Colorado - Day 25 - through Aurora back to Strasburg

Denver East/Strasburg KOA, Strasburg                                                  Friday, 26 September 2020

today's route

detail of today's route

I had one main goal for the day, which was to finally - and belatedly - get my flu shot for the year.  I'd intended to get it in August, when this year's version first came out, but it was one of those things I kept putting off.

Lately, when I've stopped at several pharmacies for other things I've asked about it and been told each time it'd take 15 minutes to process the application once I'd filled it out.  I was always on my way to somewhere else and didn't want to take the time, and then here I was - end of September, with the main flu season just ahead - and I still hadn't gotten it.  So today I was prepared to wait however long they said it'd take.

Which turned out to be no time at all.  I don't know what the problem had been at other locations, but the CVS inside a Target that I went to today in Aurora took me right away.  I've never had the flu and don't want it now, but I especially don't want to be in the weakened condition flu puts you in, which might make me more susceptible to the coronavirus which I really don't want.  So now I have at least that layer of protection.

I drove along Hampden Ave, aka US 285, which runs through Englewood and Aurora in the southern Denver area for some miles.  It eventually makes a 90° left turn and becomes Havana St, which runs into Alameda (a street I lived on in Tacoma years ago), and then Sable St. to 6th Street, aka CO 30.  And that's the route I took.  From 6th I turned left on Picadilly Road (such an out-of-place name) that should have run into I 70, but there I ran into yet another batch of road work.  I made a couple of U-turns and ended up where I wanted to go, but the signs weren't at all clear.

I understand Colorado is coming up on the end of the time when road work is possible, but they sure seem to be doing a lot of it. 

I saw the only personalized license plates I've seen here.  It said K9 CAB.

Colorado's official license plate is the one we've all seen for years.

I've seen many variations on it - for veterans and firefighters and other groups like that.  None of them uses the green/white colors, but all have the mountain outline along the top.  Even their temporary plate - the paper ones you get when you first buy a vehicle - has the mountain outline along the top.

I passed something called the Lotus School for Excellence.  I'd heard that there's a Buddhist university somewhere in CO and thought maybe this was it.  Instead, it's just a charter school for secondary education that says they don't charge tuition and take kids on a lottery system based on the space available.  

That sounds fine to me, except I'd heard elsewhere that since the 1990s, Colorado has allowed private schools and charter schools to be funded with public money.  Not surprisingly, that's resulted in public schools that aren't funded well enough to be doing a good job of educating students.  Now, 27% of the Hispanic students and 32% of American Indian students fail to graduate high school, and these numbers are an improvement over the previous decade.  My personal opinion is that it doesn't make sense to fund non-public schools with public money, but I realize that view isn't widely held these days.

When I'd gotten back out to Strasburg, I saw a sign I'd missed before, telling me by going down a particular road I'd find the Oklahoma State University Memorial Site.  When I thought about it, a memorial to an OK school in CO didn't make sense, but I saw online it's not far from the campground, so maybe I'll swing by there when I leave.