Four Corners Part 1: Denver Doings, Boulder Brewings
Our Denver to Phoenix road trip, part 1.
With summer comes time a hankering to explore. So we did.
So smitten was I by our last foray into the southwest (and left so wanting to explore even more) that we devised another driving trip and this was it.
DAY 1
We had late morning flights out of San Jose airport to Denver. We flew Frontier Airlines (a first and cheap). Snacks in the airport consisted of Croissant McMulch Friers and Starbucks Gold Coast. I drank all the coffee.
Our flight nearly began akin to a close call we had on our last trip. Our seats...?? 11E, 12E, 13E, and 14E. Yes E is a middle seat. Modest begging ensued and we suddenly were 4 abreast in row 2. Noice!
As we slipped into our seats I noted that Frontier had perhaps the newest plane I'd ever been aboard. Seatback TV's too. What's that? You charge $5 for the sheer pleasure of watching TV? Not.
Everybody read. Wowser! I enjoyed my Martin Cruz Smith mystery Stalin's Ghost which puts our hero Arkady Renko into his fifth foray into the Russian underworld this time after crooked policeman in post cold-war Russia. MCS is a phenomenal writer.
1.75 hours later and we're reaching the edge of the Rockies and the pilot has announced that there will be "quite a bit" of turbulence and he's having the flight crew seal themselves in cryogenic suspended animation units from the Nostromo in Alien.
It was a bumpy few minutes.
It's classic Denver weather, air sliding along the Great Plains (also the title of a fine book by Ian Frazier) hits the Rockies and deflects into a lovely updraft that buffets us left coast travelers every time we venture into Colorado.
Down we go. Off to the carousel. Grabbing bags... One's missing. It finally shows and off we go to Avis. I've got a Ford Escape SUV all lined up.
We pack it up and turn the key and...
The windshield has an 18 inch crack across the front.
Trudge.
"Sorry sir. Can I interest you in a Hummer at the same rate?"
This was an interesting instance of neuronal activity.
First brain impulse: Yeah baby yeah!
Second brain impulse: [horror and dread clutching my throat] The gas mileage! Oh my God I'm going to spend $172,000 on gas for a lousy week long trip.
Third brain impulse: Kathleen has always wanted to drive a Hummer.
Fourth brain impulse: People will sneer at me in this carbon consuming nightmare! I'll be run off the road by a Prius I know it!
Fifth brain imp...
"Sir?"
[She's detected my hesitation]
"It gets 20 miles per gallon."
"I'll take it!"
"Would you like a white one or a gray one?"
"Keys woman!"
I go outside. Kat and the kids are watching me. There's about 15 cars in the lot, 11 are Hummers. Hmmm... not so popular. Maybe this is a mistake...
Kathleen starts chanting. "Hummer, Hummer, Hummer!"
OK its not a mistake.
I get in, pull it out (the Hummer) and drive over to the family. Kathleen has the camera out. I oblige her.
The beast appears big but holds no more luggage than the Ford Escape. Still big enough! Everyone is excited and we roar on outta there!
We're spending the night in Boulder and take the outer toll road to miss downtown Denver traffic. $2 toll, 8 miles, $2, 9 miles, $2, 11 miles, $2, 8 miles. Damn! $8 to drive 36 miles out of town.
Downtown Boulder is lovely. Sort of a much larger Ithaca with more money. We head to the Foot of the Mountain motel. Minutes from the old downtown Boulder, Pearl street section. The motel is as its name. Photogenic setting, lots of wood, green, birds. Charming park and river across the street. 100's of people tubing.
15 minutes maneuvering the Hummerboat into a parking slot in front of our room.
Dinner time. Boulder = microbrews. We made out way to the Walnut Brewery. American Dream IPA scores 9.5 on the Lagunitas scale (recently created by Mr. Scott Johnson on our recent outing to the Monterey Beer Festival, where we discovered the transcendent Green Flash West Coast IPA from San Diego). Snacks were good too.
We make a brief stop at the local supermarket for supplies for the trip. Mitch and I are wandering down behind the checkout when low and behold:
I'll have to remember to send a shot of this to Chris Bell.
Off to bed with heads twittering with excitement. Tomorrow we drive through Rocky Mountain National Park.
DAY 2
Up we get, quick breakfast. Load up the Hummer and... it's dead.
The battery is dead! This indestructible armored car is kaput. Don't know why. No lights left on. No door ajar. This is inspiring...
Waiting for a Hummer. Our second Hummer. Our third car in less than 24 hours. What is it with me and three cars?
Frank the Avis handy car man who looks and laughs like Santa Claus arrives in the replacement Hummer an hour later. He makes a few jokes, jumps the engine and gets the Hummer to start and says "well now you get to choose which car..."
