Day 3 Continued

Downtown Denver, the Denver Capital.

This building was awesome! It was their city hall, and was enormous. All marble inside, just really beautiful. 

The green sign. 

Located in downtown Denver, is The Denver Mint, which is one of six federal buildings, in our country, that prints our nation's money. We were not able to get reservations, but thought we would just see if they had any room (in case someone didn't show up for their reservation), during a tour. We got extremely lucky. We showed up twenty minutes before the tour started, and were able to be a part of the tour. HOLY security!! Those mint officers are quite serious about the safety there! I didn't even make it through the metal detector because of my Disney sunglasses! No phones on, and NO pictures were to be taken. YIKES! I am a pretty big offender of leaving my camera on, but didn't mess around with this federal building at all!! We waited outside, "under the green sign", til everyone was in, and they could make sure there was enough room for our family. YAY, they had room for us!


While standing in line to see if we could get into the tour, Ryan had a few (many) questions to ask this officer. Ryan: Do you have pepper spray? Have you ever sprayed pepper spray? Does it hurt? Do you have a tazer? Have you ever tazed someone? Is that a shield vest? What does it do? Have you ever arrested someone? Plus MANY more, but I just can't remember them. He is so funny and will just talk to anyone and want to learn everything about them. I have been told, he is very much like myself. (lol, Liana)

#1 Offender: I had my camera off, lens cap on, and cellphone turned completely off, as instructed. We get to the very last part of the tour, and our guide tells Ryan to stand in front of a door, which is a metal gate, but has some sort of clear material (probably some sort of gun resistant material, I am sure) to guard three gold bars. The bars were worth over $1 million. So Ryan is standing there being a "junior officer", and I say to the guide, "I so wish I could take a picture of this", he looks at my camera and says "maam, you need to turn your camera off all the way". I look down and tell him it is, indeed, off, and I even have the lens cap on. So, I look down to even show him this, and the camera is actually on, and you can see a picture on the screen that I had taken outside prior to the tour starting. Seriously!!!! He says to me to bring my camera over to the guard, so he can check it out, and says it really is to protect him and his job. I felt so dumb, and really didn't mean for that to happen, even tho usually I do mean for that to happen. The guard looked at a few pics, and all was good. DUMB, I am! I have been told, before, I may be a #1 offender for taking pics when I am not supposed to.