Before driving down to Golden, we stopped and checked out the little college town of Fort Collins, Colorado. We wandered by a real, old-timey barber shop and I took a picture.
Katie liked the place, wanted to see inside, and then said she wanted a haircut. This from the girl who has wanted long hair since the trip began. Are you sure? "I want short hair." Well, it sounded good to me. Here she is in the chair:
That is Lloyd behind her. He really liked Katie. And here's the finished product (a little out of focus, I'm afraid:
Now, on to Golden...
Well we arrived, and really like the private campground. It has been given five stars by Woodall's, and I think I agree. The grass is pretty, the pads are level, which shouldn't be unusual but is, and the hills are nearby, for a great backdrop. Here's a little view of the place:
Here's our little spot:
Thursday, August 11
Our first day in Golden, we drove next door to Denver, to check out town and also see a Rockies baseball game. Well, I forgot to put the battery in the camera, so I can't show all the cool places we saw. But here's what we did:
We saw an afternoon game at Coors Field. Okay, the Rockies are in last place, and they played like it. But the new stadium is beautiful, in the style of Pac Bell Stadium in San Francisco, and what is even more impressive is that it is staffed by the friendliest staff I have ever met at a ballgame...and maybe at anyplace off a cruiseship. There are lots of retirees in purple shirts and black pants; I'm not sure if they're volunteers or if they're paid, but they will make you feel at home. Folks asked us if there was anything they could do. When I went to the bathroom, Mark and Katie bought hot dogs. A purple-shirted woman in the loo chatted with me while I washed my hands, and told me to enjoy the game. As soon as I walked out of the bathroom, a purple-shirted man pointed out where Mark and Katie were (I hadn't lost them, but I couldn't believe he was keeping track of them for me). As we sat down and got comfortable, a different purple-shirted woman welcomed us and let us know that if the sun got too hot, we could transfer to higher (more expensive) seats in the shade. I almost expected someone to offer to shell my peanuts. But really, we enjoyed the pampering. And we did move seats, after the first inning. We were burning through the sunscreen we'd applied (you can burn fast up here in the upper atmosphere).
We left before the Rockies lost (at the end of the 8th inning--it was then 3 to 11 in favor of Pittsburg) and walked into downtown Denver. Denver has a walking mall much like Minneapolis does, but it feels nicer, with landscaping down the center of the street, where the busses can go (but no cars). Naturally, we found a bookstore, and after that, we found a classic car show and an outdoor concert. It was a fun day, and great weather, hot but sunny.
Mark is really impressed with Colorado, and it is sounding like it might even surpass Portland as our next home. So I want to see some smaller towns; Denver doesn't strike me as home, from what I got to see of it.
Friday, August 12
Mark had a headache this morning, so Katie and I headed out to see some foothill towns west of Denver. There was one called Idaho Springs that is advertising an affordable Victorian home; we drove out to see if it would be a cute little town.
Idaho Springs is an old gold mining town up in the canyons west of Denver. It is now a tourist town, pretty cute, but still feels a little run down. I chatted with a store owner who had moved up from Southern California. She loved the weather and the mountains here, but said that jobs are hard to find (that would affect me more than Mark). Schools might not be the best. She said the commute to Denver is only 20 minutes (barring accidents or snow), but it felt longer than that to me, on a good day. So I don't think I'll show it to Mark as a possibility for us, but Katie and I enjoyed looking around anyway. Here are some pics.
Here's an old narrow-guage steam train that used to run through here:
I liked the passenger compartment (complete with two stoves and bathrooms):
Katie and I found a restaurant with a stuffed bison in the window. Here it is:
The bison was only two years old (half-grown) when it was gored by an adult bison, then stuffed for the Buffalo Bar and Restaurant. I can't imagine how big it would have become (too big for that room!).
