Colorado

Between Christmas and New Year's, Ryan and I flew out to Denver to spend time with his family there. Whereas the last time I was there, it was Thanksgiving, and most of the time was spent with family, this trip we had the chance to do and see quite a few things in Colorado.

One day we drove to Boulder and visited the Celestial Seasonings factory. The lobby had lots of the original artwork that adorns their tea packaging. We saw a little movie about how they make the tea, then got to walk through the factory. One of the neat parts of the tour was walking into the "Mint Room", which is a room that contains sacks and sacks of mint from Washington state. The most interesting part for me was simply watching how the machines could "sew" the tea bags shut, fold the boxes, put the tea bags into boxes, fold the boxes shut, then shrink wrap the boxes, all without human hands, really.

On another day, we drove for about 3 hours, into the mountains, to go to a hot spring resort. The place had two large outdoor swimming pools (one at 104 degrees and another at 99). A river ran down the mountain next to the building, and they piped the hot spring water into the river. People had arranged rocks in some shallow, sandy areas on the edge of the river, so the warm water stayed seperate from the cold water from the river. It was just a very strange experience (but fun!) to be in your swimsuit in warm water, surrounded by snow.