We leave Frank in the dust standing by Hummer number 1.
Up to Estes Park and then into the National Park along the Trail Ridge road, reportedly the highest paved road in the U.S. climbing well over 12,000 feet. Indeed this is truly an amazing drive up into the stratosphere. We get above the tree line and hop out to take in the vistas.
The Forest Canyon Overlook.
Mitchell announces he's got a headache. We walk back to the armored car. Mitchell announces he's light-headed. As I turn to get him some water I notice him sagging. I catch him as he goes down. Mitch completely passes out. We lay him down, maintain his airway and he comes around. Altitude sickness. Tears and fears subside and we make our way along.
Mitch seemed better so we took a brief respite to enjoy some summertime snow.
We're practically at the highest point so we continue along and down the other side of the Continental Divide. What is the Continental Divide? I wondered too. Turns out its the line that runs roughly North/South across the northern hemisphere where water on one side will flow all the way down to the Atlantic and water on the other side flows down to the Pacific.
We drove along, stumbling across a large cluster of clumsily parked cars. We'd been warned about this by the park rangers.
Moose!
We continued along this spectacular park. Green valleys, high rocks, towering trees, abundant with life.
As we headed south we had an incredible last climb up again, nearly to the same heights and the skies opened up with a torrential rain.
We landed in Frisco at the Alpine Inn. Frankly not very hospitable on the outside but appearances were deceiving and at $65/night, a steal. Our host directed us to the Breckenridge Brewery about a 15 minute drive down through the mountains. We drove through this ski resort area. The place is filled with ugly plastic stores trying desperately to look like Swiss chalets. Kinda like the worst of Carmel kitsch but done in a snow globe motif.
We land in Breckenridge. Now my favorite watering hole in NY, the Waterfront Ale House, has its own kitschy sign that says "Warm Beer, Lousy Food, Ugly Owner."
This sign would be no joke at Breckenridge except lousy isn't a strong enough word for both the beer and the food. Though the kids enjoyed playing pool in the back.
Breckenridge bottles and distributes their beers all over. There are so many good micro-breweries in Colorado. What happened that they put out this gak? I asked Scott about this later in the garage. He chided me and pointed out my lack of examination of the setting that I had driven through to arrive at said brewery. That was it. The beer tasted like a snow globe and would fit the taste of most of that town's denizens.
Despite the beer and tinseltown we had a lovely drive back to the hotel and to bed.
CLICK HERE for the next posting of our Four Corners trip.
With summer comes time a hankering to explore. So we did.
So smitten was I by our last foray into the southwest (and left so wanting to explore even more) that we devised another driving trip and this was it.
DAY 1
We had late morning flights out of San Jose airport to Denver. We flew Frontier Airlines (a first and cheap). Snacks in the airport consisted of Croissant McMulch Friers and Starbucks Gold Coast. I drank all the coffee.
Our flight nearly began akin to a close call we had on our last trip. Our seats...?? 11E, 12E, 13E, and 14E. Yes E is a middle seat. Modest begging ensued and we suddenly were 4 abreast in row 2. Noice!
As we slipped into our seats I noted that Frontier had perhaps the newest plane I'd ever been aboard. Seatback TV's too. What's that? You charge $5 for the sheer pleasure of watching TV? Not.
Everybody read. Wowser! I enjoyed my Martin Cruz Smith mystery Stalin's Ghost which puts our hero Arkady Renko into his fifth foray into the Russian underworld this time after crooked policeman in post cold-war Russia. MCS is a phenomenal writer.
1.75 hours later and we're reaching the edge of the Rockies and the pilot has announced that there will be "quite a bit" of turbulence and he's having the flight crew seal themselves in cryogenic suspended animation units from the Nostromo in Alien.
It was a bumpy few minutes.
It's classic Denver weather, air sliding along the Great Plains (also the title of a fine book by Ian Frazier) hits the Rockies and deflects into a lovely updraft that buffets us left coast travelers every time we venture into Colorado.
Down we go. Off to the carousel. Grabbing bags... One's missing. It finally shows and off we go to Avis. I've got a Ford Escape SUV all lined up.
We pack it up and turn the key and...
The windshield has an 18 inch crack across the front.
Trudge.
"Sorry sir. Can I interest you in a Hummer at the same rate?"
This was an interesting instance of neuronal activity.
First brain impulse: Yeah baby yeah!
Second brain impulse: [horror and dread clutching my throat] The gas mileage! Oh my God I'm going to spend $172,000 on gas for a lousy week long trip.
Third brain impulse: Kathleen has always wanted to drive a Hummer.
Fourth brain impulse: People will sneer at me in this carbon consuming nightmare! I'll be run off the road by a Prius I know it!
Fifth brain imp...
"Sir?"
