I’ve broken my own cardinal rule around not being able to head off on the next trip until I’ve finished the blog from the last one. But you know, life got in the way – like the whole being 50 thing (which consumed a lot of mental energy!).

Anyway, better late than never, here’s the round up of the rest of Colorado and our last week of the Pacific Northwest ++ trip.

Colorado has the craziest weather. Take our stop at this Harvest Host on the outskirts of Denver. When we arrived, we opted to sit inside as it was 90 degrees out and felt ridiculously hot. We took a window seat with a view. Within half an hour or so, the temp had dropped just a little, maybe 5 degrees, and some ominous grey clouds were gathering. And then just like that, it started hail stoning. Like proper hard packed shards of ice torpedoing down from above. Very crazy indeed.

While El Rancho brewing wasn’t our ideal type of brewery, it served us well in providing WiFi, shelter (from the heat and the hail!), and overnight parking. But way more up our alley was an overnight stay near Avery Brewing in Boulder. We braved an outside table in the heat here, relieved as it was with misters spraying into the air to cool the punters. Ahhhh!

Also while in Boulder, the bikes got an airing on the Boulder Creek/Boulder Canyon trail.

As we all know, every good bike ride should include beer and pizza

As we continued our travels, we had to pass our favorite distillery, Stoneyard, such a convenient location to drop in on the east west I80.

They had recently bottled a new concoction: Cacao de los Muertos, with a whopping 88% alcohol or 176 proof (as a comparison, most single malts sit around 43%). But strength is nothing without flavor. And the chocolate hit you get from this baby slaps you around the face while you’re still reeling from the alcohol content. Think pipette level portion sizes. And the perfect nearly 50th birthday pressie 🙂

Seriously awesome spirit in a seriously awesome bottle!
We don’t always stop at distilleries en route, it’s far more common for us to stop at coffee shops, like in Longmont on the way to Boulder.

This time, Stoneyard was just a flying visit, as D was driving and we needed to get to our next working location. Pretty glad we didn’t hang around the distillery for too long because it was back to Colorado’s crazy weather… as we continued west, our journey was marred with fog and spray from the traffic in front of us in the increasingly sodden conditions.

And less than 30 minutes behind us, the fire-eroded banks at the side of the freeway could hold up no longer, creating a massive mudslide onto the freeway. The torrent of rain continued, making recovery efforts impossible and any through traffic faced an unpredictable night waiting to see if they could get through the next day… or a 250 mile detour. Phew, just dodged that bullet!

The last week of our trip was spent in Basalt, near Aspen. As I’m sure you can imagine, Darren and I spend a lot of time together on these trips. So we mixed it up a bit on Sunday with a his n hers You do your thing/I’ll do mine. Darren spent the day mountain biking and dropped me off to hike 10 miles to the pub where we would meet up. Woefully the nachos at the brewery were sub-par but the hike itself, just gorgeous.

Taking a well earned break along the way
And from Darren
Luckily anything tastes ok when you’re that hungry

Hipcamp is a website or app similar to Airbnb but for camping. In other words, private families rent out their land for you to camp on. We scored with a lovely secluded spot on farmland, cows and horses for neighbors, chickens freely scratching around and wildlife wandering past including deer and elk.

We squeezed a fair amount into our last week – biking, hiking and eating out.

Morning bike path ride before work
Biked to the brewery in the evening for some awesome crispy confit duck and charred brussels with Parmesan and chilli
Somehow we never made it here! Too many options and not enough time.
Even though we were a long way from the east coast, the Maine lobster roll was delicious
I mean seriously good!!! Not complaining that it came with crisps either.
On the other hand, another dining out option was not so inspirational. Jalapeño poppers were for some reason covered in multi-colored crushed tortilla chips.
Like WTF??? I’d like to have a word with whoever dreamed that up and thought it would look appetizing on a plate.
Luckily there was some hiking involved too

Independence Day meant we had a long weekend to get home, so we’d planned on more alpine meadow play on Saturday morning before setting off home. That was until we got a phone call on Friday afternoon telling us we were supposed to have left our camping spot already and there was another couple waiting. Oops. Last minute change of plan – we decided to get some miles in on Friday night, and headed west to Fruita.

So the last night of our trip was spent in 100 degree heat at a noisy truck stop. Not quite what we’d planned but didn’t stop us getting the full charcuterie platter works out. Got a few double takes from the truckers but c’est la vie.

Classy

All that remained was a 760 mile drive home. What a long tiring day that was! But worth it to close out yet another epic road trip. In total over 4,000 miles through 10 US states.

Route map showing location for each week of our 14 week trip.
And that’s a wrap!