Welcome to Boulder

If there was a heaven on earth for outdoor enthusiasts, the kind of people who go for a bike ride in the morning, spend their lunch break hitting the local climbing crag, and finish up their evening with a nice hike to take in the sunset, Boulder would be it. And they know it. The roads are clotted with bikers, the trails with hikers and runners. A drive up Boulder Canyon reveals tiny figures on ropes looking like flies caught on a pendulum of spider web hanging from the cliffs. People in their fifties and sixties seem to have the bodies of twenty year olds, lean and muscled, with only a the face, a slight loosening of the skin, and, in the climbers, and enlargement of the hands to tell their true age. More than heaven, Boulder is like Mecca, with believers making the pilgrimage to the holy city as often as their wallets allow.

We are staying with our friend from WashU, Kika, who has a house south of the city that she has graciously allowed us to crash for a week and a day. If you want to see the appeal of living in Boulder, look no further than the next two pictures.








That's the view from Kika's roof, which I photographed about ten minutes ago. In the second picture, the slabs of rock on the right side of the frame are the Flatirons, sheets of rock exposed the height of the mountain, literally a mere stroll from downtown Boulder. This is the Front Range, where the Rocky Mountains rise from the naked plain and exert their dominance. Drive or hike a mile into those mountains and you'll discover why the outdoorsies flock here like moths to the flame.

All of this, of course, explains why we are here, being moths ourselves. The amount of climbing here is absolutely overwhelming, leaving me with a screen full of browser tabs researching possible crags. We've been several places so far, and even to the gym on a rainy day, but I don't have any climbing pictures, so I'll leave it up to Joseph to tell you about that.

But...I will tell you that we've been doing some hiking as well. Our first full day in town, we hiked up to the top of the Flatirons (remember those?), and looked down onto the city. Then a few days later, Joseph, Kika and I went out and hiked the Fourth of July Trail to Arapaho Pass. It was a beautiful trail, passing through high meadows of wild flowers interspersed among the pines, and eventually emerging above the tree line to slopes of scree. If you listen, a chirruping noise will slide down to you. It comes from the Pikas, which are small mammals that look a bit like guinea pigs, but are related to rabbits. They look like little brown rocks sitting in a giant field of actual brown rocks, but according to Kika, they can carry very large sticks in their mouths. She made them sound like many little Herculean buggers walking around with logs balanced in their mouths. In any case, they were fun to scout out once we were above the flower fields.



The Fourth of July Trail. We're about halfway back to the trailhead here, heading back to the end of the road you can see in the valley.



Joseph, Kika and Kika's dog Sydney hide from the wind among the rocks at Arapaho pass. And possibly the first picture on this blog not of Joseph or me. All for you Millie!

We've been well occupied as you can tell, moths called to the flame, with our bodies starting to suffer accordingly. Ibuprofen and Glucosamine are wonderful things. Somehow I still managed to find time to dominate a biscotti bake off (or biscotti-off in technical terms), and Joseph recently learned to make gnocchi. So if you see him, demand some gnocchi. Just tell him that he needs the practice his skills, so it's really for his own good to make you some delicious potato pasta.