Chief Niwot, the leader of the Southern Arapahoe tribe of Native Americans, is one of Boulder’s most important historic figures.  He was there to meet the first white settlers when they came to the area in search of gold.  When gold was discovered, he tried to peacefully co-exist with the settlers who came to Colorado in search of riches.  As you might guess, that did not really turn out to well for Chief Niwot or his people.

Chief Niwot is one of the people we talk about on Banjo Billy’s Boulder tour.  If you want to learn more about him than we can tell you on our tour, the Boulder History Museum is opening an exhibit devoted to him on May 25.  The Boulder History Museum is also a stop on our Boulder tour.  It is located in the Harbeck House at the corner of Euclid and 12th streets, and the house has a rather interesting history of it’s own.

Chief Niwot was important enough in the Boulder area that his name has been put on towns, mountains, and many other things in thearea.  His name means “Left Hand” in English, and many older historic texts just referred to him as Chief Left Hand.  As a result, the Boulder area also has a variety of things named “Left Hand”.  So, Chief Niwot is still with us today.

Chief Niwot and the Boulder History Museum are just a few of the interesting people and places you can learn about on our Boulder tour.  And you can also yell “YEEE HAWWWW” out the window of the bus.  Now where are you going to beat that for entertainment?

The University of Colorado at Boulder will be holding Commencement ceremonies this Friday. Banjo Billy congratulates these grads, and graduating seniors everywhere.

Banjo Billy has a relationship with CU students that can best be summed up this way:  Banjo Billy loves the CU students, and the students love Banjo Billy! The Boulder Banjo Billy Bus tour visits the CU campus, and passes through “The Hill”, the neighborhood where many students live and play (and the neighborhood where a visiting Leader of the Free World recently had yogurt spilled on his pants!). As the bus travels through the campus area, we are usually greeted enthusiastically with cheers, yells, waves and an occasional afternoon sighting of the moon. We thank the CU students for enlivening our tours.  And we look forward to the many private tours we will do this weekend for celebrating grads and their families.

Boulder gets  much of it’s character from the presence of CU. The University is  Boulder’s largest employer,and being  a college town means Boulder has a highly educated, free-thinking population willing to try new ideas. And the 30,000 students at CU keep Boulder from having to worry about losing its sense of humor.

Last weekend our entire fleet of Banjo Billy Buses (Rosie and Daisy) was in Boulder taking kids to the Boulder High prom at the Boulder Theater. Kids love taking the bus to the prom, as it has comfy seats, a great sound system, and they can wave to their friends arriving in less cool vehicles.

Prom is not the only special moment in life that Banjo Billy takes part in. During the wedding season we stay busy driving wedding parties to ceremonies and receptions, doing private tours for the out of town guests, or for bachelor or bachelorette parties. And the wedding photographers love the Banjo Billy Bus too.   Wedding albums are full of shots of the wedding party waving out the windows and the loving couple on the couch in the back.

Turning 50? 80? 21? Sweet 16? Pick an important birthday, and you can be sure that it has been celebrated with a private tour on the

Banjo Billy Bus. Our guides report that the guests at an 80th birthday party behave quite differently from those at a 21st birthday party. Go figure!

Classes and families have reunited on the Banjo Billy Bus too.  We hope that we will get to help you make you next important event more special.  And remember, the Banjo Billy Bus is a licensed limousine, which means you are welcome to bring a cooler of refreshing adult beverages along for the ride.

The new History Colorado Center will open on Saturday at 1200 Broadway in Denver.   We welcome another addition to the many interesting and fun things to do in the great city of Denver. The museum will feature interactive exhibits, a “Time Machine” and a 5000 square foot re-creation of the 1920′s farming town of Keota.

The new museum will be taking an approach to history similar to that found on Banjo Billy Bus Tours for the past eight years.  The Denver Post reports that the new museum will “loosen up, let the stories keep their drama”, and will “allow a sense of humor”.  That’s the same way you will find Denver’s and Boulder’s interesting history presented on one of our tours.  We salute their attitude.
Other examples of the fun approach the new $110 million museum will take are a barn that has chickens who will lay eggs on demand, and an outhouse from which certain realistic noises will emanate.  Visitors will hope it is only the noises around the outhouse that are realistic.

There is no doubt that Denver is one of the coolest cities in America, and the new History Colorado Center will be another example of how great this city is.  And if you like the idea of having fun and learning about history, then we are sure we will see you on one of our buses soon.

Unless you have spent the last month under the sea, you are likely aware that the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic was last Sunday. Perhaps the most famous person who lived through this disaster was a fascinating woman known today as Molly Brown.  Mrs. J. J. Brown was a Denver resident, and the house she lived in, now known as the Molly Brown House Museum, is one of the stops on the Banjo Billy Denver tour.

If you have seen “Titanic” you will surely recall Kathy Bates’  lively portrayal of Mrs. Brown.  The Molly Brown House Museum also has a person who portrays Molly Brown.  Her name is Janet Kalstrom, and last week she took part in a Titanic memorial cruise on the MS Balmoral.

If you take the Banjo Billy Denver tour, or if you visit the Molly Brown House, you will learn a very surprising thing about Mrs. Brown’s name.  We won’t spoil it for you here.  You will also learn the story of an active, caring woman who was well ahead of her time.  Mrs. Brown was a feminist before the word existed.  Besides her heroics relating to the Titanic, she ran for political office when women just didn’t do that.  Throughout her life she showed great concern for people from all walks of life, in ways far too numerous to list here.  She was truly an amazing woman.

