Chapter 139
And Now for Something Completely Different

Previous Post | Next Post
Table of Contents

(Originally posted February 4, 2014)

September 15-21, 2013

On Sunday, we bizarrely felt like we were leaving the flooding behind us as Tracy and I went down to Denver. She was there to assist with Denver Startup Week, and we would be staying in a hotel down there for three nights.

Even though Denver is only about a half-hour away from Boulder, it was barely affected by flooding at all. There were a few areas that had gotten hard-hit, but most places just looked like they would after a typical heavy rain. It almost felt like we were in a totally different place because almost no one we interacted with while in Denver had gotten any damage.

Since I had been allergic to the Westin, we opted for the Magnolia Hotel this time around, and we were immediately much happier with it. It didn’t hurt that when we checked in, they upgraded us to a suite. I think the room was probably bigger than our apartment back home, and it felt very fancy.

We spent the next few days enjoying being downtown. I actually went with Tracy to a couple of the Startup Week panels because it was open to anyone, and we continued to be happy with our hotel.

The Magnolia easily won us over with its great continental breakfast and free milk and cookies before bed.

Tuesday was our last night booked at the Magnolia and we needed to find somewhere to stay when we went back to Boulder the next day (obviously our flooded room at Tracy’s parents’ house was going to be uninhabitable for a while). Almost every hotel in Boulder was completely booked by flood victims, and only the REALLY expensive hotels remained.

Rather than giving up hope, I wondered whether the fancy hotels might have a special rate for people like us who had been displaced by the flood. I called the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield and was able to book us a room that was typically about $250 a night for $99. We reserved a spot there for the rest of our stay and were glad that we would have someplace to lay down our heads starting on Wednesday evening.

Getting back up to Boulder, it was remarkable how much had changed in just a few days. Almost everyone had gotten all of the water out of their basements (except our next door neighbor Kim, who still had it gushing in through the crack in her foundation…). The city just looked pretty normal almost everywhere we went as well, and it was hard to believe what it had just gone through. Of course, we didn’t exactly hit the places that had been most severely ravaged, and I know that not everyone got back to normal very quickly.

While we had been in Denver, Tracy’s mom had actually had a partial knee replacement. She’d had the surgery scheduled for months, but everything was up in the air with the hospitals basically closed during the storm. Amazingly, she decided to get the surgery over with if possible, so when we got back into Boulder it was to find her laid up but healing.

Stupey Doodle was looking just as cute as ever.

The Omni was also right next door to the mall, so of course we had to go to the Disney Store. They had all of their Duffy costumes on major clearance, so we got him the Soarin’ outfit.

We worked through Thursday, but Tracy took Friday off as a vacation day. Rather than just bumming around (which we were SO tempted to do since we were still exhausted from the previous week’s flood efforts) we decided to make the most of our day off by checking out an attraction we’d only recently found out existed.

I had happened to be reading a review of Colorado’s theme parks on the Theme Park Insider, and the author had written about a park we’d never heard of before. The Wild Animal Sanctuary is located literally in the middle of nowhere, about an hour northeast of Boulder.

I highly recommend clicking on that link and reading the article that inspired us to go check this place out. Basically, the Sanctuary is a park filled with animals who have all been rescued from abusive or otherwise unsafe situations. They aren’t capable of being released out into the wild, but the park allows them to enjoy their lives in very naturalistic and expansive habitats. As you walk across the mile-long boardwalk high above the animals, you can get amazing views and really appreciate hundreds of beautiful creatures that all seem right at home thousands of miles away from where you might find them naturally.

When we first arrived and bought our tickets, we had to go through a brief orientation before we were allowed to explore.

Next, we made our way up the stairs and began to traverse the expansive trail.

We saw some leopards first.

The black leopard is named Eddy, and he’s one of the mascots for the Sanctuary.

The Bengal and Siberian Tigers were next. These ones are all relatively recent additions to the park. They need to be socialized for quite a while before they can be let out onto the expansive plain with all the other tigers.

The reason why the boardwalk is so far aboveground is actually quite interesting. When humans are on the same level as animals, the animals naturally get anxious and territorial, but research by the scientists at the Sanctuary has shown that animals don’t consider the space above them to be part of their territory. Since the entire park seeks to relieve all these animals from the feeling of captivity that many of them were brutally subjected to in their pasts, keeping people out of their territory is essential.

Once we moved past these initial pens, we began to see the expanse of the park. Basically everything in this picture (as far as the eye can see) is all part of the tiger’s enclosure.