Breckenridge

We picked up our hire car at Denver airport - I should say that Hertz service for their Gold Club members is superb - you just turn up and find out where they have left your car and drive off - the keys are in the ignition. No paperwork - that's the way it should be.

So we drove back WSW towards the mountains along the I-70 and climbed up Lookout Mountain and noticed a sign for "Buffalo Bill's Graveyard and Museum", so we turned off and drove a few miles before reaching it. For those of us of a certain vintage, there is a magic that mostly came through the cinema of the 50's and early 60's when "Cowboys and Indians" Western films were all the rage. Magical names like Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers etc all conjured up a world we in Britain could only imagine - and here it was brought to life!

Another tourist kindly offered to take this photo of us at the top of Lookout Mountain:

The museum was very good and we learned a lot about Buffalo Bill's very progressive attitude for the time towards "Indians" and Women. Sitting Bull's magnificent feathered headdress was there as were lots of images of the great showman himself:

Of course, there were the silly touristy things too, like these, which were meant for kids - well, we were re-living our childhood, weren't we?:

We knew that Buffalo Bill had taken his Wild West Show, which could command crowds exceeding 80,000, over to Europe at the start of the 20th Century, but what we hadn't appreciated was that he took it round the small towns, including, of all places, Fraserburgh!:

We had lunch there too - Jo had the Buffalo Burger and I had the Buffalo Dog.

Re-joining the I-70, we came across 12 miles of virtually static traffic, due to roadworks, but we eventually made it to our apartment in Breckenridge about 3 pm. The first thing to do was to stock up with groceries - and booze of course. We have to be a little careful up here because of the effects of altitude. There's lots of warnings about altitude sickness and what to do - lots of water being the main one. It can cause breathlessness too - and the air is very dry, so we have two humidifiers running in the apartment just now.

The snow-capped mountains around us are spectacular - must get some photos later - but the priority today will be to try and get a decent pair of walking shoes for Jo.

To close, here's our car - a Toyota Camry: