Boulder, Colorado.

11-6-22 BOULDER, CO: This is our second night here. We flew into Denver International Friday afternoon. The airport is spread over thousands of acres with huge empty spaces between the structures. After deplaning we walked, walked on people movers, walked, took a train shuttle, walked more to the buses to the rental car center and picked up a Budget car, and drove to Boulder and found our hotel. The flight was uneventful. 

At one point during the flight, I was looking out the window at dry, dusty farmland with a lot of circular fields. I fell asleep for an hour or so, and then looked out the window at the same dry, dusty farmland. There were a few ponds and lakes, all nearly empty. 

Jonathan showed up at the hotel a couple hours later, followed by Eoin, who came from his job at a tire place, where he's working when not being a math and engineering student at UC Boulder. Siobhan had to stay home to care for Juno, their rambunctious dog. 

The Boulderado Hotel dates from 1909 and has an original elevator from Otis. Our room has a knee wall, flowered wallpaper and adequate facilities and heat. There was snow the day before we arrived and patches of it are still present in the shadows. Today was cold and very windy with gusts that blew leaves and dust all around, first in one direction and then in the other. We stopped at Eoin’s house, in  the morning, and saw his car and the truck he is building.

We hiked a trail near the Flat Irons, large, upended sandstone formations at the front of the mountains. They have eroded to triangular shapes, hence the name. We hiked on a trail that parallels the rock formation, and saw a magpie and a Steller's jay. Many pix were taken. There were lots of people hiking. To the east there are the plains and to the west the mountains with Boulder at the cusp. Tomorrow we plan to see the University with Eoin as guide. 

Looking out the hotel room window--mountains and snow. It was incredibly windy all day.

The Flat Irons. Ocean-bottom sandstone uplifted during mountain building further west. The up-tilted and faulted sandstones were eroded from the top down leaving these shapes that tell you to go iron your shirt.

A closer look at the sandstone surface with pines and snow, doing the work of erosion.

Black-billed magpie. We saw a few of these.

Steller's jay. The blue really caught my eye.

Looking away from the mountains, Bouilder is nestled at the base of the mountains with the plains to the east. Like Denver, Boulder is over 5,000 feet in elevation.

In downtown Boulder on the Pearl St. mall, you can see one of Boulder's boulders in the backgrouind.