Cherokee Castle and No Lunch

Its a beautiful Saturday morning.  The sun is shining and the skies are blue.  And the wind isn't blowing for a change.  We are reading the paper and drinking coffee.

Mark: What are we doing today?
Me: Whadda ya mean?
Mark:  Its Saturday.  It isn't snowing or raining.  You always have something planned, so what is it?
Me: You know me too well *grin*

Truth be told I didn't have anything planned but if my Stud Hubs (my new name for Mark) is asking what we are doing I'm sure as heck not going to say, "Nothing dear".  So I looked on my Colorado Bucket List and saw that Cherokee Ranch and Castle was one our items of things to do.  My Maps app showed that it is only13 minutes away from us.  Promising.  And when I looked on Trip Advisor it said that they were open all day and that they had lunch.  Done!

We got into the truck and headed down I-25 for a short distance and followed the directions to the location.  Problem being, when the GPS said "Arrived", we were in the middle of nowhere.  There wasn't a building in sight, there wasn't a sign, and there sure wasn't a castle anywhere to be found. We continued along the road that we had come in on and about 2 miles down the road there was a teeny tiny sign that said "Cherokee Ranch and Castle.  By invitation only" with an arrow pointing down a small dirt road. Um, we weren't exactly invited but Trip Advisor said they were open so we considered that our invitation.  2 miles down a winding road, we came upon a castle.  I mean a real life castle in the middle of nowhere.  And there were cars all over the place.  Seems that some other folks had an invitation to this shack as well.  A very nice man greeted us and asked us for our tickets.  I looked at Mark, he looked at me, and we both gave a sheepish grin and said we didn't have any.  Well as it turns out, they require reservations to go through the castle, but as our luck would have it, there was a couple that had called and cancelled that morning and we were able to get their spot on the tour.  Stupid Trip Advisor didn't mention anything about reservations.  We also asked about lunch and when the restaurant would be open.  The very nice man who greeted us also informed us that they did in fact have Christmas teas and other special events but there was no restaurant on the premises.  Did I mention that Trip Advisor is stupid?

For those of you that are interested, here's the link to Cherokee Ranch and Castle.  For those of you who just want the quick overview of the place here goes:  A wealthy Denver family built the castle in the late 1920's.  They owned the castle for several years but sold it to Tennessee-born Tweet Kimball's soon to be ex-husband.  When Tweet's marriage dissolved in 1955, her then husband (who was a CIA Deputy) figured that she would probably go back to Tennessee and talk about him.  So he offered to buy her any property West of the Mississippi to live in.  She picked the Castle.  Now Tweet was quite a character. You can read all about her here.  I think I would have loved to have hung out with her.  

This place is beautiful.  The castle has the most gorgeous views of the Front Range that anyone can possibly imagine.  This photo does NOT give justice to the panoramic vista from their back deck.  You can see Pikes Peak to the far left, the whole Front Range, downtown Denver and the Rockies all the way up into Wyoming. We were fortunate that the weather was so cooperative and we got to see this stunning view. 

On to the Castle itself.

The Great Hall- look at the size of that fireplace!

The balcony at the back of the Great Hall was built so that an orchestra could sit up there and perform.

Gorgeous woodwork everywhere

The formal dining room

The ceiling in the formal dining room

Portuguese hand-painted tiles over the fireplace in the dining room

The Butler's pantry

The kitchen

The veranda on the back of the house

The official bar in the house.  It was added on after Prohibition but there were several other
bars that were hidden in various places in the house that were used during Prohibition

One of many staircases in the castle

The Conservatory

Tweet's sitting room in her personal suite

Tweet's bedroom

One of her son's bedroom

Another one of her son's bedroom

Their intercom system.  Très moderne, huh?

Tweet's Trophy Room

Another view of the Front Range from one of the towers

Some unknown gate crashers

The Library

The Churchill Room. 

This was once the nursery but Tweet used it as her Mother's room when she lived with her.
A nanny would have lived in this room.

And this would have been the baby's room.

I'm not even going to tell you about the art work and the furniture that is in this place.  There are many, many beautiful and priceless pieces of art that Tweet and her family had purchased over the years as well as antiquities from Greece, and China and Ukraine.  Just one of the triptychs that they have in the home was recently appraised at $1.35 million.  The library was stuffed full of signed first edition books, original Audubon prints, and other highly valued items.  Guess what?  This part of the tour was completely off limits.  Go figure.  Can you just imagine what the insurance is on this place…

They also have lots of events that they host almost monthly.  We found out that there is a Scotch tasting this month that Mark would love to go to.  Unfortunately the event is sold out.  And there is a Sinatra impersonator that is coming next month.  Yup, that one is sold out too.  I guess that means that I need to get us on their mailing list so that we don't miss out on all of these cool things to do.  And when we do- you'll read all about it here!