Outdoors in Boulder

One of the things that I absolutely LOVE about Boulder is that the city and its residents do not take their lovely location for granted.  Much of the city itself is planned to encourage people to get outdoors--and residents respond. The town is dotted with parks, bike paths and open spaces.   This is not a sit in the house and watch TV kind of town.  There are also lots free of outdoor events to attend, especially in the  summer time.

Yesterday the kids, Jan (my mother in law) and I got out to a couple of different areas.  After seeing my mother off (she flew down to visit her mother yesterday), we just had an hour or so before lunch time.  So, we ran up to a nearby park here on the north end of town: Foothills Community Park.

This is a nice, large park that runs right up to the foothills on the north end of town.  It is a newer park, which means it is pretty sunny there; the trees have not grown up much yet.  There are lots of wonderful smooth paths to bike or rollerblade on, a roller hockey court, huge fields for flying kites, or launching rockets, or flying remote controlled planes, etc.  There are also two playground areas (one for bigger kids and one for younger ones), covered pavilions, restrooms, and a climbing area with just a couple of pieces of equipment--but it is fun.  Here are some photos of us dinking around in the park, to give you an idea of what it looks like:

After lunch, we headed downtown to the heart of Boulder, Boulder Creek.  As a child, I loved wading in the creek, and I still enjoy it (though that water is generally quite cold--mostly run off from freshly melted snow in the rockies).  It is also simply a lovely area.  Boulder has done a great job of keeping the area around the creek pretty, clean and very accessible to all (there are even wheelchair accessible platforms along it in spots).  

(there is quite a bit if art along the creek areas as well)

After dinner yesterday, we headed back outside one final time.  One of the local shopping areas (29th Street) has live bands and a food truck out every Saturday night (no charge), so we headed down (with my father in law and my nephew in tow).  

The band played lots of covers, from several decades.  They did a great job of keeping the crowd energetic and never having a lull on the "dance floor."

And YES, Marika and I danced to pretty much every song (for 2 hours):

I hope you had a chance to get out of doors and have fun this weekend too!

--Hadley