Hello, Denver Botanic Gardens

July 1, 2021, 10:03 PM PDT by Parkzer • Tourism

This post is over 5 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

I wanted to go on another hiking trip today, but because of the flood warnings, I imagined that the terrain would be a bit too muddy for comfortable hiking, and I decided to find an alternative activity instead. I decided to go to the Denver Botanic Gardens on York Street in Cheesman Park (as opposed to the Chatfield Farms one in Littleton).

The Botanic Gardens were fairly dense with a lot of winding roads and a lot of things to take in. That was fine, though, because I arrived early enough before closing time that I had hours—plenty of time to see everything. … Or so I thought.

I started on the north side of the Gardens and walked through the bonsai tree exhibits.

There was also a desert garden, which made me feel right at home. I snapped a photo of some cacti.

Towards the western, central part of the Gardens, there were some water gardens.

At this point, it started lightly drizzling. It had been cloudy since I got to the Gardens, and I figured there was a chance of rain, but the light drizzle wasn’t too bad.

My favorite part of this area were the ducks. They were pretty quick and kept dipping in and out of the water, but I managed to snap this photo of three of them at once.

By this point, the rain was picking up a bit, but it was still manageable. I didn’t come prepared with an umbrella (and I don’t recall even using an umbrella ever since turning double-digit age), so I was getting a bit damp.

In the southwestern part of the Gardens, I found a rabbit running around (or maybe it was a hare? but it was fairly small, so I’m leaning towards rabbit). I’ve actually never touched a rabbit before because I’ve never interacted with domesticated rabbits. When I still lived in the Chicagoland suburbs, I would see hares around a lot, but it’s usually not a good idea to go touch wild animals—not that they would let me anyway.

Now the rain was really picking up. I had just finished navigating through a “birds and the bees” trail; it was nestled inside a lot of trees, so I didn’t realize how much it was raining, but when I popped out of the exit, I started getting very wet. I began looking for cover.

I made my way through some winding paths and found a little gazebo in the middle of the water gardens. By this point, it was absolutely pouring.

That was very unfortunate, because I had just made it through only about a third or so of the outdoor exhibits. Fortunately, there were some indoor exhibits available, so I headed inside to check them out and hope that the rain would subside soon.

I found a peace lily; I snapped a photo because my parents had like five of these in their house when I still lived with them.

The conservatory connected to the Freyer-Newman Center, where there were a few art exhibits available for viewing.

Well, the bad news is, it never stopped raining. After sitting on a bench in the Boettcher Memorial Center to relax and reply to some emails and messages, I realized that this rain probably wasn’t something that I could just wait out. It wasn’t a torrential downpour anymore, but it was still raining hard enough that I didn’t want to get absolutely drenched walking around outside.

I ended up leaving much earlier than I had hoped. I missed out on a lot of the gardens and exhibits, and also missed out on a few of the other indoor attractions (like the Tea House, Science Pyramid, and Solarium), as they were still closed, presumably because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If I ever return to Denver, I’m definitely interested in coming back to the Denver Botanic Gardens. Not only is there still a lot more for me to see, but the environment is also just very pleasant and tranquil; it feels like a nice place to spend an afternoon relaxing, sitting on one of the chairs, and reading a book surrounded by plants.

Hello, Green Mountain in Lakewood of the Denver Metropolitan Area, Colorado

June 30, 2021, 8:24 PM PDT by Parkzer • Hiking

I made it into Denver Metropolitan Area from Rawlins, Wyoming this past Monday after a drive that lasted just shy of 4 hours.

The drive was pleasant with a decent amount of scenery, especially after entering into Colorado. With the state border receiving drizzles of scattered showers, the air smelled crisp and refreshing—a pleasant contrast from the polluted air of the cities in which I usually am. I also had a work call during my drive, which made that hour feel like it went by a lot faster. Overall, the trip felt fairly quick.

My hotel of choice for this leg of my trip is the Courtyard by Marriott Denver South/Park Meadows Mall, south of the main Denver city/county and near Centennial. (Interestingly, the hotel has an Englewood address, even though Englewood is several miles northwest of Centennial; I haven’t figured out why yet.)

