Boulder

Boulder

Boulder CO is full of people from somewhere else. I guess they come for the spectacular Rockies that start to rise up before you even leave town, and of course the University of CO is there, and lots of jobs.  The first thing I noticed was that who ever laid out the parking lots did not allow for Darth Vader.  It was often very tight and finding a spot that I could get into in one shot was impossible.  To make matters worse, driving here is an aggressive near contact sport. I have never had so many near misses, people cutting in front of me, passing me in bad places, speeding up to keep me from changing lanes even though there was a red light ahead. All this was without the trailer.  And if you don’t peel out at a green light as if it was a drag race, you get honked at pretty seriously.  Geez.

I parked in the suburban street in front of Patti and Tom’s house, Airstream friends.  It is pretty tidy here, but no one seems to mind that I’m here.  To me, this neighborhood seems crowded, the yards are pretty small. There are a lot of young families and dogs, and it is cheerful, but I feel sort of exposed.  This is odd, since most campgrounds have way less space around my trailer, and many more people and children and dogs in a smaller area.  It is nice to be able to walk to the grocery store and to get a haircut, but my rural nerves are twingy.

I spent a day with a woman I haven’t seen since we were in college.  It was amazing to run through our lives since, and to put our hard earned wisdom, and pains survived down side by side.  She and her husband live up on the mountains above Boulder with a view across CO to the east that almost made me dizzy. I guess you can see Kansas from there.

I went to see the friends that live in Borrego Springs in the winter, who have a house up in a different section of mountain homes.  They live in Gold Hill, once a small mining town,  that is now a National Historic District.  The tiny cabins, stores and one hotel evolved from mining camp to summer retreat with only minimal changes, and they take history seriously, no tidy lawns, the grasses and wildflowers grow free, repairs and renovations to the buildings are largely invisibly done, and the locals don’t drive Hummers, or dress up.  I could live here, aging hippy that I am.

The friends are in the midst of fixing their house up after years of rental, new carpet and getting their furniture out of storage, it is charming and carries the flavor of raising kids in the 60’s on minimal money.  I was there too.  I get a nice walking tour of the town and then back down the precipitous roads to Boulder.

I have been busy here in Boulder, doing errands and cleaning and fixing the trailer to get ready for the International Rally.  And on Wed, we pulled out and headed north.  The Colorado Rockies faded into the less spectacular Laramie Mountains, and soon the rolling grass lands of Wyoming take over. 

At our first stop, just over the line, we meet up with 8 other Airstreamers, old friends from the El Camino Unit, and in Douglas we become our own mini-rally, a merry preview of the socializing to come.   The roads are full of Airstreams headed for Gillette, usually we don’t see others of our “kind” very often, but now there are glinting silver ships everywhere, as though we were gathering for some obscure yearly mating ritual.