Tired of being in the house, and not want to be bound by the Arafat Death Watch, I decided to head out to Golden for the afternoon.

I used to work here, when I first moved to Denver, back in 1997-1998. It's one of the few towns that hasn't been swallowed up by development. The geography is such that even with the new Home Depot, and the huge Colorado Mills Mall, the downtown area is largely untouched and untouchable. Still, while it hasn't grown all that much, it has been...upgraded.

Clear Creek still flows here, but there's a new bridge across it carrying Wahington Street, with a little museum on the sidewalks. There's a new hotel, the Golden Hotel. The things looks nice but dull as dishwater, and the name suggests Black Hawk or Central City. There's a new parking lot, and the library advertises Free Wifi. And now, the houses are clinging to ever-more-vertical parts of South Table Mountain.

It's pushed right up against the foothills, and you can walk right up into them from town. The downtown has been preserved from the late 1800s, early 1900s.

Now, if we could only get a shul out there...