Husking and Busking

It was well past nightfall when we approached Boulder last night, so the idea that we were approaching the Rocky Mountains was a rather abstract one. To the left, the distant sky flashed with lightning from a violent thunderstorm; to the right, the last vestiges of the sunset lingered in the clouds; but straight ahead there was only the darkness of a long, unlit highway. Apparently the Colorado Chamber of Commerce does not see fit to illuminate the Rockies at night with enormous floodlights.

But sure enough, when we woke up this morning and went outside... there were mountains!


We set out for Rocky Mountain National Park in the morning, where we used our few precious hours there to drive to a few lookout points and climb rocks by a waterfall. We were surprised by how easily we got winded in the high altitudes, but we were even more surprised by the people biking up the winding mountain roads. Coloradans do not mess around.


From there we went to the Celestial Seasonings factory in Boulder, where went on a factory tour. Since it was the weekend, the factory floor wasn't in operation; this meant that we didn't get to see the tea being packaged (boo!) but it also meant that we didn't have to wear hairnets (yay!). We also got to watch a propaganda video about how fantastic Celestial Seasonings is, and how Celestial Seasonings only uses all-natural ingredients, and how Celestial Seasonings contains antioxidants, and how Celestial Seasonings will make you more attractive to the opposite sex (or the same sex, hey, this is Boulder after all). The takeaway lesson from the tour: tea factories smell! A lot!


Then it was off to the Pearl Street Mall in downtown Boulder, which is sort of like the Ithaca Commons but with more chain stores. Visiting Boulder is kind of strange after spending four years in Ithaca; there are many similarities between the two cities, but Boulder is more... aggressive? Ithaca's quirks are of the hippy-dippy, broomstick-skirt-wearing variety, whereas Boulder's quirks are of the bizarre-facial-piercings variety. In Ithaca, the unwashed hippies sit on a bench and strum guitars; in Boulder, the unwashed hippies approach you and sing at you. There are a lot of biceps in Boulder. And a hell of a lot of Subaru Outbacks. Ithaca : Granola :: Boulder : Power Bars.

We wandered around the Pearl Street Mall for a while, then headed to a Tibetan restaurant for dinner. From there we walked back through the Mall, where we we accidentally got reeled in by an annoying busker who spent far too much time aggressively courting bystanders and not nearly enough time doing anything interesting. ("Okay, okay, the box trick. Here we go. Hey, you! You in the brown shirt! Watch this! I'm going to do a great trick with these boxes! Okay, here we go. Hey you!" etc.) Then we had ice cream, and went back to the hotel to watch the Olympics. And now I'm going to go to sleep, because tomorrow we're waking up early to head to Moab, UT and Canyonlands National Park.

Oh, and to complete the rhyming title of this post, when we got back to Melissa's car in the Boulder garage, someone had thrown corn on the ground behind it: