Denver Wins (Superbowls, Awesome Parks, etc)

In honor of the Broncos winning the Superbowl, I decided to share a few of our favorite places in, or around, Denver. Back in October we visited Colorado for the first time, and stayed at the lovely Sheraton (Denver Tech Center) Hotel, which is located about 25 minutes from downtown Denver. I just want to give a quick shout out to the Sheraton for being extremely accommodating. We requested the lowest floor possible, so that our kids wouldn't bother the other guests, as well as a microwave and various other items.
They delivered.
Five stars for awesome customer service.

Well, regardless of how comfortable the beds were, and how nice it was to have cable for a few days, our 2 and 4 year old became (understandably) restless. We spent our days in Colorado out driving around, looking for our next hiking adventure (see below), but it wasn't until our last night that we came across the Centennial Center Park.

This. Place. Is. AWESOME.

Seriously, why did no one see us with our kids and say "Hey, did you know there's this amazing park down the road? You should go there"? This playground is award winning. AWARD WINNING. And I don't just mean in my opinion, it actually says so on the website:
http://www.centennialco.gov/Open-Space-Parks/centennial-center-park.aspx

They have tons of different things for children of all ages to play on.

Seriously, check out that website.

I wish I would have taken more pictures when we were there, but we were too busy having fun! We stayed until it got dark (we felt completely safe) and we STILL didn't get to experience everything that this place has to offer.

We've already decided we're going to stay in the area again the next time we visit Colorado for the express purpose of visiting Centennial Center Park.

By the way, the address is 13050 E Peakview Ave, Englewood, CO 80111

Yes, that's a rock wall! Complete with a slide
so you can get back down faster and commence
with your rock wall climb.

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We were unfortunate enough to visit the great state of Colorado during a fairly cold and wet week, but we did manage to get a little hiking done in between showers. The first place we went was Roxborough State Park (4751 Roxborough Dr, Littleton, CO 80125). For $7 we were given a day pass (check rates and hours at the park's website: http://cpw.state.co.us/placestogo/parks/Roxborough ) and a map. This park is fairly simple to navigate, we just followed the road (the unpaved part was hell to drive on, but we survived) until we found where all of the other cars were parked.

There are several different trails, or different directions on the trails, that you can take, and while we meant to go the short route we somehow ended up getting detoured and taking the long way around. It was still very beautiful and easily manageable for our two toddlers to walk themselves, though we did end up carrying/wearing them in the end (thank you, Tula!)

This ended up being a great opportunity for me (and my mini photographer) to take some beautiful pictures with my new camera.

This is one of my favorites:

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Lastly, I just want to mention that the Broncos' stadium, Sports Authority Field at Mile High, is located at 1701 Bryant St, Denver, CO 80204https://www.google.com/maps/place/mile+high+stadium/@39.7438937,-105.0222865,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x876c78b00784f6a3:0xa72ab869d692a0f5. We were in town during a home game, but didn't go because kids 2 years and up are required to have their own ticket, and we just ain't got that kind of money. We did, however, visit the following day (a week day) and checked out the outside of the stadium. They do tours on select days at select times for like $20 a person (check out more info here: http://www.sportsauthorityfieldatmilehigh.com/stadium-information/tour-the-stadium), but unfortunately none of those worked out for us.

Maybe next time.

I'm not sure if this is the norm for this place, or if we just got lucky, but we just drove up, parked in the lot, and got out to take pictures.

No problemo.

Now, I wouldn't recommend this, because if working valet in downtown Indy for 8 years has taught me anything, it's that you should never trust that your car is safe somewhere unless you paid someone in a booth and your ticket matches the name on the sign. That being said, we did the opposite and had no problems. Maybe we were lucky, I don't know.

Also, my 2 year old was TERRIFIED of the horse statues,
so watch out for that if you have small kids.