xoxo, xenophile: Fort Collins, Colorado

Mountains outside of Fort Collins

I went to Fort Collins on an IEEE industry tour of HP, Wolf Robotics, Advanced Energy, and Agilent (in nearby Loveland). The city seems a lot bigger than it actually is, and, besides the Old Town, none of the buildings seemed older than 10 or 15 years old. There are a lot of technology companies centered there (you can add Intel and a few others to the ones we visited), Colorado State University, a plethora of different breweries...it really just seems like an overall up-and-coming city. One thing that did surprise me about Colorado, is that only about half of it is mountainous, and we were on the flat half. We could see some mountains from Fort Collins, but we unfortunately didn't actually get to go up into the mountains. I did love visiting the city though.

There seems to be a big push for 'green' in Fort Collins, everyone seemed to drive newer and fuel-efficient cars, there were things like all natural food stores and 'green' dry cleaning businesses, and definitely a lot of people riding bikes. Some of the people we met at the different companies we visited actually rode their bikes to work and/or on breaks to work, even with snow on the ground, cold temperatures, and when it took them a 50 minute bike ride to get to work!

The Old Town area was one of the 'fun' things we explored (not to say touring electronics and power companies aren't fun, but...) and I really enjoyed it. There was some really cool old architecture, mixed with modern art and shops selling fair trade goods or artisan crafts, yoga studios, so many restaurants and bars, and a unique group of people, like Green Peace volunteers and a bluegrass band playing on the corner. It's definitely an interesting area, and I'm told the night life is even better on the weekends.