The old bookstore, and now my friend’s wonderful Mountain home. The outside of the build is made of tin. Unfortunately due to all the new healthy and safety regulations the bookstore is no longer open but the books are still great!
In Ned there is no rubbish or recycling collection so you need to take it yourself to the local depot. This can either be done by car or our way of choice, 40 mins by backpack and foot through the forests, tracking the elk and rabbit foot prints on our way (we didn’t see any this time!)
It looked a bit like this....
This would have been my favourite place.
Buffalo Bill's Coffee (although now days they have a liquor licence too)
SO in the town of Ned they have a carousel. Its not just ANY carousel, hand built in Nederland it is the one and only ' Carousel of Happiness' and for 1 dollar, you can be happy too! The animals have been dressed up for Halloween...
So inviting....
but mine was a flying pig....
Nederland is not only infamous for their wonderful carousel but also for the music scene.
The Caribou Ranch which is just on the outskirts of Ned, (on the way to the now, ghost town of Caribou) is famous recording studio which recorded albums for the likes of Elton John, Michael Jackson, Frank Zappa, John Denver, Billy Joel...to name a few and this is where they would come to party at the Pioneer Inn Saloon. So I thought best to go for a beer!
Lets just say this really was a saloon! I met some more locals.
One guy offered me some recently hunted squirrel meat, (I never doubted the authenticity, apparently his son also hunted an elk with a bow and arrow) I politely refused along with the buffalo burgers...but the beer was good, apparently they didn’t take too well to the attempt of introducing a bit of reggae music, but I have no doubt that the Bluegrass music and the Mountain hip hop is that happens every night is well worth another trip!
Nothing was always that lovely though...
Being an old mining town during the 70's the town population boomed when a few hippies started coming to town. During that time there was only one police sheriff and on his death bed he confessed to along with some other locals killing some of the hippies and dumping them down the old mining shafts.
Frozen Dead Guy was originally from Norway and his son moved him to Nederland (post freezing).
Frozen Dead Guy now has his own musical festival in Ned which is apparently pretty great and you can see Frozen Dead Guy been paraded around town... So if you are interested... http://frozendeadguydays.org/
Whilst waiting for the bus, the only bus, back into Boulder we met a man from Midland Texas, who had come to Nederland, as it was the home of the lead singer of Clear Water Revival, he said he had come to work the day at the ski resort but hadn’t quite made it.
He was however familiar with the local pub and had a clearly quite badly swollen bleeding lip...I later over heard him on the bus telling some local boys from Ned that he was staying in a homeless shelter but actually in Europe they call them hostels, and so he prefers that. They reassured him that nobody in Ned is homeless; you might not have a home per-se but that Ned will be your home. I had to stop listening when they started to discuss hurricane Sandy and how this may be connected to the wrath of God.
Thank you Belinda and Stevyn!
Be inspired,
LB xx
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