Another road trip and our first round of visitors in Colorado

I flew back to Virginia on the 29th of November and met Seth, Brittany, Mom, Dad, and, of course, Kylie at Crozet Pizza for dinner. It was nice being able to see everyone, and I spent most of the evening holding Kylie since I had not been with her for a week. The next morning Seth and I were up and on the road by 8:30am. Seth was driving with me out to Colorado to help get our second car and Colby and Barlow back out west. Katy stayed behind in Denver to continue the job hunt. 

Mine and Seth's trip was uneventful other then hitting a little snow in West Virginia, and other then hitting heavy traffic in Louisville due to a portion of I-64 being closed, it went real smooth. We stopped in Illinois for the night on Wednesday, and then rolled into Denver in time for dinner on Thursday. Josh had flown into Colorado Thursday evening to spend a long weekend, so we all arrived at Aunt Cyndi's around the same time for some waffles and gravy. 

Since we were all together we decided to spend Friday doing some sightseeing. We drove up to Fort Collins and spent the day visiting different breweries. Fort Collins has more breweries per capita then any other city in the United States other then Portland. We started off at Anheuser-Busch, but were late for their 11am tour. However, the people there were extremely nice and told us to come back for their 1:30pm tour and they would hook us up with free tickets to their beer school. At the end of the factory tour the guide asks a trivia question, and whoever gets it right gets free tickets, so they gave us the answer and made sure the tour guide called on us. So, with that we headed downtown and went to Cooper Smith's for some sampling and lunch.

After leaving Cooper Smith's we headed back to Anheuser-Busch and spent the next several hours touring the factory, attending beer school, and sitting in their bar sampling the beer. 

Once we left the Budweiser plant, we decided we had time for one more stop, so we headed to Odell's Brewing Company. We did several samplers of their different beer and just shared. They had some excellent beer, some interesting beer, and some strong beer. They had a whole sampler of beer that was 9% alcohol or higher! While at Odell's we decided we were hungry, and so I went out to the parking lot where a taco truck was parked and ordered us some munchies. 

 When we got back to Denver, Cyndi had cooked us a wonderful steak dinner with homemade eggnog pie for dessert! It was great all being together. Saturday morning Seth flew back to Virginia (it was a whirl wind trip for him, driving 26 hours over two days and then spending a full day in Colorado Friday before flying home). That afternoon Josh, Katy, Cyndi, and myself packed up the car and drove up to the ski town of Breckenridge for a week of fun and relaxation.

On Saturday night Alex, a friend and co-workers of Cyndi's, joined us in Breckenridge, and we went to the Breckenridge Brewery for dinner and then went back to our cabin and soaked in the hot tub with snow falling down on us. We were living the life!

On Sunday Josh, Katy, and myself spent the afternoon cross country skiing. It was not easy as we thought, and after three and a half hours and multiple trips on our butts, we were worn out! It was a lot fun though, and the scenery was gorgeous being up in the Rocky Mountains with the snow continuing to fall. That night Cyndi made one of our favorite meals, Chicken Tetrazzini...once again, we were living the life!

Did not make it out of the teens on Sunday!

On Monday afternoon Josh took off to fly back to Virginia. Katy and I spent the rest of the week doing a whole lot of nothing. My Mom's and Cyndi's cousin, Jeannie, and her partner, Keri, joined us for the week. We had one small hiccup in an otherwise wonderful week, both Katy and I caught some 24 hour virus around the same time, so that was far from pleasant. Once we got over that bug, we spent an evening downtown at an amazing fondue restaurant called the Swiss Haven...it was a delicious meal!

On Friday Katy and I took off on a gorgeous four mile hike up in the mountains with Jeannie and Keri. It was the warmest it had been all week (in the upper 20s) and there was not a cloud in the sky. We rented snowshoes, but did not end up needing them for most of the hike. 

On Saturday we headed back to Denver, stopping in Frisco for some shopping and then in Idaho Springs at Tommyknockers Microbrewery for lunch. It was a wonderful week and now we have Dave and Sherry to look forward to coming next Friday!