The last week and half I spent visiting my brother in Boulder CO. People say California is a different country by itself. Getting out of LA reminds me of that somewhat.
Firstly, the surroundings are quite different. Boulder is in the middle of green mountains. It is very pretty and I got to be there at the best of weather. CU has a beautiful campus. Having been in LA for as long as I have, I suppose I am starved of seeing vegetation which explains my admiration of Boulder.
Four of us did a very pictorial hike close in Boulder. The trail was the royal arch trail about 3.5 miles one way. It ended on top of a mountain where there was a nice arch and a great view of the plains. I shall put up pictures soon. I also attended the Independence day celebrations at CU. Since it is a small circle of people (in comparison to USC), they seem quite tightly knit and everyone knows everyone. There were Dumb Cs which I thought were quite well done but much of the crowd was less interested in them than I was. Got to play cricket and badminton a couple of times. I also took a couple of long walks around the area. Perfect place to take nice walks in random directions.
Now getting to some of the more interesting parts of my trip. We drove to Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone national park which are in Wyoming (the Northern parts extend to Montana) and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. We stayed in this little town called Dubois about 90 miles south of yellow stone. Turned out that the owner of the Super 8 motel we were at was of desi origin. He was Gujarati to be precise, and I had some conversation with him on life in Dubois, WY. Apparently, getting a gun license costs $35. From the radio ads we gathered that guns were quite the hot commodity around there. There were ads for discounts on guns if you purchased groceries from a certain place etc. all throughout. This owner also told us that hunting was a major sport around there and the season started in October. All I can hope is that the animals in the national parks are not the ones being hunted. That said, we saw plenty of deer on our way to Mt. Rushmore - so there is no shortage of game I suppose.
Every place we went, we got stares like we were aliens. We included me, my brother and a couple of his friends - all desi and clearly out of the norm in these lands. The first night we went to this bar where the bartender (bartenderess actually, if such a word exists) was very sweet. She even got us a free round of shots (something she called sexy mexi which I have never had) and joined us which was sweet of her. The rest of the bar was not as kind. We got anywhere between strange looks and clear aversion atleast in the body language. We sampled the local brew which was not too bad .. except that one of them was called Moose Drool which is quite gross especially after you look at the picture on the bottle. The people certainly liked their alcohol, their country music and tattoos. All through our trip I saw lots of people with elaborate tattoos.
On the second day, we got back in time to catch dinner at a restaurant adjacent to our motel. There were this couple who were constantly staring at us. At one point, I thought the lady said something to me and I responded with an "excuse me". But I think she was talking to her man. After we exchanged a couple of excuse mes, she finally got to the point. She asked us where we were from. She said she and her worse half were trying to guess the same. I was obviously curious what their guess would be and asked her where she thought we were from. "I dont know, Iraq", she said. Not knowing if I should be amused or annoyed, I politely corrected her and said we were from India. "That shares a border with Iraq, doesnt it?", she said. "Nope .. it is quite far away from Iraq" I corrected her again. We wound up the chit chat with some more awkward small talk on the lines of what brought us to the beautiful state of hers. All this while, her worse half was clearly turned away and did not even want to look at us. That incident sort of summarized the general reaction people seem to have when the saw us. If i was not with my brother and his friends, I would have wanted to be a little more exploratory and go hit on some local women or some such just to see their reaction but we had little time and I needed a little more getting used to the surroundings.
Mt. Rushmore was somewhat of a let down as it doesn't have much other than the four Presidents. I bought a book on the history of native Indians and their history which I hope to read in the coming weeks. I bought a cool pictorial historical account of the Presidents of the US and what each President is best known for. My brother and I drove about 2000 miles in the four days which was a lot of fun. All in all, an interesting trip .. to a "different country".
