A friend comes to Colorado and the weather deliver a clouded, rainy weekend. The joy of heading into the mountains narrows. It seems wrong to get this far - Chris travelled from Pittsburgh – and not spend a little time in Colorado’s high country.
He needed to get to Denver for his band’s evening show but we had all afternoon to see what we could find. I decided on Boulder. We could roam the college town. But I don’t know Boulder well.
A dense mist clung to the nearby mountains, even obscuring Bolder’s signature Flatirons, the giant rock shards that look like they were dropped onto a mountainside. The few places I knew well – the Pearl Street Mall, the Dushanbe Tea House – would inevitably be crowded. But I noticed a break to the north in the green hills. I then knew where we had to go next. We took the 20-mile drive up to Lyons, the little wedged among the mountains on the road to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.
Trying to get into the national park on a holiday weekend is foolish, but one can glimpse the high peaks from Lyons. I spent time with Meg in Lyons last August at the tail end of the Rocky Mountain Folkfest. She had a cabin nearby, and on our last morning up there we had breakfast at a nice café in Lyons. It’s two-plus hours from Colorado Springs, and I always feel like I should spend more time up in Lyons than I do.
But that’s the challenge and why Boulder is rarely on the agenda – I have to pass through Denver to get to Boulder. Tourist season never seems to end there; when it does, college football comes to town. For an old friend, I made the trek to their hotel in Brighton, then over to the Front Range.
Here we could glimpse the enchanting red sandstone formations that surrounded to small mountain town, and even spy the 14’ers. The big peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park emerged from the haze, especially brooding Longs Peak, the park’s tallest. Several branches of St. Vrain Creek merger in Lyons, giving my friend the mountain rivers he wanted to see on his short trip to the Rockies.
At least in Lyons there is no worry about getting lost. The commercial district is tightly plotted on two one-way streets. The town of 2,000 is larger than that, as the hills hide much of the town. Lyons is still in deep-blue Boulder County, and a few dozen protestors lined up to express their rights. The scene would repeat in downtown Longmont. Noon Saturday on a holiday weekend is peak protest time.
We stopped at Mainstay Brewing, which sits in the same building as a restaurant where I once had a dynamite breakfast after a morning of Rocky Mountain National Park hiking. Some good food and good brews followed. We wandered around Lyons for a brief while. Sometimes it feels less like a town and more like a junction. But it has thriving business and Memorial Day crowds helped fill seats at its restaurants.
Not the best day for wildlife, I did what I could. I pointed out the prairie dog towns across Boulder and Adams counties, so Chris could at least spot some animal he wouldn’t see at home. That watchdog on each mound of dirt stood in for the larger fauna one hoped Colorado would provide.
But we mostly talked across the foggy drive. Chris, his wife, and I went to college together in the late 90s. They moved to Columbus when I lived there, then moved to Middle Tennessee for a few years. For years, we were regulars in each other’s lives. They live in Pennsylvania, adopted a daughter, and we’ve seen each other maybe five times in the last decade. But we always pick up where we leave off. A four-hour sojourn across Denver’s north suburbs provided ample time.
Despite the stormy weather, talking was all we needed.
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