One of the side benefits of being involved in a cohousing community is that you get an opportunity to meet awesome people from all over the place. Wild Sage Cohousing in Boulder Colorado is the home of Bryan from Cadis Collaborative, our cohousing architect and Karin from CohoUS. It was pretty cool to meet them in person and take a socially distant selfie together – yes, this socially distant selfie behind masks is a really odd thing! Bryan and Karin were very welcoming and step away from their busy work days to give us a tour of Wild Sage and Silver Sage cohousing. It was only an hour out of our way, so we made a small detour.
We took a lot of video with our phones, hoping to be able to make a short clip or two of it. It was great getting a tour from Bryan and hearing about the architectural choices made at Wild Sage and Silver Sage but also seeing why some of the decisions we made at Treehouse Village were influenced by his experience living in cohousing and design other cohousing communities. It was also interesting to hear Karin’s perspective, having a teenage child who grew up in cohousing. It was extra neat to hear about her son’s gas powered trike experiments and how various people within the community shared their expertise with him. That and hearing how Bryan was the adult telling the kids they needed to put things away when they were done with them – again, an interesting way that the village helps to raise the kids.
As evening approached we found ourselves driving towards a lightning storm. It was spectacular driving and watching the lightning strikes. Hopefully our driving camera picked up some of it, so we can share some video of it.
One benefit of the storm is that it cooled things off, making it feasible to sleep in the van. Knowing that we are entering a zone where it is going to be warm, we opted to stop and sleep while we could. We pulled over at that Tamarack Wilderness Area, which is really just a field with a very questionable pit toilet. Fortunately, all we needed was a flat space to park.
Given the winds and questionable weather, I cooked inside the van. We were happy to have a side awning window which meant the window could be open even if it rained (we didn’t get much rain where we were).
We awoke to a lovely morning. I’m writing this as Scott is attending a Treehouse Village meeting, and I’m sitting in the shade behind the van enjoying the cool breeze. It is going to get unbearably warm soon, but right now it is beautiful outside.
Today we hope to drive through Nebraska and end up somewhere in Iowa. That last time we were in Iowa was for RAGBRAI – where we rode our bikes across the state. This time we will be driving straight through.
Our next challenge is figuring out how to get Covid tests – preferably someplace where we can get quick results. I’m finding lots of testing sites that require you to be a resident of the state in order to get tested. That won’t help us. We can likely get tests at almost any urgent care, as our insurance is pretty decent. Ideally we want a drive up testing site, but we need one that doesn’t have height restrictions. The one I did in Sunnyvale required driving into a parking garage and that won’t work at all with a 10 foot high van!
It sounds like Scott’s meeting is done, so it is time for us to get back on the road!
We are keeping track of your travels. Thanks for posting. This looks like a great day!
By coincidence Carole and I had exactly the same thing for dinner tonight. 😉
Great minds think alike 🙂