Category Archives: Travel

History of the Aurora Fox Theater

I can’t talk about all the things happening at the Aurora Fox Theater without talking about the rich history of the theater itself.

The Aurora Fox Theater opened on October 30, 1946 with a showing of “Claudia and David”, staring Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young. The Fox Theater, as it was then called, was owned by Fox Intermountain Theaters and was an unusual theater at the time. It had a stepped stadium seating area in the rear, which is something that we now take for granted in theaters. The building was a modified quonset hut used by the Lowry Army Air Corps Base during World War II. (The U.S. Air Force separated from the U.S. Army on September 18, 1947.) During these years the theater had a seating capacity of 650 persons.

Fox Theater Fire

Fox Theater Fire, 1983

The Fox was a landmark theater along Colfax in east Aurora for almost four decades, but in 1983 the movie theater experienced a fire. The fire itself did little damage, but damage from smoke and water were significant and the theater had to close. It had to be fully remodeled before it could reopen and was redesigned as a stage theater rather than a movie theater. The new design incorporated the 245 seat Aurora Fox Theater, a smaller black box Aurora Fox Studio Theater and the Aurora Fox Children’s Theater. Together the three theaters are collectively referred to as the Aurora Fox Arts Center and are owned and operated by the City of Aurora Cultural Services Division. The complex reopened in 1985, complete with attached rehearsal and scenery shop facilities. Its first stage show was the western melodrama “Bad Day at Gopher’s Breath”.

The Aurora Fox Arts Center is home to the Aurora Fox Theater Company which presents eight plays every year. The Fox also hosts visiting theater companies, sponsors educational programs and is available to be rented out for private events.

The Aurora Fox Theater is a cultural destination for the shows it puts on, the distinct architecture of the building and the historical district in which it is located, the original Town of Fletcher, where Aurora was born.

Stormy at the Aurora Fox Theater

Stormy at the Aurora Fox Theater, by Patricia Wells

Aurora Fox Theater by night

Aurora Fox Theater by night

[whohit]2014-04-20 History of the Aurora Fox Theater[/whohit]

Her Majesty, the Queen

It takes connections to hang out with presidents and royalty.

Tonight I got to travel to Boulder to see Queen Margaret. She was in Boulder with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. I thought that she’d talk to me or at least wave like President Bush had, but instead she spent her time scheming against English nobles and taking advantage of King Henry. It was very sad because everyone kept dying.

I sat in the front row and the nobles kept looking at me. After Queen Margaret killed everyone and was imprisoned by King Richard, I wanted to try out the King’s throne, but a mean guard said I couldn’t. I’m not just any rodent, you know!

Before the show I got the visit some of the more famous sites at the University of Colorado. I checked out the buffalo at Folsom Field and climbed on the sundial at Norlin Library and poked my nose into Old Main. I really enjoy sightseeing!

 

The Colorado State Capitol

There turns out to be some mystique to making rules a mile above sea level!

After seeing President Bush, I decided to take a peek at how the government worked down here. Up in the mountains marmots all did their own thing. For the most part this worked pretty well. You grow up, you find a rock ledge that no other marmot is using, dig it up, make a home and move in. Really, it’s pretty easy being a marmot out in the wild.

It turns out, though, that people have other people to tell them what they need to do and how to live. That doesn’t seem to bother too many folks. I guess life is easy when someone makes all the decisions for you. And if you don’t like who’s making the decisions, every now and again you just throw them out and get someone new to decide what you need to do.

After I saw President Bush, I stopped by the Colorado State Capitol to see where the people who make decisions live. I was corrected that they just make the decisions at the State Capitol and live somewhere else. I don’t understand why people can’t make decisions at home.

I got to wander around the Capitol and see where people work and the desks they sit at. There are a lot of really old things in the Capitol and some really old people, too. It turns out that the Capitol building is one mile above sea level. This turns out to be an arbitrary measurement that is equivalent to 5280 feet. A foot is arbitrary, too. It’s based on the foot of a long dead person who used to make decisions. I guess he measured a lot of stuff with his feet, too.

I learned that living in Denver was a pretty cool thing. Denver is known as “the Mile High” city because some arbitrary measurement places it a mile above sea level. I hope that some day I get to go to sea level and figure out what all the excitement is about.

Stormy peering over the edge at the Colorado State Capitol.

Stormy peering over the edge at the Colorado State Capitol.

Denver is one mile above sea level. But you can't see the sea from here.

Denver is one mile above sea level. But you can’t see the sea from here.

Stormy, perched atop the well worn "Mile High" survey marker.

Stormy, perched atop the well worn “Mile High” survey marker.

Stormy examines the Civil War era cannon in front of the Colorado State Capitol.

Stormy examines the Civil War era cannon in front of the Colorado State Capitol.

