Playing Tourist in My State: A Couple Days in Boulder Colorado, Part I

John and I decided to play tourist in our own state and spend a couple days last week in Boulder, Colorado (if you click on the linked “Boulder, Colorado” you’ll see a lovely little video giving you a feel for Boulder, Colorado from the bouldercoloradousa.com website).

THE ACCOMMODATIONS

We opted for a rustic experience in our accommodation choices, and stayed at the A-Lodge/Boulder Adventure Lodge in the Fourmile Canyon area of Boulder.

I couldn’t help myself, it is early Spring and the landscape is still pretty stark around Colorado so I just had to take the photos in Black & White!

The Lodge has a cool two-level lounging area and they also serve craft beers and have a daily “Happy Hour”. The accommodations were decent although sparse, but you couldn’t beat the $70 a night price.

Excellent value for the money; and if you are really looking to save money, they also have like a $22 a night hostel (you share a room with others). There were lots of young outdoorsy adventure seeking type dudes staying there, I am sure they were enjoying the low rates for the hostel area.

John and I spent some time in the lower level of the Lodge, sipping craft beers and reading (John) and crocheting (me with my travel granny squares making project).

I loved this cool piece of art in the Lodge:

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

So Boulder has a lot of independent bookstores and a lot of cool thrift shops, and visiting them was part of our plan while in Boulder!

We started our adventure with a trip to the downtown Boulder shopping area Pearl Street and spent time wandering about the Boulder Book Store.

The bookstore was pretty amazing; and I could have spent a day there (but there was so much more to see in Boulder). The original building that houses the bookstore was built in 1899 and you can see the historical architecture throughout the building.

Here are a couple photos to give you a flavor of what it was like to wander about the bookstore:

I had my favorite (and now well worn) tote bag in tow; but I was well behaved and only filled it with one new book from the Boulder Book Store.

I also filled it with some new stickers for my water bottle, laptop and John’s tool chest (which he covers with stickers) as they had an amazing and reasonably priced sticker collection:

After the bookstore, we wandered around the Pearl Street shopping district and stumbled upon this very fun thrift/vintage shop – Heady Bauer. I was already having an awesome day so I appreciated the sign in front of their door: “Best Day Ever”:

When first entering the shop you see a huge wall display of crocheted blankets, including granny square blankets, mounted on the wall!

Seriously creative art and recycling!

I bought a used book there (I didn’t want the book from our first stop to be lonely!) – an original edition (complete with 1970s cover art) of one of my favorite science fiction books of all time: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

It will be fun to re-read it in the version that it was originally published.

Oh we had a laugh when we stopped at the clothing store Free People to look around (I do like some of their clothes). Do you remember when I was endlessly working on drawstring bags? Well we came across a line of pants that to us looked like “drawstring bag pants”!

I feel like I could definitely learn to make those pants!

I’ll continue the rest of our Boulder adventures in my next post, and I want to close this post with some really cool embroidery art they had in the Free People store above their clothing displays: embroidered coffee and tea burlap sacks:

That is gorgeous recycling!