Imagine a place where everyone likes to be outside, the thin air stings your lungs as you walk uphill, during certain times of the year you can play golf and ski in the same day and the beer flows so smoothly it must be from the heavens themselves. Where is this utopia? Does it really exsist you ask? I'm here to tell you it does, it resides on the eastern foothills of the Rockies in a place called Boulder, Colorado.
We (me, Ben and Rangoon) flew in to
Denver and
Stutz (Captain Curt, that is) promptly picked us up in his new Subaru Outback. Mind you, it's not a new model, but new to him. And it actually had
enough room for 4 adults compared to his last two or three vehicles. By the way, Subaru's are big in that area; everyone's got one or two.
On our way to Curt's place, we stopped by Buckley Air Force Base where the guys bought ski lift tickets hella cheap with a military discount and we bought groceries at the Commissary--also on the cheap. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but I did manage to
get a few; just don't tell The Man.
From there it was on to Boulder! Along the way we took note of all the
great scenery:
mountains,
tumbleweeds and prairie dogs. Although some people have said that prairie dogs carry the plague, I just can't believe it. How can something so cute carry something so deadly? We did, however, decide that prairie dogs are a cows most deadly predator. They dig those holes in the ground, then the cow steps in it, breaks its leg, falls and then out come a mass of blood-thirsty prairie dogs! The cow is dead before it realizes what happened. The quickness at which it happens is really a blessing.
Curt lives in the
back portion of a house along with two other people and a dog named
Bohnam. I only saw the others once, but we did hang out with Bohnam quite a bit. You'll find him in a lot of our pictures.
We got to Curt's place around 2pm (local time) and I promptly took a nap while the guys went to get their rentals for skiing the next day. When they got back, we went for a
hike up in the flatirons. What's convienant about his place is that walking paths up the mountain are just a
few blocks from where he lives. So we did the
Red Rock Trail and went a
good ways up (but no where near the
top), as we were walking I decided that I was not nearly in as
good of shape as I thought
I was. My cardiovascular system was in shock, it couldn't believe I would do something like this to it!
The view was worth it though, there were the
health benefits too, and also the thought that I could be at home sitting on my butt, but I'm instead
hiking in the Rockies!
All good things :) By 3pm, after 2.5 hours of hiking/
walking around the area, we had built up quite a thirst so we headed to
Mountain Sun Brewery! Here are some pics of
tasty beers,
fries and some
LOADED nachos. They
have a good variety of craft beers and I was pleased with their Java Porter--it was like a cup of strong coffee only cold. Around 5pm we headed west (into the sun) and stopped into BJs Brewery, to have "
one more round". We actually had three or four more rounds, but we were on vacation and no one was counting. I really enjoyed their PM Porter, very roasty and wet-carpety. There we met Lu, a bartender/supervisor who turned out to be a cool person whom we had interesting conversations with. When we were ready to move on, it was about 8pm and Stutz took us to The Attic where they have
PBR on tap and
FREE pool. You might wonder why we would downgrade to PBR when there were tons of other fine beers around. Well the answer is simple: We were
drunk and PBR was cheap! Our first day wrapped up around 11pm with a
decent walk back to
Stutz's (up a gimormous hill/small mountain).
Day 2 started early with the guys leaving for Eldora Ski Resort around 8am.
Here are a few pics from their day skiing. I got ready for my spa day and left around 8:30. I walked 15 blocks to get to the spa at 9am. Between 10 and 4pm, I got a facial, massage, lunch, pedicure and makeup application--it was a good day. That evening we were all starving and got
sushi from Hapa for dinner. It was good, but you know, sushi never seems to fill me up unless I get a ton of it and that very rarely happens as I'm not rich. Anyway, Hapa happened to be right next to BJ's so we stopped in there again, this time we really only had two rounds. The guys were exhausted after their day of skiing so we called it a night early and went back to the house.
Day 3 started with breakfast at
Foolish Craig's, a trendy little bistro on the main, trendy street. Then we walked up to the UC-Boulder
campus and surrounding area. We saw
The Onion headquarters and
we went to the
Dushanbe Tea House for afternoon tea at 11am. Then we headed back to the house and got ready for all-you-can-eat rib dinner at The West End Tavern. But we first headed to Walnut Brewery for some pre-dinner drinks. The bartendress,
Tracy, kept our glasses full and offered us all kinds of "samples" of their beers. Rangoon and I got drunk and started talking about birth, death and taxes--it was getting really heavy, but then guess who showed up for drinks??? I finally got to meet the infamous
Finch and
Jewfish!!
They no longer exsist as just blog commenters to me anymore...I finally got to talk to them and ask them the questions that have been on my mind for awhile. It was awesome. We headed out for
dinner around 6pm, I personally don't like ribs, so I settled for a great big, tasty burger. I did eat
Bean's cornbread and yam chips--they were delicious! I think most of them all got
another plate of ribs, but I don't think anyone had more than two. After we
gorged ourselves with food, we headed to
BJ's for yet
another round. This trip to
BJ's was more to say bye to Lu than to drink. I was soo full that I couldn't even finish my beer. Not that I didn't want to, but my body was no longer accepting food or drink. I tried to go to the bathroom, but that didn't help. So I left a partial PM Porter and a phat tip on the bar.
Day 4--the last day. Our flight left Denver at 3:15pm so we didn't have to rush in the morning. After we got our luggage loaded up, it was fairly
foggy so we headed up into the
mountains. Because really, what better time to drive through twisted, windy mountain roads than when the visibility is
low? We reached some senic lookout spot and got out. You really couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of you. While the guys were throwing rocks over the mountain into the nothing, I happened to notice a sign informing visitors that bears and mountain lions are active year round in these areas. That was enough information for me and I headed back into the car. After a quick sodoku puzzle the guys came back and we headed back down. Part way down we stopped at another lookout point, this one was just along side the road. Once again, the guys got out and went to the edge to throw rocks and whatnot, everything was fine until Rangoon and Bean came running back screaming "BEAR! BEAR!" "Bean hit a bear with a rock!!" and we all quickly got in the car and drove away. I was freaking out, trying to get them to tell me they were joking...turns out they were. Very funny. We stopped and had some Thai food and then headed back to the airport.
So there you have it. Our fun mini-vacation to Boulder. If you have the means, I highly recommend you visit sometime. I did take a metric ton of pictures, we just haven't uploaded them to our gallery. Pictures forthcoming--promise!
