Denver, Day 2

After I signed off on my blog entry last night, I went to the hotel gym to work out. When I came back, my key card didn't work. UGH. I had to go to the front desk (passing many nicely dressed people, some of them in Marine Corps uniforms) to get it sorted out. I was a hot, sweaty mess. Yeah, THAT'S not embarrassing. I also didn't have an ID with me because it was locked in my room, so security had to escort me up. BLAH! Oh well, at least I got a good workout in.

I woke up at around 6 this morning. I think my body was still on DC time and then with the whole Daylight Savings Time, I was all out of whack. I wandered over to the Convention Center where I needed to get my program. I saw that there was something related to social marketing, and I was about to walk right in to the room when the guy at the door was like "I need to see your ticket." What? Oh. Uh, I didn't know I needed one. He directed me to the registration desk where I could get it worked out. The lady there informed me that the session was going to cost $200 (?!). Never mind.

Onward to the Denver Zoo. I debated on whether to take a taxi or not. Whatever the taxi fare, I knew it wouldn't be cheaper than the $2 bus fare. The bus route wasn't too tough to figure out and I made it to the zoo only to be faced with a very, very long line. I mean, it was like 3 blocks down and around the corner. Apparently, I wasn't the only one that got the Zoo-is-free-on-November-7 memo. I got to the end of the line at 10:05 and didn't actually enter the zoo until 10:25. When the Zoo opened its doors, the line kept moving. Hooray.

The Zoo was fantastic! I had a great time there. The weather was perfect (sunny, not too hot), and there were many things to see. I think the only thing that would make the zoo better is if they had pandas. "My" National Zoo is free every day and we got pandas. Neener, neener. The Zoo was showcasing many of its baby animals: giraffe, some sort of tiny anteater, sea lion and tiger. All very adorable. Here are some shots from the zoo.
I finished up at the zoo in about 2.5 hours and wondered what to do next. It was way too early to be going back to the hotel. A teen zoo volunteer informed me that the Denver Museum of Nature and Science was just up the street. Oh, ok, let's go there. They had cool stuff: stuffed animals/birds, dinosaurs, etc., but nothing that I thought was like WHOA or that I couldn't see something similar at "my" Smithsonian Natural History Museum, which is FREE every day...not $11. Living near DC really does spoil me, as you can see. Here are some shots from the Museum. The self timer on my camera came in really handy, as I didn't want to keep asking random people to take pictures of me. Check out that prehistoric pig thing...it's really freaky.

As I got back on the bus to get back to the city, I got a text message from my boss. Something about maybe seeing me at the Exhibit Hall. Uh oh, I'm not there (yet). I finally made my way back to the Convention Center and caught up with people from work. I also saw someone that I used to work with. At such a huge conference, I guess you're bound to find someone that you know. After a full day's worth of walking, I decided that a gym workout wasn't necessary today. Walking is exercise, right?

P.S. Isn't Denver pretty with all those mountains in the background? :D