After Idaho Springs, Katie and I drove up to Central City, a very cute old mining town in the mountains southwest of Boulder. Here is their opera house:
Now, unfortunately, Central City has become a gambling town (oops--I mean gaming) and, although the historic brick buildings downtown look nice, there are slot machines in almost every window, and new construction putting in more and more. As we left town, we saw brand new, Las Vegas-sized casinos going in, and houses being taken down to make even more of them. I couldn't believe how big a casino you could stuff into those tiny canyons. And the next little town over is full of them too. I don't understand the mentality of putting in these huge casinos into such a tiny town. Oh well, I guess no one would do it if people didn't spend money there.
We returned back to the RV to find that Mark's headache was gone but a new headache of a different kind had begun: the fridge was warming up again. Unfortunately, this time it chose to go out when the fridge is absolutely filled with groceries. Mark tried banging on it all night before we went to bed. Maybe it'll work in the morning. Tomorrow we're going to Boulder, which I know I'll like, and I even get to do a little garage saling when we first get there.
Saturday, August 13
The fridge was still out this morning, but it was cool outside, which helps us out. Mark banged on it before we left for Boulder and we crossed our fingers. The good thing is that we are getting the RV looked at on Monday, and if the fridge is still out, maybe we'll finally get it fixed! I kinda hope it doesn't suddenly start working.
Drove into Boulder and dropped Katie and Mark off downtown, and went garage saling a little. I found a little wooden puzzle for Katie, then met Mark and Katie at a huge bike store right on Pearl Street, the heart of old Boulder. The bike store was amazing: it had a path running around the inside for kids to try bikes on, a free vintage Dumbo ride for kids, about a million bikes to see, and really friendly staffpeople, who chatted with us about our trip.
Next we ate lunch by a playground while Katie played, then walked through Boulder's pedestrian mall (no cars at all, really beautifully landscaped). Here are a few pics:
There were other areas along Pearl Street for kids to play in, like one with big polished boulders to climb on, and a fountain that sprays from the ground. There were shops for tourists, but not T-shirty ones. It felt very real, and we loved it.
Boulder is a college town, with 100,000 non-students and 30,000 students. It felt a little like Davis, but bigger and fancier. And it has the mountains butting right up to it. It's known for being the most outdoorsy town in like the country, and everyone looked very fit. I knew we'd love it there, and we chatted about where we'd like to live, and even drove through a lot of neighborhoods (really cute neighborhoods of big and small old houses mixed together) looking for houses for sale. We found a few: a big 4-bedroom place right downtown for $989K (ahem! well, that's bigger than we need anyway), a 3-bedroom, 2-bath cottage a little farther off, overlooking a little park, for $700K (damn!)... we started getting discouraged.
We had my computer with us, and a good Internet signal, so we got online to try to find something in Boulder for sale under $450,000. Then I used Microsoft Streets & Maps (thank you so much Judy) to map out our results. Well, there is one house sort of near downtown Boulder for $399. It's pretty ugly, right across from a cemetary, and not within easy walking to downtown, but it's our best bet so far. Apart from that, there were some on the outskirts, and one in the hills west of town. We tried finding that one, as it started to rain.
We drove up into the canyon west of town, a pretty drive and we were excited to think of living along there. We were still maybe 10 miles from the property, and the road that MS Streets showed us to drive down turned out to be a private drive with "No Trespassing" on it. Darn. I was hungry, but we decided to try a different route. We drove back into town and south, then turned west again.
This route went into the mountains outside town. At first it was a pretty drive, and once again, we got excited at the thought of living there. Then the clouds decended on us and we could only see about 50 feet (maybe) in front of the car. We slowed way down, but after driving for miles, the fork in the road on MS Streets never materialized, and we were still about seven miles from our destination. It was late, we were hungry and discouraged, and my computer battery was running out. We turned around and headed back to Boulder, for a wonderful dinner of Mexican food and a great marguerita.
Back at the RV, the fridge was still out. I bought some ice and we unloaded the contents into our cooler, turned off the fridge and looked online for any other hopeful housing options. Mark noticed that the town of Longmont, where we're taking the RV on Monday, had some cute looking homes in our price range. I know it won't be Boulder, but it's probably only 15 miles from it. Sigh. Well, I'll reserve judgement till we see it, but I'm a little disappointed at the prices we saw today.
