Katie Mullen's (Denver, Colorado)

The Cashel Burger is made with Cashel bleu cheese and smoked bacon.  It also comes with lettuce, tomato, and red onion but S. opted out of having the onions.  All of the burgers at Katie Mullen's are made of 8 ounces of USDA Choice ground sirloin or chuck and comes with your choice of house salad or fries.  Sweet potato fries (shown above) are $1 extra.  S. thought this was a great burger.  She always prefers crumbly bleu cheese on a burger over bleu cheese dressing.

A close-up of the Cashel Burger, which costs $11.95.

The Irish Cowboy Burger ($10.95).  Guest Blogger J. thought the sweet potato  fries were delicious.

V. opted for the basic cheeseburger ($9.95) with bleu cheese.  As always, he said it was, "good."

Yard House (Denver, Colorado)

The Surf and Turf Burger with an upgrade to sweet potato fries ($10.85, with regular fries).

This burger comes with lobster, asparagus, and spinach.  It also had Swiss cheese and a tomato Bearnaise sauce.  This burger was great, a something different about having lobster on a burger but it was so tall, I had to deconstruct it and eat it with a fork so it made it difficult to get all the flavors in one bite.

Lost Coast Brewery (Eureka, California)

Red's Diner (Crescent City, Calfornia)

Fort Bragg, California

Marriott at San Francisco Airport

Cambridge, MA

Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage (Cambridge, Mass.)

Mr. Bartley's Burgers has been in business near Harvard Yard since 1960.  They are world-famous, having been featured on Food Network, The Travel Channel, and in the New York Times and USA Today.  Which means, we had to check them out for ourselves.

The dining room is very eclectic.  There aren't many seats and what seats they do have are very close to one another.  There was one long communal table in the center and if you sat there, you would likely be sitting by strangers.  They have an extensive menu of burger choices, many of them named after celebrity diners, or you can order off the chalkboard.

For an appetizer, we chose the "Very Famous Sweet Potato Fries" ($4.99 for a large) and they were delicious.  It was hard not to fill up on them before our burgers were delivered.

S. had her perennial favorite: the blue cheese burger.  It was an excellent burger, although a little messy with all the blue cheese dressing.  Just as she was finishing, S. lamented that she could use a wet wipe; before the words were even out of her mouth, the server arrived with wet wipes.  Apparently, they are necessary for many of the burgers at Mr. Bartley's.

A close-up of the blue cheese burger.  That's a pretty thick patty; and it was cooked perfectly to order (which would be well done for S.).  All of their burgers are made from seven ounces of choice beef, ground fresh daily.  No frozen discs of meat here.  Most of the burgers range in price from $8 - $11 and come with chips or fries.  We chose chips with our burgers because we had already ordered the sweet potato fries as an appetizer.  If you get the burgers that come with chips, they are less expensive.

S. was joined on this outing by her mom, who had the pizza burger.  Her mom remembers ordering pizza burgers when she was a teenager/young adult but that she hadn't had one in ages, so it would be a little bit of nostalgia to have one now.  She said this was different than any other pizza burger she'd had previously, she still that it was amazing.  She especially liked that you could taste the quality of the beef patty and that it wasn't overshadowed by the condiments.