[She's detected my hesitation]
"It gets 20 miles per gallon."
"I'll take it!"
"Would you like a white one or a gray one?"
"Keys woman!"
I go outside. Kat and the kids are watching me. There's about 15 cars in the lot, 11 are Hummers. Hmmm... not so popular. Maybe this is a mistake...
Kathleen starts chanting. "Hummer, Hummer, Hummer!"
OK its not a mistake.
I get in, pull it out (the Hummer) and drive over to the family. Kathleen has the camera out. I oblige her.
The beast appears big but holds no more luggage than the Ford Escape. Still big enough! Everyone is excited and we roar on outta there!
We're spending the night in Boulder and take the outer toll road to miss downtown Denver traffic. $2 toll, 8 miles, $2, 9 miles, $2, 11 miles, $2, 8 miles. Damn! $8 to drive 36 miles out of town.
Downtown Boulder is lovely. Sort of a much larger Ithaca with more money. We head to the Foot of the Mountain motel. Minutes from the old downtown Boulder, Pearl street section. The motel is as its name. Photogenic setting, lots of wood, green, birds. Charming park and river across the street. 100's of people tubing.
15 minutes maneuvering the Hummerboat into a parking slot in front of our room.
Dinner time. Boulder = microbrews. We made out way to the Walnut Brewery. American Dream IPA scores 9.5 on the Lagunitas scale (recently created by Mr. Scott Johnson on our recent outing to the Monterey Beer Festival, where we discovered the transcendent Green Flash West Coast IPA from San Diego). Snacks were good too.
We make a brief stop at the local supermarket for supplies for the trip. Mitch and I are wandering down behind the checkout when low and behold:
I'll have to remember to send a shot of this to Chris Bell.
Off to bed with heads twittering with excitement. Tomorrow we drive through Rocky Mountain National Park.
DAY 2
Up we get, quick breakfast. Load up the Hummer and... it's dead.
The battery is dead! This indestructible armored car is kaput. Don't know why. No lights left on. No door ajar. This is inspiring...
Waiting for a Hummer. Our second Hummer. Our third car in less than 24 hours. What is it with me and three cars?
Frank the Avis handy car man who looks and laughs like Santa Claus arrives in the replacement Hummer an hour later. He makes a few jokes, jumps the engine and gets the Hummer to start and says "well now you get to choose which car..."
We leave Frank in the dust standing by Hummer number 1.
Up to Estes Park and then into the National Park along the Trail Ridge road, reportedly the highest paved road in the U.S. climbing well over 12,000 feet. Indeed this is truly an amazing drive up into the stratosphere. We get above the tree line and hop out to take in the vistas.
The Forest Canyon Overlook.
Mitchell announces he's got a headache. We walk back to the armored car. Mitchell announces he's light-headed. As I turn to get him some water I notice him sagging. I catch him as he goes down. Mitch completely passes out. We lay him down, maintain his airway and he comes around. Altitude sickness. Tears and fears subside and we make our way along.
Mitch seemed better so we took a brief respite to enjoy some summertime snow.
We're practically at the highest point so we continue along and down the other side of the Continental Divide. What is the Continental Divide? I wondered too. Turns out its the line that runs roughly North/South across the northern hemisphere where water on one side will flow all the way down to the Atlantic and water on the other side flows down to the Pacific.
We drove along, stumbling across a large cluster of clumsily parked cars. We'd been warned about this by the park rangers.
Moose!
We continued along this spectacular park. Green valleys, high rocks, towering trees, abundant with life.
As we headed south we had an incredible last climb up again, nearly to the same heights and the skies opened up with a torrential rain.
We landed in Frisco at the Alpine Inn. Frankly not very hospitable on the outside but appearances were deceiving and at $65/night, a steal. Our host directed us to the Breckenridge Brewery about a 15 minute drive down through the mountains. We drove through this ski resort area. The place is filled with ugly plastic stores trying desperately to look like Swiss chalets. Kinda like the worst of Carmel kitsch but done in a snow globe motif.
We land in Breckenridge. Now my favorite watering hole in NY, the Waterfront Ale House, has its own kitschy sign that says "Warm Beer, Lousy Food, Ugly Owner."
This sign would be no joke at Breckenridge except lousy isn't a strong enough word for both the beer and the food. Though the kids enjoyed playing pool in the back.
Breckenridge bottles and distributes their beers all over. There are so many good micro-breweries in Colorado. What happened that they put out this gak? I asked Scott about this later in the garage. He chided me and pointed out my lack of examination of the setting that I had driven through to arrive at said brewery. That was it. The beer tasted like a snow globe and would fit the taste of most of that town's denizens.
Despite the beer and tinseltown we had a lovely drive back to the hotel and to bed.
CLICK HERE for the next posting of our Four Corners trip.
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