Sunday, August 14
Naturally, the fridge is working this morning. Jeez! Oh well. Maybe it'll stay that way (not).
Today, I played with Katie and did laundry. Then Mark biked Katie into downtown Golden, where they found a park alongside a creek running through town. The park had a great slide in it, and the kids could wade in the creek. They had fun while I vacuumed and worked on the website.
Tomorrow we will take the RV up to Longmont to get it looked at. They're supposed to tell us if we have a crack in our grey tank or something less serious, and also change the oil in our generator and look at the fridge if it's not working (naturally, it will be). If we have to fix the grey tank it might mean ordering a new one and waiting five days, so we can't plan our next week till we hear the news. While they look at the RV, we'll toodle around town and see these houses Mark found.
By the way, did I mention all the bunnies? There are dozens of the things here every evening. Here's Katie watching one of the littlest ones:
Next we walked up a little hill overlooking the RV park and watched the sun go down. I wish this camera was better with subtle colors like the ones in the sky tonight:
Monday, August 15
We dropped the RV off this morning. The mechanic took one look at our grey tank and said, "if it were my rig, I'd just limp along. It'll take me a long time to take this thing apart to get a good look at it, then it'll be in pieces and you'll have to wait a week or two with it like that if you need a new tank--the whole thing could take three weeks." ugh! okay, forget that problem. How about the fridge? Well, it's working, so there's nothing they can diagnose, but they agreed to do the yearly maintenance on it, and change the RV's oil, and maybe figure out the problem with our dashboard a/c. We left it with them and headed into old-town Longmont, where Mark had spied some Victorian-to-Craftsman age homes for around $300K.
Well, out of four homes, one of them was really a charm. It was in a neighborhood filled with homes from about 1890 to 1920, in all sizes and in good shape. Lots of big trees lining the streets. Not a lot of traffic. One block to an elementary school, two blocks to a park with a playground. The house itself is a two-story wood home on a corner lot, with a wraparound porch and a swing installed on it. Someone seemed to be house-sitting, so we didn't peek into too many windows, but it really was nice. I wish wish wish I'd taken a picture. But, it ain't Boulder or Denver. This is just Longmont, more of a cowtown really, which is growing in ugly ways in all its outer areas. It's a 25 minute drive from there to downtown Boulder, and we headed there after walking down Longmont's main street.
Driving into Boulder, we saw a cute older home at 20th Street and Spruce (a block away from the great shopping street Pearl St.). We figured it's probably over $700K, but the flyer said they're only asking $500! Now that's more like it (although still a little too much for us). We parked the car there and took down our bikes, rode around the great neighborhood. The house is exactly the size of ours at home (3br/2ba, 1620sf) but no garage. Here it is:
It's near a great preschool & playground:
and a little market is just around the corner. It's an easy bike ride to all sorts of great restaurants and shops.
So we biked around and found one of the many bike trails in Boulder. This one follows a stream that runs down from the canyon west of town. Here are Mark and Katie pausing on a bridge over the stream. Kids were tubing down the stream and playing in the water:
Here's a guy enjoying his book by the stream:
Near the bike path and the stream was the public library, a big, pretty one with a cafe that was perched over the stream. Here is Katie, looking at a book while we ate lunch there.
We rode along the stream and stopped at a playground, then got back in the car and found a new loft project about twelve blocks from the cute house. The lofts were pretty neat, but kinda isolated from downtown by a big busy road on one side of them.
Now it was time to go get the RV and find out if they wanted the RV overnight (we'd get to stay in a hotel room then, and I'd get to take a bath!) or not. Well, it turned out not. They couldn't fix the a/c either. oh well. I was excited by the possibility of finding a reasonably priced home in Boulder, so I wasn't discouraged. Now we had to find a place to stay for the night. We headed into Boulder and looked at a couple RV parks, which were absolute pits. Hmmm. We drove back out to Golden, and Dakota Ridge had closed their office, but they had a few spots open for the night, so we took one. We plan to stay a few more nights, if they have room for us. This is the only good RV park in the whole metro area.
