving life again."

Nikki Post: What's a Tweet-up?

I follow a local Twitter feed that tells people about special events going on in the Denver area. (I Know Denver, by the way.) Last week, they posted a notice that the Denver Museum of Natural Science (DenverMuseumNS on Twitter) was having a "tweet-up," which is a group get-together that you learn about on Twitter. (That's my definition anyway. The Urban Dictionary definition is much cruder.) All they asked was that we a) enjoy ourselves and b) tweet about our experiences and use the hashtag "#dmnstweetup."

For those who aren't Twitter-knowledgeable, a hashtag is like a common link that people on Twitter use to talk about a certain topic. Someone could search for the term "DMNSTweetup" on Twitter and see all of the tweets that people at the tweet-up using that tag were making. Hashtags range from the practical, like the tweet-up hashtag, to the ridiculous like the recent "#thingslongerthankimkardashiansmarriage.")

The tweet-up met up after regular museum hours so we could have free access to the T-Rex Encounter. Animatronic dinosaurs that follow your every movement?! FOR FREE?! Sign me up!! AND we were being given this special access by the curator, Joe Sertich ("Curator Joe"). Check out the website for the details; it's a lot cooler than I could describe. While I'm fairly certain she'd freak out from fear, I'd love to be able to take Mia (my three-year-old niece) to the exhibit. I can see her roaring back at the T. Rex if surrounded by the right audience. ;)

Before I post screen-shots of my tweets, here's the "official" picture Steve and I took with Sue, the museum's famous dinosaur: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmns_photo_booth/6333575962. And here's pictures of other museum-goers having fun with the same green screen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmns_photo_booth.

WHOMP WHOMP for me. :(

 After spending an hour wandering around the exhibit, we were blessed with a special treat: we got to go "backstage" in "the Bone Room," where the museum houses the fossils and bones that are a part of the Snowmastodon Project. Up in Snowmass, CO, a ski town, construction workers were digging a reservoir when they kept unearthing mastodon and mammoth bones, along with the bones of other ancient animals large and small. They stopped their digging, and scientists and volunteers from DMNS swarmed into town. The sheer amount of bones they found is incredible. And these bones are considered "modern fossils," meaning that minerals from the earth haven't replaced the bone. (Thanks to Scientist Steve for helping me phrase that correctly!) So instead of having to brush away the dirt from the fossils gently so as not to destroy the bones, the excavators just had to wash the dirt away. Seriously, read about the project; it's insanely impressive and geek-out worthy.

Note to scientists: I asked Curator Joe if I could touch the tooth first, and I touched it EVER SO GENTLY. Steve, when I asked if he wanted me to take a picture of him touching a mastodon tooth: "I'm a scientist. I appreciate things with my eyes and my mind." His loss. :P

 

BONUS!!! Just found this video of the Saurornitholestes that another tweet-up visitor posted!

Nikki Post: Elk Interlude

Hi y'all!! I'm determined to make this weekend a "lazy" weekend in that I'm only going to clean out my DVR, do my homework, and UPDATE THE BLOG!! I've got several posts coming. Steve and I went to the Denver Art Museum for free recently, and we went to the Denver Zoo (with Claire!) for free that same weekend. Steve and I also went to a tweet-up at the Denver Museum of Natural Science, so I'm going to post my tweets from that event here as well. I'm gonna have TONS of pictures and a bunch of videos as well, so keep your eyes peeled this weekend!

Until then, please enjoy this video of the elk infestation in Steve's aunt and uncle's neighborhood in Evergreen, Colorado.

Nikki Post: SNOW!!!

You'd think that Claire would be stoked to celebrate snowy days in Colorado. Today is the second in a few weeks. But no. Claire and I went out on the balcony, and within seconds, she was complaining about the cold. Maybe I'll buy her a scarf and some mittens or something, see if that changes her opinion of snow.

On the other hand, *I* am *crazy stoked* about the snow! I did a little dance late last night before going to bed...my own kind of snow dance. I love snow. LOVE IT. A snow day is a perfect excuse to stay in pajamas, drink Bailey's and hot chocolate, and watch crap TV. (Fun fact: unemployment is also a great excuse for all of those things).

I forced Steve to go outside with me this afternoon and take pictures of me playing in the snow. He also helped me clean off my car, which was very nice of him. Steve isn't a big fan of being cold; he's too skinny and long, so his toes and fingers always get frozen really fast. Poor Steve.