Since arriving, I spent Monday night and most of Tuesday catching up on work and relaxing. I’m heading out of Colorado on Saturday, so I didn’t want to lose any more days; I went on my first hike this morning.

When selecting hikes, I like to pick trails that are moderate or intermediate in difficulty that will allow me to overlook the city with a wide, sweeping view. For today’s hike, I wanted to summit Green Mountain in Lakewood. I headed over to the Rooney Road Trailhead and made my way up the Rooney Valley Trail.

Once I got close to the summit, I transferred over to the Summit Loop Trail for a nice view of the entire Denver Metropolitan Area.

After reaching the peak of Summit Loop, I transferred back over to the Rooney Valley Trail and summited Green Mountain, which gave me some nice views of the southwest corner of the Denver Metropolitan Area.

It seems like the Denver area has a lot of great hiking opportunities. Unfortunately, I’ll only have time to hit two more spots at most, but I’ll definitely be putting my final two full days in town to good use.

Hello Wyoming

June 27, 2021, 4:20 PM PDT by Parkzer • Travel

Instead of going from Salt Lake City to Denver by heading back down south and driving through I-70, I instead chose to go through I-80 so I could hit Wyoming on the way there. I’m told that the drive through I-70 is much prettier, but I also took this route sort of as a way to plan ahead for the future—I figured that, if I’m traveling to Denver again with other people, it is much more likely for us to drive through I-70 rather than I-80. For the sake of trying to seize the opportunity to do something I might not be able to again in the future, I mapped out a path through I-80.

My first stop in Wyoming was in Green River, a city in Sweetwater County. I exited off I-80 and took a break at Thomas Moran Park, where the Green River Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center are located.

Off to the side of the Visitor Center was a little horse pen. I’m not sure why they were there, but they were my first two new friends of Wyoming.

An interesting thing I noticed about Wyoming is that I don’t actually get reliable cell service here. I use T-Mobile, but most of the time in Wyoming, I’m connected through a partner network. The speeds I get are so bad that Google Maps directions often take a very long time to load, or just don’t load at all. The only functional use for this data service seems to be receiving text-only emails.

After saying goodbye to my new horse friends, I tried to search for a restaurant so I could take a lunch break, but couldn’t load Google Maps properly. I ended up just driving around the city until I saw a McDonald’s in the distance. I got a burger and tried to use the McDonald’s wifi, but even that was so slow that I still couldn’t load anything on my phone.

After my meal, I followed street signs to I-80 East and continued on my way across Wyoming, while realizing how much I take for granted a reliable Internet connection wherever I go.

My halfway point between Salt Lake City and Denver where I decided to stay for a few nights was Rawlins in Carbon County. My hotel of choice was the Fairfield Inn & Suites Rawlins. Luckily, the Internet connection at the hotel was surprisingly fast and reliable, so I grabbed an offline map so I could explore without fear of getting lost.

Rawlins is home to the Wyoming State Penitentiary. Having formerly been in law enforcement and earning a degree with a heavy focus on criminology, this was particularly interesting to me. Although I didn’t plan far ahead enough to get a tour of the active prison, I was able to walk in for a visit to the Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum, a tourist attraction open to the public.

The museum exhibits were free to access, but I chose to go on a guided tour of the entire facility for $10.

The recurring theme throughout the tour seemed to be that Wyoming can get to be a very cold place, and the prison’s technology systems were fairly far behind, so the inmates were basically freezing to death the entire time and would go out of their way to do things to keep warm. For example, they would purposely cause mischief so they would be “punished” by being sent to a different, “harsher” area of the prison—which actually ended up being better for them, because it was warmer there. Or, because this was a working prison, some would do everything they can to get a job in the kitchen where they could stand by the vats of steaming food that would keep them warm.

This prison was the set of the 1987 film Prison. Back then, the prison was set for demolition, so the production company made some permanent modifications to the prison, including adding an extra door in a visitation cell and drilling a massive hole through a concrete yard barrier. However, after that point, it became very obvious how expensive demolition would be, so it was left as-is and is now a museum.

My stay in Wyoming was as interesting as I thought it would be—I expected pretty much nothing, and there was a whole lot of nothing.

