Colorado Archives - a Happy Healthy Home

New Belgium Brewery Tour

Tiara — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 20:00:00 +0000

I’ve been wine tasting in Sonoma, Napa, and in Italy, but never toured a brewery! We couldn’t leave Fort Collins, CO without stopping at New Belgium for a brewery tour! Initially we checked online for tour times and tickets and they were completely booked for the week. Even though we thought it was a long shot we decided to call and check for cancellations. They recommended coming down and checking in for “stand by” and just like that we were touring the brewery.

The tour is and hour and a half. You’ll learn all about their beers and history while sampling various beers. It’s free to the public 21 and older. Reservations required.

The trio out front.

The founders

Beer on tap

The love for bikes runs deep at New Belgium (and my dad). Here’s an old Schwinn Hornet.

When there’s a cut out you can guarantee one of us will have our head in it! Nick the beer ranger

The barrels are very large. See photo for perspective.

Nick tasting the sour beer — Lips of Faith Tart Lychee. They only produce a very small quantity.
It’s a combination of their barrel-aged sour beer, Lychee Fruit puree and cinnamon sticks. It was tasty.

There’s even a rock climbing wall, volleyball court, and bike track. I even saw a ping pong table at one point too!

All the bottles lining up.

The sun talks about the solar panels and wind turbines they use to produce energy.

Of course they had a chandelier made of cans! It represents all the beers that they can.

All in all, it was a fun experience and recommend it to anyone visiting Fort Collins, CO.

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Garden of Gods

Tiara — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 23:53:00 +0000

During our trip to Colorado we spent a day in Colorado Springs visiting my brother. As mentioned in my Holiday Rewind Christmas Eve we headed out to Garden of Gods with the pups. Garden of Gods is a National Natural Landmark and free for visitors to walk around and enjoy the breath taking rock formations.

Geological formations: The outstanding geologic features of the park are the ancient sedimentary beds of red, blue, purple, and white sandstones, conglomerates and limestone
that were deposited horizontally, but have now been tilted vertically
and faulted by the immense mountain building forces caused by the uplift
of the Pikes Peak massif.

I loved using my new camera and can’t wait to actually get better at using it. Here are a few photos I snapped during our walk.

Matt, Nick, Cara and the dogs.

Matt and I

Cara & Brittnay

Nick & I… looks like Christmas card material

View of the mountains.

Storm clouds rolling in.

Cara and Auggie back at the car.

Another scenic shot.

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Checkin in from Colorado

Tiara — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 01:42:00 +0000

Hello from the great state of Colorado.

I took a few days off to enjoy family and of course Christmas. Just thought I would check in and say we made it. Lots of fun CO updates next week. In the meantime don’t forget to enter my giveaway from GlassesUSA.com here, there’s still a few days left.

And we’re off to Utah today to ski before heading back to Tahoe. Rumor has it there’s four feet of snow in the driveway. Wish us luck.

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Ski Trip :: Keystone Colorado

Tiara — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:29:00 +0000

After talking about going to Colorado to ski/board all last season Nick and I decided to take a long weekend. This past week we flew out to Colorado for a mini ski vacation. Since we’re both employed by Vail Resorts the trip was fairly inexpensive.

Nick and I decided to stay right in Keystone at The Gateway. It was only a 5 minute walk to the Gondola which was prefect for us. We weren’t alone on this adventure; Nick’s family joined us for the weekend.

Keystone was truly amazing with steep blues and nice groomed blacks we were in heaven. Over the course of our stay we had the mother load of weather variations. With temps ranging from 9-40 degrees, 4-6 inches of fresh snow and a day with wind chill of -30. It’s a good thing I had my puffy with me. Check out the pictures…

Out in the OutBack

Nick and I riding up the chair lift.

Stormy Day with -30 wind chill

Nick scooping out the mountain.

At the top of the Outback. What a great view of the Rockies.

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