Pardon the finger in the upper left. :P
View to the left of my balcony this morning. So peaceful and pretty!

View to the right of my balcony this morning. Note that the pond was partially frozen!

My car Becky (the blue Civic with all the Maryland bumper stickers) covered in ~6" of snow.

Trying to melt the snow WITH MY MIND!!
"What the hell is Nikki wearing?" you may be asking. I'm wearing my pandahatmittenscarf that my friend Gen bought for me. It's a hat! It's a scarf! It's got mittens! The best of all worlds!

I decided to end my play time outside by building a snowman! I chose a spot in the front of my apartment building and started building.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at building snow-men. Or snow-women. Or snow-whatever-this-is. Steve said that it was the saddest snow-thing he's ever seen. I think he's jealous.

Nikki Post: Cave of the Winds

Sorry that Claire's been so insanely bitter the last two posts. I think she's feeling left out of all the excitement. But let me tell you, while I was wandering around in the mostly-dark, trying to keep myself from banging my head against low rock ceilings, I kept feeling VERY happy that I didn't take Claire with me. Trying to juggle her and my lantern (candle inside a sideways bucket) would have just ended in fire and banishment from the caves forever. See....Claire's scared of the dark. Not normal, night-time levels of darkness; she's fine with those. But super-dark spaces, where you're not sure what's up and what's down? Claire's terrified of those. That's why she likes riding in the car instead of being packed away in a suitcase (like my other stuffed animals were). At one point in the tour, our tour guide had us blow out our candles and just be completely in the overwhelming, all consuming darkness. It would have been really great if we weren't on a tour with three idiotic teenage girls who watched waaaaaaaaay too many horror movies and a seven-year-old boy. (More on that later.) God, I could just imagine the screaming Claire would have done and how much worse that moment could have been. So yeah...there's a separate tour where the cave path is lit with electric lights; I'll take Claire on that one...maybe.

The Lantern Tour at Cave of the Winds is just that: a tour through specific parts of the labyrinth-like caves using only small candles inside buckets for light. The path doesn't actually take you through CotW, however; instead, you travel through Manitou Grand Caverns. They're both connected, but the difference is a matter of ownership. There were some shady land dealings going on back in the day, and that story adds to the "frightening folklore" promised by the tour's display case (above).

That sign isn't lying - there really were parts of the caves where even *I* had a hard time walking! Poor Steve...he hit his head a couple of times. Our tour guide told us to yell out "Rock is Hard" if we bumped something so the people behind us in the mostly-darkness could be prepared. ...we heard that A LOT. Of course, there were also PLENTY of parts of the caves where the only two people standing upright comfortably were me and the seven-year-old. :P Hooray for being short, I guess...

While in the cave, I took some video to get the different stories out to you, my faithful public. Warning: this is amateur videography on a Droid 2. In a cave. So some parts of the videos will be in darkness, and the ones with light will be jumpy. Since there's really nothing to "see" per se, it might be best to open the videos and listen to the stories while you do other things, like pay your bills or browse Facebook. Maybe check and see how your Fantasy Football team is doing. Fair warning.

Once you enter the caves, you have your photo professionally taken by your tour guide. Steve and I have our photo on the fridge. When his scanner stops being a fartface, I'll scan it in and share it with everyone. :) It's really cute, and totally worth the cost. (Plus, we had a coupon!) The tour guide (total stoner dreamboat that High School Nikki would have dated) told us that there's a few reasons why they take your photo BEFORE going into the caves.
1. It's a nice gift and a good way to make a little extra money.
2. It's an easy way to get a head-count. Count the number of photos/people in the photos against the number of people outside the caves. If the numbers match, hurray! If they don't...
3. They can use the photo to identify you when they have to go back in the caves looking for you. If they don't find you...
4. It's a lovely last gift to your loved ones back home.
(Yes, those are ALL reasons given!)

This is the walkway/ramp down to the bottom of the caves area (still in CotW). This area is lit with small electric lights (and my flash, obviously). The small child in the middle of the photo is the aforementioned annoying kid on our tour. I get that you want to do something cool with your family, be a cool parent, take your kid inside a cave, but DAMN! Think about the fact that a) this kid is going to ask every annoying question in the world, whether the tour guide is speaking or has already answered that question or not; and b) that he might be, oh I don't know, REALLY AFRAID OF THE DARK! Kerry, Dan, Steve, and I spent a lot of the tour rolling our eyes in the dark and trying to stifle the urge to swing our lanterns at him. Since this is sort of a "ghost tour," he got all amped up every fifteen minutes if he thought he felt something brush against him. While Dan admitted to poking him in the shoulder fairly often, I bet he wasn't the only other member of the tour to do so. ;p

I filmed this video during our walk from the main part of the caves to "our" part of the caves. Nothing really to listen to, but I wanted to be able to set the scene and let you see how low-hanging the ceilings were.

