Food Guy Guest Spot 2-Boulder Hike

Life out here in Denver is solidly on the not-too-shabby side. The conference was pretty good today. The session was fairly interesting, and I got some good ideas for the assessment course I'll be teaching in the spring. But, the highlight of the trip so far was yesterday's hike up in Boulder.

We snuck out of the conference a little early yesterday, rented a car, and hightailed it up to Boulder to check out the Chataqua trailhead. There were several hiking options there, and we opted for the Mesa trail, which is a nice out and back that offers great views of the Flatirons all along the trail.

Not a bad view, eh?

The trail is a nice one that offers mostly smooth single-track, with the occasional technical section. It would have been a great trail to run, and I saw 5 or 6 trail runners taking advantage of the trail's proximity to town. It's literally about 5 minutes from downtown Boulder. Weaving in and out of a forest, the trail offers some great long-range views.

There are also some really cool meadows filled with wildflowers.

One of the coolest features of the trail is how dog-friendly it is. If you take your dog into town and pass a sight/voice command test, you can get a tag that exempts your well-behaved trail partner from the leash law. I think it's a pretty cool program. I don't like keeping Yellow Dog on a leash, but I understand that some people don't really like dogs and I also have seen first-hand how rude some dogs can be. I think having a system that lets good trail dogs have some freedom is a great idea. I'll have to come back out here with the Yellow One. I'm pretty sure he could pass the test.

I managed to drag myself out of bed early this morning to get my run in, so this afternoon will be pretty laid back. I plan to watch a little Sportcenter, do a little work, and then go out for some good Mexican food. Tomorrow is the last day of the conference. When it wraps up, I'm going to meet Rob and Sandy (some super-cool folks from my canyon trip) to go to the Rockies game. Then, it's back to NC on Saturday. I'll be psyched to grab Yellow Dog and head back up to Boone.