Saturday morning arrived and we took our time getting up. It had been a busy trip and today would be long day with the red-eye flight that evening. We got down to the breakfast area, it was an above average spread and busy.
There was a lot of back and forth getting things down to the car and everything in the right places so nothing was lost or forgotten. Yesterday's preparation paid off and it came together in good time. We checked out of our last room and headed to Goodwill to drop off our extra stuff.
The drive to Boulder was uneventful, we arrived and parked. Lorna had heard that the Banjo Billy Tour Bus was a good time so we got tickets. It gave us a chance to absorb some of the downtown. The place was historic, modern, hip and quaint all at once. Being a college town known for fitness the place had a nice vibe. The bus came along and off we were touring the town learning all sorts of odds and ends. History, ghost stories and anything else the tour guide could throw at us. It was relaxing and entertaining. The bus was decked out with rustic lumber surfaces, inside and out with old parlor furniture making it uniquely laid back and homelike.
Getting off the bus we had found our appetite. We ducked into Lindsay's Delli and had a simple tuna melt. One place the bus did not go was the home seen in the opening of the television show Mork & Mindy. It was 3 or 4 block from the town center so it made a good after lunch walk. There it was, just like in 1970's TV! The owner was out tending shrubs. We took a few shots from across the street and were on our way.
Back in town we had some time to chill and enjoy the place. Pearl Street is permanently closed for a 4 block stretch and is an open-air mall space with lots of street entertainment. At most corners and mid-block were musicians, and other performers. It's a big piece of the culture, at the top of the hour you could see performers waiting to the side. I suspect they have scheduled slots. One red headed fellow and his guitar arrived near us and began to play. Before he finished his second tune he broke a string and that was the end of his gig. Another older dude was doing an acrobatic sword swallowing routine. There were jugglers, drummers and an ethnic dance festival going on under a tent. This was a happening place on a Saturday afternoon.
The afternoon was wearing on and a little rain was moving in. Back to the car and down the highway to Denver we went. After a fuel stop we dropped the car off with 4558 miles added and made our way into the airport. We found a quiet food court, got something to eat from Wolfgang Puck then chilled and blogged while waiting for departure. After a last-minute sprint for a gate change we found ourselves on a packed red-eye flight, not what I had envisioned. The flights went of with out a hitch otherwise and we landed back in Portland, Maine on a late spring Sunday morning.
The 2012 Route 66 trip was easy to get my arms around. It had a definition and was a known thing. This trip was more organic, it wasn't predefined and was more of an exploration. We enjoyed the many different places, the vistas, terrain, people and the many things that were not at all New England. Getting to visit so many national parks, monuments and historic sites I had heard of my whole life was a hoot. So many towns, parks and places from the news, TV westerns and history were now real to us. The alternate Route 66 leg closed a gap in that story and tied the trips together. I'm writing this some 8 months after returning home. Once again what strikes me is how often I can relate directly to something I hear in the news, making it all real again. The pictures and memories are ours and sometimes just for the heck of it I'll drop in on a town using Google Maps Street view and escape to the Mountain Time zone.