Entrance to the Caves

Going up....

The first photo is to reinforce the law that you should NOT do ANYTHING to harm the cave. If you're falling and need to reach out and grab the wall to stop yourself from hurting yourself, then yeah, it's okay. Otherwise, you're not supposed to put your hands/skin on the cave walls, as the oils can cause long-last damage to the rock. The fine for "vandalizing" the cave is actually much steeper these days. I think the guide said it's something like $1200, and they can take your license?! But yeah. They're not joking around.

The second photo is of the "coffin" of George Snider, the man who thought to bring this awesomeness to the masses. Obviously, there's no body in it, and they just do it for spoooOOOooooOOOOOoky effect. These two pics were taken in the "waiting area" right before we entered the passageway that would lead us into the first "room" of the caverns. Our tour guide (I can't think of his name right now, and it's bugging the hell out of me!) gave us some history of the cavern and gave us our lanterns here. Then he sent us off into the tunnelways to the next big room.

Unfortunately, because I hadn't yet shoved my way to the front of the group, the audio for this first part of the tour is almost inaudible. :( I also can't find any good information online about the land ownership fight between George and his former business partner, so I guess you'll just have to visit the caverns and hear the story for yourself. ;)

This next video is of the first large "room" of the cavern, the Scallop Dome. In this room, our tour guide gives the story of George and his awful first marriage. Main problem: he lived in the caves, while she lived in Manitou Springs. She thought that wasn't very "proper," so they ended up getting an annulment, divorce being uber-taboo in those days.

This is a little video I took while waiting for everyone to catch up to one another. It just shows what our group looked like walking around in the dark with our lanterns.

Ooooh...look at the pretty lights!

Marble Hall

George was quite the trickster. Some workmen were excavating not too far from his cave and came across a Native American mummy. George bought the money for $5 (a lot back in the day), and inserted it into his mine. He covered it with a sheet and used to bring his tours to that spot to show off his prized possession...

The opera hall! A very large space with lots of different levels of rock formations. As our guide will tell you, old George actually wanted to make this part of the caverns into a performance space. HOW COOL WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN?! I'd totally go see an opera if it were several miles underground in a cave. :)

Speaking of performance places, check out the Great Concert Hall, the largest cave in Colorado! Learn all about cave organs, which is basically one of the coolest concepts I've ever heard of.

This is the last video I was able to film before my phone died. :( It shows a wall of school IDs, business cards, and other random forms of identification that people left behind in the cave as a note that they were there. George used to have his visitors do the same thing back in the day for publicity reasons. (You'll hear what I mean in the video.) Kerry and Dan left their business cards behind. Unfortunately, I didn't have any spare ID cards to leave in the cave...well, I had my college ID, but I really like having that because it makes me giggle.

So there you have it! Your own, grainy, slightly hard-to-hear tour of the Manitou Grand Caverns. If any of you come out to visit, I highly recommend stopping by here!

The Cave of the Winds...the part I got to see, anyway.

I'm going to keep my hilarious wit and comments mostly to myself for this post, as punishment to Nikki (and, inadvertently, all of you) for not being allowed in the caves. Nikki kept promising "Oh, maybe next time when we do the lighted tour..." BUT WHO KNOWS WHEN NEXT TIME WILL BE?! I mean, yeah, we're basically spending the next several years out here, so it's not like I have to do ALL the cool stuff RIGHT NOW, but...pfft. Armadillos are not known for their patience.

These next few pictures are of the view from the Caves' parking lot.

Aw, look at the cute couple! So in love! <3

"Please" tell me "why" you put "please" in quotation "marks"? (Also, it is SO TEMPTING to throw rocks here! You'll see in the next picture, but man, a crazy sign only makes it more tempting!)

The view looking DOWN into the canyon! The Caves' visitors center has two levels of balconies with scenic overlooks. Nikki kept looking at me funny the whole time she and I were standing on the bottom-most balcony, looking out below. I finally asked her what was up, and she told me that she REALLY wanted to throw something over the side, but all she had was her super-expensive camera, her shoes, her purse...AND ME. I told her we should catch up with the group, and luckily, she took me with her instead of chucking me over the side!

