Tuesday, Oct 18
First thing I did when I woke up Tuesday morning was wonder how cold it had gotten.
The second thing I did was take a deep breath, begrudgingly peel myself away from Auggie and jump out from under my sleeping bag.
The third thing I did was put the key in the ignition to see what the temperature was.
Ouch! 24 degrees!
We had experienced 24 degrees back in Utah at Bryce Canyon. Somehow I didn’t remember that 24 degrees felt this cold. And this morning, we also had fog and frost to intensify the cold. Brrrrrr. Winter sets in early in the Rockies!
We made our morning walk a quick one so that I could get back in the van, sit next to the furnace and thaw out. It was really cold!
I didn’t waste any time getting food in me – a nice hot bowl of oatmeal to warm me up. Hot tea and a couple of layers of clothing was slowly starting to get me warmer, too. And when I had finally packed us up and gotten us ready to go, I blasted the car heater as we drove.
We weren’t going too far, though. Only six miles to Steamboat Springs – I wanted to take a walk and poke around. Gratefully, it started to warm up fairly quickly that day, so our walk around the town was nice. Auggie found a nice stream to plop around in, and then we found the ski infrastructure (sans snow!).
We poked around the main street shops, and then I found a coffee shop where I got a quick coffee and a yummy snack. I filled up the gas tank, and then we got on the road. We were headed to Boulder, and were due there mid-afternoon.
Our drive southeast on Route 40 was beautiful. Another blue sky, more mountains and some more snow to remind us that we were at altitude.
We were driving through some beautiful country, reminded at regular intervals that the Rockies were all around us.
And when we dropped out on to Interstate 70 for the final approach toward Denver (before we took a left turn to head north toward Boulder), we saw more gorgeous layers of snow-capped mountain behind snow-capped mountain as we drove. It sure was a pretty drive.
We got to Boulder about 3 pm. Our friend, Howard, wasn’t able to get out of the office and home till about 3.30, so we happily got out of the van and took a walk from Howard’s house down to Pearl Street, the cool pedestrian shopping and dining street in Boulder. Howard called us when he got home, and we walked back to say hello.
Before the sun got too low, we took off for a hike up Mount Sanitas, which was a short walk from Howard’s apartment. We had a great hike – cloudless blue sky, pretty vistas and an interesting trail.
Once we got home, we chilled and stretched for a bit, and then Howard needed to run out to a meeting for a few hours. I did some shopping and made dinner. After that, it was time to sleep. Good night.
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