I suspect I’m not alone in looking forward to school starting in September more than the summer break that’s about to start the beginning of June. While there’s a lot to be said for leisure and relaxation, I also believe that children do best if they have structure and rhythm. Staying up until midnight or later and sleeping in until noon? That’s fun for a few days but over the course of weeks or months,…Read More

I like museums. I write about ’em all the time, and we in Denver are blessed with our fair share of really good museums and galleries, including the beautiful Denver Art Museum. The outside is striking and is probably the most unusual architectural feature in the greater downtown Denver area, as you can see: Known as The Hamilton Building, it was designed as a joint venture by Studio Daniel Libeskind and Denver firm Davis Partnership Architects….Read More

Indiana Jones inspired a generation of archeologists, but the fact is, most archeology is fairly dry and dull work. Brushing off dirt in the middle of a desert for hours at a time, just to find that amazing pottery shard is from 75 years ago, not 1700 years ago can be a bit disheartening. But imagine that it’s the middle of the 1940’s and you’re a Bedouin shepherd. A sheep from the flock strays off…Read More

When I grew up, we went bowling maybe once every few years and I was, of course, horrible at the game. If there was a prize for gutter balls, I suspect I would have been in the running at any alley we attended. Then along came the Nintendo Wii with its terrific bowling simulator and that turned out to be super popular with my kids, particularly the practice bowling areas where you could watch the…Read More

It’s an annual tradition in my family, heading out to Anderson Farms in Erie in October to enjoy a pumpkin patch and, of course, a huge corn maze. What’s a corn maze, you ask? Well, imagine you have a big field of corn that’s past its prime for the season. Acres upon acres of dried brown stalks that are 6-8 feet high. Now plow through it with a small bulldozer and you can make a walkable…Read More

I don’t know where all these cool sports and activity camps were when I was a kid but the range and breadth of options children have nowadays to learn a new skill are amazing. From space camp to math camp, computer programming to acting, golf to tennis, if your child has an interest – and you have some money – there are plenty of choices out there. Not to mention the traditional sleep-away camps that…Read More

While on a road trip in early July, my 13you daughter and I decided it would be fun to spend a few days as tourists in Kansas City post-Independence Day, and of the various things we did, by far the most fun and engaging was our visit to the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, located smack dab in the middle of the University of Missouri, Kansas City campus in downtown Kansas City. It’s not…Read More

I’ve just spend the last 24 hours just outside Greeley, Colorado as part of a really fun and interesting Nissan Rogue Sport event, and as part of it, we headed as a group to the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colorado. You won’t have heard of Keenesburg, it’s rather in the middle of nowhere in rural Colorado partway between Greeley and Denver, but it’s well worth the relaxing, rural country road drive to get there….Read More

As a big fan and member of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, I’m always interested in seeing what special exhibits they’re hosting and what’s coming next for one of the premier museums in Colorado. When I saw they were doing a Vikings exhibit focused “beyond the legend” I was definitely interested. You know all the myths about mighty, violent blonde men pillaging every coastal area they could reach, not just encompassing the British Isles,…Read More

My 13yo daughter K- and I have had multiple opportunities to visit the lovely Broadmoor Hotel and Spa in Colorado Springs, but never in the depths of winter. With a few days off school for mid-February break, however, we got all the stars to align and headed off to Colorado Springs from our home in Boulder, Colorado for a few days vacation, courtesy of the hotel. We drove a 2017 Lexus NX300h, which added to the…Read More

My extended family seems to be pathologically unable to create travel plans that aren’t complicated. Like “plan it on a big white board” complicated, with lots of moving parts. When we started planning a trip from our home in Boulder, Colorado up to Kalispell, Montana, I knew it’d end up being a tricky puzzle. And so it was. The players: me, my ex-wife Linda, her husband, and our two girls, Ashley and K-. I drove….Read More