In June I convinced some friends from Mercury to come out to Colorado. Keren (who is normally based in israel) was over in the states for a few months and I wanted her to come and see Colorado before she went home. Keren, Vikram, Laarni and Justin (her husband that works at apple!) arrived late Friday night for the weekend. In my grand plan to convince people to move to colorado – I have started to put together a list of fun things to do. Its actually a plan to make me and Mark get out and do some colorado activities.

We got up Saturday and decided our first activity would be to head to Golden to the Coors brewery tour. Its free to the public and runs monday through saturday. It took us about 40 minutes to drive to golden and 20 minutes to locate the secret entrance to the brewery. We took a shuttle from the parking lot to the entrance and along the ride our driver gave us some history on Adolf Coors and the town of golden. The brewery looks like a ginormous factory and I was imagining the McKenzie Brothers in Strange Brew…

When we arrived in the main lobby we were all given beer labels that would put us into our group – We lucked out and got Keystone (key-light-baby!).

The tour was very cool – they show you how the hops are processed, the kettles that brew the beer and the packaging plant. When the tour is done they lead you into the tasting room where you get your 3 free drinks.

I like the Blue Moon the best – so did Laarni. Here we are giving a toast to coors.

We also headed to the gift shop where I thought about buying this makeshift hat – but instead I settled on a Beer-Babe shirt! 🙂

Day two we decided to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park and take a hike. We met up with Greg and Steven Loewy. We attempted to go to Bridal Veil Falls but they didn’t have parking and sure enough they have a ranger on site making sure we follow the rules. We drover around some more and ended up at the hike to Gem Lake.

It was a short hike (4 miles round trip) but it was definitely a steep one – especially for my non-aclimatized friends. Here we are on the trail…

We did make it to the top, only to realize that it was in fact a pond, not a lake – and it was only about 12 inches deep. The rock formations were pretty impressive.

After a short rest at the top, we headed back down – but first we needed some posed shots with the group and with the girls.

By this time we were starving (for a drink) so we headed downtown Boulder to BJ’s for lunch.

It was a relaxing but very fun weekend – now if I can just convince them to move here!!