Another thing there was a lot of was rain—apparently it’s commonplace for it to be sunny one minute, then pouring rain the next. The weather was in the 50-60s°F, which is usually a bit too cold for my liking, but was actually very refreshing this time around because I had spent a majority of the month in a 100+°F heat wave on the West Coast.

Tomorrow, I set off for Denver, Colorado.

Hello, Great Salt Lake in Utah

June 25, 2021, 6:39 PM PDT by Parkzer • Hiking

Due to my broken eyeglass incident (which, by the way, has an update now that I edited in yesterday), I feel like four out of the six and a half days I had in Salt Lake City were robbed from me—the first day when my glasses snapped in half at the bridge, the second day when I drove around to a repair shop and eyeglass store trying to figure out how to resolve the situation, the following day when I tried to get accustomed to my new glasses and failed hard, and yesterday when my glasses snapped in half at the leg.

With that being said, I think I still hit the two most important places that I wanted to visit in Salt Lake City—Ensign Peak, where I was able to get sweeping views of the entire metropolitan area, and Great Salt Lake, the body of water after which Salt Lake City is named.

I went to Great Salt Lake by means of the Great Salt Lake State Park, southwest of the Great Saltair; admission was $5. The park had an observation deck with a good lookout spot of the lake and beach.

There was also a beach access spot, so I went down to the sand… which was a questionable decision. I imagine it’s because of the high salt content in the lake, but there was an absolute insane amount of bugs on Silver Sands Beach. In the photograph below, you’ll see some gray stuff floating along the shoreline, as well as on the green sand. … Those are all bugs.

There were some areas of cleaner sand, but the entire area smelled terrible, presumably because of the bugs. I walked close to the water and got swarmed by bugs, and they followed me a good couple hundred feet back to the park.

There was another nice lookout point at the edge of the park that overlooked the opening for boats to sail off from the marina into the lake. The area looked like it was closed down, so not many people went over there, but it seemed like the blockade was only to stop vehicles from passing through that area. I went around the barrier and walked all the way down onto the rocks.

On my way back, I snapped a photo of the marina.

And behind the Great Salt Lake State Park, the Oquirrh Mountains served as a nice backdrop.

I don’t get too grossed out by anything, so I was fine walking around Silver Sands Beach, but it was quite frankly hilarious watching some of the other tourists go down there and freak out at the smell and bugs.

I’ve stared into the vast nothingness of the Pacific Ocean at astronomical twilight from a high point at the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles, so staring into the Great Salt Lake wasn’t anything too life-changing, but I definitely enjoyed the experience.

Today is my final full day in Utah; tomorrow, I set off for Wyoming.

Hello Salt Lake City

June 23, 2021, 4:03 PM PDT by Parkzer • Hiking, Travel

This post is a bit delayed because of my broken eyeglass situation, but I’m finally a functioning human being again, and that’s what matters.

The trip up north from St. George to Salt Lake City was fairly smooth; I drove for about two hours, took a lunch break at Fillmore, then finished the remaining two hours to the Fairfield Inn & Suites Salt Lake City Airport.

As of today, I’ve been to 26 states and have personally driven in 20 of them. Out of all those states, I would say that Utah by far has the best drivers by a noticeable margin. I think this might be attributed to the fact that Utah is the only state that has abundant signage educating drivers about various potential road situations.

A few of the ones I saw on my drive up were:

“No vehicles with trailers in left lane” and “No vehicles over 12,000 GVW in left lane,” to keep slow vehicles out of the passing lane
“Drowsy drivers take next exit in ___ miles,” because driving fatigued is basically just as bad as driving drunk
“Do not cross double white lines,” to stop people from swerving in and out of the HOV lane
“Legal to exit HOV when emergency vehicle present,” for the idiots who then proceed to never leave the HOV lane because they just saw a sign that told them not to cross double white lines, and thus impede emergency vehicles
“Fender bender take next exit and call 911,” to stop people from pulling over right on the side of the highway and causing rubbernecking traffic and putting their own selves in physical danger
“Fines up to $1000 for unsecured loads” and “Fines up to $500 for littering,” to remind people that there are actually punishments for this stuff

On the other hand, California by far has the worst drivers by an even greater noticeable margin, and could definitely use these kinds of road signs. Hilariously, the only vehicles I’ve seen so far breaking traffic laws in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area are cars with California license plates.

