DENVER — Greetings, superdelegates, standard delegates, compromised Floridians, miffed Michiganders, would-be VPs and all-access VIPs. As you and the other Democrats convene here Aug. 25 to formally choose a presidential candidate at last, you will be wined, dined, wooed, spun, schmoozed, queried, denounced and perhaps bamboozled by all manner of unreliable operatives, members of the media and, of course, one another. Don't trust those people. Trust me.

Denver, for the record, is a city of 570,000 people at the eastern edge of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

It's a mile high, as you might have heard. More to the point, it's the capital of Colorado, one of several Western states that leaned slightly right in 2004. Had they leaned slightly left, John Kerry would be in the White House. If I were a Democratic strategist, I would have put the party here, too.

A word to those of you who backed presumptive nominee Barack Obama from the beginning: If a couple of burly Clinton people show up to bury the hatchet and offer you a free ride to the convention center on 14th Street, take evasive action. The Colorado Convention Center is a big, beautiful building in the heart of downtown, and Denver's taxpayers spent about $300 million to expand it four years ago — but that's not where the party is.

The delegate floor will be a few miles away at the Pepsi Center, which holds more seats and houses Denver's pro basketball and hockey teams (the Nuggets and the Avalanche, respectively).

But even without all the hoopla — as they surely will be during the convention's four-day run — it's easy to have fun in the city.

MORE THAN A CONVENTIONAL CHOICE

Since its first gold rush in the 1850s, Denver has been a boom-and-bust town neighbored by fabulous outdoor temptations, including skiing in the Rockies and hiking, running and biking in the foothills.

To this backdrop, the convention brings as many as 50,000 delegates, media and hangers-on. The Democratic leadership controls the schedule (sessions probably will run from about 3 to about 9 p.m., Mountain time) and about 17,000 of the area's 38,000 hotel rooms, so those people will decide not only when everyone gets to sleep but also where.

GREET AND EAT

The past two decades of high-tech industry growth have been good for Denver, as evidenced by the Pepsi Center (opened 1999); the 1,100-room Hyatt Regency Denver (opened 2005); the Colorado Convention Center (opened 2004); the $110-million Hamilton building at the Denver Art Museum (an addition that opened in 2006); and the 202-room Ritz-Carlton (opened January), which, beginning in about 2010, is to be rivaled by a new Four Seasons hotel.

For a bird's-eye glimpse of these and other wonders (yes, those buses on the 16th Street Mall are free public transportation), step right up to the Hyatt (convention headquarters) and take the express elevator to the 27th-floor Peaks Lounge for a floor-to-ceiling view full of Rocky Mountains and skyscrapers, with the twinkling city at your feet.

If your hosts want to wow you with steak and Wild West atmosphere, someone might suggest the Buckhorn Exchange, said to be the oldest restaurant in town: It's been dishing out buffalo, rattlesnake and more traditional meat since 1893.

Or, to eat in a notably green way, head 45 minutes up the highway to Pearl Street in Boulder and pull up a chair at the Kitchen. Its electricity comes from wind power. Ingredients come from nearby growers, straws are biodegradable, scraps go to compost, uncooked food goes home with staffers and wine corks get recycled into tiles. Sunset magazine calls this the greenest restaurant in the West. The food tastes good, too.

COWBOY HISTORY

Don't be impressed when some usually frugal committee chairman offers you a tour of the state Capitol building, a prowl through the natural wonders at Red Rocks Park or Dinosaur Ridge, or tasting tours of the Celestial Seasonings tea headquarters in Boulder or the Coors brewery in Golden. Everybody gets in those places free.

No doubt some proud locals will drag you to the shiny, pointy Daniel Libeskind-designed new building of the Denver Art Museum, and I suppose you'll have to be polite. It does look great from outside, but think about the difficulty of displaying art in a building with so few straight-standing walls.

You will be tempted to sneak off for a drink at some place that has a little grit or history, or both. This could be My Brother's Bar, a signless, TV-free watering hole at 2376 15th St. (at Platte), in business since 1873, making it the oldest saloon in town. In the 1940s and '50s, Jack Kerouac's reckless buddy Neal Cassady used to drink under this tin ceiling and in the biergarten outside.

The speakers play classical music nonstop, apparently because some long-ago bartender was also a classical DJ.

For some place less beat and more sleek, head for the Oxford Hotel's Cruise Room, which is full of '30s touches that actually were applied in the '30s. The entire bar is suffused with a racy red glow and appears to have been smuggled off the Queen Mary when dockside security wasn't looking.

El Chapultepec bar at Market Street and 20th is the city's most venerated jazz venue, but a humble joint ("hot burritos and cool jazz nightly," the flaking walls say), a block from Coors Field on a corner full of bars. (Coors Field is where the Rockies play baseball — well enough last year to reach the World Series, badly enough this year to be, at this writing, a rival for last place.)

In the same block or two as the Pec, you'll find the Cowboy Lounge, LoDo's Bar & Grill, the Tavern and the Giggling Grizzly. In the 19th century, historians say, about 1,100 prostitutes and 17 opium dens operated on Market between 18th and 23rd. Current figures on these trades are unavailable, but even before the March unpleasantness involving New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (a Democrat) and his premium-priced call girl, the Denver Post was forecasting a convention boom in adult-entertainment bookings of various stripes.

But don't let any of that deter you from sightseeing. On 14th Street near Colfax, for instance, you will find a 42-foot-high, 10,000-pound blue bear peering into the Convention Center. This is not a Sierra Club stunt; it's art, completed in 2005 by Denver sculptor Lawrence Argent.

POLISHING THE IMAGE

Now, some words for the presumptive nominee: If you want to look rugged and outdoorsy (without straying far from your pollsters or hotel), head over to Confluence Park or the REI outdoor goods flagship store next door. Here you can put a kayak into a little whitewater course on the South Platte River or step inside and attack a rock-climbing wall that towers nearly as high as the federal deficit.

Stop by the Black American West Museum in the Five Points neighborhood, where museum Executive Director La Wanna Larson is ready to tell about how one in three cowboys in the American West was black, how 15 of Colorado's ghost towns were predominantly black and how light-skinned blacks infiltrated and spied on the Colorado Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century.

After that head into Tattered Cover Bookstore, at 16th and Wynkoop in LoDo. It's one of the nation's leading independent booksellers, a vast and inviting space, all those books in a reclaimed warehouse and the scent of coffee in the air.

Our itinerary includes one final stop, Rockmount Ranch Wear, outfitters of cowboys (and the politicians, actors and rock stars who admire them) since 1946.

Step through the door at 1626 Wazee St. between 8 a.m. and noon on a weekday and you're likely to be greeted by the chief executive, Jack A. Weil, the man who created snap-button shirts and sawtooth pockets on Western shirts. Weil recently celebrated his 107th birthday.

He sits up front, chatting up book browsers and offering candy to their children. Behind his chair hangs a congratulatory note to Weil (a longtime Republican) from President Bush on his 105th birthday.

His advice for the conventioneers: "I think a guy should be a Democrat until he makes a little money," he told me. "And then, if he wants to save it, he should become a Republican."