Colorado Trip, Part I - Monument & Golden

A few days after we returned from California, we hit the road again to head up to Colorado to see Stephany's dad's side of the family. Becker has been a travelin' boy these days, that's for sure! From Albuquerque, we headed up I-25 through Colorado Springs and stopped in Monument to have dinner with our good friends Stacey & Alex Paxson. (Stacey keeps a great blog for moms called Sweatpant Couture.)

Here is Stephany & Beck with Stacey, Hope, & Seth. While our visit was short, we had a wonderful time with our friends.



After staying in Denver with the family for a night, we decided to do a little sightseeing and made the short drive from Arvada over into Golden. I really only knew Golden as being the home of the Coors Brewing Company. While Coors is indeed prominent and by far the biggest thing in town, Golden was a great little town to visit!





We grabbed some sandwiches and headed down to a park near the river which runs through town. We walked along a trail near the river for a while, and we enjoyed watching all the people tubing and kayaking.











Stephany took advantage of the occasion to dip her toes and check out the rocks in the river, one of her favorite things to do when she's near a river.



The water was cold!



Family picture near the main bridge in town.



Stephany & Beck near fish statues along the river.









After our enjoyable visit to Golden, we headed out of town on a road called "Lookout Mountain." The road winds up the side of a mountain overlooking Golden, and you can see Denver in the background. The sports fields that you can see in the picture are part of the Colorado School of Mines, located in Golden.



Coors is the huge factory you can see below. It takes up a pretty good portion of the town. We thought it would be fun to try to do a tour next time we're there. It would be interesting to compare it to a microbrewery such as the New Belgium Brewing Company, which we toured last year in Fort Collins, Colorado.





The road wound around to the backside of the mountain where we could no longer see Golden. It was beautiful country for sure. It really made us want to go hiking. Now that we're back in Albuquerque, we'll have to get out and enjoy the Sandia foothills again soon.











Steph offered to drive so that I could take in all the scenery.







We'll definitely be making our way back to Golden and Lookout Mountain on return trips to Denver. We had a lot of fun exploring the town and the countryside.

Nathan