Colorado Day 3 & 4 & 5

Saturday, aka the third day in Colorado, we drove up to Fort Collins to visit my college pal Duy and do some lunch and beer. He asked us what we were in the mood for and I said anywhere that has a vegetarian option and he suggested a place he loved that was vegetarian (pretty much vegan actually) and would be happy to take us since friends of his don't usually want to join him. Tasty Harmony.

This ended up being maybe my personal favorite meal of our vacation because of the comfort food factor. Duy recommended the Kentucky Fried Freedom meal.

There is but one food item this vegetarian misses and what is it class? That's right KFC. Since saying bye bye birdies I have wanted KFC and this meal of kentucky style fried tofu, mashed potatoes, black eyed peas, and garlicky collared greens. It was so freaking insanely delicious. The collared greens were increible, so garlicky, the potatoes divine, the tofu fantastic. Just remembering it makes me want Duy to fedex me a plate.

Fort Collins is home to New Belgium brewery where they make the famous Fat Tire Beer. They have very popular brewery tours but they had been booked forever so we checked to see if anyone had cancelled, sadly no but wandered around for a few minutes checking the gift shop and sights.

We ended up at Odell's which was another brewery just a few minutes from New Belgium and their tours were booked too but consoled ourselves with two beer samplers at $4 a pop.

It was an exciting development. Duy even wondered why he didn't do this more often since he lives in that town and I wondered the same thing. I'd be there like, every other weekend!

That night we dropped Jay at his bus departure jam and watched "Moneyball" with the fam.

Sunday we went to church and took the family to the Native Foods in Boulder. What troopers they were to eat veggie for us and dangit I forgot to take any pics of that. Afterwards we drove up to a fun vista (slash almost crashed a wedding) and posed for a little photo with the fam. I am aware I'm a midget, Anna is about 13, I am 30.

HELLO BOULDER. Boulder is like the Portland of Colorado. Bunch of hippies and cool stores and such, it even has it's own Pearl thing called Pearl St. Went from Pearl District to Pearl St.

My trip was starting to become a deja vu of last summer where I also had lunch with Duy, went to Pearl St, shopped at Peppercorn, and had gelato at Two Spoons. Hey if it's not broke don't fix it.

I bought some neon nail polish for Anna at Urban Outfitters and we did our nails outside back home.

Nothing bonds like manicuring together. At night we watched "A League of their Own".

The next day my nerddom took us to the Celestial Seasonings Factory tour in Boulder. DORK.

We got there early and signed in. Did you know Celestial Seasonings bags all of their teas in this Boulder facility? It's owned by some big corporation now but try to ignore that in favor of how many American jobs (and Colorado jobs) it creates not to mention that their product is pretty fantastic and was started by a bunch of hippies stealing herbs from the rocky mountains.

There was a little museum with original paintings you may have seen on some of their teas though I think most of these they were discontinued teas. They commission original art that ends up on the boxes which is pretty cool. I also learned that they rotate their teas constantly and something like 13 different teas are released yearly.

The waiting room had a free sampling of some of their teas and the "ticket" for admission was a sample of their most famous tea: sleepytime. Just looking at that cute fat ass bear sitting on his lazy butt with his ridiculous cap on fills me with sleepyness and happiness.

Oh yes, we had to wear hair nets during the tour.

After the stimulation of a tea factory tour we was hungry so we went to Snarf's for lunch.

And had a pretty ridiculously delicious sandwich made of artichokes and cheese and the best dang bread. It was reminiscent of Bay Cities deli style bread only even tastier.

As if we needed more stimulation this day we went for a bike ride around a great little trail.

Colorado has giant space so it's no wonder they can spare these giant incredible bike trails. All we have is concrete.

After a shower and a nap we headed to Prospect a magical little housing unit for their food truck night. Prospect, in case you don't wanna click on the wiki link is a housing development within the city limits of Longmont that is full of all sorts of housing styles like craftsman, town homes, modern, victorian, etc.  It's like a movie set almost with all sorts of houses living in peace and harmony.

We ate all kinda foods and listened to live music and did some window shopping.

Another idyllic day in Colorado down.