High Plains and Denver

I meandered into the high plains in the rental car I got in Pittsburgh. This area is the geographic embodiment of America. The enormous, lush, rolling plains are there and ready to be cultivated by anyone that’s willing to make the effort. Their size is another key part of what strikes me as American. They skies and fields go on and on seemingly forever. My main wish is that the cities of northern Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and so forth were walkable. They are just big enough to require a car to get around and don’t have much in the way of public transportation.

One city that is walkable is Denver. I drove in on Saturday and stayed with Jason and Julie. Even though I haven’t seen them since they left Dallas and got married I found that things eased into the same friendship that I’d had when we were roommates in Dallas. After spending the night with them, I left them behind to return the car and head to downtown Denver. What a great city. It’s modern and classical buildings keep the ambulatory visitor occupied wondering what’s next. The weather was great. Like all walkable cities the streets have a nice, simple grid layout that makes it practically impossible to get lost. In my opinion Denver is the model city for every other city in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain states.

It was nice to get back into the Greyhound stream of things. I’d found the car travel to be a tad annoying, and way too expensive with the current gas prices.

Just a few more days and I get to see Andy in Portland, and then after that the San Francisco folks. I need to give Chris a call since I think I know when I’ll be getting into SF. I am very much looking forward to that.