Day 26 - Gem Show and Mountains

Today we all slept in, until Dali the parrot decided we were quite late with her breakfast and started squawking (although I maintain that she's not quite as loud as her brother, Picasso). Ben made us raspberry nut muffins for breakfast (yum!), then we slowly got ready for the day. Natalia and I went to Gem Faire, a gem and mineral show, with her work friend Bryony and her husband Craig. They are new Golden Retriever puppy parents, before we left for the expo we spent a wonderful bit of time playing with the two wiggling bundles of fluff! Despite being from the same litter, Barkshire is a good 15 lbs bigger than his sister Diamond, but she clearly rules the roost and has already learned how to turn door knobs and get into cabinets by 4 months old. Puppy prodigy?

In light of my experience at the Gem and Mineral Show in Tucson, this one was very small and manageable, mostly strings and strings of beads with a few booths of minerals and jewelry scattered around. The four of us were enjoying wandering but weren't finding anything too compelling until we came upon the opal booth. He had some simply magnificent pieces, and even let us touch and hold stones appraised at $100,000! I might have swooned a little. I was picking through the boulder opal necklaces when I noticed his wife wearing a beautiful necklace that looked to be made with parts of a pocket watch embellished with opals and crystals. She directed me over to the other side of the booth and oh my goodness – I'd never seen anything like these! She takes old watches and clocks and turns them into necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings, some adorned with opal, some with small crystals. A few were even still running! Mindful of budgeting I restrained myself from buying the amazing necklace and earring set and instead found a really neat little necklace pendant that has two beautiful black opals set into it (she did say that they will be at the next Tucson show if I wanted to buy more...) Natalia got the steal of the day when she bargained for a half dozen polished and raw opals, the rest of us were suitably impressed with her skill!

After the show we went on a little drive up one of the many canyons that leads towards Salt Lake, winding our way up towards two of the ski resorts. This morning we had contemplated taking the tram to the summit at Solitude (?) but decided against it because of the temperature in the low 40s down here way below the base of the mountain. Once we drove up there this afternoon we were glad we had skipped, because it was the tail end of Oktoberfest and there was no parking to be had! Still, the drive was gorgeous and well worth the little detour on our way home.

Despite only spending a day here, my first impression of Salt Lake City is a positive one. It seems to be about the same comfortable-but-large-enough size that Tucson is, surrounded by incredible mountains (and top notch skiing that's less than 30 minutes away!), and so far the people I've met seem very friendly. There are a few quirks that come from living in a city with such a high proportion of Mormon residents, particularly that all the liquor stores are state run, and most everything is closed on Sundays. Still, I get the sense that this would also be a place I would be happy living, surrounded by mountains but also close to water, with a lot of outreach programs and social services that I could work with, close to friends and family in both Denver and Tucson. Hmmm.

We had dinner with Ben's mother Linda tonight, and the two of us had a very enjoyable time talking while dinner was baking. Ben made quick rise pizza dough, Natalia and I prepared some rosemary sauteed onions and seared peppers and mushrooms, and we had a build your own pizza night. I was gifted with the pdf of the Tyler family cookbook, so look out future road trip hosts – we might have to try making pizza! Linda also was able to give me some good advice for my choice of routes tomorrow, and now I'm really looking forward to taking the scenic route on highway 93 instead of I-15. There's a third potential that butts up against Yellowstone, but it's already a 10 hour drive as is, if I wanted to stop for a little bit it would add at least an hour or two of driving in and back, so I think I might avoid the temptation altogether and just go through the mountains. Plus I'll be passing the “Appendicitis Hill Wilderness Study Area”, which just might require a stop for a photo just for the oddity of it ;)

Pictures!

 Diamond and Barkshire

 They were so cute! I refrained from posting all 20 photos that I took, you're welcome ;)

 View of the mountains from town

 Driving up the canyon

 I'll admit, Utah, you're doing a good job of convincing me that this is a place I would love to live!

