Days Nine and Ten - Denver, Colorado

Sometime on Thursday, I was looking at a Denver visitors' guide that cousin Jen picked up for us. She gave us a wonderful road trip friendly gift for Christmas with guides to the cities we're going, an atlas, snacks, and super cute coffee cups (which we've been using every day). Anyway, I was looking at the guide for Denver and circling things I wanted to do. We were planning to stop into the city on Saturday and then head west to Keystone, but I had circled so many things, I didn't think a few hours would be enough time!

P.S. This is where I got the coffee cup I was drinking out of while manically circling. Everything at Ericca and TJ's is made out of wood!

I headed to the computer and found an amazing last minute hotel deal for Saturday night. It was right downtown and Charlie friendly.

[Side note]
We thought it was pretty awesome, until we woke up Sunday morning and the hot water heater was broken! We took cold showers and while I was still angrily shivering, I called the front desk and asked what they were doing to compensate for the problem. They gave me another half off the hotel room, making the originally $160 hotel room about $32 with tax. 

This was the view coming into the city. It was snowing on top of the mountain.

Anyway, one of the main reasons we wanted to stay the night on Saturday was to be able to take a microbrewery tour, since we didn't want to drive after that! We also wanted to go to the art museum, which we wisely did before the brewery tour. It was beautiful and really big. Two different buildings that were both several stories high. Added bonus: the museum is free on the first Saturday on the month.

After the museum, we went to the Breckenridge Brewery to start the tour. We had three samples here.

Then we went to Falling Rock, where we had another three samples. I'm not sure if you can tell from the pictures, but there were hundreds of empty bottles everywhere. Love that they're using their trash as decor! Also, they had 120 beers on tap.

Here I am walking in the snow between breweries.

Apparently this was where we stopped taking pictures, but we went to two more breweries.

After the tour, we went to dinner. We went to this fantastic sushi place, Taki Sushi. The service and the food were awesome. Cute place, too.

Sunday morning, after the cold shower, we went shopping in Larimar Square for awhile, which was adorable. Plus, every store was dog friendly. Love that.

Then we went north to the city of Golden.

The Coors Brewery is in Golden. We went on a free tour and were given three free beers at the end. Is anyone sensing a trend here? Here's a picture of the giant kettles where they brew the beer. In addition to Coors, they brew Blue Moon, Leinenkugel, and lots more.

We drove into Keystone last night and went to The Goat! We knew everyone working there, which was so fun. Sorry for the dark and terrible picture.

We were planning to just stop in and then drive on to Avon to stay with cousin Kara. Scotty, being the amazing person that he is, had gotten us a hotel room for the night! It's a beautiful place with a spectacular view of the mountains.

I just took this picture with Photobooth from where I'm blogging in bed. Didn't move an inch. This is real time, people.

Bear is going skiing today and he is stoked. I'm going to ride the gondola to the top of the mountain and drink mimosas.

Rough life.