Page 226 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL FALL 2021 DISCOVERING SANTA FE

into Omaha. We were lulled to sleep by the click- walked into Union Station with its soaring Great
etty clack of the rails and were awakened around 6 Hall, we could smell fresh-baked pastries coming
a.m. by Colorado sunlight poking into our com- from a deli and the Snooze restaurant, where we
partment. had a tasty breakfast of French toast, pancakes,
About 50 miles west of Denver, our anticipation fresh fruit and coffee.
built with our first vision of the Rockies in the dis- Then we checked into our digs for the next three
tance, reminding me of a trip decades past when I nights, the Crawford Hotel in Union Station, in a
drove with my parents from Iowa to Fort Collins corner suite that was once the offices for what
north of Denver to attend Colorado State Univer- probably was a shipping company. From our front
sity for my freshman year. (I ended up graduating window, we looked out over the plaza in front of
from the University of Colorado in Boulder, with a the station and down 17th Street.
year at Uppsala University in Sweden.) Not long after that, we met Grant on Wynkoop
Within an hour that first morning, we were Street, which runs in front of the depot, and we
pulling into Denver’s busy Union Station, which re- were off. One of first stops was the Oxford Hotel,
minded me of the depot in the center of Stock- which historic preservationist and developer Dana
holm, Sweden, which I’d visited a few years back. Crawford, for whom the Crawford Hotel in Union
Located on the Baltic Sea, Stockholm was my em- Station was named, owns.
barkation point for a high-speed train to Gothen- Then it was on to the Rockmont Ranchwear
burg on the Sweden’s western Atlantic coast. store, which Grant said is the only original busi-
Denver’s station boasts a white, fabric canopy cov- ness in LoDo. Founded more than 75 years ago, its
ering some of the tracks that is a stark modernistic embroidered shirts – which feature distinctive
contrast to the century old, beaux art Union Sta- snap buttons – have been worn by musicians rang-
tion. Remarkably, the two styles flow together ing from Bob Dylan to Eric Clapton to David Bowie
well. to Bonnie Raitt.
When we bid adieu to the California Zephyr and “Papa Jack opened the business – which also

226 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE FALL 2021