Because my wife was prepping for a marathon, we only had one afternoon to visit the Blue Mountains. So we did the most touristy thing possible; we visited SCENIC WORLD in Katoomba, a hybrid national park / theme-park. We rode a tram, a plunging railway car, a cable car, and hop-on, hop-off buses. Almost our entire experience was mediated through windows! Very weird.

Rainforest Cafe is kid friendly, sort of? They have talking trees. Glitchy animatronics. Cartoon predators. And orange fake footprints that tell you where to go. And what happens if you stray off the footprints? You end up at a dark and creepy bar, sitting on stools with sheered-off animal-legs, beneath a giant magic mushroom. So there’s that.

Spent the weekend in Denver/Boulder. . . I really like this sign on the Boulder Creak Path. It’s faded, has painted-over graffiti, and shows an earlier version of Boulder. Not sure who it’s useful for. . . time travelers?

Here’s a lousy photo of a small section of the Tempelhof, an old airfield turned into an over-900 acre park. These dudes were playing a massive game of four-square.

BTW, the Tempelhof was the proposed location for a giant fake mountain called the Berg. If they ever make this thing, I’ll move to Berlin.

We visited the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park (Sutter’s Mill). For ten bucks, we learned how to pan for gold. Step one was to buy our gear. Step two was to apply hand sanitizer. And step three was to pan for gold. Who knew it was so simple! I’m gonna be rich! Rich!