Tuesday,
September 27th, 2016
15.5
miles / 10:00 – 19:00
Part 1
For hundreds of years, Colorado has been
the edge of the frontier. With endless
plains on its eastern edge to jagged mountains in the west, Colorado is one of
the most geographically and culturally dynamic states in the U.S., and as such,
it offers an enormous variety of experiences for locals and travelers
alike. It’s always been one of my
favorite states in the Union, and I’ve been there several times in my life both
for business and pleasure.
It’s hard to see it all, even in a
lifetime, but what could I see in a day?
When you see photos like this one, it’s
hard to not like Denver, Colorado’s
largest city. Denver has a storied history
being the base of frontiersman, prospectors, farmers, ranchers, businessmen,
and explorers. Denver was a city built
on the hopes of the future, with the promise of gold, land, and
independence. It’s a centralized city
designed to give people the footing they need to explore. But don’t you worry; Denver itself has plenty
to see.
When I started Miles by Foot in 2014, I made an initial list of all the cities I’d
like to walk in the United States.
Denver was the third city on that list, but it took me a while to get
there on a walk. Between school, life,
work, family, and other, more demanding hobbies, I had trouble making time for
walks like I used to, but the burning urge to explore was still
smoldering. I knew Beth would love
Colorado, so she and I went there in October 2015 for an anniversary getaway
and we had a great time, staying in a little apartment in Capitol Hill and
exploring the city and its environs, including Colorado Springs and
Boulder. When we flew back to Kentucky,
I knew I needed to strike Denver off my list and do the solo walk I’d always
wanted to.
The last full-distance walk I’d done, at
least officially, was Chicago, in March 2015, nearly two years ago. Chicago is an easy target for us here in
Louisville; it’s the cheapest destination by air, it’s close, and it has
multiple airports, so every major airline offers a route to the Windy City, so
trips there are pliable.
Using my trip to Chicago as a template, I
would try to walk the city of Denver in one day, flying out in the morning and
flying back that same night.
There is a short list of realistic one-day
destinations from Louisville by air, and Denver isn’t one of them. Denver is four times as far away as Chicago,
meaning that nonstop flights, while they do exist, are far less common and more
inconveniently timed, which can cut deeply into the time I have to walk the
city.
Only two carriers fly to DEN nonstop from
SDF: Southwest and United. Even with as
open-ended a window as possible combining both carriers, you’re only looking at
about seven hours from the time the outbound lands in Denver until the return
flight to Kentucky takes off. That’s not
including transit through the airport and to Denver itself, airport security,
and other biological and travel machinations that you must factor into an
accurate timeline. Taking this into
account, you’re looking at four hours or so “on the ground,” which is far too
little time for hassle and the cost, which easily broke $350.00. Staying overnight confounds the purpose and
novelty of a one-day trip while considerably increasing the cost. Still, Denver has enough to offer for me to
consider creative alternatives.
Denver is on the edge of the frontier, so maybe their aptly-named hometown
airline could provide the connection I needed.
Although Frontier doesn’t fly out of Louisville, they do fly out from
most of our nearest urban neighbors, including Cincinnati and Nashville. The most attractive option, however, flies
out of Indianapolis.
Indianapolis is about a two-hour drive up
the road from Louisville, a little less than halfway to Chicago, and the drive
is as simple and straightforward as it gets: hop on I-65 North and keep driving
until you see the Chase Tower’s distinctive two-pronged profile against the
sky. Hang a left to get to the airport on
I-70 West, and voila! Besides being a
close alternative, Indianapolis has a world-class airport that I’ve never flown
through, providing additional incentives to cross into the Hoosier State.
As opposed to a mid-morning outbound
flight and an early evening return offered by flying out of Louisville,
Frontier’s flight out of Indianapolis is exceptionally early in the morning,
and its return is very late the following evening, giving an enormous gap of
time to see and experience both airports and Denver at a leisurely pace. This would require an even earlier start, as
I’d have to drive from Louisville to their airport, IND. Still, this is how I like to do things;
besides, for busy people who still love to travel, this is often the only way
you can make these kinds of things happen at all.
From the time I got in my car the morning
of my Chicago walk to the time I trudged back in was about seventeen
hours. This would push that number to
about twenty-nine active hours, all
without much sleep except for the minute amounts I could grab in transit. This would, like Chicago, require careful,
close-knit planning to fully realize such an intense, circuitous route through
Denver to catch all the sights that make it such a great city to visit.
