Destination: 2 Days in Boulder Colorado
– A Road Trip From California to Colorado –
It all began one July weekend in the summer of 2007, it was four o’clock and I was off work and ready for the next adventure. And so it began…
Devin and I spontaneous decided to take off Friday after work on a 16 hour road trip to Colorado. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Alissa, had been living there for about a year and I HAD to visit before she moved back to California. Word of advice, when doing a road trip from California to Colorado, don’t leave Friday afternoon. The traffic is horrendous on the I15, we literally barely moved until we passed Las Vegas.
Finally, after what can only be described as an extremely long night, with about two hours of sleep between the both of us, we arrived in Colorado Saturday morning at 8 AM. We wanted to get right to exploring Boulder, but needed to take a quick nap…
… Once we were up and ready to go we hit Pearl Street, which is a cute outdoor area with shops and restaurants on a pedestrian only brick street. We could definitely tell we weren’t in California anymore based on the abundance of Croc sandals on everyone in sight, but I loved that it was the epitome of what you think of in Colorado. Sort of how Seattle or Portland just have that vibe, Boulder has it too, I don’t know the exact word I’m looking for but, to simplify, hypieish.
We ate lunch and then came up with the best plan ever, it involved Coors Light, and camping in the Rockies. Estes Park is gorgeous, and there are a ton of hiking trails and camping sites within the park, and although I didn’t pay attention to where we camped at the time, we had the best time ever sitting around the campfire drinking Coors Light. Really any campsite will provide beautiful scenery, you can’t go wrong.
The next morning we took an easy trail down Bear Lake Trailhead to Bierstadt Lake. I would highly recommend it for the scenic views it provides without having to end up as a sweaty mess. I wish we had more time to explore Estes Park but we only had two days and had to get going on our 17 hour ride back.
To this day I love telling people about the 17 hour road trip Devin and I took over the weekend on a whim. Still to this day friends will jokingly ask what outlandish thing I may have done that weekend, perhaps did I fly to Paris for two days, drive 2,800 miles to New York and back, and my reply is always the same, …life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all, and that’s just how Devin and I roll, always ready for the next adventure!
That’s my story,
xoxo, andrea