Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i 5280 Magazine

■ It has been nearly four years since I visited the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, but as we mark the 20th anniversary of that day this month, I took a moment to reflect on what most affected me from the exhibits. There were several displays that triggered anger and fear and sadness; it was the “Dear Hero” collection, however, that imbued me with some measure of hope. In the days and weeks following September 11, 2001, people, many of them children, from around the world sent letters and drawings to New York fire departments, thanking them for their bravery and service. That there was such an outpouring of humanity in the face of unfathomable hate reminded me that there are good folks out there…

▶ ROS SIAM Jefferson Park Est. March 2020 The tenant of the charming Victorian house previously occupied by Sassafras American Eatery, Ros Siam specializes in palateawakening sustenance. While some of the entrées, such as the pad prik khing—green beans wok-fried with chile paste—pack serious heat, others exude tart, sweet, and earthy notes. If you’re craving spice, ask for a hotter variation of the nam tok: charbroiled beef tossed with toasted rice powder, mint, red onions, and lime. By curating a wide-ranging menu, Thai-born owners and siblings Attawut Intongkam and Suttichai Inthongkham (their last names were transliterated into different English spellings) aim to educate locals about the multifaceted cuisine of their homeland. ▶ HEY BANGKOK Washington Park West Est. August 2020 At this convivial joint, the walls are bedecked with scenes…

Six baby goats shelter beneath a piece of scrap metal that’s a slightly darker shade of gray than the sky, from which a cold drizzle falls. The rain doesn’t seem to bother Tony, a 2,000-pound bull resting in the dirt nearby, but there’s no sign of Harvest Farm’s resident turkeys, pigs, or donkeys. The landscape is flat in Wellington, an agricultural town about 12 miles northeast of Fort Collins, and the horizon is lost in the low clouds on this mid-April day. The 100-acre farm typically would be abuzz with human residents preparing for planting season. Instead, everyone has taken refuge inside. In the chow hall, small groups of men sit at long tables and chat over burgers. They converse about work and life and all the other things co-workers…

MUST-DO’S Options for buying drinks and snacks inside the park are limited—especially this year. Bring a cooler full of provisions that you can leave in your car and enjoy after tours and hikes. Visitors are often surprised about the driving distances within Mesa Verde. From U.S. 160, the highway just outside the park, you should allow an hour (no joke) to get to any of the archaeological sites at the far ends of Chapin or Wetherill mesas. Add at least 30 minutes to that if you want to stop at the Mesa Verde Visitor and Research Center that’s located just off the highway exit, near the Mesa Verde National Park sign. (The center was still operating at limited capacity at press time.) The roads inside the park are narrow and…

As of 2016, the vast majority of Americans could not see the Milky Way from their homes, and fewer than one percent had reliable views of a dark sky. “We’re lucky here at Mesa Verde,” says visual information specialist Spencer Burke. “We can see the Milky Way every night, just like the Ancestral Puebloans did when they lived here. Just thinking that we see the same sky they saw gives me goose bumps.” Of course, Burke and his cohorts had to do some work to return the skies to their A.D. 1100 state. To be approved as the 100th International Dark Sky Park by Arizona’s International Dark-Sky Association, Mesa Verde had to use lower color temperature bulbs, redirect lights downward, and install motion-sensor lamps. “I was initially overwhelmed with what…

Operating hours: The park is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Main Park Road is always open; however, roads that lead to archaeological sites close at sunset. Entrance fees: From May 1 to October 31, a $30 payment per vehicle is good for seven days. From November 1 through April 30, it’s $20 per vehicle for seven days. An annual pass to Mesa Verde costs $55 (or an America The Beautiful federal recreation sites annual pass is $80). recreation.gov Current conditions: The ongoing pandemic and roadwork during summer and fall 2021 continue to restrict access to certain services and sites. Visit nps.gov/meve, then click on Alerts to get the most up-todate information. Listen and learn: Mesa Verde has an informative audio tour as well as a podcast…

Banchs, who leads the kitchen at Stanley Marketplace’s Comida, helped develop the recipes in “Harvest Party” (page 76). ON HER CULINARY MUSES: ”I’m inspired by my Puerto Rican roots and the people I have met throughout my career. I always try to mix in Puerto Rican ingredients.” FAVORITE FRESH PRODUCE: ”Plantains and a good slice of avocado are great complements to any meal.” WHERE SHE EATS WHEN SHE’S NOT WORKING: “When the food truck Areyto is brewery-hopping, I go on a mission to find it and enjoy the flavors of Puerto Rico here in Denver.”…

■ If you’ve ever scoured retail racks for hiking pants that actually fit, you’re not alone. According to a May 2021 article in Outside Business Journal, recreation-focused apparel brands have been slow to bring plus-size clothing to market, which advocacy groups say hinders equity in the outdoors. Enter Alpine Parrot, a Denver-based online clothing shop that 36-year-old Raquel Vélez founded with the mission to make outdoor apparel solely for women sizes 14 to 24. Fueled by her own retail woes, Vélez’s two-year-old company designed its debut offering, the Ponderosa Pant, to be both fashionable and functional. As Vélez sees it, making britches in more inclusive dimensions makes the outdoors more accessible, no matter your size.…

“Look all around you,” SHE SAYS. “Then close your eyes. Think about these mesas and canyons as a bustling community. Think about seeing women cooking, men hunting, kids playing, dogs barking, grandmas holding babies. You can smell the smoke from the cooking fires. You can hear the regular noise of daily life echoing out of these alcoves that are natural amphitheaters.” T.J. Atsye knows Mesa Verde National Park better than most, and that’s not just because she worked there for the better part of eight years, first for the museum association and then as a seasonal ranger. Atsye’s relationship with this landscape goes much deeper. As a Laguna Pueblo woman, 67-year-old Atsye is a direct descendant of the Ancestral Puebloans who made the area now protected by the park their…