This last one is directly across the canyon from where we were standing. Those hole are other cave mouths. Nikki and I agreed that it'd be SO COOL to go over there and go exploring! Then she pointed out that if we managed to do that, we'd probably die, as neither of us has ever been caving before. If you look, you can kinda see how the rocks and tree form a creepy devil monkey face!

Hanging out with the #1 Threat to America. Rowr!

This statue's....FOR THE BIRDS. yuk yuk yuk

What IS this awesome jungle gym-like creation? It's only the COOLEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN:

$20 and you can climb and hang over the side of a mountain. You're three stories up...ON THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN! We saw a guy who was harnessed in scaring the hell outta some girl friends by leaning backwards OVER THE SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN. Nikki wanted to go. I wanted to go. But no one else did. They poo-pooed the price and were all, "Oh, yeah, you're over the mountain, but there's no guarantee you'll fall to your death because you're super strapped-in." NIKKI'S FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES ARE INSANE. So once again, I was denied a cool experience. Anyone reading this who wants to come out to Denver and grow a pair, please let me know, and we'll climb all over this monstrosity!

I'm gonna end this blog entry with two pictures of silly hats:

Kerry

Me (thanks, Kerry, for the helping hands!)

Colorado Springs

I'ma just throw this out here at the top of the post, and sorry to the people of Colorado Springs if you disagree with me. THERE'S NO GOOD REASON TO GO TO COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO. Maybe they were just having an off-day or something, but there was NOTHING going on! A bunch of funny statues, a GREAT view of the mountains, and a really tasty Mexican-fusion restaurant, but that's about it. The streets were dead on a Saturday (!), and too many of the stores were closed forever. I think it was Steve who pointed out that people LIVE in Colorado Springs, but they work and play elsewhere. Since we were only stopping through on our way to/from Manitou Springs and the Cave of the Winds, I guess his point was made for him.

Cave of the Winds is this awesome natural wonder of a cave system. Two little brothers were out in the mountains trying to scare each other silly when they found a cave. They did a little exploring, heard what sounded like ghosts, and freaked out. They told people in town that they found a haunted cave, but adults never believe kids, so they laughed them off. Except one man, who explored the cave, realized it had the potential to become an AWESOME tourist trap, and bought the land to make it an attraction.

Sorry that's not a very detailed description. I only got this story second-hand from Nikki because ONCE AGAIN I wasn't allowed to participate in an awesome attraction! This time, it was Nikki who made the discriminatory call. "I'm going to want to take pictures AND I have to carry this lantern AND I might need to prevent myself from falling down onto sharp rocks. I can't carry you." Pffft. So I got stuck in the hot car AGAIN.

My job in this entry is to show you some silly pictures of me in Colorado Springs.

Behold! The beauty and splendor of the mountains, as seen from quiet Colorado Springs, Colorado!

Ooooooooh! Aaaaahhhhh!

(Special thanks to Dan for holding me up.)

I'm pretty sure this is the Colorado Springs Visitor Center. Or...Pioneer Museum. Or...?

Why, who is this dashing and handsome fellow in whose company I've found myself?

With a name like "Zebulon," you know he got allllll the ladies back in his day. ;)

While I've always been a sucker for men in uniform like Zeb, there's just something about the ruggedness and manliness of a cowboy. Enter Hank, every cowgirl's dream. (And every armadillogirl's dream too!)

Look at his strong hands, his confident, laid-back stance...he's so hot! Literally! It was, like, 85-degrees that day in the sun, and my man Hank is made out of metal! Scorched!

This is a literal, artistic interpretation of how big my love for Hank is.

Just joking! It's this statue:

And now, some art that doesn't make sense:

That's, like, Hampden-level crazy right there. I half expected a giant, metal flamingo and a Christmas tree made of hubcaps to be around the corner! (Sick Baltimore-in-joke!)

Probably the coolest thing in Colorado Springs. I wanted to take a peek inside, but apparently, no one had time to humor a stuffed armadillo. >:P
(Thanks again to Dan for the help.)

Right before we left Colorado Springs to go to the caves, I made a "friend":

I was utterly convinced that she was going to eat me, and when Nikki asked her owners if we could take a picture together, I was thisclose to smacking the camera out of her hands and running away! But luckily, the pooch's owners had some cheese and apple bites off-camera to keep her drooling maw away from me, so we took the picture, and then I bolted back to the safety of the car.