Because it’s still pretty chilly out, I’m not back on the WWOOF train yet. Still, I wanted to do some volunteering while I was in town, so I signed up to spend a day working with Habitat.

Volunteering is easy: you just sign up on habitat.org, show up at the build site, and they put you to work. I’m definitely going to be doing more of these Habitat days in other cities: it’s a great way to learn a few construction techniques, plus you get to feel good at the end of the day.

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Read the rest of Try This at Home: Volunteer with Habitat! (360 words)

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Post tags: Colorado, Denver, dumpster diving, energy-efficient, environment, freegan, green building, habitat, habitat for humanity, recycling, sustainable, voc, volunteer, voluntourism

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Tuesday I had myself a Bicycle tour of downtown Denver. And I’m convinced: it’s the best way to tour this town!

Cherry Creek cuts through the city in a wide canal with bike trails on both sides. It passes under steel-and-timber rail trestles where it smells like creosote and pigeon, over spillways where muskrats frolic, past banks of multicolored condos to the glamorously named Confluence Park, where it flows into (aka confluences with) the Platte River.

The Platte flows to the Missouri, which joins the Mississippi and eventually floods New Orleans… but here, it’s still a calm brownish-green stream.

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Read the rest of Two-Wheelin in the Mile High City (477 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: art, bicycle, biking, buy nothing, canal, Colorado, cycling, Denver, energy-efficient, environment, outdoors, recreation, river, tourism, touristry, transportation, travel, water, weather

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Yeah, I didn’t lie. That’s a boring video. But it was exciting for me. I saw him frolicking around in the creek, and had time to pull my bike over and get out the camera. Just as I reached the bank, he swam over to me, perched on a rock right below me, and commenced to have a bath. Then he gave me a Look (the look that says HEY WHY DIDN’T YOU FEED ME), and jumped under the spillway.

Now back to the regularly scheduled blog. As previously mentioned, I’m in Denver! And although I don’t think I’ll linger here, there are some good things about this place. The muskrat is one of them.

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Read the rest of Good News Denver! (189 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: animal, Colorado, couch surfing, couchsurfing, Denver, environment, habitat, habitat for humanity, muskrat, travel, weather, wildlife

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Cara and Morgan were headed to Denver, and I was too. We piled in the jalopy and sailed north, through the Carson National Forest (contents: juniper, piñon, and rocks), past big empty lands with big worn-out signs that said things like “Most Beautiful Land in Southern Colorado!” and “Lakefront Living!”. We saw no lakes, just empty grasslands and mesas with every so often an abandoned clapboard house or trailer tucked between the sage. But the mountains rode alongside us, headed north too, and they got bigger.

Yep, Southern Colorado is even more empty than Northern New Mexico. But there’s towns up there somewhere, cities even! We could tell the cities were approaching, because the air got dirty. I guess that’s the part that shocked me the most: dirty air. “The Rockies: America’s Alps”? Don’t be deluded, this ain’t Switzerland. Here on the Eastern Slope of those mighty mounds of pay dirt, this is where men live and die by the railroads, and the steel mills, and the Wal-Marts. Pueblo, Colorado: city of industry, and I mean this. We blazed through with only a brief stop at the gas super-station. I saw my first coal train: a mile of identical cars carrying identical loads of black stuff. Then I saw another one.

Pueblo fades into Colorado Springs, which bursts forth in a fount of housing developments. They trickle slowly down the hillsides, pooling along the freeway, flowing toward Denver. Denver itself starts far outside of Denver, and the downtown sits in a yellow-brown haze, lurking beneath the mountains like a teenager up to no dang good.

At least that was my first impression. Tune in tomorrow for what happened next… I’m bound for bed and none too soon. I will say this: it gets better.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: coal, Colorado, rideshare, spring, travel

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