Day 16 – Boulder

Miles traveled: 120
Hours on Road: 4
States covered: 2 –Wyoming, Colorado

[I’m back!! We’ve been out of wifi and cell phone contact for a while, but now we’re back in civilization. Actually, we’re in a rinky dink town called Salida in the middle of 14,000 foot mountains, but it’s civilized enough to have a McDonald’s with wifi. Conveniently, it’s lunch time, so the boys are eating.]

The morning was nice at this campsite. The sun slowly rose over the reservoir, and there was enough warmth to dry off all our stuff – chairs, coolers, tent. We must have had frustrated visitors during the night because, while our coolers were covered with raccoon paws, they were never opened. We found out from our neighbors that they lost four eggs to the raccoons, because the little scroungers were able to open their cooler. We’ve all been frustrated at some point on this trip because the coolers can be very hard to open, but now we’re happy they’re that way.

We had a pretty short ride ahead of us, so we stopped at a McDonald’s along the way to post a couple more blog pages. I was able to do the photos for only one because they uploaded too slowly.

Our next destination was Boulder, Colorado, home to my brother Wilson, and his wife Andrea. We arrived at their home a little after 1 p.m. Wilson wasn’t home yet, but we had a great time visiting with Andrea. She showed us some of the tricks their dogs can do. Both are Australian shepherds. Seven-year-old Truman has many talents and will even play dead when shot at. Taffy is three and she’s been blind as long as they’ve had her. She can catch her goo-goo (it looks like a pacifier) if you throw it right into her mouth, and she does this great circling trick where she spins in circles very quickly. While out on a walk we also witnessed her herding instincts, as she crouched down low and crept forward before pouncing toward Truman.

Boulder is a great place to live. There are bike paths everywhere, and bicyclists are allowed to ride two abreast. Cars must pass at least 10 feet from the bikes, and if anything bad happens, it’s the car driver’s fault. Everywhere you look you see people running or biking. We strolled part of the three mile path that Truman and Taffy get walked along every day.

We didn’t have lunch but we had a late snack, so we had an early dinner. Wilson made barbeque ribs and chicken along with potato salad and coleslaw. It was delicious. We finished just about everything they put in front of us.

After dinner we drove to Pearl Street. A good portion of the road is pedestrians only, and they have street performers to entertain folks. The first guy we came across was pretty incredible, though we didn’t stay for the whole show. He had a couple of chains he was laying out on the ground, and while he did that he asked people if they were from out of town and, if so, what their zip code was. Then he proceeded to tell that person what town they came from. He called on me, and he got New Milford, CT correct. After he’d say what town you’re from, he’d go on to tell you other things about yourself, but he was usually wrong then. He said I had two sons. I told him I have three. He obviously saw that Parker was with me and said that one of my sons plays basketball. Although Cal and Trey do, I knew he was talking about Parker, so I had to tell him no. But he knew he was just grasping at straws, so every time he was wrong, he just laughed about it. By the time we left, we could see he was making an outline of the US with the chains.

After that show, Andrea and Wilson treated us to ice cream – great homemade stuff. We then stopped to watch a contortionist. We didn’t know right away that that was what he’d do. He caught our attention with fire, using those sticks you put in lighter fluid then light on fire, but they really had nothing to do with his show. He admitted that they’re just his attention getters. His show started off pretty slow with a little girl throwing a rubber chicken at him that he caught in a bear trap – yes, you read that correctly. I was ready to leave pretty early into that show, but Trey wanted to stay. The guy’s big stunt was to put his whole body through a toilet seat. He also made lots of jokes along the way and was very funny. He had to dislocate both shoulders and both hips to get through the seat, but he did it. Andrea had to walk away because she was so disturbed by the whole thing; it was making her nauseous. He ended his show by putting chain hooks through his ears and using the chains connected to them to pull a 200-pound man on a skateboard. I told Andrea she was smart to have walked away when she did.

That evening the boys slept on two cots and a couch. They had a fan going, so they were in heaven. Jeff and I got the guest room upstairs and had a great night’s sleep. Because of the air conditioner in the room, we couldn’t hear a thing. Taffy slept right outside the door. I guess that’s usually her room.

For corresponding photos, go to:
http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1880969027/a=2740108027_2740108027/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/