Lauren Trice, a fellow Mary Washington Preservation Alum, is currently living and working in Colorado as a fall survey intern for Colorado Preservation, Inc. She and another intern are exploring rural Colorado, ranches, and seeing a different way of life, that of the Colorado ranchers. She’ll be there until mid December and will surely return to us with endless stories, preseration related and then some. Lauren has begun chronicling her Colorado experiences on her new blog, Adventures of a Historic Preservationist. Featured here is her latest post about lessons learned after one month on the job. Aside from future blog posts, she will also have an article in the next issue of Preservation in Pink. Read the post below and you will most likely be eagerly awaiting further explanations of her points. Here is Lauren’s list of lessons:
1. Tarantulas migrate south in the end of October in southeastern Colorado. They travel across the road one at a time, so you have to be careful not to hit them.
2. Over 100,000 people can fit into Civic Center Park in the middle of Denver to see, now President-Elect, Obama speak.
3. It is not uncommon to see a salad bar on a covered wagon in a restaurant. (The bathroom’s also say “Cowgirls” and “Cowboys.”)
4. There are lots of subtle differences in quanset huts. They can even be used as movie theatres.
5. Ranchers are willing to make roads with their pickup trucks. They also look at you funny when you put a seatbelt on.
6. Although the Coors Brewery has its home in Colorado, nobody really like Coors beer.
7. Directions are given in N, S, E, and W instead of left and right. People orientate themselves by the mountains in the west and rely on the grid patterned streets.
8. There are places in the world where you can spin around and around and not see anything.
9. Double laid stone is simply beautiful.
10. It is always an option to order your food “smothered” in green chile.
11. Western preservationists have a broader approach to what needs to be saved, including modern linear landscapes.
-Lauren Trice
Preservation in Pink 