Boulder, part 1

We're in love with Boulder. Not only is it set in a beautiful location with a ton of hiking trails, but it has biking lanes all over, lots of state parks within an hour''s drive or less, my favorite animal charity, Peaceful Prairie, is only a little over an hour's drive away, it doesn't take long to get anywhere (compared to what we're used to, at least), the restaurants are very vegan friendly (and there's even one vegan restaurant which I mention below) and it seems to be much more liberal and eco-friendly than most places. We really, really love it here so far.

So, anyway, we started out yesterday by taking Emma to one of the three dog parks here that are fenced in. It was huge, we had the whole place to ourselves and she had a blast running around at top speed (which is quite fast!). We then headed out to Eldorado Canyon State Park where we went hiking for a while. It's a beautiful park with a ton of cliffs that you'll find rock climbers crawling all over. There was a river going through it and being a weekend, it was very busy. On the trail, a few chipmunks crossed our path, driving Emma bonkers, but other than that we didn't see any wildlife. Not surprising since there were so many people on the trail.

After that we ate lunch at VG Burgers, an all organic, vegan, eco-friendly fast food restaurant. Yup, you heard right- fast food that's not only organic and vegan, but all of their packaging & utensils are biodegradable and their restaurant is wind powered. This is a fast food chain that I wouldn't mind seeing all over! We kind of went overboard and ordered too much food, but since Mike is a bottomless pit, none of it went to waste. Our order included the chicken parmesan and chicken ranch burgers, chili cheese fries and nachos. The cheese on the chicken parmesan was Follow Your Heart brand, I believe, which I honestly do not care for. However, the cheese on the nachos & chili cheese fries was of the nutritional yeast variety. I love the stuff and loved the nachos. They were definitely a meal in themselves. The other stuff was okay, but nothing that I would order again. Really not bad for fast food, though. Later in the day, we went there again for some soft serve hemp twist cones and they were *extremely* good. I could certainly see myself getting one of those again!

We then went to another of the dog parks which turned out to have a little doggie beach at one end of it. Although we live two blocks from Lake Michigan, Emma has never gone swimming because the beach is filthy and the water isn't always safe. Plus, it's very, very cold. So, this was Emma's first experience with water other than getting baths. She tentatively went into the water and then started bouncing around in it clumsily. At one point, she got a bit too deep, freaked out and came bouncing back to us. Very, very cute!

Next, we stopped at a trail where we went hiking in the prairie, but that hike got cut short when a pretty ominous looking storm started to head our way. So, we went back to our room and rested for a while. About an hour before it got dark, we took Emma to the third dog park which turned out to be our very favorite park ever. It has a huge amount of room for the dogs to run around in with three different sections right at the base of a foothill. There were prairie dogs all over the place, chirping and squeaking. I was in love and could have stayed there much longer if it wasn't getting dark out.

Today we decided to go back to the dog park we went to last night and hike in the foothills for a while after letting Emma take care of her business. The prairie dogs were out in full force and we even saw a coyote that was trying to get a meal out of one of them with no success. They were so cute as they sounded their little alarms to warn all of the other prairie dogs that the coyote was coming, then they all promptly scrambled in their holes. The coyote then checked us out for a while from a safe distance and went on his or her way.

Further up the trail, an elk suddenly appeared ahead of us and then went bounding off uphill. He had a gorgeous, huge rack that was all velvety. It was definitely a good hike for seeing wildlife!

After we came down from the hike, we let Emma take care of her business again in the dog park, then headed back to our room to order some subs. I got a tempeh thai sub and Mike got a tofu veggie one. They were both delicious!

To see pictures of all of this, check out my flickr page and stay tuned for more posts about our adventures!