Nov 30, 20193 min read

The Colorado 14er Project: Day 7

Day 7

Watch our Day 7 Adventure Video

When we began Day 7 we were almost halfway through our summer Colorado 14er Project. Looking back at some of the footage you can definitely tell we’re starting to get a little tired. But believe it or not, we were still having fun.

Maybe that’s why we decided to include Coffeeshops as one of the categories in our project? When exhaustion starts to set in it’s nothing a hot Americano and scone can’t take care of. Right? So we began our day with just that at the River Blend Coffee House in Glenwood Springs (Coffeeshop #6).

Our goal with this project was to showcase Colorado by experiencing 14 of every category we chose. Perhaps we should have made showering a category? Because we didn’t get anywhere close to 14 of those. Luckily, with Mandy’s brother and his wife visiting we got to invade their hotel room and treat ourselves to a nice, hot shower; the first one of our project!

Now that we were all clean, it was time to take on the world—or at least a brewery… We headed across the pedestrian bridge spanning over I-70 to the Glenwood Canyon Brewpub (Brewery #7). This place holds a special place in our hearts. Nearly three years ago it’s where Mandy asked Kendrick to move into her T@G trailer and hit the road with her.

Eventually, it was time to hit the road again. We hopped in the truck and began heading east on I-70 through Glenwood Canyon (Scenic Drive #6) as we made our way to Winter Park. Driving on I-70 from Denver to the Utah border is beautiful, but the stretch through Glenwood Canyon just stands out above rest of it.

As we neared Winter Park we found our next two features just above the small town of Berthoud Falls. First, was the Berthoud Falls Cascades (Water Feature # 8); a beautiful flow of water less than a minute walk off the side of the road. Of course, usually where there’s a waterfall there’s a wildflower. The Beautiful Cinquefoil (Wildflower #7) was right beside the cascades.

We’ll give you three guesses as to why we drove over an hour out of our way to Winter Park, but you should only need one. That’s right, we drove out of our way to visit Idlewild Spirits & Brewpub (Distillery #10). The first thing we noticed about the distillery was the atmosphere of the tasting room. You could tell a lot of effort was put into making the space feel warm and welcoming. We enjoyed a sampling of their spirits then redeemed our BOGO coupon for cocktails that was on the back of our grocery store receipt!

Day 7 was a welcomed rest day: nothing too strenuous, we didn’t visit too many places, and we only drove a little over 200 miles.

Finally, it was time to find a place to lay our heads for the night. We headed back towards the town of Idaho Springs and up into the National Forest, where we parked Little Bear and Blanca to get some rest. Day 8 would have us returning to 14k feet to summit two 14ers.

Here’s to 7 more days exploring Colorful Colorado…