An Afternoon On Lookout Mountain

My sister Susan and I, along with her dog Blackberry, spent Sunday afternoon on Lookout Mountain, located just to the west of Denver. Our first stop was the Boettcher Mansion, located in the Lookout Mountain Nature Preserve. It was built as a summer home and hunting lodge in 1917 for Charles Boettcher, a Colorado pioneer who made his money in a variety of businesses, and was donated to Jefferson County back in the 1970s. It now functions as an historic events center, and can be seen in the photograph on the left.  

For somewhere that is only a 30 minute drive from Denver, this area has an amazingly rural feel, with views such as the one in the photograph on the right, which I took on the grounds of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave. Buffalo Bill actually wanted to be buried in Cody, Wyoming, a town he founded, but due to financial difficulties, he made some kind of agreement to be buried on Lookout Mountain instead. Some citizens from Cody tried to steal his body and take it back to Cody, but they were stopped, and afterwards Buffalo Bill was reburied under a substantial amount of concrete to prevent this from happening again. And can you believe Susan didn't even get out of the car to pay her respects at the gravesite? Go figure.

While at the Lookout Mountain Nature Preserve, we ran across the sign in the photo on the left at a trailhead, warning that black bears were in the area, and what to do if you encountered one. I myself would walk up to the bear and take a selfie (bear and moose selfies are very popular here in Colorado), but I didn't get a chance - Susan also refused to head down the trail to see if we could find one. I think we would have had a good chance, too, since we had Blackberry with us, and I suspect large black bears just love playing with dogs, especially small ones like Blackberry. I guess that will have to wait for another day.