Labor Day Weekend

Another great weekend in beautiful Colorado: Friday evening I biked up Sunshine Canyon (more like partly cloudy with scattered showers). This road was significantly less steep than Magnolia but I still had a wild ride on the way down! I had a spirit moment with an elk on the side of the road - we locked eyes for a few minutes before a car drove by and severed the connection. I've been contemplating spirit animals as of late - I tend to associate with the bobcat/lynx/cougar family, but also with aspects of mountain goats, beavers, and elk. Saturday morning I drank lots of espresso and cut lots of wood - the city of Boulder has a program by which folks like myself can sign a contract and pay $15 in exchange for access to a lot where the Parks & Open Space department drops off surplus wood from maintenance activities. This round I gathered lots of wrist-size wood for starting fires; next time I'll bring my saw to cut up larger logs (and get an upper-body workout). My roommate and I had brunch with a Couchsurfer who stayed with us last Monday evening. She is a delightful woman from Ann Arbor (originally from Thailand) and shared many stories from her trek through the backcountry. Saturday afternoon my roommate was playing violin at a wedding in Grand Lake on the western side of Rocky Mountain National Park, so I tagged along. We drove Trail Ridge Road on the way over the divide - wow! That evening we hiked a couple miles from a random trail head into the park and set up camp in a grove of trees next to a wide meadow. After enjoying some pesto and bananagrams, we attempted to sleep, but were kept awake by a terrifying, high-pitched whine very close to the tent. It didn't help that a couple hours earlier on the trail we had run into a gigantic bull moose who snorted at us when we got too close. I managed to get some rest after picturing a peaceful moose family sleeping in the field. After doing some research, I'm fairly positive the shrill noise was the distressed mating call of a lonely bull elk. Sunday afternoon, I had some plans to backpack in the James Peak Wilderness with grad school colleagues (I feel old saying "colleagues"), but those plans quickly unraveled. I was pretty exhausted anyway, and enjoyed the evening with Chipotle and Mountain Men, my most recent Netflix favorite. Today (Labor Day) I worked on a programming assignment, biked to some live bluegrass near the creek, and did some grocery shopping. This evening my roommate and I biked up to Settlers Park, one of my favorite spots for a quick mountain hike fix. Still loving my new life in Boulder one month in!