Tuesday, August 16
This morning we headed out to see the National Renewable Energy Research Center. On the way over, we passed the Coors plant, which always smells like french fries. Historic downtown Golden is cute, if you don't mind that smell all the time (it's yeast).
The renewable energy place was hard to find because there are a lot of streets named West Denver (we counted at least four), and they go in multiple directions. But despite their efforts to lose us, we managed to find it and I was excited to see what's new in solar research and other renewable sources. Renewables represent only 8% of US energy sources (according to this center), but there is so much energy out there not being used. Anyway, the visitor's center was quite pretty, and had some neat exhibits, like one showing a solar-fueled fuel cell. But many of the exhibits didn't work (maybe it's telling us something). I left a little discouraged, a little encouraged.
We headed into Denver to their science museum, which has an exhibit on Lewis & Clark including many of their actual artifacts from their trip. Here is Mark relaxing in one of the museum's rooms overlooking downtown Denver, chatting with his buddy Eric:
I couldn't take any pictures in the Lewis & Clark exhibit, but it was great, with a few short films at different places, lots of areas where docents showed you things kids could touch, as well as free audio headsets for indepth info. I was especially moved by seeing the actual letter that Merriweather Lewis wrote to President Jefferson just 19 days before Lewis committed suicide. His handwriting and words show a confused, broken man, not the man who mapped the entire western side of America a few years earlier.
After the museum, Mark took me to Baja Fresh for dinner. I've been longing for their salsa for a long time, and it was delicioso. Then, on the way home, we went through downtown and noticed an REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.) near the highway. We pulled off and found the best REI so far. It is in a building that used to be a power plant. Here it is:
They pulled out all the old equipment a long time ago, but you can see the riveted girders inside, supporting the building. Here's a shot that shows it a little:
What a great use of an old building. Just outside it is the river, with some little rapids, and this view:
Driving home, the light behind the western mountains was so pretty. This doesn't really do it justice; I tried taking a half dozen shots, because the silhouetted hills were stunning.
Wedesday, August 17
This morning we toured the Coors plant. Here part of it is, from one corner:
I've been a Corona drinker for awhile now, and never really drank Coors, but how can we stay here a week and a half and not tour it? Well, it was a really classy tour. For one thing, it's free (Coca Cola charges you to take theirs) and they break folks into small groups (unlike Coke) and provide a really knowledgeable and even funny tourguide (sorry Coke). Here are some pictures; first the 18-foot-tall copper tanks that cook up the mash to make their beer:
And the lab where they make sure that every Coors or Coors Light or Keystone or Zima is the same as the last:
Halfway through the tour, we arrived at the fresh beer room, where brand new baby beers are born, and we got to taste Coors or Coors Light. Here's Mark having a sample:
After the guide walked away, Mark opened up the bar for seconds and thirds.
The employee break room at Coors has Coors and Coors Light on tap. Up till 12 years ago, employees could come down and have a sip anytime on their lunch or breaks (OSHA frowned on that and stopped it apparently). Now they can have some at 5pm, when they have their "safety meeting."
The tour ended at the canning & bottling section. I hoped it would look a little more like Laverne & Shirley; the room is so big that they give you binoculars to look through to try to see more of it.
After the tour, you arrive in the free tasting room (local college students often take a "short tour" and skip straight to this room) where they'll pour you Coors, Coors Light, Blue Moon (a yummy wheat beer), Keystone (a cheap beer), Zima, or others that Coors makes. We both tried Blue Moon and Zima. Now, Zima used to taste like fingernail polish remover to me, but they changed the recipe (and added more alcohol), and now it smells like cough syrup but tastes like Cool Aid, really fruity and not at all alcoholy. But it has a kick! We stopped drinking at 1.5 tastes.
The Coors company is really good about recycling--their used hops and grains become cow and cat food, any beer that doesn't pass muster gets turned into ethanol for local gas stations to add to their gasoline, and the extra warm water produced by Coors' own power plant is donated to the Colorado School of Mines across the street. I was impressed by the company and the tour.