“When I enter a modern-day kiva, I ask permission out of respect and cultural tradition,” says T.J. Atsye, who is Laguna Pueblo and a one-time ranger at Mesa Verde National Park. “I do the same thing when I enter a cliff dwelling. I ask permission to pass by.” Atsye, who often calls Mesa Verde the place “where the ancestors whisper to you,” explains that Pueblo people believe their ancestors are all around them, like many people feel the presence of their departed family members at a cemetery or maybe in a loved one’s favorite spot. Atsye understands not everyone has the same beliefs, but she suggests taking a quiet moment to address those who have passed on but whose spirits can still be felt in these sacred places. “Be sincere,…

Proportion of Mesa Verde National Park’s 52,000 acres that has burned in wildfires since 1996. Although wildfires can devastate any national park, the blazes at Mesa Verde—caused by lightning 95 percent of the time—can be especially destructive to archaeological sites. Fire can induce spalling, the peeling away of rock surfaces, which can be particularly damaging to petroglyphs and pictographs. After fires have been contained, erosion and lack of vegetation above alcoves can lead to harmful cascades of water, ash, mud, and detritus falling into the dwellings during rainstorms. Fire can have an interesting side effect, though. After the 1996 Chapin 5 fire, archaeologists began executing postfire surveys to assess damage; those inspections uncovered numerous archaeological sites that had been hidden for centuries under dense vegetation. Between 1997 and 2007, 676…

Set down in a canyon between two 400-foot swells of rock, Morefield Campground is the only place to set up a tent—or hook up an RV—inside the park. As campgrounds go, Morefield is clean and easy to navigate and has a full-service village with a gas station, showers, a cafe, and a camp store that’s well-stocked with adult beverages. The sites are outfitted with tables, tent pads, fire pits, and dark skies. For the best stargazing—and quietest camping—select a site in the Taos, Zuni, or Jemez loops. visit mesaverde.com…

in September, Rayme Rossello is searching for the plumpest poblanos for chile rellenos in anticipation of an upcoming outdoor soirée at her Boulder home. The owner of Comida at Stanley Marketplace hunts for the peppers in her sprawling garden, where they grow alongside everything from squash, herbs, and garlic to cantaloupe, watermelon, and strawberries. Cooking with fresh produce, particularly in the summer and fall, has always been a vital part of entertaining for her and her husband, Erik Duffy, who owns heritage pork retailer Tender Belly. To throw the ultimate garden party at their home—which sits on 14 remote acres flanked by views of the Continental Divide and North and South Arapaho peaks—Rossello enlisted her dear friend and Comida chef Sandra Banchs. Together, they curated a Mexican-inspired menu of veggie-topped…

Want More Dining Options? Visit our online listings at 5280.com/restaurants. SYMBOL KEY NEW Indicates a restaurant featured in 5280 for the first time (though not necessarily a restaurant that has just opened). 25 BEST Indicates inclusion in 5280’s 2019 list of Denver’s best restaurants; we did not release a 2020 list due to COVID-19 disruptions and closures. These selections are at the discretion of 5280 editors and are subject to change. A Adobo at First Draft $$ RiNo / Latin-Asian Chef Blaine Baggao draws inspiration from his Filipino heritage and childhood in Roswell, New Mexico, to produce Latin-Asian specialties inside First Draft Taproom & Kitchen. 1309 26th St., 720-520-7869. Lunch, Dinner 25 BEST Annette $$$ Aurora / American Caroline Glover brings a warm dining experience to Stanley Marketplace with Annette.…

■ The smell of roasting corn permeates the air as machines whir, click, and hiss. Outside, it’s a suffocatingly hot June afternoon, but inside the Raquelitas Tortillas factory in RiNo—where commercial-grade ovens blaze at 600 degrees—the heat is a welcome sign of booming business. Rich Schneider, a 61-year-old Raquelitas business partner and self-described “tortilla savant,” strolls through the 25,000-square-foot facility, where roughly two dozen workers supervise production lines and package freshly made tortillas into pink and teal boxes. Wearing jeans, an untucked Hawaiian shirt, and custom-made Vans emblazoned with tortillas, Schneider points out the various stages of the process: the vats that soak 800-pound batches of corn, the beige conveyer belt that spits out balls of dough in neat rows of six, the nine-tier cooling machine on which fresh-from-the-oven circles…

To see ancient mesa-top village foundations, centuries-old farming sites, and the famed cliff dwellings, parkgoers must travel the Main Park Road roughly 15 miles from the entrance before making a decision about which mesa—Chapin or Wetherill—to visit. Most parkgoers select Chapin Mesa, home of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in the park. “We’ve done a poor job of marketing Wetherill,” says Kristy Sholly, the park’s chief of interpretation and visitor services. “Wetherill has the second-largest dwelling in the park.” Advertising aside, visitors’ decisions usually come down to time: From the intersection of Main Park Road and Wetherill Mesa Road, it’s a 45-minute haul to reach the sites on Wetherill and a 20-minute drive to those on Chapin, making it difficult to view everything in one day. Our suggestion? Stay…

5280: You’re a park ranger but also a trained archaeologist—how does that background come into play during tours? Jackie Rabb: Working as an archaeologist can be lonely. Being a park ranger allows me to share ancient cultures and special places with actual people. I can teach the importance of preservation and educate people on cultural history. Walking through living history is a great way to do that, no? Backcountry tours are special. It’s a small group, so we can do things that other tours can’t. We can hike the actual trails the Ancestral Pueblo people hiked to get to the alcoves. We can go down ladders like the ones they used. We can even use the handand footholds they carved into the sandstone over the centuries, as many of them…