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park, is rather interesting to me:

This was a fairly big day and it totals up to $12.27 and I believe we treated Mother to the movie @ 50¢ to boot. This is quite a contrast to traveling by car today, when a motel room for two will often run twice the total expense for that June 22nd in the year 1931.

Tuesday we drove down to Denver, shunning the Nederland scenic route for one less devastating to the nerves. We went via Loveland and Longmont, lunching in Longmont, and having a nice restful trip. As I recall it, you drive through a nice farming country lying in the shadow of the Front Range and you can still feast your eyes on the peaks without being subjected to a severe nerve-jangling while doing it. It was a clear but [[underlined]] "frightfully [[/underlined]] hot" day per the diary, so after getting established in the Shirley-Savoy Hotel, we looked up the "best refrigerated theater in town" where we saw one of the best pictures of that period and one we talked about for years afterward. It was "A Free Soul" with Norma Shearer, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable and Leslie Howard. I can't remember much of the plot except vaguely that Gable was a slick, tuxedo-clad crook of some sort with whom Norma fell in love. Her father, Lionel, was a brilliant but drunken lawyer and I guess Leslie was her very worthy but rejected suitor. The diary enthuses "It was [[underlined]] great [[/underlined]]--everyone perfect, but Lionel Barrymore was simply magnificent as the brilliant but drunken father of Norma. Some of the scenes between father and daughter were 'shakers' for me." I believe this was one of Gable's first great triumphs and did a lot to propel him into top stardom. I almost overlooked the fact that this was my 29th birthday and I was probably rejoicing in the fact that I had a whole year yet to go before becoming thirty and an old man. I find no reference to any celebration of my birthday. Nor do I find any reference to why we stayed at the Shirley-Savoy instead of the Cosmopolitan. I'd judge that either the latter was full or we were trying to save a little money, since the Shirley-Savoy charged us $4 against $6 for the Cosmopolitan. Our meals that day were $4, the movie admission was 40¢ each, and gas was 20¢ a gallon. We blew $2.50 on presents, presumably mainly for Babbie. (I was going to say "for Bab and Rog" but Rog was then only a vague thought in our minds.)

Transcription Notes:
change face to fact.