Two Hundred Seventy-Four

May 3, 2015
8.08 Miles in 1:15:16
Mood: Sightseeing
Soundtrack: Robert DeLong "Long Way Down" and "Just Movement" and "Spotify Sessions"

After spending some time in the Capitol Hill neighborhood the previous weekend, I was determined to do a little exploration of this area via running. It was a gorgeous May morning, so I drove up to Cheesman Park and began my self guided two legged tour.

It's a bit overwhelming just how much cool stuff I saw on this run. I passed by the Governor's Mansion, the Grant-Humphrey's Mansion, The Sports Castle, The Denver Art Museum, The State Capitol Building, the Molly Brown House, an elementary school with some very cool graffiti art, a tremendous Colorado Avalanche wall mural, City Park, the Denver Zoo, and so many excellent lawn lions. It was an eventful and fun 8 mile tour, the only hard part about it was deciding which of my many photos to use for this run.

I ended up deciding to use my photo of the Denver Art Museum. This place was the unofficial hub of my weekend, as I walked down this sidewalk no fewer than three different times over the two days. The kids and I spent a few hours at the Art Museum on Saturday, then I hit it up again Sunday morning on this run, and finally later Sunday afternoon I'd end up here yet again en route to Civic Center Park where the whole family enjoyed the Cinco de Mayo festival.

I decided to use this photo for a few reasons. One, this is just a tremendously weird building. I love it. The goofy angles are far from practical, but why should an art museum be a nice sensible building? The answer, of course, is that it shouldn't be.  So I wanted to use this picture because this building represents everything I love about architecture...My theory is that the best buildings are interesting, unique and memorable. If you can also make your building a little awe inspiring, that's even better. Art over utility is a must, although to be fair, this building does a remarkable job of displaying art, so it is a champ at utility too...Just a cool place all around.

The second reason that I used this photo is because of the awesome clouds. I can get a picture of the art museum pretty much whenever I want, but it won't always be accompanied by a gorgeous deep blue sky and impressive clouds, so I felt obliged to use this picture from this day. Running a close second in the competition to be the photo of the day was a picture of the Avalanche wall mural, which is epic. I hope to use it on the blog at some point, but that point was not going to be today...the clouds sealed it in favor of the DAM.