After my last post I walked around Pearl Street because the
Open Arts Fest was going on. It really reminded me of Art Fair on the Square in
Madison. It was neat to see different kinds of artwork, some of which was
really amazing, but of course I didn’t buy anything since it was all out of my
price range.
Every summer Boulder hosts the Colorado Shakespeare Festival
and since it was on my list to see one of the plays I went (by myself) to see The Twelfth Night, which is one of my
favorite plays by Shakespeare. It took place in an outdoor theater on campus,
so I was able to ride my bike there. Before the play I saw groups of people
finishing up picnics on the lawn in front of the theater. It was a great
production and even though I was in the third to last row I had a great view.
When it was done I raced to the CouchSurfing mixer at its new location at
Rueben’s, a block off of Pearl Street. There were a lot more people, probably
over 20, compared to last week when there were only five of us!
On Monday Elisabeth and I drove up to an area in the
mountains called Brainard Lake. The actual lake called Brainard is pretty small
and is surrounded by more beautiful lakes and hiking trials. First we went to
the Long Lake Trailhead and went hiking past Long Lake to Lake Isabelle, which
may have the best views I have seen in Colorado. We both love taking pictures
and having pictures taken of ourselves, so she is a great person to go
sightseeing with and we had a lot of fun making up poses. Next we drove to a
different trailhead and hiked one mile to Mitchell Lake. It was a lot less
exciting. About five or ten minutes after leaving Mitchell Lake it started to
rain then hail. While Elisabeth had a poncho that covered her backpack, I only
had a rain jacket, so my backpack with my camera was getting wet. I decided to
be not a very good friend and with Elisabeth’s consent I ditched her and “ran” about ¾ of
a mile back to the car. A good workout, but my left lower calf and ankle area
have kind of been bothering me since then…
Tuesday was the last day at my internship, but I worked a
little on stuff Boulder today and might next Tuesday. That night I drove to
Denver (during rush hour, so normally a 30-35 minute drive took double the
amount of time) to see the U2 tribute band, Under a Blood Red Sky, whose
performance in Boulder I caught the end of a couple weeks ago. I met Elisabeth
there since she is a huge U2 fan and actually saw them live in Paris a few
years ago! The venue was really cool – it was on a bridge over a creek in
downtown Denver. The people there were very different compared to the concert
in Boulder. Everyone was in their mid-twenties to late forties and well dressed, like
business casual or nicer.
Yesterday I went to Rocky Mountain National Park. I was
planning on going with a group of people, but they all ended up having to work.
But that wasn’t going to stop me from going! If you haven’t noticed, I am a
very independent person and don’t mind doing things by myself sometimes. I’m so
glad I went because it was totally worth it! I drove all of Trail Ridge Road,
which is very scenic and has lots of places to stop and take pictures. It took
me three hours to drive it one way and two hours on the return. At one of the vista points as I was
pulling into a parking space I saw the car next to me was purchased at the same
dealership in Madison as mine. They were leaving, but when they saw the back of
my car with the dealership name they pulled back into the parking space and
asked me if I was from Madison and what I was doing there. We had a very brief
conversation, but they were so nice! My first wildlife spotting was two elk
that were in the road three cars in front of me. At the end of Trail Ridge Road
(the western park of the park) I saw a moose and a few miles near that one were
two more moose, one of which was a still pretty young! I don’t think I had ever
seen moose before so it was really exciting! When I was leaving the park, right
after the fee station, I saw two more elk that were probably 40 yards from the
road. There were lots of people taking pictures, but they did not seem to care
at all.
On Monday Andrew had showed me how to slow the shutter speed
on my camera to take cool pictures of moving water. I wanted to try it out at
Boulder Falls, the waterfall I went to with Elisabeth last week, so on my
way back to Boulder I stopped there. Here are some of the pictures I took (the first two are of Boulder Creek, when I was learning how to do it):
This morning I took a self-guided walking tour of the
University of Colorado campus, since I practically live on campus and had only
seen part of it. All the building are so beautiful and there is so much green space.
The campus itself doesn’t really have any major streets going through it, which
I like.
I don’t really have anything planned until my mom gets here
Wednesday morning, so I am looking forward to spending the next five days just
enjoying Boulder!
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