An Epic Weekend
28/05/2008Memorial Day Weekend rocked.
Saturday:
Visited Boulder. I was interested in checking it out, and seeing how much of a hippie town it really was. David suggested we also go to the Celestial Seasonings factory that’s a little outside of Boulder, and since I am rather enthusiastic about tea I could not refuse.
Despite being a well-known tea brand, the Celestial Seasonings factory was actually rather small. We went on a tour, for which the ticket is a package of tea, and while you’re waiting you can sample any of their teas for free:
Celestial Seasonings is adorable:
Just like on the tea, quotes and words of wisdom are everywhere:
Ford samples some tea:
The theater where the tour began:
The day we went, the factory wasn’t in operation (they don’t need to operate every day in the off season, aka summer) so it was quiet and we just saw big bags of tea ingredients. There was a tea room for tea that was already mixed, which smelled very nice. The best room, however, was the mint room. The door has to be kept closed as to prevent mint aromas from infecting all other tea ingredients. Walking in was like hitting a wall of mint. 2/3 of the tourists couldn’t handle it and ran out immediately, and the last 1/3 were standing inside inhaling the minty goodness. Sinuses, totally cleared. Apparently, if the factory exploded or something, you would smell mint a mile away. Awesome.
Factory tour was followed by intense Celestial Seasonings shopping.
One more fun fact: The reason there are no strings or paper tags on the tea bags is to save the environment. Saves those trees.
After Celestial Seasonings, we were incredibly hungry and headed into Boulder only to spend like half an hour looking for a parking place. Boulder was packed, partially because of the carnival and outdoor market going on. We went to get pasta, by which point we were too hungry to make any reasonable decisions about food, but somehow we made it. There was also some extremely sketchy Nutella ice cream, which was really just chocolate (major disappointment). After we were fed, we shopped at the outdoor Pearl Street Mall, which was very nice.
There were also two people playing didgeridoos:
After buying earrings and some records on Pearl St., we headed over to the outdoor market and carnival. Ford was totally into the rides, so she did that while I bought even more earrings.
Meanwhile, I was here:
Totally fun day. We passed Denver on the way back:
Sunday:
See previous (bruffin) post.
Monday:
Skiing at A-Basin. I had never skied before, and Ford had just once, so we were essentially n00bs. A-Basin (Arapahoe Basin) is less a tourist resort than a place where locals go to ski and snowboard, so everyone else there was really hardcore and really good. First step was driving into the mountains.
A good sign:
Since we were skiing n00bs, at first we sucked. I couldn’t turn, I couldn’t snowplow, I couldn’t do anything. But after a little while, with David’s expert training, we improved a lot and got a little more comfortable.
Here’s where I kept getting stuck and sliding backwards. Wow I was bad.
Eventually we improved enough that an actual ski lift was necessary:
Ford totally skied in a tshirt.
Here’s some great videos of us while we still were learning the basics. Note how reluctant I am to actually go down the slope and try to stall:
Ford skiing, no nonsense, down the slope:
Skiing is hard. Sometimes I fell down… and just stayed there:
Ford was pretty good about not falling:
But even she had one major yard sale:
Mountains are so great.
After we went down our first real run (i.e. went halfway up the mountain and then down) we broke for lunch. I suffered from acute mountain sickness.
After we completed a couple runs (Wrangler and Sundance on this map), we had mastered not being extremely scared, parallel turns, and getting up once we’d fallen down. Pretty good progress for one day, thanks to expert instruction, and being pushed a lot. The scariest part was probably all the hardcore people flying by (sometimes literally) as we moved at 2mph being terrified.
By then we were exhausted and needed to return our skiis anyway. Ford searching for the Rental shop:
We said bye to A-Basin and started on the journey home. Next weekend is the last weekend A-Basin will be open, and then it’s closing for the season.
On the way home. Buffalo Peak, at the base of which is the town of Frisco:
A 14er is the class of mountains that are 14k feet high. Here’s the list of them, and Colorado has a bunch of them. The mountain on the right is Quandary, the 13th highest 14er. 
The continental divide:
On the way back, we drove through South Park (a park is a big flat expanse of land, surrounded by mountains), and saw the town, Fairplay, that the show is based on.
This looks totally fake, but it’s not. Colorado is so great.