Day 25 - Traveling to Utah via Wyoming

To Salt Lake City at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Colorado

Miles: 450 miles

Time: 7 hours 30 minutes

Back on the long road again, this time from Ft. Collins to Salt Lake City! Jordan had to go off to work but Cei and I ventured out into the gray misty morning to have breakfast at the Wild Boar Cafe. Any place that sells their coffee in small, medium, large, “bucket” and bottomless refills is clearly the kind of place I want to frequent often! The breakfast sandwich and the raspberry white chocolate scone were both very tasty, made all the better by good company and conversation. :)

The drive itself was a lot of fun, it was exciting to be back on the road. Northern Colorado was full of gentle twists and turns up and down rolling hills, and it seemed shockingly soon when I hit the state line. As I crossed into southern Wyoming I remembered my giant list of podcasts waiting to be listened to, so the Splendid Table and ERcast kept me company for a while. I never knew Wyoming could be so pretty – it really is a very nice drive along I-80 with a lot of different terrains and landscapes. I did get a bit of an unpleasant shock when it started snowing. Snowing! September! Pumping gas in the snow was not something I expected to be doing quite yet in my trip, but there we have it – one of the many “firsts” on this trip, September 27^th was the first day I got snowed on.

I arrived in Salt Lake and was welcomed into the beautiful apartment of Natalia and Ben. Natalia and I were good friends in high school, we'd stayed in sporadic touch over the years, and when she got married this summer we got back in closer touch. At their wedding they kindly invited me to come visit so I took them up on the offer :) Again with the feeling of “wow, my friends are adults!”- their apartment is 15 minutes from the mountains, with beautiful views, lots of space, and is packed full of books and movies, even Dali the parrot made the trek from Colorado to live here with them! It's a wonderful place to start their married life together, they both seem very happy with where they are in their lives, and of course that makes me incredibly happy for them! After I lugged my bag inside, Natalia and I went out for Indian and brought some home for Ben. We all settled in to chat and laugh for the next few hours with recordings of Dara O'Briain shows (spelled like that, he's hilarious if you haven't seen him!) before bundling ourselves off to bed with plans to sleep in nice and late.

Pictures from the day:

 Cei and Gnome

 Gnome and the "bottomless" coffee at Wild Boar Cafe

 I pulled over to program my GPS and saw this

 Misty rain in Northern Colorado

 First sighting of snow! In Southern Wyoming

 Away from the snow by the time I got near the Utah boarder

 Wyoming has a good amount of wind power going on, it was nice to see all the turbines

Day 24 - Ft. Collins

I feel like I could have easily spent a week in Ft. Collins, clearly I've missed out by not having spent a significant amount of time here in the past! I started my Thursday with a nice leisurely cup of coffee, incidentally it was in an amazingly cute owl mug, but I did also have the choice of a mug with a southern blot image (that DNA fragment gel column for those of you who, like me, only vaguely remember a little college cell bio) – I feel like those two mugs do explain this household very aptly, and both made me smile.

Taking advantage of the beautiful park across the street, I went for a run (well, more like a jog) and discovered lots of things that caught my eye, most of which are documented in photos. I tried to track my progress using an app I have just for such things to figure out how far I got, but I had futzed with my settings on my phone the other day and forgot to turn on the “background refresh” or something like that, so it concluded that I magically floated from place to place every time I turned the app back on to check it, and traveled about 5 miles in only 59 seconds but was somehow away from home for 50 minutes. :p <Insert that adage about technology only being as smart as the programmer here> Despite my iPhone shortcomings, it was a lot of fun to realize that despite not being a runner in any way, shape, or form, I could still demand that of my body and do just fine (well, I got a tiny blister on my toe, but I think it was a fair trade), plus I got to see horses!

I came home and got ready for the day, then poked around a little online to try and find a neighborhood where I could go walk and maybe sit and blog a little. I discovered a coffee shop/bookstore that sounded like a good place to start, and happily wandered around College St and the nearby areas for a few hours. My first choice of the Bean Cycle wasn't a bad one – they clearly encouraged people doing just what I was intending by providing lots of seating, power strips, and 50 cent coffee refills, plus they had a decent used book selection and even a free book bin that I mightily resisted. As someone who doesn't really know much about coffee, I will say that the house blend did seem a little...weak, perfectly drinkable but nothing spectacular considering this place has a 6 foot tall board explaining the various brewing methods they use.

I had to go move my car (and saw lots of cool statues and people playing public pianos along the way), and happened to park right in front of the Choice City Butcher and Deli just as I was trying to decide where to go for lunch. So I went in and had the delight of sampling the “Colorado” ruben sandwich, made with bison instead of beef – in retrospect I should have taken a picture but...it was so tasty I didn't think about that until it was gone. The lemon dill coleslaw was a nice touch as a side dish, with diced cabbage instead of strips that facilitated its delivery in a little plastic to-go cup (they have a number of tables but you still are served everything ready to take away).

