Our friends Ron and Brandi were great hosts. They showed us the sights and walked us around downtown Denver. And we spent a lot of time just hanging out with them and their two kids: Mikey, 6, and Maddi, 5 months. This was our first time seeing Maddi, and she was appropriately adorable. She has very blue eyes.

Confession Time: I've always been tentative about holding babies. I suspect that long ago, when the earth was much younger, somebody asked me to hold their colicky baby. I further suspect that the baby instantly began to scream bloody murder upon being placed in my arms, and that I was impressionable enough to take this personally. This would explain why I'm mortified that somehow I will break babies, just by holding them. Sort of like Lennie in Of Mice and Men. ("Tell me about the rabbits, George.") Little Maddi, however, seemed perfectly satisfied with me holding her, and there were no screams or secretions issuing forth, so the event was a brilliant success.

At any rate, Mikey and Maddi are great kids, and it was cool spending time with them. Mikey showed us his killer karate moves and tried to get me to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with him. "I can be Michelangelo and save the world, and you can be the girl and help." That was a pretty sweet deal, I thought, but then it was time for dinner so we had to postpone saving the world.

Mikey also had a new Gameboy Advance, which kindled an envious gleam in Nick's eye, and almost as soon as we got back into town—God help us—we bought a Gameboy apiece.

Every city has its scourge. New York has a problem with pigeons. Kansas has squirrels. And Colorado? Well, Colorado has a plague of prairie dogs. These little guys are truly ubiquitous, and once you know to look for them, their little mounds can be seen mucking up the landscape in every direction. They are disease-ridden munching machines that breed like rabbits and tear up the ground, but they are the cutest infestation you can imagine. Driving by a field, scores of these tawny, weasel-like bodies can be seen peeking up from the ground, scanning their surroundings for . . . well . . . I don't exactly know what for. But they've got these elaborate underground networks, and a sentry system, so that when intruders are nearby, one of the prairie dogs shrieks out a chirpy warning and all the others obediently disappear into the holes. Mikey and I ventured into a field to look at the holes and see how close the prairie dogs would let us get to them. Here's a picture of our own venerable prairie dog sentry, giving off his falsetto alert.

We saw some peculiar things in Denver, like a sign reading "Dumb Friends League." There was a great deal of speculation about this, and a lot of laughter. We were savvy enough to deduce that 'dumb' probably meant 'mute,' rather than 'stupid.' But I was positive the 'friends' part had something to do with Quakers. And then I came up with a great joke, but I didn't say it: "Hey, isn't the School of Mimes nearby? Maybe the Dumb Friends League is one of their competitors." I was pretty proud of myself for this one, but just before I opened my mouth to speak, I realized my joke would require an explanation—first, I'd have to make it clear that I knew the proper name of the school (the School of Mines), and then it occurred to me that the joke was not all that funny to begin with and was hardly worth the effort. Ron did a bit of research after we left, and it turns out the Dumb Friends League is some sort of animal defense thing, which is certainly the most boring of all the possible options. But good for them anyway. I like animals just fine. And I guess they can't really defend their own interests, unless you count claws and fangs, which are used pretty infrequently in a court of law. (I would watch a lot more Court TV if this kind of thing was allowed.)

There's a major artery through Denver with the highly significant moniker of "T-Rex." This thoroughfare is currently undergoing construction, expansion, eradication, and evisceration. There's the equivalent of half a lane of space through which upwards of 50,000 cars are expected to drive each minute. It's absurd. In addition to the congestion, people were driving in such a way that I checked my mirrors to see if there was a tidal wave about to crash down on the road behind us. Maybe there was a giant killer robot, smashing everything in its path, and that's why these motorists were driving erratically and cutting each other off. I didn't expect this kind of behavior in a mountain city. I always figured mountain people were totally laid back and self-actualized and, literally, above the petty concerns of your average neurotic citygoer. These are the people who amended their state constitution to recognize the medical use of marijuana, after all—how could they possibly be so uptight? If anything, they should be driving about ten miles an hour and munching on Funyuns.

And I almost forgot John Elway Ford. John Elway, formerly of the Denver Broncos, owns and operates seven Ford dealerships all over the city. It's not enough that he ruled the football field with an iron fist and won a place in all of our hearts? Now he's got to muscle his way into our wallets as well? Greedy S.O.B.

Summary: Mountains cool. Friends cool (even the 'dumb' ones). Can't wait to go back.