Travel Adventures in Denver, Part 1

Last week, Steve attended the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit in Denver, Colorado. I traveled with him and used the time he was at the conference to visit as many of Denver's best attractions as possible. I'm excited to share all of the fun museums, tours, restaurants, and more I discovered during my time in Denver. 

Because I blog about educational travel, I was given admission tickets for most of the places I visited during our trip. This has no bearing on my reviews. Unless I say otherwise, everything I'm sharing is something that I recommend. If you notice any gaps in my narrative, it is because I didn't love a particular attraction enough to recommend it, regardless of how much I paid or didn't pay.

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Travel Adventures in Denver, Colorado

On Sunday, June 22 Steve and I flew from Sacramento to Denver. Most of the flight was uneventful, but we had about 15 minutes of turbulence during the approach into Denver. This is no surprise, considering Denver is North America's most turbulent airport. It was the side-to-side, vomit-inducing kind of turbulence (roll), not the plunging and jerking, fear-inducing kind of turbulence. I'd rather be nauseated than terrified, so I'm calling that a win, particularly since I didn't actually throw up. 

We headed downtown and checked into our hotel, the beautiful Hyatt Regency. I highly recommend it if you find yourself in Denver. It's in a great location, offers wonderful amenities, and has spacious, clean, and comfortable rooms. After we dropped off our stuff, we headed across the street to the Convention Center so Steve could pick up his registration materials. It was fun to see a sign with Tux in hiking gear welcoming the OSS attendees!

The Colorado Music Hall of Fame is located in the Convention Center. You don't have to be an attendee to visit; as long as the building is unlocked, it's free and available to visit. Go!

John Denver is one of my all-time favorite musicians. He was part of the inaugural class of 2011, along with Red Rocks Amphitheater. 

I enjoyed learning about all the inductees to Colorado's Music Hall of Fame. 

After Steve got his badge, he took it to the customization table. He attached three flags: Embedded Linux, Zephyr, and We Are Hiring. Then he added a pronoun sticker (He/Him) from amongst five choices. Finally, he chose a green sticker to indicate that he is comfortable with people approaching him to talk. I appreciate the Linux Foundation's efforts to help all attendees have a positive experience at the Summit. 

  

We dropped Steve's registration materials at the hotel and then headed out to complete the Denver Urban Adventure Quest. The Quest started at the beautiful Colorado State Capitol... 

... where we found Colorado's Liberty Bell replica. 

The Quest took us to many other points of interest in downtown Denver, including the Denver Art Museum, 16th Street, the Performing Arts Center (the second largest in the country behind Lincoln Center in New York), and the Brown Palace Hotel. Along the way, we were joined by Joseph, one of three others from Anodize besides Steve who attended the Summit. This was Joseph's first-ever Quest. 

During the Quest, we saw some really cool public art. There are tons of murals, sculptures, and interactive art pieces throughout Denver.  

  

  

  

As always, the Quest challenges were interesting, fun, and educational. 

    

We'd planned to finish the Quest and then have dinner, but we were all starving, having eaten nothing all day but an airplane snack. So we paused the Quest (we love that feature!) and had a delicious dinner at Stout Street Social. 

Can you guess whether I had the beet salad with pepitas, goat cheese, and blood orange vinaigrette... 

... or the ahi tuna tower with eel sauce and crispy wontons? (If you can't guess, you don't know me AT ALL.) 

Pleasantly full, we finished up the Quest and headed back to the Hyatt. Between the travel and the Quest and the time zone change, we were really tired. 

It would be an early morning for Steve and the gang, but it would be a REALLY early morning for me. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

I Love You, Dad

Even when you know it's coming, even when they've lived a long and happy life, even when you have so many good memories... saying goodbye hurts so much. Goodbye, Dad. I love you. 

