Category Archives: Summertime

Celestial Seasonings and My Birthday in Boulder

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For my birthday I took the day off of work and so did Britton. We wanted to take a little mini-vacation in our own state. So we went out to Farmer’s Inn in LaSalle at lunch with some of my family, then Britton and I headed over to Boulder to take a tour of Celestial Seasonings.

3 Generations-Me, My Mom, and her Mom-Grandma


Celestial Seasonings

The tour was nice and completely free! We were shown a short video and then we toured the facilities. We went into the tea room and learned how tea (like coffee) can be decaffeinated and then we went into the mint room which was overwhelming in its mentholated way. Just going in there and you could clear out your eyes, nose and sinuses! We saw how the tea was made into the little sachets and then boxed and wrapped in the cellophane. We even learned a little about the “international” sized teas which come 10 in a box instead of 20 as they are in the U.S. Unfortunately I couldn’t take pictures on the actual tour, but got a few before and after.

We got to sample all sorts of their teas both hot and cold. I even tried Kombucha tea which was sort of strange. It’s a fermented tea that tastes kind of vinegar-y and has bubbles from the natural carbonation that occurs. Interesting stuff.


Outside of Celestial Seasonings in Boulder

After our tour and various samples, we went to a lake just near/behind IBM and walked around it. It was definitely like a dog park/lake. Everyone had big labs and they were throwing frisbees and balls into the lake for the dogs to fetch. It was fun to hike about and watch the silly wet dogs.


At the lake


Dog fetching from the water

Then we decided to cruise over to Pearl Street in Boulder. We like visiting Boulder as there is always something happening and it’s so very beautiful there. We stopped into Foolish Craig’s which is a cute hole in the wall diner with friendly staff and a fun “Cheers” atmosphere.

We actually met Craig of Foolish Craig’s on our way to Puerto Rico this last time. He was our seat mate to Newark and on his way to a golfing vacation in Scotland! We told him that the next time we were in Boulder we’d stop into his place. Foolish Craig’s has even been featured on the Food Network! We just missed Craig by about 15 minutes, but we plan on stopping in again the next time we’re in town.

Finally we headed on home and Britton bought me an ice cream cake. He’s been teasing me about my “lemonade stand” at the garage sale. So this is what he put on the cake:


At least I’m young at heart! 🙂

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Noodles Traveling Shirt

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My friend Penny gave me a shirt. But it’s not just any shirt. Secretly, this shirt is a salad! Noodles is doing a promotion where they are trying to see 10 degrees of separation for a t-shirt. If you bring in the tee, you get a free salad and then you are supposed to pass it on to a friend. It can be anyone, but they want you to promote it and talk about it. So, that’s what I’m doing I guess.


Me in shirt with the young chicks in the background

The salad was pretty good especially because it was free, but I don’t think I would have paid $7.50 for it which is the full price. I like Noodles. The food is good, healthy, has vegetables, the service is nice etc, but the price is what you would expect for a full service restaurant in Greeley not semi-fast food.The thing that kind of stunk was that I can give it to Britton, but he has to use it on another day. Seems a little silly…you should be able to eat with your friend that you pass it on to!

But I liked the idea of the promotion, sort of a traveling gnome/traveling pants thing thought up by the marketing department of Noodles and Co. If you want to see where our t-shirt ends up, you can go to Noodles’ web site (at this site you can also request a t-shirt of your own). Our shirt is number 128-9.


Just call him Super Kit-Tee

Britton’s a little too over-enthusiastic -lol

We had nearly everyone in the house wear the shirt (Schnoodle, Kitty, even a couple of chickens); since it will be traveling, it should have some stories to tell of its journey.


Putting a chicken into a tee is harder than you might think!

It would be fun to see where the shirt ends up. We are trying to decide who next to give it to. We’d like it to leave Greeley at least, but are open. Anyone want a free salad and be the temporary owner of a funky green huge t-shirt? Only catch is you have to pass it on (and try to get it to leave your small circle of usual friends and family).

