Day 2 started simply enough. I drove towards Denver, hit up Trve Brewing, and picked up a couple of bottles. Trve had a weird vibe. It was more like a dark pool hall. Denver itself really seems to be a mess to drive around. There’s no rhyme or reason to the city layout. Honestly, I don’t even remember what the three bottles I got were. They are still stuck in my car (more on that in a bit). I continued going West out of the city to Casey Brewing and Blending in Glenwood Springs. What a drive. I think I went downhill for about 20 miles or more. Oddly, it doesn’t seem like we went uphill in the reverse direction. I swear it was downhill both ways. I finally got to Casey on a 95-degree day. I tried the Funky Blender pluot farmhouse sour, the Undertone Preserves balaton cherry, and the Ghost Note pear. All were very delicious. I swore to myself I would take better tasting notes on this trip, but again I failed. I was overwhelmed choosing my bottles
The way back from Casey is where it got dicey. Heading back to Denver, I got about halfway, and my car started struggling, Then it started smoking and making an awful grinding noise. I ended up on the side of the highway for about 5 hours in the extreme heat, waiting for my AAA tow truck. The adventure didn’t stop there. This was the third tow truck AAA called. The guy was on police towing duty, so he couldn’t leave the area. He ended up driving me to Vail where I had to sit at a bar until 11 PM and eat some pizza with the local stoners. Then it got really fun. He wanted to get this long-distance tow over with and drove 85 or so the whole way to Denver on that windy mountain road. Of course, we also had to wait for the extra hour because they were closing the Eisenhower tunnel like one of those one-way flag routines where each direction had a few minutes to go single file through the tunnel. Gotta admit he was a really fun dude though. Quite the experience and I lived to tell. So my car is now at a shop where they will not even be able to look at it for a while. So I camped for 2 nights in Golden, Colorado. I did, however, get to drink a nice sour at The Yardhouse from the Bruery in CA. I also want to give a shout-out to the local dude who stopped by me and my car at least three times to make sure I was safe and gave me some water and his contact info in case I needed it. There are some good people in this world.
So I had two days to decide what to do. My car is in the shop for a week or more, so do I give up and fly home and then fly back to pick up the car? Do I figure out a way to continue? I was already now two days behind, which would make many of my destinations impossible, so I made the hard decision to give up on the California portion of the trip. I ended up Flying to Portland, which was cheaper than spending two nights driving a rental there. And that is where we pick up with day 4.
An Interesting article on changes at Casey I read while in my hotel.
Casey Brewing Has Broken Out of Its Niche and Found Success in Change
