Boulder, CO

Hello from Boulder!!!

The last few days have been amazing. Boulder is a great town, kinda like Berkeley, but a bit yuppier. Still, I think I'd definitely be able to live here. I've seen so many people out on bikes--all sorts of people, not just racers, etc. They have a great network of bike paths for everyone to ride on, and the city is pretty cool. I'm in the downtown area right now. There's a nice creek running by, lots of shady space, and the Pearl Street Shopping area seems to have a lot of good food, etc. I'm probably going to spend all day here. The only problem is that its somewhat hot outside, but I'll have to deal with that for the rest of the trip. I think I'm out of anywhere where its going to be cool, except maybe Appalachia.

July 13th - State line between Wyoming/Colorado to Timber Creek Campground, Rocky Mountain National Park - 105 miles, 8 hours

I wrote about this day a good bit in my last entry, but I'll write a bit more on the ride from Granby to the campground. We got a decent lunch at this place called Mad Munchies, and then rolled out of town. On the way out we stopped to get some food at this farmers market, then proceeded to get ripped off--- $7 for lb of pasta, $6.50 for a loaf of bread, and $4 for this other bread thing. We headed to Grand Lake, stocked up on some more small groceries from a gas station store, and got into the park. It was a lot less crowded than Yellowstone, so it seemed.

Riding into the park was great. About ten minutes after entering, we saw a big herd/group of what we think were mule deer -- smaller than elk, but not regular looking deer. I tried to get some pictures. This was by far the biggest collection of wildlife at one time... I was about to count 32 total. They were just lounging about everywhere, munching on some delicious grass. My legs felt surprisingly well for that late in the day. Later on up the road, we saw a bull moose (male moose), which was cool. We hadn't seen one before. Sadly, this one didn't have any horns, but it was still huge.

The only disappointment that day was that by the time we got to the campsite, the campground was full. We decided to roll around (it was around 100 sites total), and found an older couple that we decided to ask if we could share the site. They had one of those VW van campers, so there was all the room we needed for us to pitch a tent. They also let us stay there without helping to pay, which otherwise would have cost about $15.

So... it turned out that the pasta/bread and stuff we got was actually amazing. Given our situation, it was definitely worth it. All of the stuff was fresh and organic, grown from around the area, and so it was super delicious. We got to bed relatively early at around 10pm, which was good, because we needed an early start the next day.

I think I'm going to go get some lunch now, I'm getting hungry. I'll write about yesterday's ride later on.