Our travel plans for 2020 have all been postponed to 2021, and that is not looking great at this point. But we did take a road trip this past fall to visit John's mom and Al in South Dakota. After visiting them we headed to Colorado and visited Fort Collins, Glenwood Springs and Colorado Springs. It was nice to get out of our house and see some new sights. But overall travel is quite stressful in COVID times, since each state has different mask requirements and health requirements.
Wall Drug sign
tons of traffic in Wall- no mask requirements there, but we wore masks anyway
It was a full day's drive to get to Lead, SD, where John's mom lives. Deer in their side yard. We enjoyed their new pellet stove on the front deck each evening and mostly stayed in, expect for one night we went downtown to the Stampmill and sat outside on a patio for dinner.
Deer in downtown Lead. They are well trained and use the crosswalks!! Same deer- then it went to church!
John and Al going on a bike ride with the snazzy electric bikes.
On the road in Wyoming heading to Fort Collins. This was not a storm, it was all dark from ash in the air from forest fires in the area.
We stayed at the historic Armstrong Hotel in downtown Fort Collins. The room was small but nicely appointed and remodeled.
masks also can be used to keep ashes out of your beverages....
yup, that is the sun. Crazy stuff.....
lots of excellent sours at Funkwerks brewing
sign of the times
We had dinner the first night at Jax Fish House and Oyster Bar.
This was some sort of fish cooked in parchment I believe. All of the food was quite good.
We had breakfast at Urban Egg. It was excellent. Also, Colorado had statewide mask laws and everyone was excellent with social distancing. I felt much better about virus related things in Colorado than in South Dakota.
We hit a few breweries in town on our second day. Gilded Goat, Rally King, Stodgy Brewing and we did a bit of shopping as well. I had forgotten a winter coat and it was much colder than we expected, so we made a Colorado Costco run.
We had dinner at Penrose Tap House and Eatery. We stopped at Nuance Chocolate after dinner and I picked up some chocolate bars and truffles. I enjoyed those for the rest of the trip. Very high quality truffles and chocolate bars.
Oh yeah, then it started snowing. It snowed all night. Snow in September. Early September. Yuck!!
Our last morning we had breakfast Lucile's in downtown Fort Collins. We had a bit of a wait, but the portions were enormous and everything was delicious.
We kind of took our time to get on the road because we were hoping the snow would melt. We were heading to Glenwood Springs, but first we had to head to Denver to get on I-70.
Kind of neat to go through the Eisenhower tunnel. I don't think John enjoyed driving in the mountains in the snow. But we made it just fine. Mostly, the roads were wet and messy.
And then shortly after the snow, the snow was just gone. And we saw some damage from fires that had just happened a couple weeks earlier.
We stayed at the Glenwood Hot Springs Lodge. It was fairly basic but it included admission to the hot springs, which is what we were there to visit mainly.
Glenwood Hot Springs
We had a late lunch /early dinner at Colorado Ranch House. Sat outside on the patio was it was fairly decent weather outside.
The hot springs was different. It was like a giant hot tub that had an odd smell to it. One pool was 104 degrees and the other was cooler, like 90-93 degrees. Both felt quite warm even though it was chilly outside.
We hit the hot springs and later on went to Casey Brewing in downtown Glenwood Springs. The town was really nice because we could walk from our hotel to the main downtown area very easily.
We took a gondola up to Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. We didn't do any of the "adventures" we just walked around and took a few photos.
We had lunch at Glenwood Canyon Brewing Company in the Hotel Denver. The food and beer was better than expected.
origin of the springs-- super stinky!!
origin of the springs
Drove a bit to Ball Brewing. More of a locals place....
We had made reservations for the Pullman Food and Drink in advance. It was worth the wait. The food and drinks were all excellent. Great service also.
cool neon in downtown Glenwood Springs
We picked up breakfast at Sweet Coloradough donuts before we hot the road for Colorado Springs. That made for a long day of driving.
Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.
pic from the visitor center
We stayed at a Hyatt Place in Colorado Springs. Nothing great, but we used some free credit card nights. We also visited Red Leg Brewing and Trinity Brewing and grabbed lunch at Raising Cane's near our hotel.
We had dinner at Oskar Blues Grill and Brew in downtown Colorado Springs. We were only in Colorado Springs for one night, so we didn't get a chance to do a ton of activities there.
We stayed at the Hyatt Place in Omaha also. This one was a bit newer and nicer than the one in Colorado Springs. We had dinner at Upstream Brewing. Downtown Omaha is rather neat, but bars were open and almost NO ONE was wearing masks. Gross. So we did not stay out very late.
Spotted a bunch of hot air balloons spotted outside Omaha
Overall, we had a nice trip. If everywhere had mask regulations I would have felt better about things overall, but South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa did not at that time. Some still don't and I'm writing this a couple months later. Anyway, regardless, we didn't go out nearly as much as we would have in some places, but at least it felt like we got out of the house for awhile.