The Titanic was built for $7.5 million in 1912, and set off on it’s first voyage to great fanfare, a voyage it failed to complete.  On the other hand, the first Banjo Billy Bus was built for considerably less than that in 2005, still sails the streets of Boulder and Denver, and has a perfect passenger safety record.  We hope James Cameron is paying attention!

This Sunday starts the third year of the Boulder Brew Bus, which is organized by the West End Tavern in Boulder.  The brewery tour starts at 5:45 at the West End Tavern, where the thirsty customers board the Banjo Billy Bus and are taken to three of Boulder’s outstanding craft breweries.  We spend about an hour at each brewery, where guests enjoy a tour of the brewery along with some of their fine beer.  The West End’s Catering Van provides a meal at the second stop.

The tour this year will visit two of Boulder’s newest brewers, and one of its oldest.  Avery Brewing Company has been in business since 1993, and is known for their willingness to experiment.  One of the things they love to do at Avery is age their beer in whiskey casks.   The Upslope Brewing Company is a fast growing brewery that started canning beer in Boulder about 4 years ago.  Asher Brewery is new to the Brew Bus this year.  Asher is in their third year of business, and is the first certified organic brewery in the state of Colorado.

For $45 you get great beer, good food, and transportation on the coolest ride in Colorado.  For reservations and information, contact the West End Tavern at 303.444.3535.

And if you are a beer lover in Denver, don’t despair.  Banjo Billy is arranging a Denver brewery tour that will start in late May.  Keep watching this space for more details.

Fresh Produce at the Boulder Farmer's Market

Boulder is no ordinary town, which may explain why Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours got it’s start here.  Boulderites love the outdoors, bikes, and the beautiful views of the Flatiron Mountains from their windows.  They also love fresh produce and expressing opinions, and great opportunities to engage in both will occur in the coming week.

The Boulder Farmers’ Market starts it’s 25th season this Saturday on 13th Street between Arapahoe Ave. and Canyon Blvd, it’s location since 1987.  You can enjoy locally produced fruits, veggies, meats and cheeses.  You can also get a meal from one of the catering vendors, and enjoy it while listening to live music.  Our Boulder tours usually go down 13th Street, but we don’t mind taking a detour for the market.  In fact, on Saturday morning you might find one or more of our guides there enjoying Green Eggs and Ham for breakfast.  The market takes place on Saturday mornings until mid-November, and on Wednesday evenings from May through October.

Boulderites take pride in thinking globally (Boulder has a foreign policy), and there is no greater evidence of that than the 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs, taking place April 9-13 on the CU campus.  This unique event brings together people from various fields to discuss  music, politics, business, environment, art, war, peace and death.  And it’s all free.  And you can watch “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” with Roger Ebert, and interrupt the movie any time you want to comment or question.  A truly Boulder experience!  Check the complete schedule to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Another important Spring event takes place in Boulder and Denver this weekend: Banjo Billy’s goes to our Spring Schedule, with tours Friday through Sunday.  Come join us while your getting your fill of comments and kale.

There is more to the Final Four being in town than just the games.  There will be a variety of events taking place throughout the weekend all over Denver.  The is a 4K run at 9AM Saturday to benefit the Kay Yow Cancer Fund, thus making it the 4Kay run.  There will be youth clinics at several high schools in Denver during the day, and all day “Tourney Town” takes place at the Convention Center, a place that is also famous as the starting point of Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours in Denver.  At 5:30 Jewel will be performing a free concert at the Convention Center.  For a complete list of the weekends events, you can visit the Final Four events page.

The basketball stereotype is that the men’s game features high flying athletes, while the women focus on excellent passing and fundamentals.  While this may be true, at least one of the players in this years Final Four is turning  that adage upside down.  Baylor’s Brittney Griner has dunked several times this season.  Fans in Denver can only hope the see the 6’8″ center throw one down in the Pepsi Center.

Banjo Billy wishes good luck to all the players in town for the big games this weekend.  And we hope to see players and fans on our bus while their here.

The Crew who rode Rosie in the Boulder St. Patrick's Parade

Ah, Spring. That time of year when the days grow longer, flowers bloom, birds sing, and that damn pile of brown snow across the street finally melts. And, of course, the time of year when the windows come off the Banjo Billy Bus.

Here in Colorado, Spring weather can mean anything from sunny and warm to snowy and cold, with maybe some rain and high winds thrown in just for fun. Sometime, all of that happens on the same day. This leaves the Banjo Billy guides a tough call: What do we do about the windows today.

Our buses, Rosie and Daisy, have windows that can be removed in about 10 minutes. We prefer to run with the windows off, as it connects the passengers with the action on the street, and gives our guest the chance to respond to a yell of “Hey Banjo Billy!” with a hearty “YEEEEE HAAAWW!”. In the summer, windows are always off, and in the winter, always on. But come Spring, we have to think. And sometimes we have to change our mind in the middle of a tour, as the weather changes. Or, perhaps we will leave half the windows on, and let our guests decide whether the weather is more than they can weather.

We have had some lovely weather on the Front Range of Colorado already this Spring, and Banjo Billy has been enjoying it.  Rosie, our Boulder bus marched in the World’s Shortest St. Patricks Day Parade (see picture).  Not to be outdone, Daisy the Denver Bus, was in the Denver St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

We are looking forward to good weather, and giving great tours as our tour schedule expands in April.  We hope to see you on the bus!

Pick Three – Denver/Boulder/Colorado Springs