Denver, CO

Following the spontaneous spirit of this trip, I had not actually planned where I would be going in the state of Colorado. My friend Amy from Exeter was kind enough to open her house to me for a few nights so I headed from Moab to Denver to visit her.

My favorite Kirkland piece

My first touristic stop in Denver took me to the Kirkland museum of decorative and fine arts. Named after the painter Vance Kirkland it held a large portion of his collection as well an impressive collection of interior design pieces form the 1900s on. The majority of these pieces were chairs tables and clocks, but you could find the odd display of other household items such as the toasters throughout the decades exhibit. While these did prove mildly entertaining, what really tickled my fancy were the cosmic tableaux of Vance Kirkland. Each one depicted a different imaginary galaxy or nebula swirling with splashes of vibrant colors on a dark background, finished with pointillism dots. Perhaps more intriguing than the artwork itself is the story of its creation in the workshop. Because of his short five-foot-five stature and his desire that his works have no discernible sense of up, down, left, or right Kirkland would lay his canvases face down on a table then suspend himself above them with a series of ceiling mounted leather straps. This enabled him to float freely above the piece uninhibited by gravity or any conventional sense of artistry. He pioneered several artistic techniques such as mixing oil paints with water then splashing them across the canvas. He would subsequently soak up the excess water with paper towels leaving behind magnificent amoeba-like patterns. I'm sure that none of these descriptions made a shred of sense, so I'll let the actual paintings tie everything together.

The Great Divide tap room
You can also see their yeti logo above.

Appreciating art always makes me thirsty so I skipped over to one of my favorite breweries, Great Divide (GD), that just so happens to reside in Denver. With a few minutes before the beginning of the tour I plopped myself down at a bar stool in the taproom and sampled three of their local releases. Sadly, I don't remember the names of the beers, but I can tell you they were enjoyed with much gusto. In any case, the tour began shortly thereafter. I'll spare you the details as they were, for the majority, topical, but I will share two interesting tid bits. First, GD has been growing at only 33% per year (intentionally) because it wants to ensure that it maintains the high quality of the products that have given rise to the brewery's great success. While this may not immediately surprise you, I found it interesting because I first discovered GD in Connecticut over 5 years ago when they were but a wee baby brewery. Second, GD keeps six of it's large fermenting tanks outdoors. Brewing, particularly at a professional level requires an enormous degree of control and stability in terms of temperature. As you can imagine the Denver area weather can range from far below freezing in winter to the high 90s in summer. Like most breweries, GD uses double jacketed, glycol insulated fermenters which allow for precise temperature control, but this equipment can requires massive amounts of energy. I suggested they house the fermenters in a building with solar panels to recuperate some of the energy, but they didn't sound very interested. Oh well, they're the experts, not me. And it is at this time that I would like to thank all of you readers who continue to tolerate my high degree of beer nerdom. I promise there will be non beer related paragraphs as well.



Following my brew tour, I met up with Amy so that she could show me a bar/lounge, Linger's, that served street food from around the world a la carte. It rested on the rooftop of an old mortuary building that still displayed0 the original marquis. You can think of it as a global tapas bar. We had some delicious eats which I will share with you visually.

Jalapeno cheddar poppers

Duck bun

Carnitas tacos

From Linger's, we grabbed some ice cream, gossiped, and frequented another bar until we both felt exhausted at 9PM. Needless to say, we called it an early night.