The President of the United States

How lucky can a marmot get? Not two days off the mountain and I got to meet George Bush, the President of the United States!

Two days after coming to live in what people call “the civilized world” I was handed tickets to the Colorado Rockies game at Coors Field. The Rockies, which makes me think of majestic tall mountains, are a bunch of men in funny clothes who play a game that requires them to hit a small ball – I thought it was a white rock at first – with a large wooden stick, then run really fast. The game is called baseball and is played in a large green clearing surrounded by layers of uncomfortable seating. It’s sort of like sitting on the side of a mountain, looking down into a valley, something I did a lot of back on Mount Ida.

The Colorado Rockies were playing a team (that’s like a marmot family group) called the Atlanta Braves, who came from some hot muggy place called Georgia. I guess you have to be really brave to live in a hot muggy place. The two teams would take turns hitting the ball, catching it, then chasing each other. This is called a game, but it’s actually treated as some sort of a competition.

The game was held at a place called Coors Field, which is named after a group of people who make a yellow beverage that makes people walk funny, talk funny and pee a lot. The bonus for this game, or so I was told, was a visit by George Bush, the current President of the United States.

These are a lot of new concepts for me. It turns out that “The United States of America” is a large area of land that consists of mountains and valleys and plains and forests and lakes and is all governed by a group of people who can never agree on anything. President Bush (I didn’t get what kind of a bush he was – I might be familiar with what his relatives taste like) is in charge of the men who can not agree.

To get to see the game I had to be searched (I am not sure what they were looking for) by a woman wearing gloves. She patted me and squeezed me. It felt good at first, but got really old, really fast. I was told that this had to happen only because George Bush was at the game, so I guess he likes being petted and squeezed.

I did not really get to come close to George Bush, but I did see him come out on the balcony and wave to everyone. He really looked like a person and not a bush, but maybe he was disguised.

The game did not make a lot of sense to me. This isn’t really the sort of stuff I was taught as a little marmot. It seemed to me like the whole thing lasted far too long and wasn’t all that attention grabbing, but I was told that it went into an extra innings (whatever that is) and in the end the Colorado Rockies won by one point. That meant they had one more person who hit a ball not get caught than the Atlanta Braves.

There were other people who came to see President Bush, too. Some of them were not happy he came.

There were other people who came to see President Bush, too. Some of them were not happy he came.

The First Big Trip

My first big trip came just a day after I left the mountains. My friends were meeting an old naval buddy, Roger, who was ‘blowing’ through town (although I didn’t notice a significant change in the weather). Roger came with his girlfriend, Melody. We met them at ‘The Sink’ in Boulder, which is supposed to be a ‘hole in the wall’. I figured that was something like a burrow.

The Sink is a restaurant, which is a place where they serve food for people to eat. The food they made here was pizza, which is a bread crust with bits of plants and animals baked on it, and burgers, which are two bread crusts with an animal baked between them. Yuk!

Roger now lives in Texas, where he is a police officer. That’s really cool, because he gets to go around and help people. But Roger’s a trouble maker, too. After he finished eating, he got a marker from the waitress and put graffiti on the ceiling.

After dinner we went around the University of Colorado and we took pictures in various places. We met a nice lady police officer who agreed to pose for a picture with me, so long as she didn’t appear in the newspaper.

Roger writing on the ceiling.

Roger writing on the ceiling.

Stormy exploring the solar system at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Stormy exploring the solar system at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Stormy with a friendly officer from the University of Colorado Police Department.

Stormy with a friendly officer from the University of Colorado Police Department.

 

The Gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park

Estes Park is a popular summer resort town in north central Colorado, located in the southern end of Larimer County, at an elevation of 7,522 feet above sea level.  The population of 5,400 people (2000 census) hosts in excess of four million tourists every year as visitors flood in to explore the natural wonders of the Rocky Mountains.

Estes Park is named after Joel Estes, a prospector who settled in what he called the Estes Valley in 1859.  Estes Park is the home of The Stanley Hotel which was built in the early 1900s by Freelan and Francis Stanley, founders of the Stanley Steamer Company.  This hotel was Stephen King’s inspiration for the fictional Overlook Hotel in The Shining and also appeared in Dumb and Dumber as Hotel Danbury.

Estes Park sits on the eastern boarder of the Rocky Mountain National Park and is connected to Grand Lake, on the park’s western boarder by the 50 mile long Trail Ridge Road, a part of U.S. Highway 34.  Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuously paved highway in the United States, reaching an elevation of 12,183 feet just east of Milner Pass, where it crosses the Continental Divide.  The highest mountain in the 415 square mile Rocky Mountain National Park is Long’s Peak, reaching an elevation of 14,259 feet. 

[whohit]2001-08-12 The Gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park[/whohit]