Road Trip Recap II

We continued our road trip west from New York to Oregon after a long break in Oklahoma. Kansas was an easy day, with flat freeway and a horizon line that seemed to go on forever. When we did briefly stop, we were greeted by some of the nicest people I’ve ever run into on the road. Most people noticed the license plate from Oregon and wanted to find out more about our trip and what brought us to Kansas. I felt kind of bad saying we were just passing through…

Then onto Colorado where we spent a couple nights in Fort Collins. Our reason for being there? Beer! They are said to have one of the highest per capita rates of microbreweries, so we felt we had to experience this first hand. It was amazing to pull closer into the state and watch those huge Rocky Mountains loom on the horizon.

Fort Collins is a lovely town with a cute main strip and lots of beers to choose from. In Oregon, breweries that stay open until 2 am like a normal pub, but unfortunately in Fort Collins they close early at like 5 or 6 pm. We missed out entirely on New Belgium and Odell’s – bummer, but oh how we were in for a treat…

The highlight of Fort Collins was Equinox Brewery. They saved the day by being open until 8 pm, so we had maybe half an hour to sample their beers. They were SO GOOD! Here is this little brewery you would never know about outside the area, since their beers are not distributed widely, and they blew our minds.

They pulled off a German-style hef very well and their brown ale might be the best one I’ve ever had. Not to mention their golden, pale, and IPA. They were all very balanced and true to the style of the beers. Hard to find a brewery that pull off a good IPA and still make a malty golden. They just started up this past April, so I hopeful we can get their beer back in Oregon sometime soon.

After a couple days of playing, it was time to be back on the road again. I’ve only experience Wyoming along the southern freeway going from the eastern end to western end of the state. It was barren, but in a beautiful way. I hope I get to see the spectacular northern area sometime with Yellowstone.

We made it to Oregon! Howard, our retired greyhound, was relieved to be home and so were we.