Beers and Bears

Amazingly,  not too worse for wear after our whitewater rafting trip, today our friends were to show us some of what the greater Grand Junction, Colorado area had to offer in the brewing and distilling genre.  We started off with a delightful lunch at a deli in town and discovered that they like their bicycles BIG in Colorado.

As our day progressed we traveled just outside Grand Junction to Pallisades, Colorado and enjoyed a winery tour, 2 craft brewery tours and a distillery tour.  I suppose the one that we found most interesting was the distillery tour at Peach Street Distillers.  I saw something I’d never seen before with their limited production “Pear Brandy” product.  The unique thing about this was the bottling (shown above).  They wait for the pear tree to blossom and once the tiny pear starts to grow, they tie a bottle onto the tree with the tiny pear in the bottle and let it grow.  After the pear gets to the right size, they harvest it off the tree with the pear in the bottle and add their special blend of pear brandy.  The presentation is mind blowing with a grown pear inside the bottle and the taste of their pear brandy is wonderfully memorable.

Here is a promotional video from Peach Street Distillers on their success with Peach Street Distillers Bourbon:

 

Here are some random photos from our tours and special thanks to our  “designated driver” for the day!

After a great day of tasting and tours we headed back to enjoy one last tasting of the days “collection”.  While sitting on the patio and looking at the mountains in the distance, we decided to head up to the hunting camp tomorrow.

It was about an hour and a half ride into the mountains to the hunting camp.  The area is called Harrison Creek on the Colorado Grand Mesa.  We didn’t expect what we saw, the little cabin in the mountains was actually a very nice log construction and far from little.  Even more astonishing to me was that it was completely off-grid and “nestled” in a 40 acre plot surrounded by other large tracts of land as much as 100-250 acres pieces of land.  This was beautiful country and 8,000 feet of elevation.  The cabin had a nice wrap around deck that surrounded the cabin on 3 sides.  After we arrived, we stood out on the deck and just tried to take it all in.  Our friends said that they could normally sit on the deck and watch the deer and antelope feeding within easy sight but were curious why we weren’t seeing any?  All of a sudden as we were viewing the countryside, we saw a large black bear about 400 pounds but instead of being black, this one was what they called cinnamon colored and quite rare.  “That explains the lack of deer and antelope in the area right now”, they said.  This property was amazing with a spring fed pond, stocked with fish slightly down the hillside from the cabin and nothing in the way of civilization for miles and miles.  There were fruit trees and plants with berries, we joked that if the Zombie Apocalypse came, this would be the place to be because it has a variety of sustainable food sources, fresh water and due to the elevated location, it’s defensible.

We spent the day target shooting our guns, playing on the 4 wheelers and Razors (offroad vehicles, kinda like golf carts on steroids) and touring their land.  This was much more in line with the Colorado I had envisioned.  Wild, rugged and beautiful unmolested country.  You would expect that you could hear John Denver songs in the breeze.

I don’t know if I’m ready for a full on Grizzly Adams experience, but if I see any Zombies, you’ll know where to find me!