Denver Rental Car Mishap and Fun

Usually when I plan a trip, things go smoothly. Reservations aren’t lost. Flights aren’t missed. Everything works. When I got to Denver to pick up my rental car for this Mount Rushmore Labor Day Road Trip Extravaganza, things took a very wrong turn.

Since I don’t have a credit card, apparently you have to drop off the car back at the place you picked it up from if you use a debit card. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t have worked from Cheapo Car Rental, so I just took a Lyft to my hotel and assessed things. I figured if I booked a flight out of Denver, I could make it work with Enterprise. I did. The only catch was they didn’t have anything available until today. So I wound up with an extra day in Denver.

I bought a ticket to the Rockies game and figured I would have to kill time there. Because it was over 90 (but unlike Los Angeles there was no humidity so it was bearable,) I decided to go to the Denver Art Museum. While the architecture was neat:

I was disappointed with the offerings. They had two great exhibits though. The first was “Common Ground: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh, 1989-2013.” He took pictures from refugee camps around the world during this time with a majority focus on women.

Walking through this exhibit I was on the verge of tears the whole time. The images of the mothers particularly at the Mandrea feeding center in Kenya during the Rwandan civil war in the 90s really grabbed me. Their faces betrayed no emotion as they were trying to get their malnourished babies fed. These women were just doing what they had to to keep their babies alive. Also haunting was the fact the a lot of the babies were being tended to by their sisters. Where had the mothers gone? Were they killed during the violence?

It was all just so haunting.

The other great exhibit was “Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Space.” One of the first things you notice when you get in is Ramiro Gomez’s mixed-media on cardboard piece about Lupita:

And here is something very pretty from Gabriel Dawe:

Perhaps the best thing about the museum was that since it was the first Saturday, it was free!

And also right outside was the Taste of Colorado festival on the Capitol Grounds which was pretty terrific.

Then heading to Lodo to get close to Coors Field:

And my good seats at Coors Field:

The Rockies ended up losing to the D-Backs 4-2, but it was still a pretty fun day for me.

I went back to my hotel after that and prepared for my next day:

By the way, I did get my rental car and did make it to Mount Rushmore. More on that later.