Castle Rock with Harry Potter

Frank and I flew out to visit Dan and his family in Castle Rock, CO, Thursday, August 13 - Monday, August 17, 2026. The departure of our flight out from San Jose CA was delayed 45 minutes (nothing really in airport time) due to lightning threats at our Denver destination. Otherwise our flight was timely. Our drink service was eliminated, with apologies, because the turbulence was sufficient enough that the captain kept the seatbelt sign on the entire time and did not permit the cabin crew to be up and about. The bumpiness did not bother me (although it usually does). I had surprised Frank by springing more money for extra legroom seats, so maybe the added room helped. Dan had a last minute work commitment, ironically in California, and could not pick us up as planned, so we took an Uber to Dan's house in Castle Rock.

We've since learned that August is not a good time to fly in and out of Denver due to a high frequency of thunderstorms that month. I was always cautious of snow in the winter in Denver, but summer time travel? The plane can fly fine. It is the safety of the ground crew that is the issue since they must be clear of the tarmac due to threat of lightning. After a bit of online research I learned

At Denver International Airport (DEN) and most aviation or outdoor worksites across Colorado, the standard protocol mandates that ground and ramp crews must be brought indoors when lightning is within 10 miles. While the general scientific and aviation baseline for stopping ramp activities (like fueling) is a 5-mile radius, Denver's severe weather protocols specifically use a 10-mile notification and shelter trigger due to how rapidly storms develop and move across the Front Range.

Dan's flight on Friday was not as fortunate as ours. What was supposed to be a 1:00 pm flight from CA did not get realized until late in the day due to Denver weather and so he did not arrive home until after 10:00 pm Friday evening. Delays were due to lightning threats at Denver. Frank and I were lucky all had worked out well for us the previous day. We got to rest up Friday, the day after we'd traveled. We enjoyed watching the various storm squalls and intermittent rail downpours from the porch of the house. We talked to Dan while he was at the airport waiting to fly out. He confessed he was jealous. He loves to watch the extremes of mountain weather from his porch. The following photo shows just how bright and sunny it can be in between those threatening episodes.

Thursday had been a travel day. Friday was a day of rest. Our first outing was on Saturday to a Harry Potter Exhibition in Denver about 45 minutes north/northwest of home base, actually a bit closer than the airport had been.

Shortly after we entered, we saw the luggage trolley used in the movie scene where Harry is setting out to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He boards the Hogwarts Express from Platform 9¾. Other props from the movie are also displayed throughout the exhibit. But the exhibit is not just visual. There are many interactive spots to engage involving wands, potions, Quidditch, and dueling, etc. 

The first room is for immersion in the scenery of Hogwarts. It is a large circular theatre surrounding the visitors with expansive walls of scenery in and around Hogwarts during various seasons.

Many exhibits ask you to select the house of Hogwarts where you'd like to belong. The choices were: 

Gryffindor (Lion) home of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Albus Dumbledore

Ravenclaw (Eagle) home of Luna Lovegood

Slytherin (Serpent) home of  Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy

Hufflepuff (Badger) home of Cedric Diggory

There is even a sorting hat that, if you place yourself in just the right position, it will assign you a house. "Just the right position" is the key phrase. Only I was able to get the hat to sit on top of my head.

There were more props and costumes from the movies. Following are the gold and black uniform of a Huffelpuff Student and the green garb of Bellatrix Lestrange, an evil villainess.

The set of the Great Hall of Hogwarts Castle fascinated me. Visually it is stunning. The display changes with the seasons. My favorite was this Halloween one; although the snow falling in the Christmas one was awe-inspiring, also.

I also found the history of the design and building of the Great Hall set for the movies to be impressive. Read below for more background.

I took a photo of our whole crew (minus me the photographer) posed in front of the Great Hall.

The wand scene at Ollivanders along Diagon Alley had always been fun for me to imagine in the book. One room of the exhibit was dedicated to wands with the storage shelving and detail information on the wand of each character. Lillian posed near a huge many-times size replica of Dumbledore's wand.

Another room within the exhibit included interactive activities for magic potions. A "cookbook" listed a combination of three ingredients that the potion make had to remember. Choosing from a list, the maker adds the correction ingredients to the cauldron to be declared successful or not as a wizard. Cauldrons "bubbled "with different colors of the magical broth. Everybody in our party got in the act.

A botanical room in the exhibit bore the experience of repotting infant mandrakes. Both Vivian and I tried our hand at that agricultural endeavor. Note that Vivian selected a truly appropriate shirt for this trip.

There was a darkened room where would-be wizards could conjure up their own patronus. Harry's patronus was a stag. Albus Dumbledore's patronus was a phoenix. Minerva McGonagall's patronus was a cat. After correctly answering questions on a screen, your patronus was revealed. One of the options for a patronus was a horse.Try as she might, Lillian, the horse lover, could never conjure up a horse. Everybody else at some point got a horse. Lillian tried. And she tried. And she tried over, and over yet again, with absolutely no success. Everybody else was was rooting for Lillian. Fortunately it became a laughable situation despite Lillian's good-natured frustration. No horse for Lillian. Sigh... We moved on.

