Hey Scott... is it just me or was Denver a lot flatter than you expected it to be when you got there?
I'd always pictured Denver as being "surrounded" by the rockies... but then I found that Denver is actually just in the flat part of Colorado that for some reason Nebraska and Kansas didn't want. dunno why. There's mountains... but they are "over there" (pointing to the flatirons).
By way of full disclosure though... while I have a lot of time spent there it's all been up in Boulder, and little of it in Denver exactly. Boulder I found to be sorta like Olympia. Up to its gills in Greeners.
It is right at the end of the great plains -- the airport is really out in the plains another 25 miles east. Yeah, it isn't what you expect (but then I've been here before, so I knew what the geography was like) being mile high. We were walking down the street last night and I said to a co-worker "were 500 feet higher than the base of the White Pass ski area" and she looked at me like I was nuts! Way up high in the plains - but the plains nonetheless.