Home and Away: Road Trip 2012 Part Four

Day 12, we drove to Boulder, CO, and spent the afternoon downtown, strolling down Pearl Street where Mary played in the water fountain and climbed the fake boulders, and I read The Lifeboat.

I hadn't really planned this leg of the trip so we didn't yet have a reservation for that night. After an extended visit to the REI store, we headed to Aurora, Denver to find some place to stay.

After checking in to our motel, we Yelped for a decent dinner joint and set off to enjoy some highly rated L&L's Hawaiian food. Tired, we hung out at the neighboring Barnes and Noble for a while, reading books and drinking hot chocolate.

We spent the next day visiting the children's museum, walking around downtown, visiting parks (where I think Mary developed her first crush watching the very talented skate boarders), and generally getting a "feel" for Denver. I liked the city but I found the traffic and infrastructure frustrating and the parks a little run down and creepy ("Mommy, why is that man drinking from a bag?"). However, I am not yet ready to cross Denver off the list of places I might one day like to live.

That night, as we lay sleeping, a shooter burst into the Batman screening at a cinema in Aurora, two streets down from our motel and a lot of people lost their lives or were injured. I am glad we didn't go to the movies that night, and I'm really saddened for the people affected.