Colorado Rocky Mountain High

Here’s the truth. I basically come from a family of native foreigners. It’s pretty much why I am the way I am. Why I love to travel so much. Why I have this itch to see the world and, on occasion, live there.

My dad is the original native foreigner. I might be stretching the meaning of the phrase. In my case, I guess it means a person who has finally returned home after years away. But in my father’s case, he never made it back. So, he has become a native of another place, this place we call Jacksonville. He grew up in Indiana, but moved here at the ripe age of eighteen looking for a career in rock and roll and never looked back. Although he did look all around the rest of the world, making a life for himself traveling six months out of the year. So, in truth, I think it must be in my blood.

And not just my blood, either. Both of my sisters love to travel as well. One is only fifteen, but she has already seen more of the world than any other fifteen year old I know. The other, older sister has successfully moved to four of the countries most prominent cities. After four years of Tallahassee, three years of New York City, and two years of DC, my sister has become a native foreigner of even another kind. By marrying a man from Denver she has now become another kind of native foreigner, native through association.





So that is how I wound up spending my Thanksgiving holiday in Denver, CO. When we got there, it was snowing. Two days prior, it had been 78 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny. But I wasn’t complaining. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve seen snow fall. It’s been years. So, despite the freezing temperatures that dipped into the teens, it made me feel like I was in a winter wonderland. It was wonderful. When I wasn’t shivering.

The first thing we did to keep the blood flowing through our veins was hit up the Breckinridge Brewery. It’s a tradition that every time I go to Denver I visit a brewery, and this time was no different. It was grey, snowing, and freezing. Beers were on special for two dollar Wednesdays. There was some strange and interesting fan/heater contraption. And tastings were free.

After a few rounds an employee kneeled down by our table and said, “So you guys want to see the Brewery?”



“Absolutely,” we said in unison. Brew tours were usually by appointment only, but we were squeezing our way on to a specialized “friends” tour that the man was giving his friends, and us as well. We got to climb on the equipment. We got to feel all the hops. We got our picture taken by a world-renowned photographer (a “friend”). We even got to see the CEO’s office. It was a complete mess and looked straight off of Spiderman. It was basically the best brew tour I have ever been on. We literally saw it all. And that’s the truth (about brew tours).

The next day was Thanksgiving. We ate a lot of food. We drank Bloody Marys. I discovered red beer (basically a bloody with beer instead of vodka…). I met and mingled with a lot of my new extended family. We walked around the neighborhood in sub-degree weather to rid ourselves of the Turkey Slump. And we played trivial pursuit. I learned that it takes two men to mount the horse simultaneously in an accurate game of elephant polo. I also learned I am terrible at trivial pursuit. That’s the (sad) truth about me and most games.

We made sure to partake in Black Friday via Cherry Creek, an overextended marriage of Avondale meets the Town Center. We took in dinner at Rioja on Larimer St. in downtown Denver. I dare to say it was better than Thanksgiving. It was delicious out of this world, like if Biscotti’s only served entrees all the time. Plus some. And we ended the night by driving through downtown looking at the Christmas lights strung across every prominent building in sight. It was pretty gaudy (truthfully, aren’t they all?), but beautiful nonetheless.



On our last day of Colorado rocky mountain high, we ran some errands. I closed a bank account. I picked up some things from the cleaners. We picked out a Christmas tree. Oh, and we went to the candy factory. Hammond’s, the nations largest supplier of handmade candies. And naturally, we took a tour. We sampled some tasty flavors as we took the tiny fifty feet tour from behind glass walls, watching the candy makers boil and spin and fold and mold the little delectables into the wonderful morsels we were chewing on. We wound down, preparing for our red eye flight home, by watching the Tim Tebow show and playing some scrabble.

It was an amazing vacation. I did amazing things and spent time with some of the most amazing people in the world, my family. But the truth of the matter is, as great as all that was, it was just like being any other place. We ate, drank, and were merry. We saw the town. We went on some tours. But these are all things that can be done, and are done, here in Jacksonville.

I think that’s the best thing about all the traveling I’ve done. I now feel like a native foreigner pretty much anywhere I go. Because, if you remove the landscape and you rearrange the name, anywhere could really be anywhere else. And although the experience is always different, life is life, and it’s lived all over the world just like the rest of us. One day at a time, with some good times in between. And that’s the truth.