Colorado Trip 2013: Days Six and Seven

This post will be my fourth and final entry covering my trip with my girlfriend Sara to Colorado. In the first post, I discussed our first and second days visiting with my sister, nephew and niece. My second post on this topic covered days three and four which saw us journeying up to a cabin in the Rockies Mountains. The third post discussed the fifth day. On that fifth day, we drove back from the Rockies.

Sara and I had the sixth day of our visit mostly to ourselves. We decided to borrow my sister's car and drive into downtown Boulder. The main drag in downtown Boulder is Pearl Street. We found a place to park the car on the street in a residential area a few blocks from Pearl Street and walked the rest of the way. We walked up and down Pearl including stretch known as the Pearl Street Mall which is closed off to traffic. We stopped by several of the eclectic shops along the way and picked up gifts for April and her family. Sara also bought gifts for friends who were watching her cat while she was away.

Eventually, it was past lunchtime, and we were past hungry. We were looking for a place to eat that had a local flavor, but we did not find anything that excited us. Instead, we ended up at West Flanders Brewing Company which is located at the western end of the Pearl Street Mall. The location was familiar to me because I had visited during my trip back in 2011. The location was previously home to a BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse. I found out that the BJ's had since moved to a new location a couple of miles down the road, and in 2012, West Flanders took over their previous location on Pearl Street.

With her lunch, Sara ordered a pint of Tree Hugger Organic Amber from Asher Brewing Company. I helped her with it enough to feel comfortable adding it to my Beer List. I had promised myself that for lunch I would not have another buffalo burger along with another beer sampler, but that is exactly what I had. I believe West Flanders tries to focus on Belgian-style ales as their name would indicate. I had four of their tasters, the Trippel Lutz, Third Kingdom IPA, Canniption Pale Ale, and Angry Monk. The Trippel Lutz is obviously a Trippel. The Canniption and Third Kingdom are an American-style pale ale and an American-style IPA respectively. The Angry Monk is a Belgian-style pale ale, but the brewery's webpage has a humorous story about how their Angry Monk was originally called a "Trappist-style Ale."

Day seven was getaway day for Sara and me. Our flight back to Raleigh was delayed for a bit, so we had time to grab a snack and, of course, a beer or two. At Timberline Steaks and Grille in the Denver International Airport, she and I grabbed a couple of seats at the bar. I enjoyed a couple of brews from Odell Brewing Company located in Fort Collins, Colorado. I had the Odell IPA and the Odell 90 Shilling Ale. Then we boarded a plane and flew home.