Boulder

Wednesday, 11.Oktober

Hot Tub here we come!

• At sunset, we drive into the not-so-nice suburbs of Boulder and, after about five detours, finally reach the canyon where our accommodation, the A-Lodge, is located.
• The road there is very nice to drive even at night -winding its way up the dark canyon.
• The A-Lodge turns out to be what it promises – accommodation for adventurous and outdoorsy people – and the best part: It is located in the beautiful, mountainous and rocky nature that surrounds Boulder and offers many recreational opportunities, such as climbing, cycling and hiking.

• However, when we arrive at 9pm, it seems like no one is up anymore – later I meet a guy from Birmingham, with whom I decide – this has to change tomorrow evening.
• However, lights out and quiet time is already at 10pm, so let’s see.
• Until then, we quickly jump into the hot tub, my dream come true and a super nice ending to our evening!

Thursday, 12.Oktober

Chill out day

• Talking Hands Session, writing the blog, reading, hot tub and enjoying the autumn sun are on the agenda today.

• We briefly consider going on a hike that starts right behind our house, but then decide on the hot tub =)
• In the evening we chill out in the hot tub for a long time, even with some happy hour beer.

Friday, 13.Oktober

Boulder, the town with a pedestrian zone

• We get up and after our muesli breakfast, we set off on our rented bikes from the A-Lodge to Boulder.
• The bikes are e-bikes and very suitable for off-road riding, which isn’t necessary as there is a cycle path leading directly into Boulder – however, they have a huge pedal assist and five gears, of which we only use the first three, I think on the fifth the bike would accelerate so much that you would be catapulted backwards.

• It is a very beautiful route through the canyon, which looks even more impressive by day than by night, and runs along Boulder Creek, the small river that incredibly formed the canyon.

• We reach Boulder, where surprisingly the bike lane situation is not that bad (well, for an American city, of course there are no segregated bike lanes, but at least there are markings on the road and you don’t have to ride next to a seven lane Freeway).
• What’s also amazing is that there’s a pedestrian zone on THE street in Boulder, Pearl Street, where all the interesting things are.

• The small student town is full of bookstores, nice cafés (I think this is the first place where I’ve discovered cafés in this sense) and inviting restaurants – and I was already won over by the small cafés and, at the latest, the bookshops.

• So we sit down in one of these cafés, sip our latte and hot chocolate and start planning for Route 66 – we’ve discovered that the map material isn’t very good, so we use the turn-by-turn description from “historic66.com” and the offline navigation app “Here we go”, which turns out to be a great solution, but requires a lot of preparation time.
• In the bright sunshine, we stroll through the pedestrian zone for a while, have a look in one or two bookshops, where of course I can’t resist once again and pick up some books (although we already have too much luggage anyway).
• Then we pop into a small, hip restaurant where we can finally eat healthy things – we order sandwiches with homemade spreads that are so delicious that we order another portion – my favorite is the artichoke spread, mmmh.
• We cycle back to the lodge, where we first want to relax in the hot tub, but we can’t (!!!) because there’s an event going on.
• We can only get in at 9pm, which we do straight away and are even joined by an American with whom we strike up a good conversation.

• He is a researcher and lecturer in English literature at the university in Nebraska (not much there apart from mountains and snow, according to him) and has already been to Finland, as his research topic is Finnish myths and historic legends.
• In general, we meet a funny collection of people at the A-Lodge: a lady who is doing medical training here, a guy who is training to be a climbing coach, another guy from England who is here on a business trip and discussing his sustainability concept with companies and the guy from the hot tub who is here at a conference.

Saturday, 14.Oktober

Hot Springs and Rocky Mountains

• Off we go in the direction of Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), for which, as we find out on the way there, you need a permit and can otherwise only enter after 2pm.
• You can’t get any more permits for the same day, so we decide to make a stopover at hot springs (finally some in which you’re allowed to bathe), which are on the other side of the mountain range, but – according to our master plan – we’ll just drive into the RMNP later on the other side and cross it via the pass road that runs right through the national park.

• So we drive through the “mountaneous Nederland” to the pass road that runs south of the Rocky Mountain National Park and crawl up to the top of the pass behind yet another person who is afraid of turns and especially serpentines.

• There is a partial solar eclipse in 10 minutes, which we want to view from the highest point of the pass, which is why we stop there.
• We walk along a snow-covered hiking trail (amazing to think that a week ago we were still walking through rocky and sandy deserts), which leads through a forest and from which we repeatedly catch glimpses of the sun shining brightly from the sky.

• We see the solar eclipse through the camera lens, of course you can’t just look at it (despite sunglasses) – it is only a small darkening in front of the sun -although to be honest we can’t see it that well.

• Off to the hot springs!
• These are a somewhat old fashioned and a little outdated, but still a very nice outdoor spa – there are 19 smaller and larger pools with the healing water of the hot springs at different temperatures.

• We start with the “coolest” ones, which are nevertheless very warm and can also be used by children, and work our way up to the hotter ones.
• It’s really beautiful and very relaxing – we enjoy it a lot.

• The sun is shining, which is why we chill in the pools with sunglasses and caps and soak until we get duck skin.
• The hot springs are sulphurous, which you can totally smell and which our swimsuits still smell of today (two weeks later).

• Very soggy and relaxed, we drive on to the west entrance of the RMNP, which is located near the village of Grand Lake and lives up to its name as it is situated right next to a huge lake.

• Only to find that the pass road is closed due to the snow and we can only drive 10 miles into the park.
• As our guidebook warns us – “If the pass road is closed, what would otherwise take three quarters of an hour becomes a four-hour drive”: and we look it up – it’s true, we have to cross the pass road we came over to reach the other end of the mountain range and thus the east entrance; a detour of four hours.

• We therefore abandon the plan to drive to the east entrance and decide to visit the park from the west side and pick out a short hike here.
• We take several short “hikes”, which are described on the map that we got at the entrance.
• One of them leads to old huts that have since fallen into disrepair and were once rented out by a German family as a vacation village – with the main hut, Mamas Kitchen, always serving delicious home-cooked food.

• The second hike takes you along the Colorado River, which has its source here and, looking at it as a small stream, it is hard to imagine that it was this very river that formed the Grand Canyon.

• The third hike leads to the waterfalls of a small river, Beaver Creek, which are spread over several levels.

• On the way out of the park, we make a stop in the village of Grand Lake, buy an RMNP Leiberl each and admire the lake at sunset.

• We cross the pass again in the dark and off we go to the airport, stopping off for a quick McDonald’s dinner before returning the car and checking into our hotel, which we have booked for tonight as our flight leaves first thing in the morning.