Walkin' Boulder
By Sue Deans
Training for a half-marathon walk, the former editor
of the Camera blogs about exploring Boulder

August 23, 2011

I think I overdid last week and my left foot is still a little sore, so I am not going to do so many miles this week, especially since the race at Disneyland is less than two weeks away!

I decide today to check out the Newlands area, the part of North Boulder that’s west of Broadway. Old North Boulder, where I live, is on the east side. Like ONB, Newlands has lots of older homes, likely 1950s-ish, but lots of them have been updated and/or eliminated and replaced with more modern homes. I want to look for interesting houses and especially for pretty yards and gardens that will inspire me to update mine.

Heading west on Alpine, I stop and sit on a staircase to adjust the insole of my left shoe. Maybe that’s been the problem. It feels better already.

I turn north on 9th Street and see this sign at North Boulder Park: “Keep it clean because we’re all downstream” referring to Goose Creek, a reminder that our water keeps going no matter what we dump into it.

The park is pretty quiet about 9 a.m., with just a few people in an exercise class in the shade of some trees.

I love the stone used in this house. Maybe it’s original, maybe not, but it looks like it belongs here, unlike some others! It’s similar red sandstone to that used in many buildings on the University of Colorado campus.

I am not a good enough photographer to avoid having my shadow in this shot, but I love the lily pond in this yard. Goose Creek actually passes under my back yard – maybe I could make it into a fountain? Just kidding.

I continue up Ninth Street till it ends at Hawthorn and turn west, laboring up a significant hill. One of many construction sites looks like the original back of the house has been saved and a new front seems to be under construction.

I love the look of wrought-iron fences. These two are gorgeous, smaller versions of some I’ve seen in Charleston, S.C.

At the top of the hill I turn south on Fourth Street. I’d like to keep going uphill, to see some of the gorgeous homes I know are up there, but I will wait for a cooler day to make that climb. Here’s a cute mailbox – “the dog ate my bill,” you could say to a creditor.

Two construction sites next to one another. And meanwhile repair work is going on in the street nearby. Noisy for the neighbors.

I love little yard decorations like this one – my newspaper in Myrtle Beach had a sun wearing sunglasses as its logo. I still have a whole collection of sun face jewelry – earrings, pins, necklaces. Once the airport security people took me aside, thinking one of the pins in my purse, with its metal pointed rays, might be a martial arts throwing star.

South past Mapleton the street gets very shady as the old trees on Mapleton Hill keep the hot sun at bay.

One of the huge old cottonwood trees on Pearl Street as I head eastward. I hate that they are starting to die off. A story in the Camera this week said that two of the trees along Boulder Creek will be taken down because they are rotted inside. They are just about irreplaceable.

It’s not the usual yard décor, but I never before noticed this antique fire truck on Portland Place near 13th Street, on the north side of the Central Fire Station, not too far from where I live. It’s a hook and ladder truck from 1875 that obviously was pulled by horses. My great-grandfather was a Chicago fireman in the era of horse-drawn fire trucks, and my grandma, his daughter, who was born in the 1890s and lived to be 101, told us she was scared of the horses in his firehouse. She said that when she took him his lunch one day the fire alarm went off and she was nearly trampled as they sped out to the fire. Maybe she exaggerated a little.

Home again after two hours, including a stop at the Trident Coffee Shop to see my old Camera friend, former sports editor Dan Creedon. My mileage: 4.75 miles. My foot doesn’t feel so bad now, so maybe the worst is over.