Since this parking wasn't time limited I just left the car there, glanced at the menu of the Chocolate Cafe next door (with a dessert list twice as long as the lunch menu, a stop for my next trip for sure!), and then continued my wandering. I did duck into Ace to pick up a bright orange roadside emergency kit, I have a feeling that if I have one I won't need it, but if I didn't I would inevitably be wishing for it later. It's money well spent that I probably should have spent earlier (like when I bought the car) :p I had a lot of fun wandering into stores and shops; I was a little disappointed that the cheese store I read about online seems to have either gone out of business or relocated, but the whole area seemed very friendly and accessible to locals, students, and visitors (maybe student budgets a little less so in general, but I did see a few CSU sweatshirts walking around). Free on street parking was abundant but tended to involve circling around once or twice to find something open, but there were also parking garages available.

And then I came across the Little Bird Bakery! My first coffee shop stop had been more of a dark wood, tall ceiling, quiet contemplation amongst the old books kind of environment. This was bright, charming, and gave the sense that it was experiencing an unusual lull in a normally bustling atmosphere. When I asked about wifi I was told that they don't have one, they're typically so busy that they don't encourage folks to linger, but since it was a slow time of day she might be inclined to tell me that the bar down the street has a strong signal and doesn't require a password ;) I saw that they had a pistachio-cornmeal biscotti right after I'd already requested a pecan sandie to go with my coffee, so I sampled both! The coffee was very tasty (and just the right strength), served in a steel french press that must have had a triple filter because I didn't end up with a single ground even in my last cup (which never happens!). The cookies were both simple and delicious, not overly fancy or full of extra bits and pieces, just two good cookies that tasted exactly how they should. Definitely a good find, I would happily go back, particularly on Sunday when they bake their Earl Grey Apricot bread :D

It was about time to go home and meet Cei to go to yoga at Elan Yoga and Fitness, so I packed myself up and wandered back to the car. I've never done this particular style of “warm” yoga (not to be confused with “hot” yoga). The sequence of moves sometimes moved pretty fast, and there were a few that I was unfamiliar with entirely (hello handstands!), but the whole thing was both energizing and relaxing – I left smiling. The instructor was very good at explaining quickly and accurately what a position involved, so that even if I was unfamiliar with it I could still keep up with everyone else using her descriptions of how to move, without flailing or having to watch my neighbors constantly. She gave a lot of variations for different experience levels and was really encouraging and supportive the whole time while also offering a nice physical challenge. An individual class was a bit pricy but they did have a super deal for two weeks of unlimited gym usage and classes, if I had been staying another day or two I absolutely would have just done that. The studio also offers a work-exchange to cover the cost of attending classes, which I thought was a really neat idea. 

When I was at the zoo with Jessie and the kids, she suggested tracking down a particular food truck for lunch. Hey PB&J wasn't out that day, but the menu ideas had stuck with me and when I mentioned them to Jordan and Cei, we all decided that we should absolutely try replicating some of them. So off we went to the store to pick up supplies, and when we got home we started creating! We chose the “Figgy Piggy” - fig jam, almond butter, goat cheese, bacon, and rosemary honey; and the “Thai Basil” - spicy crunchy peanut butter, fresh basil, orange marmalade, and flaked coconut. We made the rosemary honey by heating some honey with a sprig of rosemary from their tree, and the spicy peanut butter was made by mixing regular peanut butter with liberal amounts of cayenne and powdered ginger, with a hint of nutmeg for good measure. The original called for crushed peanuts but we figured chunky PB was the same thing, essentially. The Figgy was decidedly the hit (bacon!) although Jordan and I enjoyed the spicy peanut butter – I would make that again just to use on regular sandwiches. The basil was a surprisingly nice flavor in a PB&J, and although the goat cheese was very strong, it somehow went nicely with all of the competing sweet/salty/savory flavors in that sandwich. We proceeded to stay up way too late talking about science, art, pop culture, life, court cases, and bad first lines of books (again), then tottered ourselves off to bed. What an amazing day!

Pictures!

 Running though Rolland Moore Park

 Flying boot statues

 An unused fountain

 Wind chimes over the river

 Horses!

 Hopscotch :)

 Wandering around

 Piano in progress of being repainted

 Optimistic graffiti

 My beautiful Murphy's Law emergency kit

 Gnome at Little Bird

 Bulb headed Buddha?

 This is Mr. Fishy Pants. That's actually his name.

 Peanut Butter and Jelly deliciousness!

