Day #6

This was our first day we actually got to sleep in!!!  It was also the day of the snowstorm.  Snow had started falling the night before, and when I woke up, snow was getting pretty deep (18" overnight!)  I went downstairs to get some breakfast and take some pictures of the snow.  It was so pretty!

It had snowed so much last night, and the roads were still pretty bad, we decided to all squeeze into the 3 vehicles that had 4 wheel drive, just in case.  Don, John, Beth and I went with Chandra and Jr in their truck.  Here's Jr inpsecting his truck.

Despite the snowy conditions, we decided that we would be able to make it to the Coors Brewing Company, as we had originally planned.  On the way over, we noticed that we were the only people on our side of the road.  The other side of the road was a huge line of cars that seemed to be heading towards the slopes.  Luckily we were the only ones on the roads for a while, because the plows hadn't gone through yet, so the roads were still covered in snow ... Jr just made his own lane driving on the freeways!

We got to the Brewery parking lot just in time to board the shuttle waiting to take us to the actual brewery.  Those that were 21 and over were given a special bracelet that would allow us to have a tasting and 3 free samples on this FREE tour.  We were all issued audio devices that provied us with the guided tour.  It made us all look like were on the phones throughout the whole tour.  Here we are outside the brewery infront of the historical brew kettle that they actually used to use to make beer way back when!

Here's the brew kettles that they use now days ... they make a lot more beer!!

We all squeezed in to take a picture infront of the Coors Brands wall.

It was interesting going through the plant and seeing all the different stages of making beer.  But the best part of the tour was the free samples!!  It started with a tasting.  I'm not a huge fan of Coors, but that fresh beer tasting was certainly yummy!

I think Jr agreed!

They made us go through the whole factory tour before we could get the rest of our free samples.  Beth and I were tired of waiting and wanted our tastings now!!

But eventually we made it to the tasting area.  Remember the special bracelets I told you about earlier?  Well, this was where we could use it to get 3 free 16 oz samples of any beer listed that we wanted.  For those who didn't want to  (or couldn't drink), they offered soft drinks instead.

Here we are enjoying our samples! :)

Believe it or not, we were not drunk!!  hahaha.  The kids were posing as animals for the moms, and I thought it would be a great idea for all the girls to follow Skout and make monkey faces too!

We had lots of fun playing around in the souvenior shop as well, and after the drinking and goofing off, we were all starving!!  Chandra was craving some good Mexican food, and alot of us agreed that we wanted some too!  So we asked around the brewery, and after serveral people suggested La Carreta, we decided we would check the place out.  It was a little sketchy when we had to drive all the way into the residental area to get to this little resturant with NO cars in their parking lot.  I don't know who was more surprised when all 16 of us showed up in the resturant - the 4 workers, or us, who took up almost the whole resturant!!!  We definately kept all the 4 workers busy in the kitchen making all of our meals.  But there was really nothing to worry about in the end, because that was the best Mexican food I ever had!!!  Mmmmm... just thinking about that place makes me wish I was there again!

It was still snowing from last night, and I have been trying to take pictures of the snow since last night.  Jr asked me if I had taken pictures of the individual snowflakes ... I haven't realized that you could, so I was on a mission to see a real snowflake pattern, not just some blob or flurry that I saw falling down then melting when it hit something.  I think I was pretty sucessful!

After lunch, it was decided that we should go to the Denver Downtown Aquarium.  It was really neat and we ended up staying 3 hours in there!!  It didn't even seem like it.  I think everyone enjoyed it.  There was an otter that kept doing flips off of the glass for a good minute straight!  Because of how fast he was moving and the glass, I couldn't get a good picture of it.  If you have facebook, however, I did catch a video of it, so you can check it out on my page, if you're interested.  Here's the "kids" taking a picture before we went into the exhibits.

Here's some pictures I took of the exhibits along the way.

When we got to the end of the exhibits, there was still a huge touch/feed pool of some type of rays.  We were allowed to touch them, and for a small fee, we could feed them some fish.  I got a little fish dish and shared it with Beth and Don to feed the rays.  They would eat by sucking the fish out of your hands.  It was a really wierd feeling.  And these rays were hungry!!  They would start hugging the side of the tank whenever they saw people stick their hands in the water.  Some rays even seemed to jump up the side of the tank almost a foot high just to get fish!

After feeding the rays, we all sat down to eat some dip n dots!  Then we noticed that Jaide had her face painted.  The girls decided that we would do the same!  So we all ended up getting our face painted.

After the aquarium, we went shopping at some shopping center.  I was too tired at that point to shop, so I kinda sat around with the guys for a bit.  But after shopping, it was dinner at the Cheesecake Factory!  Yum!!  Then it was back to the hotel and some hot tub time!