Staycation for the Birds

Non-migrating avians have been bellying up to our heated birthbath and flocking around our feeder

A flock of robins (below) has all but taken over the birdbath.



The bird feeder atop a pole stuck into the ground attracts smaller birds (below) until a (relatively) large flicker chases them off.

Squirrels patrol the snow (below), picking up any scattered birdseed, and occasionally, the neighbored fox comes around seeking a squirrel to snack on (I've never caught Foxy with my camera, but trust me that s/he lives nearby).


Meanwhile, Johnny Cash, the Cat in Black (below) is an avid birdwatcher. He really doesn't care to go outside into the cold -- especially when he might get his paws wet in the snow.

Summer Waning in Beautiful Boulder

Colorful plantings in Boulder's pedestrian zone attract photographers

Tens of thousands -- probably more like hundreds of thousands -- of visitors come to Boulder, CO, every year: vacationers en route from Denver to Rocky Mountain National Park, parents of University of Colorado students, fans of CU (not UC, but CU) football and other teams, scientists visiting the city's prestigious laboratories, business travelers and folks from elsewhere in the Rockies in town for a getaway at the foot of the Flatirons. Sooner or later, everyone visits the Pearl Street Mall, a beautifully landscaped and immaculately maintained pedestrian mall along a four-block stretch of Boulder's historic downtown.

Visitors and locals alike love to hang out on "the Mall," watching buskers perform their acts, listening to street musicians, attending one of several warm-weather weekend festivals, attending free Wednesday evening Band on the Bricks and Friday Noon Tunes performances in summer, or just strolling to or from dozens of intriguing places to drink, dine and shop. The floral display, from the tulips of spring to blossoms that linger until the first hard frost, are the warm-weather backdrop for all of these other attractions (in winter, little lights are strung on bare trees, but that's still a few months off).

We are lucky enough to live just a few blocks from the Mall, and as I was walking downtown the other day, admiring the plants, I was taken by the stunning array of healthy coleus plants. I took a number of closeup pictures, which I present here now on a misty romantic day that is a souvenir of the sunny summer days that are about to give way to autumn. I leave it to the gardning enthusiasts among you to ideintify exactly which coleus varieties I photographed. The coleus are still there, and will be until they freeze or are are snowed on.

Boulder Celebrates the Fourth in Style

Close-to-home entertainment, music and great fireworks on Independence Day

We rarely go far for any holiday, because Boulder knows how to celebrate. My husband and I, often with friends, have have cobbled together our own Fourth of July traditions from the city's many options. For years, a goup of us would meet at Chautauqua Park for a picnic and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra's free afternoon concert of Sousa marches and other lively songs. That event no longer takes place. Instead, the orchestra plays a concert on the evening of the 3rd in the historic Chautauqua Auditorium, a National Historic Landmark with great acoustics. My husband and I and good friends are taking a picnic and going to the concert.

We usually take a morning hike on the 4th. The most appropriately named destination areound here is the Fourth of July Mine in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, west of town, but tomorrow, we will more likely to stay closer to home. In lieu of the afternoon picnic in Chautauqua Park, we might veg out a bit at home. Then, friends are coming over for hors d'oeuvres and drinks before we all walk up to the University of Colorado's Folsom Field for free entertainment and fireworks University of Colorado photo).

We are carpooling with neighbors this evening, so it seems as if we will leave about smallest possible carbon footprint for our Fourth of July activities.

Staycationing on Independence Day

We don't tend to go anywhere on Independence Day Weekend, but a lot of people come to Boulder, as well as Denver and the Colorado Mountains. Boulder celebrates its Sesquicentennial this year, with a ceremonies and patriotic music at Chautauqua Park. It is capped off with a great ground show and spectacular fireworks at the University of Colorado's Folsom Field. For a list of free or low-cost daytime events in the Denver/Boulder metro area, click here, and for local fireworks, click here.

One Colorado Vacation Planner Excludes Boulder

En route back from Hawaii (more posts from that trip to come), I picked up a copy of the "Colorado Summer Vacation Planner 2009" (top right) at Denver International Airport this morning. A bit spacy after a full day on the Big Island and a red-eye nonstop flight from Kailua Kona International Airport, I thumbed through it on the ride home. There were the usual towns, resorts and counties in almost-alphabetical order: Aspen, Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, Cañon City, Chaffee County -- all the way to Winter Park.

Then I looked again. No Boulder! No Boulder? I know (and have repeated) the one-liner about "the People's Republic of Boulder," but as far as I knew, Boulder hadn't actually seceded from the State of Colorado, nor had Boulder been kicked out. Colorado towns as small as Ouray (population under 900) and even non-towns like Gateway, which is actually a resort development called Gateway Canyons Resort, near the Utah state line, get their own chapters. But no Boulder -- except in the lodging listings, where 11 properties are given.

I looked again through bleary red-eye flight eyes and finally noticed that this vacation planner is not the one issued by the Colorado Tourism Office, but rather by the Colorado Hotel & Lodging Association. The CTO's "2009 Official Sate Vacation Guide" (lower right) does not feature specific destination chapters, so low-keying Boulder is not quite so obvious. (I'm sorry that there's no larger image downloadable from the CTO's site, but you can see it here.) The covers of the two planners are similar: blue sky dome above a wildflower-filled meadow, with a couple of hikers on the CHLA's planner and a romantic couple lounging (off-trail) amid the flowers on the CTO's planner.

But back to omitting Boulder, oversight? Maybe. Deliberate? Maybe, perhaps because of an insufficient level of advertising support by city interests for state-wide tourism promotion efforts. Too bad? For sure.