2010 Tour Part 2: Peak-to-Peak Byway and Mountains of Mint |
| Gordon White | Sunday, 13 June, 2010 | |||||||||||||||
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Take a truck camper across the United States and Canada and I personally guarantee you will experience the stuff adventures are made from. You’ll see the landscapes rise, fall, turn, twist, and transform before your eyes. You’ll meet amazing people that could be characters in some Hollywood movie. You’ll have have things happen that even your friends won’t believe. That’s the road and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Peak-to-Peak Byway Break
Of course our reality is a bit different than most cross country truck campers. We’re on a working tour visiting factories and running a magazine. Lucky for us, we can take our breaks in some of the most beautiful places on earth and we always have a truck camper with us. Lucky indeed.
Our first official break on this tour happened just after crossing the state line into Colorado. Angela turned our truck towards Estes Park and the Peak-to-Peak Byway. Driving through the endless fields of Iowa and Nebraska left us so hungry for mountains we could practically taste them. For the love of nature, give us a mountain or give us a fifth wheel! Now you know I’m serious.
Perhaps it was the thinning air, but we were positively giddy watching the landscape of streams, rock cliffs, and mountains unfolding before us. This is what truck camping is all about. This is why we write the magazine. This is it! And take that fifth wheel and... you get the idea. We were loving it. We sat and listened to our diesel purr as our truck carved a path up, around, over, and through the endlessly spectacular landscape. I took pictures out the window but nothing can really capture the experience of being there. I’m trying to tell you something. Get out there and see some of these places! They’ll take your breath away.
Celestial Seasonings and the Mint Room We don’t normally seek out factories that don’t build something camper related, but Celestial Seasonings is often, quite literally, our cup of tea. Located just outside of Boulder, Colorado, Celestial Seasonings was perfectly located for our next stop after exploring the Peak-to-Peak Byway.
When you go on the Celestial Seasonings tour, be sure to bring your nose. Starting in their vast ingredient warehouse, every step offers your nostrils wave after wave of odiferous adventure. Hundreds of stacked bags, boxes, and bins of cinnamon, chamomile, Indian lemongrass, hibiscus, rosehips, blueberry leaves, and other exotic tea ingredients from around the world had our nostrils spinning in delight. And that was merely a whiff of what was to come. Our tour guide stopped us just outside Celestial’s sealed Mint Room to give us a short presentation, and a warning. The Mint Room is a large sealed temperature controlled room filled to the brim with mint leaves. The Mint Room’s exterior is decorated with red and white stripes in a pattern normally used for police tape, or candy canes. We were about to learn how appropriate this was. Within seconds of walking into the Mint Room, our eyes watered and our lungs tingled. For a few folks on the tour, the experience was too intense and they immediately walked out. Glutton for punishment, we walked to the back where the tour guide has said the mint was most powerful. It certainly was. Wow! Freshly minted, the tour then walked past the tea packaging facility. It was Sunday so the layers of steel shoots and machinery were unattended and quiet. After a few words about Celestial Seasonings hippy beginnings and eco-friendly practices, the tour guide herded us towards the ultimate goal, the factory store. Like good little consumers, we bought stuff. Hey, it’s good for the economy. |
