Day 030: Down at Castle Rock

Pic: Poutine, kinda. Southern Sun Pub and Brewery, Boulder, CO

The plan was to hike to Devil’s Head Lookout, “the last of the seven original Front Range Lookout towers still in continuous use”.[1] These days, fire-spotting is a game played mostly with aircraft.

Yet, after navigating past four-wheelers in one of those aforementioned OHV areas, I learned that the trail was CLOSED for the week. Isn’t this the kind of information the forest service should put on its website, or, at the very least, tell me about in person when I visit the forest office and ask about this hike specifically? #ThanksObama.

With no internet, no backup plan, and no desire to hang out with dirt bikes zipping around, I proceeded to Sedalia in hopes it was a real town with services.

Nope!

I think there was a general store. It may or may not have been open.

“HILLARY AND OBAMA LIE AND SUCK”
–hand-drawn sign on a house in Foxton, CO

I continued on to Castle Rock, which was a real town — including Mexican food! And shitty LTE coverage, demonstrating the maxim that one bar of signal is no bars, two bars is one bar (aka Good Luck With That), and three bars is some actual internet.

Ultimately I got a hold of Kevin, who agreed to meet for ice cream, beers, and “poutine”[2] in Boulder.

I looked for camping in the hills outside of Boulder but, as Dave put it, “There’s sites, but they’re used pretty heavily between the party crowd, the shooting crowd, and the transient / rainbow crowd.” I took in the sunset from a high point, then imposed upon Dave and Julie’s hospitality a day earlier than scheduled.

 

[1] Devil’s Head Trailhead #611

[2] As someone who has gotten no closer to real poutine than Toronto, even I know that no cheese curds = no poutine. To be fair, the resulting dish was quite satisfying regardless of authenticity.