Despite all the fun we had been having in Colorado up to this point, all of that wasn't the real reason for our trip. If you remember my very first post, the reason we traveled out to Colorado in the first place was to watch our niece play softball with her summer travel team.
As Wednesday rolled around, it was finally time for the games to begin. I'm not going to bore you with all the stats and results. I did all of that on my @bozz.sports account some time ago. Please feel free to dig back and check that out. Instead, I am just going to share some photos and stories from our time watching softball.
The games were actually pretty well spaced so that we got some downtime in between all of the excitement. I think there was something like 240 teams in the division that my niece plays in. Add to that the fact that there are about six other divisions and it's easy to see why the games were spread all across the city.
We played the majority of our games in Arvada at a place called Harold D Lutz Sports Complex.
It was a nice park that offered some interesting views of the city. I have two issues with the park in general. First, there wasn't a lot of shade, which makes it extremely warm watching games. Especially when the air is thinner. Thankfully, we had our Coleman canopy that we could pop up and give ourselves some shade. I honestly don't know what we would have done if we had flown and not had it.
My other issue with the park was the lack of maintenance at the facility. You can see in the photo above the dip in the brick. I'm sad to say that as @mrsbozz was carrying some of our stuff into the park she stepped on that dip and rolled her ankle falling to the ground. It was more embarrassing for her than anything, but we are still dealing with the damage to her ankle via PT to this day.
I joked for a while that maybe they would put my name on the park after I sued them, but I'm not really the sort to go down that road.
It just put a bit of a damper on the rest of the week.
There was one day that our games were at another park called Youth Memorial Sports Complex. I actually preferred this park over the other one. It felt more open and it was in a part of town that made it feel less congested.
You couldn't really see the mountains from where we were in the park, but if you look in the photo above you can just see a spec above the treeline. You might think it's something on your monitor, but I assure you it is in the photo.
That was one of a pair of fighter jets that flew over the park. I wasn't fast enough to get a better photo, but man were they loud!
Another interesting fact about this park is that on our way to the park we passed a dead body on the side of the road. We didn't realize it at the time, but as we were traveling down the road we saw a large number of police cars ahead of us.
They were positioned in a way that they were trying to block off a view on the "outlawn" near the sidewalk. As we got closer, we saw a white sheet on the ground with a pair of feet sticking out the bottom. We also noticed a white van that said medical examiner on the side of it.
We never found out what happend, but it was pretty surreal to see something like that in the middle of the suburb.
As you can see from one of the photos above, one of the parents made jello shots for us to enjoy while we were watching the games. That cut the edge a little bit from seeing the dead body!
Probably some of my favorite shots from this part of our trip came on the third day of playing softball. It was a late night for the ladies but as you will see, it afforded us some amazing views back at the other park.
It's hard to believe, but our time in Colorado was coming to an end. I feel like writing these posts has gone just as quickly as the time we spent there. I have about three more posts after this one and then we will start the long drive back to Michigan.
On Wednesday I will share another round of disc golf that @mrsbozz and I played at a different course, and then on Thursday I'm going to share with you the remainder of the places we ate at, so if you like seeing photos of food, be sure to check back for that one!
Finally, after the last softball game was played, we had one more night of fun before we headed home.
As a visitor, Denver really is a magical place and as I was looking at the map, I started to realize just how little of the city we actually got to explore. I already have a list of places I want to check out whenever we make our way back to the mile high city.
I hope it ends up being sooner rather than later. What I do know is that it probably won't be for softball. We only have one more summer of softball before my niece moves along to the university level. Then we will be traveling down to Virginia to watch her play.
I can't wait!
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