A Day in Boulder...

Boulder, Colorado...an hour and $3.75 bus fare each way and there you are...Boulder is one of the most artsy-fartsy cities I have ever been in. We started our morning having breakfast in a delightful restaurant that served "real" beignets on the Pearl Street Mall. It's another one of those streets that allow no traffic...and has great shops, cute restaurants, and street performers...The Pearl Street Mall goes from "high end" to "the hippie generation". It was wonderful!!! It is also known for being the birthplace of Colorado's "natural foods" community. We totally enjoyed walking through the Farmer's Market and Arts and Crafts Market that was open that day.

Our main reason for going to Boulder was to go to Celestial Seasonings Tea. So we hopped a city bus and headed for the plant. Big mistake...the bus driver dropped us off here...does it look like there is much around... Nope...there is an Industrial Park down the road which is where we would eventually find Celestial Seasonings. But the view was wonderful of the mountains...

So we began our hike...I was a tad worried for Scarlett as she has asthma and the air there in Colorado made breathing sometimes difficult. As we walked along the sidewalk, I kept noticing these strange holes in the ground.
And, hearing this chirping kind of conversation going on...well, lo and behold, there they were - prairie dogs...hundreds of prairie dogs...everywhere! It seems that along the two mile hike that it took us to get to Celestial Seasonings - the company had establish a Prairie Dog Park...
They are soooo cute! Of course, one would not want them in their yard as they could and would tear up the lawn pretty quickly... As I took another shot of the beautiful mountains in the distance...my camera died...the batteries were gone...and no where in sight to buy more...

We had a wonderful tour at Celestial Seasonings and learned that they operate two shifts a day except in winter (the busy time) when they operate three. The Denver plant is it...there is no other Celestial Seasoning place in the world...I have no idea exactly how many teas they make but it is a lot...and they only employ 225 people! It was just amazing...they had a great tasting room where you could have as many cups of whatever tea you would like to try. They also had some of their flavors of the day made up...I'll tell you the Blueberry is really good cold (they made it with sugar - but you could use honey.) They also have a very nice gift shop...and we came home with Tea!!! (What a surprise!)

We strolled the mall in Boulder, found a wonderful "friendly" bookstore, bought organic treats for the four-legged children and headed back to Denver...for our last evening in town.