Karla & Kevin visited us in the Springs for a week. It's been a minute and we rambled around COS and the area for good fun and a great visit with them.
1st Day ~ Arrival, Tunes, & Drinks... We grabbed K2 early eve and headed back to Blodgett for an intro to COS with some nice bourbon totties, world news reviews, pizza Tuesday pies & beer, and some tunes on the EleFrugalKit.
2nd Day ~ Manitou Springs Springs, MLC Visit, & Crystal Park Cantina... After a small breakfast we headed down to Manitou Springs for a tasting tour of the seven mineral fountains there. Salty, sulfur, lime, and more tastes were had on a fun walk through town. Kala found a gift for Karla too, which was "nice," Kevin enjoyed some Josh & John's, and MLC rolled down in his 911 to join us for the evening. After a quick beer at Manitou Brewing we headed up to Crystal Park Cantina for some excellent margs and tasty Mexican meal.
3rd Day ~ Out For A Rip And Denver Day @ Meow Wolf & Casa Bonita... Karla & Matt in the 911 and DRC in the Boxster headed out for a rip in the canyons on our way to Denver ~ it was a very quick 80 miles! What a blast. I parked the Boxster at Matt's protected and I was picked up for our reservation at Meow Wolf... a building with tons of kitchy permanent art installations. The team enjoyed the comprehensive tour through the exhibits.
After, we were joined by LPC & MLC for the premium lunch meetup at the ultra-kitchy Casa Bonita. We had a quick beer prior at the nearby WestFax Brewing. At CB, the food was decent, the table was prime, the camaraderie was great with family, and it was nice being inside on the hot day. Dave & Kevin met up with Eric as the new instantiation of Casa Bonita was bought by the completely awesome and irreverent South Park guys... mariachis, margaritas, merchandise, and more. Cute kids did the diving and we had front row seats. We said "see-ya" to family members and headed back to COS after the fine kitchy day in Denver ~ no weather dumped on the Boxster. We had a fine evening of gaming to close out.
4th Day ~ Paravacini's & Celebrating Independence... Our breakfast burritos attacked the morning hangries. We hit Kala's & my fav Italian spot, Paravacini's in OCC for dinner. It was mostly excellent as typical. We'd gotten tickets to the Star Spangled evening with the COS symphony for the 4th @ Ford Amp COS and enjoyed great seats and decent weather after sunset. The show was pretty interesting with the mayor speaking, the symphony sounding excellent on the Amp's sound system, a band of local kid's playing some pieces, and good vocalists joining for some rock & roll covers. It unravelled a bit when we were told we might not be able to see the fireworks from our seats and decided to move. We were thrown out of a 2nd choice seats by fire marshals but ultimately made our way to a spot high on the grass in the GA section. Oh well. It was all fine and we ultimately left the area from those seats quickly and made some correct street choices to beat most of the crowd out.
5th Day ~ Sculptors & Brewers Tour... I fashioned a tour around COS to see some of the sculptures around town, including the keen kinetic stuff from Kempf, and of course visit some favorite breweries in those areas too. We started on the north side with "challenged parking" at the ENT Center for Arts @ UCCS. We followed that with a visit to the venerable Red Leg brewery on the NW side of COS near us.
The second leg of the outing was having lunch at the Patty Jewitt GC downtown... always nice, even if we didn't play a round. We moved on to park at the excellent and somewhat new Urban Animal brewery downtown and walked over to America The Beautiful Park past the Switchbacks' stadium and the Olympic Museum as "big art." When under power with water, the AtBP circle rotates... cool.
Back in the car we headed south to the Ivywild neighborhood and the newish Creekwalk shopping center. We saw several more Kempf sculptures relocated to this redevelopment area, and we saw the bandstand being rebuilt. Any trip to Ivywild includes the old school where Bristol Brewing anchors the funky set of shops, eateries, distilleries, and a field for playing whatever. We were back at the ranch pretty early and made crispy Chinese pork cups and caprese appetizers. Ticket to Ride afterward.
6th Day ~ F1 Movie @ iMax... It's still pretty hot so we headed indoors with a set of tickets to see the new F1 movie at the iMax theater. The movie was pretty darn good but included hokey parts regarding F1 racing. Back at Blodgett we dined on Kala's stellar "spicy noodle salad" and other leftovers and I queued another movie for the team, Licorice Pizza, A good Paul Thomas Anderson character study piece with Alana Haim in a debut roll. Best I could get from the team was "interesting" and "I Googled the meaning," but I liked it. I also showed them PTA's video of Haim playing "Valentine" where Danielle is more of the centerpiece. That eve we made excellent steak salad with spicy SW ranch dressing and served a good Pinot from Scott.
7th Day ~ Kite, Kocktail, & Kura... A big art installation in Green Mtn Falls was our first stop. It was a very cool kinetic piece flying over the town pond there; made of kite fabric. We walked around and got our money shots. My video was too "still" to include here but when gusting wind hits, this piece is awesome. We headed downtown for a pop and the view at Lumen8. We grabbed dinner at one of our fav sushi spots, Kura, and had a lauded meal.
8th Day ~ K2 Head West... Kala dropped off Karla & Kevin to rent a car and drive out to Bighorn Sheep Canyon to meet up with friends and do a cabin there for a couple of nights. All went well there while I managed to retrieve the BC20X outfitted with a new toilet, as well as get new tires for the Crusher. It was a great week with the North Carolians.
