Poco Mountain Girl

A week or so ago, we went to Hammond’s Candy Factory in Denver for the annual Candy Cane Festival.  Zia played in the kids games hosted by KLOVE radio station, and won a gigantic lollipop for her fine dancing. Yayayay!

We watched the candy canes being made.  Hammond’s makes 10 million each Christmas season!  They were patted out in huge 80-lb lumps, pulled and spun, twisted, cut, and curved–all by hand.

The guys mostly have the job of hauling them around, but they said they have one super strong girl who also does it.

We checked out the gift shop, full of every kind of candy imaginable, including chocolate bars with names like Pigs n’ Taters (stuffed with bacon and potato chips–how healthy is that!), Double Truffle, Red Velvet Cake, PB&J Sandwich, Malted Milkshake, Cookie Dough, Whoopie Pie, etc.

Caleb bought four 1-lb caramel blocks for a dollar each in the “Oops” discount barrel to see if he could re-sell them for a profit at school.  Zia and Cash each bought a candy cane.  Cash’s was blue, and he never expressed the slightest interest in tasting it–I’m not sure he knew it was edible.  Instead he whacked it together with a lollipop he also bought (and didn’t taste) in the car on the way home until they were both in shards, held together only barely by their wrappers, then threw them on the floor.  Our car floor is covered with things like that, so no big deal.

How do you like these sweet hats?

There were bouncy houses, slides, and tents set up outside.  Zia had a blast.  Most of the tents were closing down by the time we got outside, but they had local places like Celestial Seasonings represented, more candy samples, and a Santa’s workshop.

Cash and Zia got to pet the Clydesdales before we left.

That there’s one sweeeeeet cowboy.  I’m always having to chase off the women–because like he says, the cowboy comes out and the cows come a runnin’.  And especially with a candy hat on top of his cowboy hat.  Moo-ooooo.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2014 at 8:00 am and is filed under Colorado. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.