Exploring the Mile High Marketplace

One Saturday, ES and I were trying to figure out how to entertain ourselves when one of us brought up the Mile High Marketplace, Denver's year-round, outdoor amusement park, farmers' market, and flea market. We've both heard or seen a lot of the commercials (you probably have, too), and checking it out seemed as good an activity as any to while away a sunny weekend afternoon.

I wouldn't go to the Mile High Marketplace expecting to do any serious, high-quality shopping, as the place seems to specialize in cheap clothing and sunglasses, used power tools and toys, and just a bunch of overall junk. While we did find ourselves attracted to some enormous duffel bags selling for less than twenty bucks apiece, it might be better to simply think of the place as something like an oversized yard sale (and indeed, the marketplace encourages people to rent out a booth for the day in order to get rid of household items).

However, the place is good for cheap beers and carnival fare like turkey drumsticks, funnel cake, sausages, and corn on the cob. The temperature that afternoon was too high for ES and I to be enticed by the hot food, but we couldn't resist getting a cold beer and an enormous bag of freshly made kettle corn to keep us company while we browsed.

Aside from the flea market, Mile High Marketplace also boasts an extensive farmers' market, most of which is centered around Mexican produce. This grocery store, in the middle of it, carried rows and rows of canned and packaged imported goods.

The outdoor section of the farmers' market seemed to be less about variety than quantity, with identical arrangements of the same fruits and vegetables repeating at every other table. If I'd known what the heck to do with thirteen different types of chili peppers and endless rows of nopales, I'd have been all over this place. But since my Mexican cooking skills need a lot more work before I can tackle a meal, we simply picked up a few onions and avocados, brushed the kettle corn crumbs from our lips, finished the beer, and called it a day.