Days 22 and 23 - Last friend visits, moving to Ft. Collins

To Ft Collins at EveryTrail

EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Colorado
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Distance: 74 miles

I knew when I got to Denver that even spending almost 3 weeks in town I would still find myself in a rush at the end to see people, or to spend more time with people I had already seen. There are several people that I didn't get to see at all (I'm sorry it didn't work out!) and a few that I would have loved to spend more time with (well, just about everyone really), but I guess that's how it goes sometimes. It just means I have to come back and visit again!

On Tuesday I had a "wow the world is small" moment and met up with the sister of a fellow SMA alum who I met while visiting former teachers last week, who is now friends at CSU with someone I was friends with in high school. Confused? She and I got to talking and she told me that her sister wants to be a midwife and wants to go to Africa, so I asked if she would pass along my phone number and email to see if her sister would be interested in chatting about my time in West Africa working in a maternity. She got certified to teach ESL after high school and went to live in Colombia for a year, traveling around the region a bit and perfecting her Spanish. We met up for smoothies on 16th Street and prattled away for over an hour, I think we could have easily talked for half the day about living in other countries, learning new languages, different educational programs and pathways to entering midwifery, and the quirks of international bus travel (to name a few). Unexpected to find a bit of a kindred spirit through such a complex web of connections, but well worth the frustration of finding a parking spot downtown (I was proud that once I found a spot I managed to parallel park on the first try!)

I had to leave because I'd also promised to meet up with Bailey, a friend I met back when we were both in college. She works long hours and had been out of town and this was going to be our chance to finally see each other, so I said goodbye to Jubilee and drove down Broadway to meet her at Sweet Action. It was my second time in the week being in that part of town and I was happy for the excuse to wander around all the neat shops and restaurants that have popped up there. I guess I must not have driven south on Broadway often enough, because I know those stores didn't just appear in the past three years, but it did give off the impression of a neighborhood in the middle of a revitalization. An excellent way to spend the afternoon, catching up with friends in person and then on the phone as I sat and watched the dog walkers go by (French Bulldogs are apparently the "in" pet these days) If you ever go to Sweet Action, I highly recommend the peanut butter and jelly ice cream, don't let the "vegan" label stop you, it's delicious!

Yesterday I said goodbye to Denver and headed north to Ft. Collins. I managed to time it perfectly to hit rush hour traffic, construction, and pretty much every red light possible. It reminded me of why I love Tucson and the "traffic" there. We still have construction, bad drivers, and red lights, but in the summer when the spread out town is missing 1/3 of its residents, traffic is listening to the radio and hearing about a 3 minute delay on I-10 while you zip up Oracle instead. :p

I got to Cei and Jordan's apartment before they were home; I had in mind that I wanted to go on a little walk around the neighborhood after being stuck in my car for the past 2 hours, and then I discovered a huge park full of trails right across the street! So off I went for a nice walk, trying to refrain from dancing to my zumba music playing on my headphones, smiling at the assortment of bikers, joggers, dog walkers, and tennis players that I encountered. I did see a faded hopscotch outline on my way back and I *may* have turned around just to jump on it (and almost trip over my own feet).

Jordan had gotten home by the time I did, and I "helped" (watched) her start dinner while we chatted away a mile a minute - sometimes you just have that ability when you meet someone, I always like when it happens with the partner of a friend (we met briefly around New Year's but this was our first chance to really get to know each other) She's incredibly smart, very well informed on so many topics; I was happy to find that we not only have a lot in common but also a lot not in common that gave us a lot to talk about. She has this amazing ability to remember full names of people (besides the ones you have to memorize in school because they did something famous) and finds connections between topics that once she says them you kind of think "oh yeah, that was totally there this whole time!" but it didn't come into focus until she points it out. Recently I've started thinking about how interesting it would be to write biographies of people I know, everyone seems to have such compelling life stories even by the time they're in their 20's and 30's - from the little I know I suspect Jordan's life story has a fascinating book waiting to be written.

As we sat down to dinner I couldn't help but feel impressed by the passing of time. Cei and I met in elementary school, lost touch for a few years, and reconnected in high school. It's easy (and fun at times) to wander reminiscing paths of our childhood, but it's also nice to see that our present lives are so overwhelmingly different from those times. Cei and Jordan live in a beautiful little apartment that shocked me at how "adult" and real (vs. college dorm hodgepodge falling apart) it is - it's comfortable, full of furniture that may not be a matched set but go together in a cozy, lived-in way, with actual care and theme in the decorating that gives the clear impression of being well thought out and deliberate, and feels much more like a home than anything I would have thought to assemble together (so many good ideas!). They both seem well on their paths to where they want to be in life in terms of working and being in/applying to graduate programs, and seem to find a real joy and satisfaction in being exactly at the point in life that they're in. And here we were sitting down to an "adult" meal with more than one element (steak, green beans, rosemary mashed potatoes, and a delicious mushroom onion sauce), none of which had come out of a box and all of which had been successfully cooked by a trio of 20-somethings - it shouldn't be shocking, but I guess it just felt particularly impressive in that moment. It's not the life I'm leading right now as I give in to wander-lust and travel the country, but it's the kind of life I hope to have one day soon.

