Today, we got up fairly early with tasks to accomplish–Mark took the car to a tire shop, because we knew we had a small leak in a tire (they fixed it right away, as we hoped), and also picked a few groceries, and I had a cooking agenda: I made a huge bowl of German potato salad and deviled eggs for tomorrow’s various meals, and packed up some of our deli meat and some fruit for our lunch, which we were going to have at Jacquie’s house at noon. That required leaving at about 11, since it’s about 15 minutes past Nederland. We got there right on time and had a lovely meal with fresh-baked bread for sandwiches and blueberry smoothies with Jacquie and her boyfriend, another Mark, who is a pharmacist in Rollinsville and has a huge interesting in Native American culture and history, so he told some very interesting stories. After lunch, we went for a lovely walk through the back country behind Jacquie’s house with Jacquie and her dog Rusty, and saw some lovely wildflowers (including the beautiful state flower, the columbine) and pretty nasty-looking mine tailings (all of this backcountry was once combed through for gold and silver). We walked for an hour and a half or so, and then drove back to Louisville, with a stop at the Boulder Falls, where you can still peek at the falls, but not hike to them, because of erosion issues. But across from the falls, people were rappelling after rock climbing, so we watched for a bit.
We were home before 5, had salad and bread for dinner, and I went back out in search of some cheap containers for the picnic food for tomorrow. The nearby thrift stores had what I needed, but I have to say that they were more expensive than the thrift stores in Santa Cruz, and that’s saying something! Once I was home and we had gotten some laundry started, we watched a movie that’s new out on Netflix, “Okja” and then went to bed–so it was a pretty low-key evening.