Take a free tour of the Celestial Seasonings tea factory!
Chase didn't get off work until dinner time Thursday night, and since it only takes 4-5 hours to drive to Steamboat Springs from Denver, we had some time to kill before we could snatch him. We considered going to Boulder early and getting some time in there, and as we were perusing a downtown map, we found the listing for free tours of this factory.
Sign us up!
It reminded me of being inside a Mister Rogers episode when Mr. McFeely would bring a "how they make that" video. I loved that part of the show as a kid, so I was really interested to take this tour.
And it was just as cool and interesting as I would have hoped! At the time we were there, they were working on processing hibiscus flowers, which is a main ingredient in a lot of their teas, including all of their zingers. They can't clean the leaves with water (because then they'd have tea), so they have to use a different sifting process using air.
We saw the room where they store the white, green, and black tea leaves, which is apart from the rest of the factory to keep it from acquiring different smells and flavors. What I didn't know is that white, green, and black tea leaves all come from the same plant. The white tea leaves are harvested first, while they're still "baby" leaves, then the green tea leaves are harvested after the leaves have further matured, and the black tea leaves are harvested after the leaves have oxidized even more. It's that process of oxidation that weakens the antioxidant properties from the white and green levels, but it makes the black tea good for your heart.
My favorite part was the Mint Room. They have to store peppermint and spearmint separate from everything else in a sealed room because the fragrance is so strong. Our tour guide, who I bet got her training walking backward doing college campus tours, introduced this room by saying, "Now, feel free to stay in this room as long as you like, or leave as soon as you like. Since you're the first tour of the day, it's liable to be especially strong."
She opened the sealed garage door, we stepped in, and the scent of fresh mint completely engulfed us. Our nasal passages were instantly cleared (I need to get one of these rooms!) and the menthol in the mint made our eyes water.
We bought some flavors of tea that we hadn't seen before here in stores (they make 101 flavors) and then headed on to Steamboat.
On our way, right outside of Boulder and just inside the mountains on highway 119, we stopped at a lookout on the side of the road and saw some rock climbers.
See the little white dots in the top left third of the photo?
(Note: If you click on any picture, you can view it larger. When you're done, you'll need to go back in your browser to return to this page.)Another climber was about 100 feet ahead of them up the side of the mountain.
We finally collected Chase in Steamboat, had dinner at a local pizza joint, and watched a beautiful sunset right across from our hotel.
And after a day like that, we crashed, only to have an even busier day on Friday.Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1000 (1st photo) and Canon 40D (2nd and 3rd).
2nd photo: 1/125s, f/11 at ISO 400 under overcast skies at about 1:00 p.m.
3rd photo: 1/125s, f/5.6 at ISO 640 at about 9:00 p.m.
No comments:
Post a Comment