Monday, July 04, 2016

Zuberfizz and Pizza



While at Eagle, Colorado, one of the first places we went was to the welcome and visitor center.  Besides the normal place where one can buy trinkets, shirts, etc., they had a small museum, a caboose, and a couple more small outbuildings.  The man in the museum charges a dollar each to go through the museum.  It was worth the dollar, especially when we came to an old wringer washer, powered by an electric motor (some have gas engines), that when you moved a lever, operated an ice cream freezer that was hanging off to the side of the contraption.  This must have been quite the appliance back in its day!
The man at the museum was chatty, but not overbearing.  We talked about many things, including the name of a bush that was growing all around the area.  It had bright yellow flowers, and bloomed all summer long, they said.  No one seemed to know the name, however.  He even called someone, but they didn’t know.  He said he would continue checking, and if we would come back, he might have the name for us.
We checked out the other buildings, the river which was flowing right beside the grounds, and bought a few things in the visitor center.  They were selling chocolates by the piece in there, and I bought a caramel chocolate that had a little coarse sea salt sprinkled on the top of it.  It was much better than I thought it would be!
We inquired of several people of good places to eat.  One of them, the Dusty Boot, was in the south part of town, which was a newer section.  We had lunch there…and were one of just a few people eating there.  I had a turkey, peach, goat cheese, grilled red pepper sandwich on sourdough.  I forget the name of the sandwich, but it was pretty good!
 We took a road south out of town, and followed it for several miles up a canyon until we came onto the Sylvan Lake State Park and visitor center.  We stopped at the center and looked around, used the restrooms, and left again.  We never entered the park because of the cost, but found the trip and the center to be interesting.
Going back to the visitor center in Eagle, we found the man in the museum.  He had the name of the bush, and gave it to me.  Of course, I can’t find the name of it now that I’d like to tell you what it is.  Oh well…such is the way life is sometimes.  (Addendum:  It's potentilla, aka cinquefoil.)
The second evening, we drove around a bit and ended up at a pizza place just a block from the B & B.  Called “Pickups,” it was pretty much a “to go” place, although they did have one table there.  We ordered a pizza and waited there.  We also got some soda there…Zuberfizz root beer from the Zuberfizz plant in Durango.  We didn’t know of the plant in Durango or would have toured it while we were there.  They make 8 different kinds of sodas, all of the ingredients for which come from Colorado or Utah.  They also use sugar instead of corn sweetener.  Good stuff.  You can go online and order a 15 pack of assorted Zuberfizz products and have them shipped to you.  By the way, the pizza was great!  We went to the visitor center and ate at a picnic table that was set up there.
Next morning, we were packed and headed east on I-70 for the turn to Rocky Mountain National Park.  That will be in the next installment.

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