Fort Collins = BEER

Our last stop on our Colorado getaway was in Fort Collins. It's a great little town that reminded me a lot of Iowa City and Madison. The one thing that made me fall in love with this place... beer. There were breweries every where and especially one of my faves the New Belgium Brewery. Home to Fat Tire, 1554 amongst others. More to come on this later!

Fort Collins is a short drive North of Denver. It has a far different landscape then the mountains, more like a desert. I will show you our hike in Fort Collins in my next post.

Our main reason for coming to Fort Collins is that Molly's friend was getting married to a gentlemen who happened to be a brewmaster at New Belgium. Fun for everyone! We were all invited to the rehearsal dinner Friday night at the brewery and then we hit the town with a few of Molly's friends.

You can see Molly was enjoying herself

J & J even had a few cocktails!

The ladies!

We made a pit stop at a real hole in the wall. I don't recall the name of the bar but it was covered wall to wall in bumper stickers. They also had cherries soaked in Everclear that were pretty good and very lethal.

You're all invited out when we move:)

White Water Rafting

Day 3 of our adventure vacation included a trip down the Colorado River. In an inner tube. With a hippie. This was my first trip, the others had been on something of the sorts before. Uncle Nick had been on a few crazy rafting trips, which made me feel more comfortable, so I thought...

Great outfits, I know. The start of the cruise was pretty mellow, nothing to difficult.

But it got harder... Look at that intensity! Coach Sabers would be so proud.

Yes, that's an ear warmer. In our downtime we were offered blue raspberry Jolly Rancher's and lemonade.

As the river got wilder we came to a little place known as the Widow Maker. Our fearless leader, Jaime, had never had a swimmer. Today was a different day, as Nick decided to depart the boat with a big smile on his face.

Fear. Fear was what gave Meg and her huge pipes the ability to pull Uncle Nick back into the boat. It's definantly one of those had-to-be-there moments but one I will never forget it. Meg yanked him back into the boat and wouldn't let go and until Uncle Nick had to yell at her to let go. I'M IN THE F***** BOAT! Unbelievable!

I'm so proud:) What would I do without her?

Marge the Barge

Thought I'd start breaking down our awesome trip to Colorado with Marge. Marge was our 2003 Ford Econoline Van and she is special...


Jim got her from Courtesy Car Rental. She was fully loaded, and there was plenty of room for 6. Check out the custom rims! She also had some custom exhaust that made me giggle every time we headed up the mountain. Nothing like glass packs on a conversion van!!

Marge had a DVD player with a pretty large screen that dropped down, unfortunately the sound in the van was terrrible! I forgot to load the power inverter so we couldn't watch movies on the laptop for very long either. Instead we passed gas and laughed at Julie:) I mean Jim.

Molly the Navigator

Pumpkin and her neck brace

Julie

Sorry Uncle Nick, had to put that one in there...

Angsterguy

Gotta have me some Red Vines!