I am currently on my second trip to Colorado Springs. This trip happened to fall during one of two snow storms hitting the Colorado area. As a product of the midwest, I have always maintained that I like snow until it loses its dazzling, wonderland quality. Like two days after it falls. However, this Colorado snow is the stuff of poetry. The flakes are fluffy and soft. Not at all like the wintery mix I’m accustomed to pelting me in the face. Despite the below zero temperatures, I still managed to explore in the downtown area. I spent the better part of yesterday with my laptop and a chai tea latte in a cozy corner of a gem of a bookstore/coffee shop, Poor Richard’s, watching the large flakes blanket the town.

Today, I stumbled upon my first experience with a coffee beanery called Switchback Coffee Roasters which I originally thought was a coffee house. I immediately knew I was in the wrong place when I saw the roasting contraption in the middle of the shop. Apparently coffee beaneries don’t sell actual cups of coffee. After the woman made me a sample cup in a device this coffee noob has never seen before and shared her extensive knowledge on the art of proper brewing, I purchased this “craft coffee”. What I will do with this, I have no idea. I got swept up in the idea that I too can make a cup of coffee like she made. Can I actually? No. But it was a fun, inexpensive splurge.

Luckily I found the coffee house for which I was searching located adjacent to Switchback. And I was pleasantly surprised to find Fiftyfifty Coffee House can make a mean avocado turkey sandwich. All local ingredients, of course.