An Extremely Lovely Sunday Ride

This week's Lovely Sunday Ride, and entry into LGRAB round 3,  featured the Highland's Neighborhood of Denver.  The townsite of Highland was laid out in December 1858 by William Larimer, Jr., who the previous month had founded Denver City.  In 1859 the Highland town company formed, and a Platte River bridge was planned to connect to Auraria and Denver. The Rocky Mountain News noted:

"No more handsome location for residences can be found than on the highlands of Highland, on the opposite side of the river from and overlooking Auraria and Denver, and a vast extent of surrounding territory."

After the May 1864 flood wiped out parts of Denver, new people moved up the hill to the west. The Fifteenth Street Bridge made the western hills accessible and as the years passed streetcars made the area even easier to reach.

From my house to Highland Park, where we met, it was approximately seven miles, only the last two or so were straight up hill so it wasn't bad at all.  We meandered through the neighborhood for about an hour...

The architecture in the Highlands is just plain cute.  A fantastic mixture of row houses, Victorians, Spanish style casa's, massive stone structures, Denver squares and bungalows.  It's one of those neighborhoods where nearly every block has something distinctly different.

This was an amazingly well done tri-plex which managed to mix old and new into something truly beautiful.  The original house is on the right.  It's one story, has a flat roof and winds around back where it meets up and is beautifully integrated with the ultra-modern styling of the other two units.  I was amazed at how well it worked!

A nice example of the many stone houses in the Highlands.  I loved the sign on their porch.

We stopped at Highland Cork & Coffee for lunch.  I think they might have *the* best patio in the city!

We toasted with cold beers and sangria then dug in to our lunch!

Green chili quiche.

Monster salads.

After taking our own very sweet time eating and drinking, we headed across the street to a little boutique where we found the cutest little button rings!

And I bought a new hat!

Next was the Urbanistic Tea & Bike Shop

TEA and...

BIKES!  I mean, why not?

They carry a fantastic line-up of quality leaf tea and beautiful bikes.  Denver is a big cruiser town so nearly ever shop carries some sort of beach cruiser line.  Urbanistic has Nirve and this one on the end seemed to be a Western Flyer reproduction.  They also sell Civia's and Breezers.

This vintage Nishiki parked out front looked fine!

And this Soma mixte xtracycle was the bomb!

Back to our bikes (Irene got to go along this ride) and we headed for home.

On the 20th Ave Bridge across I-25 we had a nice view of the upper deck at Coors Field.  A fantastic day for a baseball game!

On my way home I stopped at City Floral to pick up some ladybugs.  The aphids are attacking my greens.  Not gonna let those little buggers destroy my kale!

Soon after I got home, this came out of the oven.

Lovely!