Apart from my broken glasses incident, my stay in Salt Lake City has been fairly uneventful. I like to avoid going places over the weekends because I don’t like when it’s too busy, and it tends to be a lot busier everywhere on the weekends. So, I usually stay indoors on Saturdays and Sundays and catch up on work.

Now that it’s Wednesday and I can actually see where I’m going, I took my first leisurely trip outside earlier today and hiked up to Ensign Peak. It was a very short but fairly steep hike; apparently it’s only about one mile round-trip, but my fitness tracker says I climbed about 41 stories during the hike up. I picked this spot as my first nature destination because it was a great location to see the Salt Lake City metropolitan area with vast, sweeping views.

My glasses randomly decided to snap in half

June 22, 2021, 10:49 PM PDT by Parkzer • General

I’ve had poor eyesight and have worn glasses since I was a fairly young child. My eyesight got progressively worse throughout elementary school and into middle school, so my parents took me to an optometrist on a routine basis to get stronger glasses.

My final optometrist appointment was when I was just shy of 14 years old, in 8th grade. At that time, my dad worked for the United States government and he had some family health spending plan that was about to run out for the calendar year. To make sure we wouldn’t lose out on free money, he got me some new glasses. There was quite a sum of money left in this government-sponsored plan, so we ended up purchasing the most expensive glasses with every single possible additional lens option. The price of the glasses exceeded US$400.00, which, adjusted for inflation, would be over US$530.00 in today’s dollars.

Since then, it didn’t really seem like my eyesight was getting any noticeably worse, so I never went back to the optometrist. I continued wearing those same glasses year after year. “You get what you pay for” definitely applied here, because those glasses were invincible. I would regularly get hit in the face with balls while playing sports, and I’ve gotten kicked in the head on numerous occasions in martial arts. Yet, my trusty glasses stood by my side.

Fifteen years later, at age 29, I am still wearing these same glasses. … At least, I was still wearing these same glasses, until a few days ago, when they decided to randomly snap in half.

These glasses were made out of a generic, off-brand version of Flexon, a flexible titanium. You can equate this to a memory foam mattress, but instead, it’s sort of like memory metal glasses. That also probably explains why they seemed to be indestructible—because they actually were, to some extent.

Unfortunately, it seems like this off-brand version of Flexon doesn’t last forever. After 15 years of daily use, it lost its flexibility enough that the bridge of the glasses became brittle and randomly snapped.

Of course, this couldn’t have just happened a month ago while I was still home. Oh no, that would be far too convenient. So now, instead, I am in Salt Lake City, three weeks into my cross-country road trip, and I do not have functional glasses.

I found some tape.

Considering that I literally cannot see or do anything without my glasses, I needed to find some sort of solution that was more viable than having a strip of packaging tape loosely holding the two halves of my glasses together as securely as an ant trying to carry a twig sixty times its mass. Because of this, everything was in a constant flux of random distortion, sending me in a spiral of dizziness.

I did some research online and found a glasses repair shop. It was almost half an hour away and two cities over from where I’m staying in Salt Lake City, but it appeared to be the only dedicated glasses repair shop in the entire Salt Lake City metropolitan area. I sent them an email ahead of time to confirm that they could fix my glasses; they let me know that they could grind off the existing bridge and install a new one, and it would take about an hour.

I showed up at the repair shop, only to discover that I was 5th in line to get my glasses repaired. The actual process itself did indeed take about an hour, but I would have to wait about four hours before the technician could start working on my glasses. The worst part is that, during the diagnosis, he took off the packaging tape that I had so intricately applied to the bridge of my glasses. So now I was left with a five-hour wait time and re-broken glasses.

He told me to come back tomorrow morning if I wanted to avoid a long wait. In the meantime, he spent about a minute haphazardly soldering my glasses back together so I could at least put them back on to drive back to my hotel room and be a functional human being for the rest of the day. He said the solder might come apart after a day and claimed it was scuffed, but it was definitely far more reliable than the tape I had put on prior.