A teacher who wears pink in Harry Potter is Dolores Umbridge. There was a replica of her feminine pink-hued office, complete with moving kitty plates. She was a nasty teacher, per my memory, and I was not fond of her. However, I welcomed the opportunity to sit down and rest a bit at her desk.

We moved on to a Quidditch section in the exhibit where you could ride a broomstick or toss a ball. Here are Dan and Lillian, Vivian, and Irene, on what I think is a Nimbus 2000 model. William has his own inimitable style on the broom stick. 

As Chasers, each of us tried to toss a big red ball, the Quaffle, through the hoop goal. One of my small regrets is that I had forgotten so much of my Harry Potter trivia going through this extensive exhibit. I may have missed many of the nuances at the time. However, in writing this blog I refreshed my memory on players in the game of Quidditch.

The Four Player Roles of Seven Quidditch Team Members

• Chasers (3 players per team): They handle the large red ball called the Quaffle. They pass it between themselves and try to throw it through one of the three opponent goal hoops to score 10 points per goal. 
• Keepers (1 player per team): They guard the goal hoops to block incoming shots from the opposing Chasers. They also act as defensive leaders who oversee the play around the goal area.
• Beaters (2 players per team): They carry small clubs or bats to hit the heavy, aggressive Bludgers away from their own teammates and direct them toward the opposing team. 
• Seekers (1 player per team): They focus on finding and catching the tiny, fast-moving Golden Snitch. Catching the Snitch awards 150 (or 30 in some modern adaptations) extra points and immediately ends the match. 

I remembered to look up while touring the exhibit. Lots of interesting items were on the ceiling. There was a gigantic-sized replica of a Time-Turner, a magical hourglass necklace use to travel back in time. Hermione used it to take multiple classes at the same time. Each turn of the hourglass reverses time by one hour, with a safe maximum of five hours.

Also overhead was a model of Fawkes the Phoenix. Fawkes can burst into flames when his time ends and be reborn from his own ashes. His tears have strong healing powers, and his tail feathers form the core of both Harry Potter's and Lord Voldemort's wands.

Along the walls in two cases were many devices from the movies. This was toward the end of our tour and my brain was gettin saturated. I took photos and perhaps some time in the future I will enlarge those pictures and see what I can recognize. They certainly evoke a medieval vibe. Harry Potter is not set in the medieval period, but it heavily uses medieval aesthetics, themes, and traditions. Curious I found this timeline on the web.

Key Milestones of the Era

• 10th Century (c. 993 AD): Founding of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin.
• 11th Century: Emergence and early development of the sport of Quidditch.
• 13th Century: Invention of Floo powder by Ignatia Wildsmith and the inception of the first Triwizard Tournament.
• 14th Century: Invention of the Sorcerer's Stone by Nicolas Flamel.

Dan had a close encounter with a Chinese Fireball Dragon, faced by Viktor Krum in the Tournament of Wizards. For those trying to remember who the other three competitors and their dragon opponents were, I included that information below.

The last station we went through at the end of our journey was a wand battle. Here are each of the kids battling away as a reenactment of that closing scene of the final movie.

We spent about 1¼ hours going through the exhibit. The estimated time had been 1-1½ hours. I think I might have lingered longer had I remembered more. Maybe not. I looked forward to sitting down for a spell. The displays were very well done and had much of interest to all levels of fans and varied ages of kids. Dan did a great job in finding this activity for our crew ranging in age from 5 years to 77 years.

I started this post with a weather discussion. I will end it with more meteorology. We were headed to a place to grab some food on our drive home from the Harry Potter Exhibit when it began to rain, and then rain harder. Then we realized the precipitation was hitting hard and was ice pellets. We were in a hail storm! It had come on so suddenly, kind of like a flash flood from the sky. We were near the restaurant so Dan pulled off into close parking garage. Other cars had the same idea and several of us were all huddled under the entrance. Unfortunately the gate would not raise and let the cars in because it was an employees only section and needed an access card to operate the gate. The kids were squealing with excitement and glee. Irene was initially a bit scared but she came around. No way was she going to sit in the car when her brother and sister were out having a roaring good time.

We were a jolly group. Drivers inching close to each other and pointing their car every which way to let others behind them get some shelter. Then, either one of the drivers or an employee of one of the stores appeared out of nowhere and used his access card to let us all in. We drive around inside the garage for a spot close to the restaurant where we planned to eat. When we drove through the uplifted gate, ice pellets were accumulating at the garage entrance.

We entered the Great Divide Brewery and Roadhouse, Lone Tree location, just north of Castle Rock, via the parking garage entrance. By the time we were seated by the window the hail storm had subsided. That's OK. We'd had a close up look while we were in it.

 

The kids played a bit of cornhole on two ramps set up outside that window. We also noted the nearby accumulation of "snow", aka ice pellets, at an alternate entrance door.

On our outing that day, Frank and I were introduced to more that the world of Harry Potter. We also experienced the mercurial weather world of Colorado. This was certainly a full fun day packed with surprises and adventures.