Boulder we had visited about five years ago and at that time were impressed by the youth, slimness, and physical activity of its citizens - to the point that Nancy and I worried that we were just not a fit for the town. But we loved its big and beautiful Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall, which boasted outstanding street performers and wonderful restaurants and shops. This time we found it a bit less exciting, though still quite nice, and enjoyed a very tasty dinner there.
A day later we drove to Denver, which is only about eleven miles from Golden. In the past we had avoided Denver, partly because it always seemed to be shrouded by ugly brown smog. And the internet tells us that Denver is still the 11th worst city in America for pollution - though it is improving. On this day there was some haze but less than expected.
It happened to be the day for Denver's annual Zombie Crawl, and some of those critters had spilled over to the downtown pedestrian mall we visited.
There were on the mall, of course, street performers. The one who seemed to be pulling the most cash from the passersby was a swami with no visible means of support. I think I know how the trick was done. How about you?
In our opinion Colorado does downtowns better than any state we've visited, and we love the ambiance of a good downtown. In fact, it's almost a must-have for us.
On our last day in Golden we drove to the nearby town of Broomfield, home of Anthem Ranch, a "master planned community" - that is, a series of neighborhoods built by a developer that also include some facilities - swimming pools, country clubs, restaurants, shops, tennis courts, and so on - that can be used by its residents. There are a lot of those developments across the country. Some of them are age restricted - meaning that residents must be over 55 years of age - and some are not. We don't believe that we'll end up in one of them, but life is unpredictable, and the concept behind them has some appeal.
From a distance, Anthem Ranch looks like a huge hive of similar-looking homes on a barren landscape. We drove to the sales office in its interior and were told that the current section under development was indeed an over-55 community, so that all the homes were ranch-style (meaning one floor and no stairs to the upper floor that might be problematic for the elderly).
We were directed to the model home next door. It was a three bedroom, 2100 square feet house and had an open floor plan, extremely high ceilings, a high-end kitchen, a sumptuous master bedroom, and two fireplaces in the living section.
A bonus for me was that down a long flight of stairs was a huge basement which I would be able to convert into a home theater. The design and finish of the home were excellent, and we could imagine ourselves living quite happily in such a space. Except that it was kind of in the middle of nowhere (though it did have nice views of distant mountains), and the price - $615,000 - seemed high for a home that was packed tightly among so many similar structures. So our search continues.
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