Denver, then Louisville with Aprylisa

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After leaving Fort Collins, we made our way down to Denver, and surprisingly had no trouble at all finding the skate park that John wanted to go to. We were there for about three hours, including a stop at Jay's Cafe, where I ate cactus for the first time. It came on a sandwich and was really good.
Then, after John was satisfied, we drove to Aprylisa's house. She's my mom's old roommate; she was living with her in Lawrence at the time I was born. We saw her once in Hawaii when I was 7 or 8, but not since then. She lives in a house which is full of art, herbal essences (not the shampoo), and pets. There was Magic, the Siamese cat; Little Girl, a calico cat; Romeo, a fluffy black and white kitty; and Sasha, a really sweet grey and white dog.

Aprylisa's current roommate, Barb, is a shaman and was extremely kind and welcoming. Speaking of Barb, she had a really weird thing happen to her the day that we got there: she had to take her car into a car repair place, where they gave her a loaner car. She was driving it, and suddenly felt her feet burning, and saw that the Freon was dripping into the inside of the car, and she got 2nd-degree burns on her feet. So, she had to go to the hospital and came home with bandaged up feet. It was the most bizarre thing ever.

While Aprylisa went to teach her video class, Mom, John and I walked around Louisville a little bit. I liked the town a lot. Then we went back to the house, and John and I watched "The Other Bolyn Girl" which was great.

We hung out with Aprylisa for awhile after she got home from teaching, and then went to bed. The next morning, we had pancakes with peaches and mangoes, and scrambled eggs. Then, Aprylisa, who makes jewelry as part of her work, made me a beautiful necklace in about 20 minutes, right before we left! It has my two favorite stones in it - amethyst and peridot.

After leaving her house, we drove into Boulder because I was obsessed with going to the Celestial Seasonings tea plant. I had heard about it from Andrea, who went there not too long ago. We came out of there smelling like a mix of different types of tea. The most intense part was the Mint Room, which is, as you can guess, full of just mint. It makes a person's sinuses go crazy and eyes water. It was great and horrible at the same time. I loved it. We got to see how two 19-year-olds who found herbs in the 60s and put them in muslin bags to sell now have this huge tea company that sells tea all over the world. It was very interesting; we saw the boxes of tea on the conveyor belt, folding and getting shrink-wrapped. It was cool, but the best part was definitely all the great smells.

After that, we started driving home, and did something I had never done before - I bought a bottle of Coke AND a 20-ounce cup of coffee, determined to stay awake so that I could drive for a really long time. I also had my mom's Coke when I felt that I needed it, so I had had 60 ounces of caffeine, basically, and drove until almost 4 in the morning, when we reached Des Moines. Then, Mom woke up and took over, and drove the rest of the way, and because of bad rush hour traffic, we didn't get home until about 8:30 yesterday morning. We went to bed when we got home, and I woke up at around 2 and had the worst headache I think I've ever had. Mental note: never, ever have that much caffeine at once again. 😊

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Comments

[Uncle John]

Hello again!
It looks like John had the skate park all to himself? Perhaps school has already started in Denver. I'm glad you all had a safe drive home. Have you already posted a travelblog entry about Fort Collins? If so I may have missed it. I will check my e-mail again. Looking forward to hearing about your current location!

[Margaret]

Skateboarding in Denver while the DNC was going on
John wasn't completely alone, but it's true that the number of other skateboarders was pretty low. Alia took pictures of John when she got him alone in view, I think! Interestingly enough, the Democratic National Convention was going on, and we weren't far from it. We did see two groups of cops -- one on bicycles and one on horseback -- near the skatepark. But there were also other skateboarding dudes around -- mostly 20 years old or so, probably.