 

Dad (24) and Cindy (6 months)

Dad (77) and Cindy (53)

David Everett Jones was born on May 23, 1948 in Renton, Washington, the youngest of three sons. As a boy, he enjoyed baseball, building model cars, camping, and earning Boy Scout merit badges. Dave met Kathy in their middle school science class and their first date was the Junior Prom. After graduation, they both attended Green River Community College. Dave was the first in his family to go to college and graduated with an AS degree in 1968. He moved to Livermore, California to begin working at what is now called Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory while Kathy headed to eastern Washington to complete her BA degree. 

Dave and Kathy married on June 20, 1970. They welcomed two daughters, Cindy in 1972 and Kari in 1975. Dave worked at LLNL as a Mechanical Engineer Technician for 38 years, retiring in 2006. In his spare time, he build a beautiful cabin from the ground up and did significant home renovations. Dave was a very talented woodworker who enjoyed hanging out in his garage and chatting with neighbors. He loved baseball, NASCAR, jigsaw puzzles, and traveling with the family. Dave was a member of Holy Cross Lutheran Church for 50 years before moving to Eagle, Idaho in 2018. In Eagle, he joined Hope Lutheran Church. Dave loved spending time with his grandchildren: Timothy, Trevor, and Allison. 

Dave passed away on June 25, 2025, five days after his 55th wedding anniversary. He will be missed by many. 

Justinthetrees: Woodworking with a Twist

I am a big fan of Justin Davies, of Justinthetrees. He is a talented woodworker, but that's not reason enough for me to share his videos here. It's the fact that he includes two of my passions in his woodworking: US geography and cooking. 

This is a poster Justin sells in his store, based on the actual United States of Trees wood map that he made. I love it. 

This is the compilation video from the 50 projects that make up the map. It's long, but super interesting (to me, at least!). 

He's made a second US map, this time based not on state trees, but rather on native trees. 

I mentioned Justin combines cooking with woodworking, which is even more interesting to me than the maps. You're probably assuming he makes cookware, as opposed to actual cooking, but you'd be wrong. There are many super fun videos where he makes tree-flavored ice cream, gelato, cake, candy, and more. I would love to try them. And then there's the time he made bread from sawdust. 

 

I hope you enjoy Justinthetrees as much as I do!

10 Years of Fun with Urban Adventure Quest

By the time you are reading this, our family will have (hopefully) completed our 28th Urban Adventure Quest. We are obviously huge fans of this game, where smartphone clues take you on a walking tour to the most interesting and important sites in a city. We always learn so much during a Quest and every Quest has taken us to places we never would have discovered on our own. 

We solved our first Urban Adventure Quest in Sacramento in March 2016. We were immediately hooked. We completed our second UAQ in Salt Lake City three months later and two more Quests in New Mexico five months after that. One month after that, we served as beta testers for a new Quest for the first time. 

Over the past 10 years since that first time in Sacramento, we have solved Quests in 19 different states. We've done Quests in extreme heat and epic downpours. We've finished Quests with no mistakes and others with an embarrassing number of errors. We've powered through Quests to try to get a good time and we've leisurely solved Quests with no consideration to our final score. 

I put together a map with all the locations we've done (so far). Most of the blank states don't have Quests; here is the current list of Quest cities. 

I'm excited to see what the next 10 years of Questing looks like for the deRosiers!

Creating Your Own Coloring Page from a Photo

Technology makes it incredibly easy to make your own coloring page. Pick a photo you like (one you personally took or that you have the rights to use)...

... and then use a photo editing program to convert it to an Edge Sketch. I used PicMonkey, of course. PicMonkey is a Shutterstock property, so a subscription includes access to a library of millions of royalty-free photos. 

Print your coloring page on good quality paper, then start coloring! I used Prismacolor colored pencils on Neenah Bristol Vellum. You can use the original photo as a guide for the colors, or you can color it any way you want. 

You could use this technique to make a coloring book of images from a special vacation or event. It would make a wonderful gift for anyone who loves to color.