Travel days can be tough for planners and participants alike, but we are fortunate that Colorado has put something cool between today’s point A (Denver) and Point B (Estes Park — gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park). That cool thing is Boulder, a place that deserves its own stayover, at least, and perhaps even a good chunk of a week to give it its full due.
We just had today, though, so we set out to do our best with the time we had.
First things first, a planned stopover at Dutch Bros. coffee, a chain that Nadia knows from her visits to Arizona. She secured a highly caffeinated creation, and we were all suddenly ready for the day.
We moved on and made our way to our first point in Boulder, a park high above the city. We wandered through a wide inclining grassy field (and past at least two more weddings — or at least wedding photo sessions), and we crawled among the ankles of the famous Flatiron rock formations. Zoe even started a brief climb up Flatiron 3, which is accessible only via a very vertical route up a tree-less rock face.
It was crowded with Saturday morning adventurers, many who thought it was a great idea to run up the hill and then scale the rockface barely breaking stride. Several climbers made their way out of our sight line, gaining 100 feet in altitude, in the 10 minutes we watched. Zoe only made it about 20 feet befored she decided to come back down. Her sneakers did not make good climbing shoes.
We finished our loop and then hopped on a shuttle bus that connected the park to the downtown area that held our next points of interest. Down the hill we went and across town, through the impressive Colorado State University campus,
The trolley dropped us on the edge of the city’s bi-weekly farmers’ market. At the center of the tents and stands we found our brunch destination, a tea house donated to Boulder by its sister city, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. This was another point of interest uncovered by Zoe’s research.
On a Saturday morning in early August, the wait time to get in (they don’t take brunch reservations) is about 45 minutes. That gave us time to wander through the farmer’s market.
We saw a very good side of Boulder this morning. The park and hike offered a connection to nature, with a scenery scale that was off the charts, and free public transportation always gets our attention. The community’s embrace of the farmer’s market — it was quite crowded and supported a fair-like atmosphere — was also on full display.
And if that didn’t win us over, the brunch at the tea house sealed the deal. Our orders spanned from Indonesian to Indian to Persian to Mexican, and every one of us walked away full and satisfied.
Boulder is compact enough that we did not even need to walk far to get to the highly popular Pearl Street outdoor mall. We wandered a little here — it is quite extensive well laid-out.
Our guess is that Denver is trying to recreate this with its 16th Street Mall. One standout feature on the Pearl Street Mall: the only retail outlet for the Liberty Puzzle Company, whose intricate wooden jigsaw puzzles have given Jen many hours of entertainment.
The last stop in Boulder required us to collect the truck and head to the outskirts of town for another singular retail experience. All of the Celestial Seasonings Teas in the store are mixed and packed in a plant just outside of town.
They offer a very nice tour and an extensive gift shop that is the only place in the world where you can purchase all 100+ blends they create. Even cooler, they have a tasting room where you can request a samply of any of their teas. It was simultaneously very cool and very laid back.
We stayed there tasting right up to the 5 pm closing time, but when they kicked us out we realized that we were already well on the way from Denver to Estes Park. We pulled into our apartment well before sunset, and if I were to tell you there was an elk waiting for us in the front yard I would obviously be lying. In truth, there were THREE elk there to greet us.
It might have been a family, and they seemed completely disinterested in us and completely interested in eating the grass — though the biggest elk did walk over to check out the pickup truck.
For dinner, we decided to hit up the Estes Park Brewery — and realized that it looked familiar. The adults in our family had been here before. Just like last time, the Olympics were playing on the TV. Luckily, this time, it being Saturday night rather than Friday afternoon, we were able to watch something other than rhythmic gymnastics.