Our 3 Weeks In Denver – New Food, New Beer & Pneumonia

When planning out the first year of our road trip, we decided to spend Christmas in Denver, Colorado.

We figured it’d give us a chance of some snow, plus it’d mean Shae would have an opportunity to help NORAD track Santa (more on that below). We stayed there from mid-December through the New Year, with Shae’s dad visiting the first week and her mom and stepdad visiting the final two weeks.

The plan was that we’d have time to relax along with the chance to explore Denver and the wider area in search of fun. Some of the adventures were stymied as all of us got sick at some point, but here’s the fun stuff we did manage to get up to.

Beer

Denver is home to some excellent breweries (although sadly also Coors). We managed to check out a few while we were there, the first of which was Periodic Brewing. They have a couple of locations – we visited the one in Northglenn.

Thankfully Shae doesn’t care for beer, which meant I got to try several beers as she offered to be our designated driver. All the beers I tried were excellent, which is impressive considering they’re a microbrewery; some microbreweries we’ve visited have been OK but nothing special, but the flavors at Periodic Brewing were far more developed.

We headed into downtown Denver for lunch one day and ended up at Wynkoop Brewing. They had Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout on the menu, so I knew it had to be tried – I guess I was feeling ballsy that day.

We’ve been watching quite a lot of Food Network over the past few months, so I only learned recently what Rocky Mountain Oysters are. In case you don’t know what they are, the beer menu explained it quite clearly:

We headed up to Fort Collins towards the end of our trip. That’s home to New Belgium Brewing Co. which makes Fat Tire, so we stopped for a couple of drinks in their pet-friendly brewery.

Food

It’s us, so of course food appears high on this list. One of our best meals was on our final night in Denver. We’d been driving around doing some shopping and were getting hungry, so stopped at a place in Thornton called Baris Pizza.

It was a great choice. This location had only been open a couple of weeks, but they’re a family-run restaurant that’s been open for decades elsewhere. The service was fantastic and the pizza was superb – my meat lovers pizza might not look like much, but it was a large slice that was probably the best meat lovers pizza I’ve ever had.

While at Periodic Brewing, we grabbed lunch from Pink Tank food truck which was on site. Despite living in Virginia for many years, Shae and I had never tried chicken and waffles – nor had her dad – so we got that. It was extremely tasty, with Pink Tank offering it with hot sauce ice cream. We were dubious about that flavor ice cream initially, but the hot and cold works well together.

While in Fort Collins, we went for breakfast at Vern’s Place which has giant cinnamon rolls. They were tasty, but we’d have appreciated a vat of icing on the rolls too.

We also went out to dinner at North County where I ordered their tortas and Shae got some tacos – both were excellent.

Golden Gate Canyon State Park

While Shae’s dad was visiting, we headed up into the mountains to visit Golden Gate Canyon State Park.

The higher up we got, the more snow there was.

We’d dressed up warmly, but it hadn’t occurred to us quite how cold it was going to be. We therefore didn’t do too much exploring, especially because Shae’s dad wasn’t feeling well already and so the altitude was making it harder on his breathing.

Shae returned with Truffles the following week along with her friend Melissa who lives in Denver and her dog Maggie.

The views weren’t great when we visited with her dad due to the snow. The weather was much better when Shae returned, so you could see much further from the lookout point.

Figuring that Truffles’ paws might struggle in the snow, Shae had stopped at PetSmart with her mom and stepdad along the way to get her some dog boots. The result was pretty amusing:

Stadium Tour

For Shae’s dad’s birthday, we took him on a Denver Broncos stadium tour. It was a ton of fun, even though none of us are Broncos fans – read more about our tour here.

Christmas Lights At Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center

A year or two ago, our friends moved to Aurora which is to the east of Colorado. They suggested we meet up at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center which had just opened up a few days before and was decorated nicely for Christmas.

In addition to all the lights inside, there were loads of Christmas lights outside.

Prairie Dogs

I don’t know if we’d ever seen prairie dogs before 2018, but last year seemed to be full of them. We saw them as we were leaving Altus OK, found a prairie dog town in the middle of Red Bud Park in Abilene TX, came across some more in Odessa TX (one of the only redeeming features of the city) and found even more near our Airbnb in Denver when taking Truffles to a dog park.

Santa Tracking

Shae’s mom and stepdad flew in to Denver on Christmas Eve to join us for the holidays. That evening, Shae and her mom drove down to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs to help NORAD track Santa. Kids (and adults) call up to find out Santa’s location, so NORAD has hundreds of volunteers answering the phones throughout the day and evening.

Shae had so much fun doing this, so check out her post about it here.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was nice and relaxing. Seeing as we’re traveling full-time, we’ve restricted ourselves to a small travel Christmas tree, although there was still plenty of room beneath for presents.

One of Shae’s favorite gifts was this top featuring the Niffler from the Fantastic Beasts movies.

Snow

One reason we’d picked Denver for Christmas was in the hope we’d have some snow while there. We were snow-free for the first few days (other than up at Golden Gate Canyon State Park), but we got a little just before Christmas, then a fair bit more just after.

Sickness

An underlying theme of our time in Denver was sickness. Shae’s dad didn’t feel great the entire week he visited, then Shae and her stepdad both got really sick. He ended up going to an Urgent Care and was diagnosed with flu (as in flu-flu, not man-flu or bad-cold-flu). He and Shae had the same symptoms, so we figured that’s what she had too. Things ended up getting so bad for Shae that she went to the Urgent Care as well. She was diagnosed with pneumonia too and ended up on a nebulizer.

With the two of them so sick, we didn’t end up exploring Denver as much as planned. Shae’s mom and I seemed to be doing fine, but the last few days of our stay both of us got sick too. Thankfully our symptoms were much more mild, so we didn’t have full-blown flu.

Flea Market

There was a giant flea market close to our Airbnb in Commerce City, so we walked over a few days after Christmas to check it out.

Unfortunately the place was virtually deserted. It looks like it’d be amazing in the summer, but the freezing temperature and lack of money after Christmas meant very few shoppers, which in turn meant very few vendors.

Movies

Due to everyone not feeling well, we watched a lot of movies. Many were streamed through Netflix and Vudu, but several were in movie theaters too.

Shae ended up watching Aquaman twice – once with her dad and then again with her mom. It’s possible that Jason Momoa is now on Shae’s laminated list 😉

Haircut

Shae’s hair grows incredibly quickly. She shaved it off for charity a few years ago and this is how long is was by the time we reached Denver.

Whenever it’s long enough, she cuts enough off that it can be donated to Locks of Love. Locks of Love is a charity that takes donations of human hair in order to make wigs for children who have lost their own due to medical conditions.

Dog Parks

Seeing as Shae and her stepdad weren’t feeling great, we stayed inside quite a lot. That meant our dog Truffles would get cabin fever every couple of days, so we took her to the dog park several times to get some of her energy out.

A quick note regarding the photo below – it kinda looks like I’d just booted her up the backside, but I’d kicked her ball and she’s chasing after it!

New Year’s Eve

Shae still wanted to celebrate New Year’s Eve despite feeling under the weather, so at about 11:15pm we headed into downtown Denver.

We’d been told by a friend that they had a firework display off the top of some buildings, so we followed the crowds and arrived a few minutes before midnight.

Final Thoughts

Our time in Denver was a bit of a bust because of all the sickness going around, but we still managed to find some fun things to do. We’ll be returning to Colorado for ~10 weeks later on in our 50 state road trip, so Denver – we’ll be back to check you out even more in the future – hopefully minus the pneumonia!