After Coors, we drove into Boulder to bike around some more. We saw a big community garden, lots more houses for sale (all too pricey), Katie and I saw baby hummingbirds almost ready to leave their nest (outside the library), and we rode through their Wednesday farmer's market. Then Katie wanted to play in the spray fountain on Pearl St. Here she is:
Then we had pizza and wandered around a little. We found a baby finch who couldn't fly. It looked like it fell from the nest too early. I tried to find a shopkeeper who might adopt it, and called an animal rescue place and left a message. Then we met a dad and his little girl at a kids area. He moved to Boulder nine years ago after finishing grad school. Said he got here with no job, but knew he just wanted to live here, and stayed. We chatted about house prices and good neighborhoods. His wife is from Portland, and he says they like to visit, but that the weather is really nicer here. Sigh. Well, we'll have to decide for ourselves, I think.
Thursday, August 18
This morning Mark did laundry, and I worked on the website, then we found a spot for us to stay in when we leave tomorrow (down by Colorado Springs). We headed out to see some neighborhoods in Denver and do some bicycling down by downtown. On the way out of the campground, we saw this behemoth which had just pulled in:
I think it has a towing capacity of about 40 tons, just in case, ya know, you need to tow a house behind your motorhome.
So next we drove around Washington Park, a nice neighborhood not unlike McKinley Park in Sacramento (1910 - 1930s homes, tree-lined streets, a big neighborhood park). The prices were too much, we thought for this area. Then we drove through chi chi Cherry Creek, which has big homes designed by architects in the 1920s to present. Too much money, and we didn't see any stores or shops--you still have to get in your darn car and drive. They didn't even have sidewalks in Cherry Creek. I guess rich people don't walk. We'd seen enough.
We drove downtown, parked the car, and rode our bikes to the children's museum. It was a good one. Here are some pics:
Here Katie is as an earthworm...
...and an ant:
there were also great costumes for bunnies and birds. Also they had a kids basketball court. Here is Katie after she made a basket:
and Mark taking things a little seriously:
When the museum closed, we rode along one of the many bike trails back near REI, to Confluence Park. Here you can practice kayaking through easy rapids:
or, if you are a kid, you'll just float down them. Soon Katie was splashing and playing in the shallow water:
while Mark and I collected broken glass from the stream bottom. Luckily, no one seems to be getting cuts on their feet, but look how much we found in less than an hour:
Mark took it over to REI to ask them if they'd consider doing a clean-up day. They said that actually they did a streamfront cleanup the weekend before to get rid of trash, and were planning to clean up the stream itself the following weekend. We were glad to hear how invested they are. and the stream really needs it.
After pooping Katie out a little, we rode back to our car. Here is Mark with Katie on the back, along the bike trail:
There are lots of lofts springing up in the old factory district. They advertise their names on their water towers. Here is one at an old candy factory:
Denver has a lot to offer: good weather, great bike trails, the river, the museums, the sports parks and downtown lofts and stores. It doesn't feel real homey to me (yet--that could get better in a year or so if they put in a Safeway near the lofts), but it's worth considering, and Mark looked at prices. They are actually affordable to us. well, we'll see.
Tomorrow, Colorado Springs.
Friday, August 19
Today we leave Golden, and we've really grown to like this whole area. We'll be heading south to a much more conservative area, Colorado Springs. But I feel like we'll be back here someday; it's not forever.
Katie wanted to see Mirra, a little girl she met here at the campground, one more time, so while Mark got things ready this morning, I took Katie over to the playground. Mirra's jacket was there, but no Mirra. We asked at the desk, and they didn't know where her grandma was camping. We decided to look around for them, and luckily they came out to toss some trash away and we met them one last time.
I got to chatting with her grandma, Marguerite Honeycut, the wife of a retired soldier, who now lives between Florida, North Carolina (near Asheville), and Golden (to be close to a daughter in Boulder). They like the RV life, and I absolutely loved chatting with Marguerite. I could talk with her all day long, I felt, and the hour or so we had passed by way too quick. She told me about dealing with her husband's recent stroke, and I chatted with her about why we started our trip, etc. I hope we'll get to meet her (and he husband Tiger) again someday.