There was also one additional minor problem. Apparently, getting my glasses fixed in this manner would cost $89. I understand that installing a new bridge and properly realigning a pair of glasses requires specialized skill, but that amount still felt a bit too high for my liking.

I started looking for some alternatives and found an eyeglass store literally next door to the repair shop. Apparently I would be able to get an eye exam (which I was clearly overdue for, seeing as the recommended time between exams is 2 years) by an optometrist on-site, and be able to walk out with a new pair of glasses on the same day in most circumstances.

For the first time in 15 years, I got my eyes checked again.

After getting my new prescription, I headed out to the retail area of the store where I went through a good 12 or so pairs of glasses until I found some that I liked. The glasses I picked? An off-brand generic version of Flexon glasses. Again.

The eyeglass store I went to apparently has a miniature laboratory at every location, so if they have the appropriate frames and lenses in stock, a technician can put together the glasses within a day. I was originally promised the glasses tomorrow morning, but they ended up having it ready for pickup by the evening, so I ended up getting same-day service.

This is my first time with new glasses in 15 years (obviously), and it’s quite a jarring experience. I have a massive headache, I’m dizzy, I have distorted vision around the edges of my glasses, I have blurred vision near the center, and I’m having much more trouble with depth perception (which is bad, because I already had issues with depth perception).

Apparently it’s normal for it to take a few days, or even up to a few weeks, for your eyes to adjust to the new lenses. My myopia got a little bit worse, but apparently I developed a substantial amount of astigmatism, and it appears like the new astigmatism correction on my lenses is what’s causing a majority of these symptoms.

I did some additional research online, and the general consensus appears to be that the quickest way to get accustomed to new glasses is to keep wearing them. Thus, I am sitting here at my computer, fighting through the nausea, writing about how everything in my life loves to troll me, even my glasses.

I leave for Wyoming on Saturday. Here’s to hoping my eyes finish adjusting before then.

—

Edit (June 24, 2021):

Well, the story doesn’t end here. The distortion on my glasses didn’t get better. In fact, it got significantly worse. The instant I put my new glasses on yesterday, I got a severe headache that lasted the rest of the day. My absence of depth perception persisted, and if I moved my eyes around at all (as opposed to just looking straight ahead), everything would be out of proportion.

I also had a few “incidents,” to say the least. The first involved exiting my hotel room and trying to go down the stairs, but literally missing the first step because I couldn’t tell how far away it was, and falling down the stairs. The second was a bit more severe and involved. It was… an “unfortunate driving situation.” I’ll leave it at that. (Nobody got hurt, and no property ended up being damaged.)

I decided that now was not the time to get new glasses. It’s not that I didn’t trust the science behind just wearing the new glasses and getting used to them. The problem is that I can’t really do that right now when I’m on a cross-country road trip and am very active on a daily basis.

If this had happened while I was still in Las Vegas, it would’ve probably been doable, but the fact that I’m not at home, coupled with the fact that my optometrist put me straight to my proper-strength prescription, about 6 steps higher than my current glasses (as opposed to incrementing me up little by little), made it so having new glasses right now is not really too viable.

I returned my new glasses and got a full refund (minus the cost of the eye exam, which is fine, because I still got a prescription signed by an optometrist, and he also inspected my eyes and informed me that they were otherwise healthy).

As for my old glasses, I went back to the repair shop and got the full bridge replacement done. The rest of my glasses were obviously still tattered, but the bridge looks as good as new. It is sturdy and securely holds both halves of my glasses together. I can continue wearing these for now, and later on, I can either go to a different optometrist when I get back home and ask them to prescribe me something that isn’t such a jarring difference, or I can just get laser eye surgery.

… The story still doesn’t end here.

I mean, what’s the fun in life if, after your glasses snap in half and you get them fixed, they don’t snap in half again at a different location.

I reattached the right leg of my glasses using super glue. I obviously can’t fold it in anymore, but at least it’s nice and sturdy now.

When I purchased the super glue, I intentionally purchased a two-pack. I’m saving the other tube for when the left leg of my glasses also inevitably snaps off.