Denver, Boulder and the Mountains of Colorado

Welcome to the Mountains!

In my prior life as a lawyer, Denver was a regular location for meetings. I had my favorite hotel, favorite restaurants, and favorite clients. It was such a pleasure to visit. After I married, we took a skip trip, landed in Denver, stayed a night or two, and then went to Beaver Creek, where our munchkins learned to ski. These are great memories, and I looked forward on my Goodbye America tour, to visiting the city again.

Mistake of the century. You know the adage that you can “never go home again?” Well, I can never go to Denver again. While the mountains are still there and just as beautiful, the rest of the city has changed significantly.

I selected to use my hard-earned points this trip at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center on 14th Street because I looked forward to being near 16th Street, the pedestrian walkway with stores, restaurants, and fun things to do. My mistake was relying on my memory and not getting an update.

New travel rule: Research before you go, even if you’ve been repeatedly. Things change, and you might want to know about them before you go.

Sixteenth Street in Denver is still a pedestrian walkway, but now predominantly for the homeless. Too many stores are empty and the great restaurants I remembered are gone. Walking the street, we found very little we wanted to do or see. It was depressing, given how vibrant the area used to be.

The entire area gave me the vibes of San Francisco’s Tenderloin. As a retired real estate lawyer, I grind my teeth at how many available solutions remain ignored across our country for this problem, not just in Denver. (Sorry. I’ll save that rant another day.)

Needing to head out of town, I made a reservation on Turo for a car share. (If you aren’t familiar, this is the Airbnb for cars. I do not recommend it. See side note below.) We first traveled to Nederland, Colorado, a tiny town of less than fifteen hundred people. On the Barker Reservoir, it is twenty-five minutes in the mountains from Boulder and an hour from our hotel. As you can see below, it’s a beautiful place.

The trip up Highway 119 led us through mountains with rocky terrain. I saw immediately where Boulder got its name.

Once we roamed the mountains, we returned to Boulder for lunch and a walking tour. The pedestrian walkway I expected to find in Denver is now in Boulder. I was pleased to see almost a duplicate of what I experienced twenty years ago in Denver, located on Pearl Street. You’ll have to see the video on the link for Pearl Street, as my photos wandered away.

Boulder is a college town with student vibes from the University of Colorado Boulder and a half dozen other schools. For me, a university makes a town come alive. Yes, there are problems with so many kids in one town (ask Boston, with its one hundred universities and colleges), but there are also benefits.

Of course, as a lawyer, I gravitate to the courthouses where I go, and this one was one of the good ones. I can always tell how a city or county is run when I visit the courthouse. This one was clean with friendly staff, surrounded by lovely park-like grounds.

Side Note: With respect to Turo, while I could rent the exact vehicle I owned at home for a decent price, the owner filed a claim for alleged damage to the vehicle once I returned it, a clear scam. I disputed the claim, forced it into arbitration, and was lucky the lawyer on the other end, who acted as the arbitrator, understood my argument of how the owner created the false damage. I won after several months of irritation, but I will never use nor recommend Turo again. There is too much required to protect yourself against scams with this car share service.

Denver, I’ll miss you. My daughter visited this past year and had a great time with her friends, but for me, it will now be a part of my past.

Time for me to move on.