Frontier Airlines is an
ultra-low-cost-carrier, or ULCC, a relatively new designation to the commercial
airline industry, especially in the U.S.; Europe and Asia have been featured
ULCCs for years, but we’re just catching up over here. Since 9/11, every airline around the world
has changed the way they structure their services, developing increasingly
segmented offerings from full-service to bare bones. Many consumers see this striation as a way to
nickel and dime them, charging them for every little thing they expect to be
included in their ticket price. That’s
less the case now, and from an industry perspective, this makes sense. Charging consumers for specific services they
use is, well, how a service business works, and letting people elect those
parts of the ticket they want tells the industry, using the dollars-and-cents
vernacular in which they have become fluent, what actually matters to their customers.
It also allows people who wouldn’t have needed all the “extras” offered
in a standard ticket a chance to get on a plane at what could be seen as a
discount, which brings new business to the industry. Some complain about airlines like Frontier
and their ilk, but as long as you know what you’re getting into, you only have
yourself to blame in the majority of instances.
Frontier would be my first experience on
a ULCC, and as weird as it is to admit, I was looking forward to it. I’d heard horror stories about missed
connections, delays, and poor service, but I had faith. Denver’s a great city; hopefully, their airline
would deliver me there in a safe, timely, and novel manner.
When it came to pulling the trigger and
booking the flight, I found a narrow window in September where the price was
low, the one-day return was possible, and the weather would still likely be
good. Booking mid-week helped
tremendously, so I planned for Tuesday, September 27th, 2016,
slightly less than a year after Beth and I went. I booked less than a month out, on Labor Day,
but even as close as it was, the base ticket price was hilariously inexpensive:
$43.10 each way. That’s $86.20 for a
round-trip flight covering 2,000 miles in a combined five hours. Driving
2,000 miles in an efficient car would still put you at around $125.00 just for
gas, not to mention the thirty hours of time spent driving, the exhaustion that
comes with that, and the cost of parking your car in a major city. This was the way to go.
That price was amazing, but after buying
the base ticket, everything else cost
money. Want to check a bag? Costs some money. Want to print off your ticket at our
kiosk? Five dollars. Oh, hey, are you bringing a backpack and a camera bag? More expensive than that checked bag. That’s right; you only get one item for free,
and it’s a small, personal item at that.
On most “full-service” airlines these days, you’ll get both a sizable carry-on
bag and a personal item for free. Not
here, though. To add to the challenge,
I’d have to carry my camera bag alone.
My small, trusty backpack was too big to fit their restrictive size parameters
for a personal item: 8” x 8” x 14”. As
is, my camera bag would barely fit. Time
to bust out the cargo shorts to carry everything else.
The only upgrade I chose was selecting my
seat, and it wasn’t even for a higher-quality seat or more legroom. I always like a window seat, so I paid $19 on
my outbound for the farthest forward window seat I could get. My return window seat was much cheaper at
only $8. Still, this put my entire
flight cost, taxes and all, at a paltry $113.20. I’d print off my boarding passes before I’d
go, or I could bring it up on my phone, so this was still an exceptional deal,
perfect for a trip like this.
I could drive to Indianapolis, but once I
land in Denver, I’d have to get from the airport all the way downtown, which is
no short distance. Thankfully, Denver just opened a direct rail link from the
airport to their central business district within the last few months. Beth and I had seen the signs of the last
steps of construction of the rail line when we were there in October. Good timing!
This would also give me an anchoring starting and ending point for my
walk: Denver’s Union Station in Lower Downtown (LoDo).
So where do I walk in Denver? Chicago is full of recognizable landmarks, like
the Willis Tower, Wrigley Field, and Michigan Avenue, all places I passed on my
walk in March 2015. Denver doesn’t have
the landmark recognition level of Chicago and, to be fair, few cities do. Instead, I recalled the details of the trip
Beth and I took to plot out those places I thought would be worth experiencing
on foot. When we were there together, we
had a car, but I had a feeling Denver would feel much different on foot. I did some research on the city and its
landmarks, nailed down a solid circuit, and surveyed its distance, coming up
with around fifteen miles of walking in Denver proper, this time with a planned
stop for lunch.
This trip already involved a frighteningly
early start, a moonlit drive, a tiny luggage allowance, a lengthy,
uncomfortable flight on a budget carrier, a train ride, a formidable walk in
the Mile-High City, a train ride back to the airport, and an overnight flight
back to Indiana, where I’d then have to drive two more hours after walking a marathon.
Yep, that sounds about right! Pretty good use of a Tuesday if you ask me.
Next week, we’ll start the trip. Make sure to swing by, and remember, keep
going!
- Matt
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