Team Dave's Road Trip, Day 4 - Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Hammonds Candy, and Denver Mint

This morning, we woke up to a dusting of snow on our van and the ground. We took advantage again of the center's breakfast, then headed north to Denver.

First stop was Hammond's Candies for their factory tour. We got to watch them make butterscotch candy canes from start to batch-rolling. They weren't making chocolate when we were there, but they did have their Easter candy on sale 75% off, so we got a solid chocolate bunny for $2.75. We did get a big old bag of Mitchells Sweets offs for $5. As you can see from that link, 4 of them are $7.50 but we got a bag of like 25 of them for $5. And they're super addictive. We got a couple of free candy canes that were broken, including a cream-filled cinnamon and a regular blueberry one. It's neat; the centers are made up of broken pieces that are melted back into a base and recycled. They also gave us a bubblegum-flavored Valentine's heart lollipop, then I bought two 2-ounce candy canes. One of them is cherry filled with chocolate, and the other is five spice. Looking forward to trying that one. Lastly, we bought a piece of bacon taffy. Yes. That's right. I wish we'd bought more. It's pretty fabulous.

Next, we went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It was huge and, initially, PACKED with kids. School kids, daycare kids, pre-school aged kids... Lots and lots of kids. My introvert husband was a bit overwhelmed. We probably should have called it a day after that, but I'd made reservations for one more thing just afterwards, and since the reservations had been in place for three months, I thought we should go ahead and do that.

Anyway, the museum was too big to take in in one day, much less the brief three hours we had. I learned that my arm-span-to-height ratio is a little low. James and I are the same height, and his total reach is two inches more than mine. I'm going to blame all of my upper-body-lack-of-strength on this from now on.

Unfortunately, I left my phone in one of the 4 or 5 bathrooms I visited while we were there. Fortunately, by the time I called the museum at about 7:30 this evening, someone had turned the phone in. I even got the security guy to turn the phone off for me to save its charge. Of course, I'll have to reactivate the phone service once I have it again, but I didn't want anyone calling my friends.

After the museum, we went to the Denver Mint (no pictures allowed) and watched a million or so pennies be made. It costs over 2 cents to make a penny, over 10 cents to make a nickel, but closer to a nickel to make a dime. Figure out the economics on that one.

We checked into our hotel (thanks, Priceline!), and Daphne wanted to stay in for the evening, so James and I walked next door to Bender's where we started our meal with poutine... it was divine! It was also VERY cold, so when we came back to the hotel, we jogged across the promenade.

We all spent the night recovering a bit from the pretty busy tourist day, and we don't have to make it to a breakfast or anything in the morning, so we're going to take it a lot slower tomorrow.

Pictures from today start here.