On the Porch
Onisha Ellis
Days 16 September 23, 2017
If you read the beginning of our road trip story on September 7, 2018, you will remember that we started out as Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida and I had mixed emotions about driving further away from our daughter living in Florida. It took us a week to arrive in Denver for our meet up with our friend, Pam and our daughter, Rebekah. The week we spent with them in Pagosa Springs, Colorado flew past and this morning we were up early to drive them to the airport. Fortunately, they both had their electricity restored and now it was a matter of putting away their hurricane prep. We were sad for them to go, they were fun travel companions.
One place Rebekah had really wanted to visit was the Celestial Seasonings headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. Unfortunately, a visit there couldn’t be worked into our schedule. I guess a kinder mom would have chosen to not visit the tea headquarters without her, but I really wanted to visit it too. Rebekah enjoys flying, I hate flying, so she can fly in for a weekend. So after dropping the “girls” off, husband and I headed north to Boulder.
Except for getting some basic information, I didn’t know anything about the facility and what to expect, except that we would learn how tea is processed. As we followed the map on my phone, I began to worry when it directed us to turn into a residential area. Surely the phone app had led us astray…again. We decided to continue following the map app as we had no idea where we were and knew if we were in the wrong place, we could program it to bring us back to a main road.
To our surprise right there in the residential area, we saw the a street sign reading SleepyTime Drive. We were in the right place! Not far down the road, we came to the entrance.
By this time I couldn’t wait to get inside, and I was hoping we would not have long to wait for a tour.
As we approached the headquarters entrance, I had no idea what to expect. The front window was covered in their signature picture.
Once inside we discovered tea heaven! I can not believe I didn’t take pictures. The first thing we did was sign up for a tour that would be starting in about 20 minutes. The room had a long counter set with a variety of teas.
Photo credit Yelp by Jeff Boyardee T
After signing up, we were invited to sample not only those prepared but any tea in their inventory!
I was in my element…..free samples!! Take that winerys! We sampled both cold and hot teas until it was time to go into the theatre and begin our tour.
There is a slight downside. We were touring on Saturday and the processing lines were not running. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the tour as our guide explained what activities we would be seeing if the machines were running. They process their teas except peppermint from air drying to packaging. I looked at each variety of tea from all over the globe, while my imagination roamed wild, imagining the places where the tea was grown as well as the people who spend their days hand picking the best leaves.
After we finished our tour, I asked if we could return to the tasting area. I wanted to try out more blends to decide which I wanted to buy. They laughed and said, “you can taste until we close!” The people at Celestial Seasonings are friendly and seem to love their jobs. We tasted several more blends, then headed to the Tea shop. As we entered the shop I was delighted with the huge assortment.
I told my husband to buckle up, I would be doing some serious damage to our charge card!
Celestial Seasonings teas are bulk packaged in signature designed boxes. My husband prefers individual pack and we were pleased to note they had a selection of boxed individual tea bags and scooped up several in flavors we can’t get locally. (Reminder to self….order some more of these online.) It was fun browsing the different blends and deciding which ones had to come home with us. It turns out quite a few hopped into our bag!
The facility also has a cafe and I was hoping to have lunch there, but it was closed. As I am writing this story, I am beginning to think I might need to join Rebekah and Pam when they fly out to visit Celestial Seasonings. Surely the two of them can keep me from embarrassing myself on the plane.
It has taken me way too long to tell the story of our road trip and this is the final episode. My interstate hating husband decided we should abandon back roads for the return trip and drive the interstates. I still don’t know why, but if I understand everything he did, what fun would that be? Thank you for reading the posts. I have enjoyed remembering the journey. We are undecided about where we will visit on our Fall vacation this year. I do know that a short beach adventure and a tour of a historical city is in the works.
Oh the irony. As I am finishing this series, a sub-tropical storm is advancing on Florida.
Old Things R New 
I’d be happy to have you fly with us to Boulder one day! So many trips to take, so little time.
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That was a fun read!
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Thank you! It was fun to remember.
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Oneisha, when I was writing professionally I did several series on historic hotels. That is an interesting subject, and often, in Colorado there are a number of them in areas near each other, Boulder has a great one, we also stayed in one in Leadville, and one near Leadvillek can’t remember the name.
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Boulder was much prettier than I expected. Did you ever visit a historical hotel in Golden?
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I missed that one. I hope you are safe from this new storm!
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your journey, Onisha, and I hope you missed those storms.
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I enjoyed sharing it, Every time I sat down to write about it, I expected a 30 minute session and they usually ended up being 3 hours. I am a slow thinker! I sure hope we avoid major storms this year. Some buildings in Florida still have blue tarps on their roofs.
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