Denver Mint

After SIXTEEN years (gasp!) of living here, a dear friend came out to visit for the first time with the sole intent of going to the Denver Mint. So, we made it a top priority!

Turns out, however, it is actually quite a pain in the rear end to get tickets. Initially I thought we would all just head down around 6:15. Tickets are first come, first served.

Last night as I did research, though, I learned that people start lining up at 5 AM! Ben said, "haven't people realized it isn't that cool of a place to see?" Regardless of Ben's opinion, this was the entire reason Danielle came to visit, so we needed to get tickets!

Each person can get 5 tickets. I decided to wake my incredible trooper Audra up. I did so at 5:15 and said, "Put some pants on. I'll explain in the car!" She and I drove down and got in line- we made it by 5:45. We were about #20 in line. At 5:45. By 6:15 the line was very long- we most assuredly would not have gotten tickets if we got there at 6:45.

Thankfully, we were next to very friendly and wonderful people. A couple from New York, and a homeschooling family from Texas! Audra made friends with their kids Rachel and Isaac and we exchanged addresses so she has new pen pals!

 Audra is the best- she never complained! I can always count on her to be my partner in crime! I can't wait to traipse through Europe with her by my side- she is simply the best at being adventurous and willing to do hard things for great rewards!

I was quite grumpy about this archaic system of not being able to reserve tickets in advance, BUT- it ended up being totally worth it! The tour was fabulous, and I learned so much about how money works in America (for the record, zero tax dollars are spent on the making of money. In fact, the US Mint earns about 4 billion dollars of profit a year. It's incredible). The Denver Mint has about 50 BILLION dollars worth gold in the basement! WOW!!!

I would definitely do it again! I'm so glad we played tourists with our tourists today and had such an incredible time at this place!

After the tour we walked over to the capitol so N could stand on the 5,280 marker. Then, there happened to be some kind of food truck festival going on, so we ate there.

Oh, shout out to Ben: Children under the age of 7 are not allowed, so Ben took the day off work to baby-sit Camille and 5 year old C, our guest.  It was very nice of him to help us out, but I told him that he needs to go to the Mint as an adult. He did not enjoy it as a child, but I think as an adult he would really like it.