At Noodles in Greeley


The Salad for the Shirt

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Cheap Tix to Cheap Trick

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Every year here in Greeley (at least for the last 80 or so) we have a July 4th celebration put on by the Stampede.  It used to be a community “potato festival” as that is what was grown in this area..Potatoes.

Somewhere along the line a private company took over ownership of the fair.  Since then it’s turned into a bigger and bigger deal.  They run the parade every year, the rodeo and the island grove park carnival.   One of the benefits to this is they draw in some pretty big names in music. They’ve had Def Leopard, Kid Rock, Keith Urban and numerous other acts.

Last night we had tickets to Cheap Trick and rode our bikes to the fairgrounds.  Blue Oyster Cult opened up for them.  I think we were the only people that rode our bikes.  The people watching the gate kind of laughed as we rode past them and bypassed the $10 parking fees.


Ticket Stubs

The fair has increasingly gotten more and more expensive.  I’d imagine back in the days of the Potato Fair it was pretty cheap to walk to the park.  They’d have some games and maybe a baking contest.  Now it’s $10 to park your car and another $5 just to get into the park.  A Turkey leg will cost you $8 and a lemonade $4.  That makes the regularly priced tickets to see Cheap Trick($17) not so bad in comparison.   We got them for $5 which is usually the cost to just walk around.  Not bad!


At the show! You can see the meat packing plant in the distance

The concert was pretty good.  We recognized a few of their songs from the radio and there were a few people that seemed to know every song.  I am sure this was a pretty big deal for them.

We got an “Indian Taco” (that isn’t really a taco and isn’t Indian either) as we walked around the food court.  We ran into a few people that we know and then watched the concert.  Overall it was a fun night .

Walking around the fair grounds after dark

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Greeley Freight Station Museum

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We think Britton has West Nile Virus. He’s had a headache, fever and body aches for a couple of days. He decided to stay home sick and work from home Friday. He’s been feeling a little better but still kind of strange he says. Anyway, since he was in Greeley I asked if he would meet up with me and my co-workers down at Lincoln Park for a free BBQ meal the Greeley Stampede was putting on. I don’t know if it was to butter us up because of last year’s new policy to charge admission, but I’m always up for free food. Some people said they may not charge admission this year (2011), but according to their website they are still planning on it.  In any case, it was actually pretty good for a bbq and fun to see all sorts of people from Greeley come out! We even ran into one of the people who used to rent the basement bedroom from us, our friend Bob!


With some of my co-workers -Andrew, Marjorie, Kelly and me

Since we were downtown we thought about and  decided that Saturday morning we should ride our bikes down to the Farmers Market since we hadn’t been yet this summer. So we did! There really wasn’t too much in the way of local produce yet, but we picked up some tamales and a pretzel. Then I thought we should swing over and visit with my friend Michelle who works at the Greeley Freight Station Museum! Britton’s grandpa used to have a huge set in his basement, so I thought Britton might get a kick out of it.


The Building for the Train Museum

It is located right next to the Farmers Market Square, or the old Train Depot (680 10th Street). The museum building looks like an old warehouse or something, but inside it houses 20.5 scale miles of miniature railroad track and lots of mini trains that are set in a scene in Oregon in the mid 1970s. There are a total of 2,000 train cars!


In this part you can see logging and an old Greeley Monfort Feed Lot Train Car

For the set, the attention to detail is unreal and must have taken the staff and volunteers a ton of time to put together. In addition to all the mini trains, there’s also a full size caboose that you can climb in and check out. From what I understand a lot of this was the private property of the former owner of the Greeley Tribune (Greeley’s newspaper). When he sold the paper and a few other newspapers, he ramped up his train set. Eventually he decided this was something that the public should see and started a museum. It is set up to eventually become a Greeley public museum when he dies.

We had a lot of fun and thank Michelle for letting us visit it and her!


This is the city scene…down the street you can see my face in the mirror like a billboard -lol


Me at the Greeley Freight Station Museum


Britton in the train museum

 

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