Day 7 in Colorado

~ We'd stayed up late last night chatting and looking through our photos; and the lil' cousin just couldn't wait and had me purchase tickets to her next Big Head Todd show.
~ We grabbed a quick snack for the road and made our way northwest to Nederland, a small place high up above Boulder full of old wooden buildings that have been revived by colorful hippies. It's pretty cool there, and the fact that it's only about half an hour outside Boulder makes it even nicer.



~ On the way up, we took the Peak-to-Peak Byway. Its tight, winding curves would likely make this dangerous in bad weather, but it was a dry, sunny morning and the views are outta this world. The kiddo even spotted some alpacas, which I love. I wish we'd had more time for some hiking and such; I'll just have to go back more often, won't I? :)



~ We didn't spend too much time in Nederland, and headed back down to town via Boulder Canyon. Wow. There was no real way for me to take great photos of the canyon, because you simply can't back up far enough to get the entire canyon wall into the frame! But I tried...



~ We spent time on Pearl Street Mall. Our stops included Starbucks (I was surprised that there aren't more indy coffeeshops in these parts), Boulder Bookstore, Gold Mine vintage shop, a toy store and an old-fashioned candy store (Mini-Me got herself a vanilla gelato here, despite the cold wind outside). As I always do when traveling, I made a point of looking for the local newspaper office, and grabbed copies of the local rags, too. Worth mentioning is that this town is full of public art as are its neighboring cities (sculptures, murals, etc.), buskers (most of whom were actually good), street lamps plastered with posters pushing local bands, and a youthful, funky vibe (it IS a college town, afterall). And Boulder, like Denver, has a large number of live music venues for its size; that's great for me!




~ We picked up our friend and had supper at West End Tavern, which apparently is owned by the same folks who own Zolo, where we ate last night. Both places are run on 100% wind power and locally source as much of their food as possible - pretty cool.
~ Again, we walked around downtown a bit, then took the long way back to the hotel. I never tired of the lovely nighttime view coming up over a hilltop in the suburbs; the lights just keep going and going and going.