Golden, Colorado

Remember when Coors was kind of an exclusive cult beer?  After its 1873 founding in Golden, Colorado by Adolph Coors, a German immigrant, it was available initially only west of the Mississippi, and it wasn't distributed to all 50 states until 1991.  And remember those commercials in which the spokesman told us it was the Rocky Mountain water that made the beer special?

We're currently set up at a campground in Golden, where Coors is still brewed.  Golden is a pretty little city at the base of the Rockies, with a nice downtown shopping and outdoor restaurant area, and Clear Creek - carrying that fine mountain water - runs through it.

The Coors Brewery offers tours of its plant there in Golden.  Nancy and I waited in line for 45 minutes until a shuttle took us up to the incredible buildings within which the magic is accomplished.

We began by proving that we were over 21 by showing the gatekeeper our driver's licenses.  Truth be told, Nancy's is expired, and her attempts to get a new one from the California DMV have failed - but I don't think the lady looked too closely, and she was allowed to accompany me.  It was a walking tour of the facilities, and considering that we had been in line for so long, somewhat boring, partly because not much was going on.  I suppose the brewing of beer isn't a seven-days-a-week activity, because we saw only a few workers on the floor.  But maybe the hops mash was working away in the insanely huge copper-topped vats we looked down upon.

At the end of the tour Nancy and I - along with fifty or so of our best friends - were given the opportunity to indulge in up to three glasses of free beer each.  Nancy drank a Blue Moon, and I had a Killian's Irish Red.  (In 2004 Coors merged with the Canadian giant Molson, and the corporation is now officially Molson-Coors Brewing Company, producer of a number of different brews.)

On another day we drove to the Buffalo Bill Museum and Gravesite, up on Lookout Mountain.  Buffalo Bill Cody (not to be confused with a contemporary of his, Wild Bill Hickok, who was killed at Deadwood) was a frontier cowboy of the old West, a Pony Express rider, a gold miner, and a soldier in the Civil War on the Union side.  He became well known for his skill hunting the buffalo that were so common on the plains at that time.  A number of books were published featuring him as the hero of largely fictional exploits, and that made him a very famous man.  Later in life he put together an enormous show of cowboys, Indians, and horses - Buffalo Bill's Wild West  - that for many years toured the US and eventually even Europe.  But as famous as he became, he had trouble paying his bills and eventually lost his show to creditors.  Apparently show business wasn't the path to riches in those days that it is now.

Bill was buried on Lookout Mountain, one of his favorite places on Earth because it looked out upon the mountains and plains of the old West.  The mountain views up there are indeed awesome, but today it also overlooks Golden and Denver down on the plains.  A museum dedicated to his life stands near his gravesite and contains an amazing number of truly beautiful vintage posters advertising his Wild West show, along with guns and saddles and other paraphernalia from the show, and costumes that were worn by Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and Sitting Bull, who all appeared in the extravaganza, and of course Buffalo Bill himself.