So it's been a while...but we're finally getting into the swing of things.
Phase I
Saturday was our second trip to the Boulder Farmer's Market, but our first trip on a nice and sunny day. Needless to say it was packed. The market is definitely far superior to the Atlanta one in Piedmont Park -- I'm basing that mainly on head count, number of stalls, variety, and delicious all-natural zero-waste food court (breakfast and lunch items).

I scored some local goat cheese coated with rosemary, organic tomatoes, a bag of spinach, peach jam, and radishes -- all from different vendors. And before all of that we got some fresh cooked (they had some sort of portable kitchen) breakfast burrito type things. They have this idea of a zero-waste system where everything is either recyclable or compostable (and most of the cups/strasws are actually a biodegradable plastic). Overall I'm definitely impressed. And did I mention this is all in downtown Boulder on a blocked off street next to the park and Boulder Creek?

Phase II
We heard about this pretty awesome place to go to called Estes Park (pronounced "ess-tiss" by the locals and if you pronounce it "ess-tees" you get laughed at...we got laughed at). From what we heard, it's supposed to have crazy wildlife and awesome views. What we learned through our research is that the name is misleading. It is not, in fact, a park, but a town...near a park. Rocky Mountain National Park to be exact, which has a supposedly amazingly cool road to drive on, which turns out to be closed until Memorial Day, due to the fact that they never know what kind of weather they'll get out there. We decided to take the Peak to Peak highway out there, which is the longer, more scenic route. There were some incredible photo opportunities, but that curvy mountain road inhibits picture taking.

We started in Boulder--elevation 5485, drove up to Nederland, our nearest mountain town--elevation 8350, hopped on the Peak to Peak and nearly made it to an elevation of 10,000 in a town called Ward, which had an awesome church up on the very top of a cliff...we didn't get a picture of that, there was nowhere to stop. We finally cruised into Estes Park, which is in a cool little valley. We caught the tail-end of their jazz festival which was taking place in Performance Park, which is about the size of a little league baseball diamond. We sat next to their creek and picnic'd. It was getting chilly and starting to rain, so we headed back home. On the way home, we had to stop at a "historical landmark" to snap some photos. We ended up back at Nederland, just in time for a delicious meal at a restaurant called the Pink Flamingo and then coasted back down Canyon towards home. All in all, a productive day.