5/26-5/28: The Tale of a Tail-less Cat and A Journey's End

I am going to finish recounting my trip with this post, so it may be a little longer than others.

I was making my way across Colorado for the 2nd time, enjoying it just as much. Mentally cementing that this is an area I would like to reside in for a least a small period of my life sometime down the road. I took a different highway though found the drive not as exciting visually as the interstate. Making it into Denver around 8pm I headed to downtown Denver with my cousin Jason for some Sushi and a stroll around 16th Street Mall. The last time I had visited the mall was during a Best Buy leadership training a couple years ago. I had been instructed in training to “meet at least 3 new people and start a conversation” as a way to practice interactions with strangers. I ended up saying hello to a woman on the 16th st. bus who looked very artsy and unique, my type of people!

Her name was Jazz and she lived nearby in Aurora though grew up in Greece. She wasn’t very interested in talking to a happy go lucky stranger so the conversation waned after that, however it inspired me to write a song that my music buddy Michael Loukes and I will be performing as apart of our set at Art Blitz in Rochester, MN this August 26th!

This time I didn’t meet any music inspiring people as it was too early for the night crowd and too late for the afternoon crowd so the 16th street mall was a ghost town. Jason informed me that shortly after I had spent time with him a couple weeks ago, a huge storm with hail the size of golf balls caused billions of dollars of damage in the Denver area including totaling his car. Aside from some impressive dents, his windshield cracked though didn't shatter. This was actually a lucky break as glass repair shops were quoting weeks out due the spike in broken windshields.

We ended up making it an early night since Jason had planned something for the next morning. I took a much-needed shower and slept well, waking up bright and early to hike the Flat Irons! It was a great hike and offered some fun climbing. A couple climbing groups were there doing some serious bouldering near boulder (hehe). We could see one guy climbing the rock face all the way from the base.

We both enjoyed the intensity of the hike and made good time. The public outhouse near the base of mountains blew my mind when I discovered it had Two-Ply toilet paper with cushioning! That’s the FIRST time in my life I have been given the luxury of two-ply from a publicly funded facility. “Only in Boulder” I thought. We grabbed lunch from an Indian joint and I left for Kansas City shortly after.

​The drive to through Kansas was…boring. When I entered the destination into my GPS from Denver it said to follow the interstate for 540 miles…so I just turned it off. It really was just a flat highway I drove on for 8 hours. I was able to finish and audio book and began writing a song about my all night experience in the desert. Other than that it was completely uneventful, and half way through it started getting dark. 

After the sun set I noticed hundreds of flashing red lights that were not equally spaced and briefly thought I might have been hallucinating again until I realized it was a field of windmills in the dark. I arrived late at my friends Madi and Alva’s apartment in KC but they are night owls so It worked out. I slept on an air mattress that didn’t like to retain air as much as others, and woke up with the air mattress more or less acting as a blanket I could wrap around myself. 

My hosts had breakfast ready to go and I joined Alva for a trip to BassPro as I’ve never been to one and he had to return a firearm that between inaccurate pricing and incorrect serial numbers had been through quite the ordeal. Regardless of the reason for the visit, the store itself had incredibly intricate wildlife displays, both taxidermy and live! A huge fish tank held thousands of gallons and tons of different fish alongside hundreds of stuff game from quail to buffalo to everything in-between. It was like visiting a museum while you shop.

With the remainder of my day I visited the Nelson-Atkins free art museum and I was a bit blown away by the selection of a free museum! It reminded me of some of the exhibits I was able to see in NYC back in 2014. I spent most of the rainy afternoon there and was especially taken in by the photo and French impressionism pieces. 

Prichard Learoyd had a photo gallery that beautifully used depth of focus to create points of attention on the human form against very simple backgrounds, and I was able to identify how he accomplished it based on the technical photography skills I’ve been honing! Monet’s masterpieces have always captured my heart and soul. A couple oh his works made a strong “impression” and I spent 5+ minutes simply admiring the character of the brushstrokes and the power of the mixture of colors.

Afterwards I drove downtown to visit Union Station and see downtown however the rain was off and on down pouring and I was only able to see it from inside my car but I grabbed a few photos. I went back to my friends apartment and Madi got done with her shift so we headed to see Alva at his work before grabbing some dinner and heading to the Crane Brewery for a tour and some local sour beer, yum!

There was a tail-less cat that keeps the storage areas free of unwanted visitors and it mostly jumped along the barrel aging brews as we walked throughout the backrooms. After the tour we returned to the apartment, shared some pizza, and had discussions and drinks into the night.

The next morning was a sad one; it was the last day of my trip. I had originally planned on visiting a couple people in Iowa on my way back up to Minnesota, however my schedule had been pushed back a day and I no longer had time. I ate lunch with another friend/coworker named Bethany in downtown Kansas City before starting the 6-hour drive back up to Rochester, MN. It hadn’t hit me until a couple days before that I would actually be returning home. And this last jaunt across Iowa (which was still more interesting than Kansas, it had slight hills with windmills!) gave me plenty of time to reflect on all that had happened over the last month.

This trip did a few great things for me. First, it gave me a renewed perspective on my life as a whole. Nothing I didn’t already know, but simply an awareness of where I tend to put my focuses and efforts and the results. Second, it refreshed my love for people, travel, and nature. It was like seeing the movie for a book I had already read; I was reassured that life is a series of experiences that help us grow and . I felt as though I had lived more in the last month than I had in years in terms of new memories and adventures. I was forced to look for people to meet and things to do instead of relying on my routines. On top of it all I stayed under my $2,000 budget mark ($1400 was on gas), and traveled just over 5300 miles!

This trip did a few great things for me. First, it gave me a renewed perspective on my life as a whole. Nothing I didn’t already know, but simply an awareness of where I tend to put my focuses and efforts and the results. Second, it refreshed my love for people, travel, and nature. It was like seeing the movie for a book I had already read; I was reassured that life is a series of experiences that help us grow and . I felt as though I had lived more in the last month than I had in years in terms of new memories and adventures. I was forced to look for people to meet and things to do instead of relying on my routines. 

I plan to continue traveling, pursuing photography, and cataloging my experiences with this blog. Currently I am finishing a trip with my sister to the North West part of our country and will be in Canada next month. I hope to travel to the East side of the country next year and return to places from this trip that I want to explore further (especially Zion and Yosemite).
 
Thanks for reading, I hope I made it an enjoyable recounting of my adventures while providing vicarious and informative stories =)
 
Until next we meet again.
 
- Nathaniel DeBoer