Fancy Board Game Bar

Our friends Sumit and Shubra are big board game people and invited us to check out Mox Boarding House Bellevue. I've been to board game bars before but nothing like this!

They have a bar area that is speakeasy themed and can be accessed through a secret entrance behind a bookcase. 

They had a lot of amusing Prohibition themed stuff on the walls that was amusing.

The place is giant, with rooms for more casual and then the hardcore card collecting/figurine type nerd games.

We picked this cool game that was sort of like Where's Waldo? but had multi-part mystery stories to unravel by finding characters and tracing their paths through the city. It was very unique and fun.

They have so many games in their library section that they have one of those wheeled ladders on a track for the worker to reach stuff with.

We made it back to Kirkland for a nice walk to an unbeatable Lake Washington sunset.

Shopping then Beering

Keith was about to go skiing for maybe the first time, but either way he didn't have the necessary clothing so we all headed to Sierra, which amazingly is like TJ Maxx where they sell discount stuff but it was exclusively for cold weather outdoor gear.

I was impressed with how popular skiing must be here to support this type of joint.

All that shopping left us parched so we knocked back a couple at Stodgy Brewing Company. The atmosphere there was very grandma's house with cozy couches and such.

These guys were having another of their famous deep conversations. I couldn't get a word in.

We hit a liquor store on the way home.

What will those geniuses at Anheuser-Busch think of next?

The treasures I brought back from the store included more winners from my favorite Colorado brewery, Weldwerks. This one had an awesome name to go with the fun flavor: Churro laser sword fight sour wheat ale which was brewed with churros, cinnamon, milk sugar and Madagascar vanilla.

S'Mores Achromatic was part of a fancy line from the same brewery. "Striving to reach new levels of decadence. s'mores achromatic is an imperial stout brewed with unreasonable amounts of chocolate malt, flaked oats, toasted marshmallows, milk chocolate, and graham cracker. We boil for more than 6 hours to achieve the unbelievably rich, chewy, thick mouthfeel of the base beer, which is made even more creamy by a generous addition of flaked oats. Then we aged the final beer on more than 5 lbs per barrel of toasted marshmallows, along with milk chocolate bar and honey graham crackers, producing a beer surprisingly reminiscent of everyone's favorite camp fire treat, and the perfect treat for the middle of winter!" 

Keith picked a new board game to whip me at. Luckily I had my delicious beers on hand for consolation.

Einstein witnessed the beating but offered no assistance.

All the Breweries All the Beer

Today in Colorado we really went crazy and switched it up... no we didn't we went to more breweries. I guess Keith and I's friendship is built on beer so it's fitting that that is nearly the only thing we do together.

Keith had a respectable board game library going. I like playing games but man I don't want to have to carry this many of them around.

We hit Odell Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO which I was pretty impressed with.

I especially liked how organized and colorful their flights were. It seems like good branding/business as well. I'm much more likely to grab one of these in the supermarket now that I've seen the label.

There was a lot of fun hoppy metal work all over the place.

Sweetwater isn't local so I wasn't sorry when we got there and they were closing soon.

Around this point we lost Keith to some work social event so Becky and I were on our own in the mean streets.

Lucky Joe's was so Irish that there were a couple of dudes playing bagpipes and a random girl who just happened to know how to dance Irishy popped up and started twirling around.

Rocky Mountain Hiking and Oysters

Colorado is a pretty cool place, and I feel like that might mean more now that I live in a pretty cool place.

Keith is a fellow beer lover and his fridge was stocked with magic. I did give him some grief for buying non Anheuser-Busch products though. I was pretty religious about only buying Anheuser-Busch beer while I was working there. An emissary of the king of beers must always be on his best behavior.

Keith and his lady Becky were fantastic hosts and were excited to hit some touristy locations with me. I couldn't go to Denver and not see Rocky Mountain National Park. We didn't really have the gear to get too silly with it though, so we picked a relatively easy hike.

We played around with the Bear Lake nature trail but the snow was very deep and I don't think we were able to do the whole loop. The scenery alone was worth the trip though so whatever.

"Ice measuring 500 feet thick moved across Bear Lake basin between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago. Originating in the uppermost valley heads, glacial ice eroded high basins, called cirques, and quarried the sheer granite cliffs of Hallett Peak. Rock debris from these glaciers formed the ground moraines, or ridges, that surround Bear Lake."

Keith did not come prepared and was getting his shoes eaten by the snow.

Our next stop was the very cool Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. It has plenty going on for the film nerd to appreciate. Stephen King stayed here and was inspired to write about the spooky hotel in The Shining. It was not an actual film location for the movie but apparently was the location for some sort of tv miniseries. It was however a film location for the movie Dumb and Dumber.

I guess Emperor Akihito of Japan stayed here in 1994.

The bar had some Shining themed beers that had somehow not been sued into oblivion.

I was forced by my traveler ethics to eat whatever the locals do to buy rocky mountain oysters. Bruce's specialized in this testicular delicacy to the point that there were cartoon bulls all over the signage and plastered all over the walls.

There were three kinds available:

Rocky Mountain Oysters (Beef)

Black Hills Oysters (Buffalo)

Lamb Fries

Luckily there was an Oyster Combo that featured 8 oz of all three.

I ate a few but... not my favorite situation. Keith wouldn't even try one. I should have fed them to the dog when no one was looking.

Luckily there was some good beer around to get the taste of balls out of my mouth. I read that Colorado has 2% of the US' population but 10% of its breweries. Bunch of geniuses.

Einstein is quite a character. He looks kind of like Master Splinter and has fur the consistency of hay. He's the best.

Keith is a big board game guy and had quite the library. He whooped me at The King is Dead. Losing is not my favorite but it was fun.