Colorado Part 2

Welcome, rocky reader, as this week I give you a rundown of our second full week here in Colorado.

We're now on our way back to California, fully apprised of the meaning of Amtrak time and prepared to get there when we get there. In fact, we've added in an extra overnight stop in Sacramento so we have plenty of time in hand. Anyway, Sacramento is actually quite nice and we've no objections to staying another night there.

We started our second week in Colorado in a traditional Boulder manner, by walking halfway up a mountain, and running into some friends whilst doing so. We only know a couple of people in Boulder, but given the local propensity for walking up mountains, it's perhaps not surprising that we ran into them. The other Boulder trope is that it doesn't matter how steep the path is, or how hot or exhausted you are, some nutcase in lycra is going to come running past you.

Anyway, the walking around here is obviously tremendous, with amazing mountain views and well maintained paths. And a lot of dogs and runners.

On our day off on Monday we went to a former gold mine up in the Rockies, not far from the Continental Divide. To get there, we drove through Central City, Colorado and its sister city Black Hawk, which are tiny places that have almost become ghost towns. Bizarrely, the locals have tried to reinvigorate them by introducing casino gambling, so you encounter this very odd site of two apparently deserted towns nestled in mountain valleys, with multiple casinos and not much else. Odd.

The gold mine itself was wonderfully atmospheric, with a fantastic tour guide that really brought it alive. It all felt safe, and it was clear to me that our hosts cared about safety more than anything else, but this is still the US which has different standards to Europe in this regard; it still felt like something which just wouldn't be open to the public in Europe.

On this trip, we realized we were further from the sea than we'd ever been (about 1000 miles in any direction; in the UK you're never more than about 70 miles from the sea), and also higher in altitude: the gold mine was about 9000 feet above sea level. We were reminded of this when one of our party, a teenager visiting from Denmark, had a bit of a faint. Our mountain-dwelling hosts nodded knowingly and said a lot of things about electrolytes, which apparently are vital to staying hydrated up here. However, Helen's opinion of Gatorade wasn't one that I can reasonably publish.

The rest of the week was spent enjoying Boulder's wonderful weather, then watching a packed-out baseball game at the Colorado Rockies stadium in Denver. The Rockies play in a rather fetching shade of purple, although interestingly, their high-altitude stadium is somewhat disliked by the pitchers (the ball doesn't curve in the air as much here, and a well-hit ball flies further).

An unexpected benefit of our time in Colorado was a windfall in the "50 states of plates". We managed to bag many of the more Southern states, surprisingly, and now just have one more to get (Delaware). That may need a special trip East...