This morning, we drove from Colorado Springs to Denver, a trip of about an hour. From Denver, we headed northwest to Boulder to go on the Celestial Seasonings factory tour. It was interesting to see what goes into their teas–Celestial Seasonings sells about 75% herbal teas, which are technically not even teas, since they do not include any part of the tea tree. Unfortunately, Celestial Seasonings uses a lot of proprietary equipment, so they do not allow people to take pictures on the tour.
In the afternoon, we went on a tour of an operating gold mine (they will be blasting next week). The mine tour was not what we were expected, with a real miner as our tour guide. The mine owner was quite the talker and we suspect that he had been in the bottle before we arrived. Everyone involved with the mine was quite the character. We also had the chance to pan for gold (and found several small flakes) before leaving.
Back in Denver, we checked into our hotel and walked five blocks downtown to the outdoor 16th street mall for dinner. We ate a Maggiano’s, an Italian restaurant where Laura went for prom. We had a five course family style dinner with enough leftovers to be tomorrow’s lunch. On the way back to the hotel, we enjoyed seeing the real gold dome of the state capitol lit up at night.
Tomorrow morning, we have a tour of the US mint, where they make several types of coins. We also want to see the unsinkable Molly Brown’s house and experience downtown Denver.