Today rocked even better than a Granny in her favorite chair

Sorry guys, it's a long one. Wow, what an awesome day. With the time changes, we are two hours behind hometime. That means I was up at 4:30. I got up and read a little, tried to go back to bed, then decided to go down and exercise. The elliptical machine here is even better than the others. It had a TV attached to it. Then I came back up to shower and get the rest of the gang up. We all got ready and left the hotel around 8:15. As we were driving to our first surprise stop of the day, we pulled onto the on ramp and saw a whole bunch of prairie dogs. We pulled over quickly to get some pictures. They scattered, but then we could see some peek over. Way to cute. Then we were on our way to our surprise destination. We drove to Union Station which is Denver's train station and were lucky enough to get a perfect spot right away. Then I saw the surpirse right away. It was Disney's "A Christmas Carol" train. They are taking this train cross country and stopping at alot of major cities on the way. The train is to promote their new movie coming out in November. This was so neat. We were lucky that we got there early because the line grew long quickly. As we were waiting in line, they came through with activity pages for the kids, and tattoos. Of course, Cassie and myself had to get one. Then, we were led out to the train. They had Christmas carolers in period costumes strolling around singing Christmas songs. They gave us a ticket and then when we boarded, they punched it with a Mickey Punch. We walked through about 8 cars on the train and they had it set up as a mini-museum. They had pictures of the characters, costumes, models of the places and characters, and then a few cars showed how they did the special effects. Then they had this awesome photo morphing software. It took your picture and then it used your features to morph into a character from the movie. They will email us when the pictures are ready for us to download. After walking through the train, we walked over to this huge inflatable movie theater. Not just an inflatable screen but a whole theater with seating for around a 100 and hanging red curtains. It was incredible. We then watched 3-D clips from the movie. I cannot wait till this comes out. It looks really good and detailed. You could see the veins sticking out on Scrooges hands. Jim Carry, Robin Penn Wright (Jenny from Forest Gump), Gary Oldman (Sirius from Harry Potter), and Cary Elwes (Princess Bride and Ella Enchanted) are all in this movie. You know me and Disney, I was so excited. Everybody else thought it was great too. As we were leaving the theater, there was snow floating about. When Disney does something, they do it right. The attention to detail in everything was mind blowing. OK one surprise great for the entire family over. Now onto Cassie's activity. It was a visit to the Hammond's candy shop. This was featured on the Travel Channel a while back. They had all of this old equipment still being used and they did alot by hand. We watched some guys fold this huge piece, (I believe it was about 70 lbs) into a big log which was then spun down into 3/4 in sticks which were then chopped into small pieces that looked like a sliced piece of fruit. We were then given a sample of the warm candy. Yummy. They were also having a "garage sale" in the warehouse where we were able to buy some more candy. Tim got these Chocolate covered lemon balls. Which he put in the cooler so they wouldn't. At the end of the day, the bag filled with water and I won't even begin to tell you what they looked like, but Tim carrying the bag was a pretty funny site. Well, on with our day, and Tim's attraction. We proceeded to Golden, Colorado. Can you guess what for? It was to take the Coors factory tour. As we were waiting in line to get on the bus, we started talking to people behind us who were from NY. She was originally from Phila. and said how she liked to shop at Vanity Fair. We had a great time talking to them. It was so funny, because the bus could only fit about 20 people. They were saying with their luck, we would get on and they would have to wait. That's exactly what happened. We were cracking up, but were lucky enough to meet up with this friendly family in the tasting room later. This tour was self guiding. They gave you little cell phone like units that you typed in the number of the tour where you were and then it would tell you all the info you needed. Seeing the huge copper vats was really neat. Half way through the tour they give you a sample in a small Dixie cup, and we were sort of let down, until you hit the next number on your unit that told you at the end of the tour, you could get 3 more samples. As much as I don't like beer, those 3 went down pretty good. I was feeling very happy and Tim started getting a little chatty. The kids just laughed at us. While there, there was a guy celebrating his 21st birthday. They gave him a shirt that said "21- The draught is over" Starting this day, I sort of was able to pick out a specific activity that we would all enjoy, but would be suited to one person more than the others. I just didn't know what to do for Nick and he had no idea either. Well when we were talking to the friendly family from earlier, they said there was a really neat car show going on downtown. Yippee, something for Nick. After the Coors factory tour we were able to walk about 3 blocks over to the car show. They had such a wide assortment of really neat cars. Old classics, newer decked out cars, cars from every era, sports cars, and even some really neat cycles. We enjoyed walking around. Golden is a really neat, quaint town and the whole thing had a fair feeling to it. We walked down the street and back up. We crossed a small bridge in the middle of town and noticed kayakers practicing barrel rolls at some rapids just steps from downtown. Just a unique experience. Then we took a drive to Boulder, CO. On the drive there, we passed through a hail storm. The weather here has been strange, even according to the locals. We went to the Celestial seasonings tour. We were able to sample some tea before we started. Then we watched a movie before heading into the plant. Unfortunately, the plant was quiet today with it being a Saturday. Our guide was very informative, and we found out the differences between white, green, and black tea. And the herbal teas which really aren't teas at all. Then we were invited into the mint room which was a separate area where they stored all their mint ingredients. This smelled so good and really, really cleared up your sinuses. We really enjoyed this, but on the way out, it started storming again. We headed back to our hotel room, but stopped at a Target to get Cassie a charger for her DS. (Hers broke, and as she put it, it was the only recreation she brought along for the long rides.) We stopped at a Boston Market for supper, and then back to the hotel. I had lemonade from Boston Market, and mixed it with a packet of Blueberry Zinger tea sample they gave back at the tea place. Boy was that delicious. We went back to the hotel. Tim and the kids went to find some local caches while I typed this up. Now we are heading to the pool. We had such a fun filled day, and all of the activities we did today were free. Pretty incredible if you ask me. We could not believe how much we were able to fit into the day. For not planning anything today, it worked out wonderfully well for us.

Sorry- didn't check the mileage today but it was probably around 50 miles or so