Day 17 - Boulder, Colorado

I was lucky to find the camping area at Longs Peak last night. It sure beat sleeping in the car. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I was woken up around 3am by some pretty high winds that came through Rocky Mountain National Park. Of course, this was the night that I didn’t think I needed to put in the tent spikes to hold down my fort. The only thing holding my tent from blowing away was me inside trying to sleep. It was the wind and the movement of my tent that woke me up, but once awake I could hear some rustling with what sounded like a metal box. I wondered why someone would be up at 3am and making noise by banging on a metal container? The blowing wind kept me up the rest of the night.

I laid awake until about 7am when I decided that I might as well pack up the tent and head on to Boulder to check out the town. As I exited my tent, I noticed directly behind it (paced at 12 yards), a brown metal container. Apparently, this was a bear-proof, food containment box. People put food items in these to keep bears from coming into their tents or breaking into their cars. Since I set up my tent in the dark, I didn’t noticed how close I was to one of these. I don’t know for sure, who or what, was trying to get into this food container behind my tent at 3am, but if I had my guess, it was probably big, black, furry and cuddly looking.

I followed US-7 south from Longs Peak and arrived in Boulder by 8:30. Boulder lies right at the foot of the eastern section of the Rockies coined the “The Flatirons”, named from the five rock formations that represent the shape of flat, metal clothing irons.

I had formed my first impression within about 5 minutes upon entering Boulder, loved it! It seemed like a very active town with lots of bicyclists and pedestrians out and about. I drove down Broadway Street which was lined with beautiful, well maintained houses and modern shops that eventually led to the University of Colorado at Boulder. I stopped to get a bite to eat and then took advantage of Border’s book store’s free WiFi to finish the blog from the day before. Border’s was tucked into an outdoor shopping mall lined with some upper end retail shops and lots of restaurants and eateries. It was a perfectly sunny day but already into the upper 80s. I pulled my mountain bike down from the roof of my car and decided to explore the hippie, granola (insert any tree hugger reference here) town on two wheels instead of four. After about 3 hours of riding around, I think I covered most of the main areas. For having a population close to 100k, Boulder has a small town feel and just about everything that I am looking for.

I realize that I am going to have to work on some sort of a rating system in order to rank possible relocation areas based on the criteria that are most important to me. Since I don’t have a system in place, a simple pros/cons list will have to suffice for now.

Pros

· Active, outdoor community

· Pedestrian, bicycle and animal friendly

· Proximity to hiking, biking, fishing, rock climbing and skiing

· All conveniences of a large town with small town feel

· Pedestrian only historical area (shopping, cafes, breweries)

· Qdoba

· Public transportation

· Weather (300+ days of sunshine)

Cons

· Cost of living, expensive housing

· Proximity to skiing. Close by NJ standards (1-2 hours) but I would prefer to be closer

· Weather – Hot summers and mild winters. Average snowfall in town is only 83”. Most snow melts away within a day or two.

Boulder summary: I like it, a lot! I still have plenty of locations on my list to check out, but Boulder will be high on the consideration list.

After spending the day in Boulder, I decided a warm bed would be a nice change so I headed to Highland’s Ranch, just outside of Denver where my father’s cousin and wife (Howard and Theresa) have opened their doors to me.

Mileage update: 2,849.9