Photos!

 Banana?

 This is Ooofie, the sweetest fluffy old-man kitty

 Watching morning cartoons and waiting for breakfast

 Fluff!

 Very friendly cat in a tree

 This sounds crazy now, but when I first got to Burkina I suddenly had so much time to just sit and think and remember random things from my "America life" and one image that popped up a couple of times was the on-ramp from Sheridan to 6th avenue, I think Caitlin and I must have driven that route downtown a few times a week at least in the months before I moved to Tucson.

So I took pictures this time, although I wasn't too surprised when the memory didn't resonate like it used to

Day 21 - When was the last time I went to the Denver Zoo?

When was the last time you went to a zoo? When Mom and Uncle David visited me in Burkina in 2011 we went to the "Presidential Zoo" where he kept all the animals he'd had imported from around the continent. It was a little sad to see some of the animals in fairly small simple enclosures, but it was also pretty cool getting to scratch a hyena and pet an elephant, Uncle David even fed an enormous hippo! Before that I visited the Lupa Zoo in Ludlow, MA when I was in college. Before that I just don't remember - it must have been at least 10 years ago.

So needless to say, I was really excited when Jessie suggested we take the kids to go check it out! When you're accompanying a pair of two year-olds you don't spend much time in any one place, but we did manage a pretty good tour of the "zoo greatest hits" - we saw the baby snow leopard (!), tigers, zebras, polar bears, giraffes, elephants, sea lions, a few monkeys, quite a number of fish and snakes, and the komodo dragon. They were more interested on going on the carousal and the train than they were in the animals (I mean, they are 2, and admittedly I was glad they insisted because I enjoyed both!).

We were all tired and hungry by the time we got off the train ride, so we hustled the kids out of there and picked up an amazing (and filling) lunch at Watercourse Foods - a trendy hipster vegetarian restaurant with some delicious ideas and combinations. I'd been well exposed to tofu applications in college and enjoyed my blackened cajun tofu cesar wrap, but I also got to try seitan, in the form of seitan buffalo "wings". The texture was decidedly not chicken-like, but I suspect it would have been perfect shaved on the "ruben" sandwich, and the flavoring was spot on. The tomato curry bisque was also a highlight, and the staff was very friendly even in the face of threatening pre-nap time meltdowns.

I've realized that I'm talking about all these people that I'm staying with and haven't always said how I know them! Jessie and I grew up across the street from each other - I'm the same age as her younger sister Theresa, so I was "Little Jessie" and she was "Big Jessie". Now that we've both reached our adult heights, the irony of the 6 inch difference is not lost on us, but we stick with the names none the less. We had all lost touch by the time we were in our early-teens, but Jessie and I reconnected on Facebook a few years ago and have been staying in better touch since then. I had the pleasure of staying with Jessie, her daughter, and her mother for a few nights, and got to spend some time catching up with Theresa, her awesome boyfriend, and her two sons, and even some of their extended family that I haven't seen since we were all very young. It was an amazing experience for so many reasons which I hope to write more about later. Now that I've promised the kids lots of pictures so they can adventure with me: here are the photos!

 Baby snow leopard!

 The hyenas kindly decided to nap right up against the window for easy viewing

 I don't remember seeing Maned Wolves before, they look like very large foxes

 Giraffes

 They're really big!

 Hugging Klondike and Snow, the two polar bear cubs that were born when I was a kid

Splashing in the puddles was a favorite activity as we walked around

 River otter

Huge anaconda

 Glub glub

 African Green Mamba - it's so pretty for being dangerous

 Looking at the Komodo Dragon

 Head

 Perspective makes all the difference!

(photo by Jessie) I really love this one, I think I was talking to them about his "fingernails"

 This one was a crocodile but I still can't tell the difference between that and an alligator without Google's help

 Sea lions

 A young elephant in the new (very fancy) elephant pavillion

 Jessie and Dono on the carousal

(photo by Jessie) Me and the kids! I had a blast playing auntie, and I smiled every time I did or said something I know my mother would have said exactly that same way