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Sharon Wheatley's Golden a pretty nice one

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Contributed by: Brendan Leonard/YourHub.com on 12/7/2006

On Dec. 6, I had the pleasure of meeting Sharon "The Eye of Golden" Wheatley for coffee and the grand tour of her town. Sharon's photos of community events are often found in the YourHub.com print edition, if not on the cover. You'll also see her work popping up on booklets from the Golden Chamber of Commerce from time to time.

We met at Higher Grounds, the coffee shop that'sright out her front door at 14th Street and Washington Avenue. And when I say "right out her front door," I mean she has to walk out the door of her condo, take two steps to the north and open the door of Higher Grounds. Sharon does own a coffee pot, but does not use it. Higher Grounds makes a good mocha, I found.

I also discovered that it takes a quite a while to walk thefour blocks from Sharon's condo down Washington Avenue through historic downtown Golden to the Golden Visitors Center, because Sharon knows something about just about everything in those four blocks -- history, who owns what, how the food is at all the restaurants, who the regulars are for coffee at which coffee shops, how much the condos rent for, and the names of most of the folks working in most of the businesses. Also, people stop her on the street to chat. Sharon walks into every storefront like she's the mayor, which, informally, maybe she kind of is.

We walked past the Table Mountain Inn, which has a great happy hour, Woody's, which has an $8.88 pizza buffet,Foss Drug, which has everything, the Ace-Hi Tavern, which has moved its smoking section outside, the Bridgewater Grill, which has a great grilled vegetable sandwich (Sharon says, "Everyone has their specialty in town -- nothing's bad, just different.") and the Golden Hotel, which has a great painting sitting above the fireplace in the lobby. We stopped in at Del's Tonsorial Parlor, where I met Barb Greenhagen, Sharon's stylist. We walked to the Thirteenth Street Bake Shop, where I met Marg Edgell, the owner, and where Sharon's coffee group gets together every Wednesday morning, and the Lions Club does, too. And I met Sid, Marg's dog, who is awesome.

On the Washington Avenue bridge that crosses Clear Creek, Sharon pointed out to me where a logjam had dammed up the creek a couple of days ago, pushing chunks of snow up the banks almost to the back door of the Visitors Center. No one was around to photograph it when it happened, but plenty of folks saw it.

After stopping in at the Visitors Center to see Carol Ann Bowles and Gary Wink, we walked down Clear Creek and past the Golden City Brewery at 920 1/2 12th St. I tried to get a photo of the brewery, "The Second Largest Brewery in Golden," with Coors in the background, but couldn't really work it. We strolled around the Colorado School of Mines, a pretty campus where lots of smart people do hard math equations.

On the way back downtown from Mines, we were walking on the trail on the east side of Clear Creek when we saw three Golden Police officers runningsouth on the trail on the west side. They were in a hurry to catch someone, as was the police SUV that was driving down the trail on our side. We jumped off the trail to let him pass, then watched as officers inspected the buildings at the Clear Creek History Park to see if anyone was hiding in them. Sharon and I walked, slowly, hoping to hear some clues as to what was going on. More police vehicles appeared on 11th Street and others drove down Washington Avenue.

A few minutes later, as we crossed the Washington Avenue bridge again, a fire truck screamed south down Washington Avenue, followed by another police car. Golden is exciting!

Then Sharon and I took turns trying to capture the sunset over Clear Creek and Mt. Zion. I think her shots were better. On our last swing up Washington Avenue, I found myself checking out rental properties in the window at Laurel Property Services. Apparently Sharon's a pretty good tour guide.

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