So after a long trip across the country, Jen and I have landed in Monterey, CA.

Here’s a picture of the beach/bay:

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We put about 7,000 miles on the car, 2 oil changes. 1 U-Haul trailer, 21 different beds, 13 states & 16 breweries. Talk about a blast. Lots of National Parks. Just to name a few: Grand Canyon, Devil’s Tower, Painted Desert & Redwoods.

But really, I think my favorite was Crater Lake.

It was amazingly gorgeous. And the water really is that blue.

We went from Traverse City to Grand Rapids, then to Chicago to Milwaukee (Miller Valley), through Wisconsin to Minnesota (drove through some tornados.) Traveled to Sioux Falls, SD. The Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. Wall Drug. Mt. Rushmore. Stayed in Richmond, SD. Saw Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Drove down to Denver, CO for a few days. One night in Albuquerque, NM. A night in Mesa, AZ. A few in Scottsdale, AZ. Saw Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taelisin West. Drove through Sedona. Camped in Flagstaff. GRAND CANYON. Southern NV to Las Vegas. VIP Party at the Luxor. Then to Barstow for a night. Put stuff in storage. Oceanside, CA. Loved the beach there. San Diego & Pacific Beach for about a week & a half. Went up to Venice & Santa Monica. Stayed in Azusa, CA at Jeff’s. Then drove up to Monterey. To San Fran. To Petaluma. To Eureka & the Redwoods. Spent a night in Eugene, OR aka Track Town USA. Then up to Portland for a few days. Then to Bend, OR for a night. Really liked OR. Saw Mt. Hood & some Lava fields at the Lava Butte. The Three Sisters (mts.) & Mt. Bachelor. Crater Lake. A night in BFE NE Cali. Then to Reno, down to South Lake Tahoe (gorgeous) and spent the night at The Caselli Cabin. Drove into Sacramento for a night at the Caselli house. And then on to Monterey. Seems like forever ago we left MI.

All in all the road trip was a great experience. There are plenty of stories to be told. You’ll just have to ask. And eventually I’ll get around to posting some great pics. After a month and a half it is nice to be in one place for a bit. I’d like to thank all of our wonderful hosts: Alysa, Hillary. Bruce, Jordan, Katie, Jeff, Aimee & The Caselli Family. We were very lucky to have such great people open their homes to us.

I’ve been interested in Homebrewing for some time now.  Luckily one of my friends Gene is an amazing homebrewer. And how do I know this? Well, he let me sample some of his delicious brew. I was kinda iffy about going out and dropping $150 on a bunch of equipment, so Gene graciously let me brew in his garage, along with our friend, Sean.

I found a recipe online that wouldn’t take much time and emailed Gene to see if it would be ok to do it. He said it looked tasty, and so the horses were out of the gate. I gathered the ingredients for the IPA at Diversions (don’t be fooled, they sell beer making equipment/ingredients). We picked a time & place and hooked it up.

Here’s Gene & I working the wort:

Here’s Gene & super cheese-grin Sean:

Here’s the lil baby all carboyed up with lifting straps on:

It was a great experience & I am very excited to try it again. For this “KPA” (Kiki’s Pale Ale), we did a malt extract brew. Sean has decided to do a brew as well, so we are going to do a full grain brew, which involves you mashing the grain. Essentially it’s making everything from scratch. So I think we’re going to get to that this week. We’re calling that Homebrewing 102. Very exciting. And here’s the progress that Gene posted a few days into the fermentation.

Hope you all enjoyed “Baby’s First Homebrewing.” I know I did. And I can’t wait for the final product. I’ll let you know how it is!

Yes, please! I was really excited about the 7th Annual Empire Asparagus Festival, which was this weekend. A group of us went out to Empire yesterday to enjoy the festivities. I was looking forward to getting a tshirt, but really just didn’t end up getting one because I wasn’t in love with the design of it.

The main draw was the food, which was phenomenal. I had some asparagus crabcakes with remoulade & some deep fried asparagus with horseradish sauce. It was delish! I also had a glass of Tandem Ciders’ cider, but can’t recall the name at the moment. As well as a glass of Right Brain Brewery’s Will Power Pale Ale.

We then walked down to the beach and could see the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes from there. As well as the Empire Lighthouse.

Then we walked back into town, bought some of Deering’s Asparagus Brats and were able to catch the parade, which pretty much consisted of this:

And this:

All in all it was a beautiful. And if you are a foodie, I would totally recommend going next year!

There’s nothing wrong with keeping your beer cold. And there’s everything right with having a coozie like this:

It’s super classy and my friend, Erica, brought it to me from Brazil, where she was on vacation. It’s even got a super fancy lid.

And a necklace like strap so you can go hands free like bluetooth!

Jen’s dad, Greg, recommended 3 Floyds to us because he knew we were going to Chicago. This is just off of the HWY (94) in Indiana. Well, maybe 2 miles off the HWY. So being the beer dorks that we are. We had to stop. The directions may be a little misleading, but it is actually located in an industrial park. Here’s the statue out front of the brew pub.

And here is the other side of the statue. You know loving on a beer!

And here’s the logo above the door.

We got the sampler, which was a pre-determined 4 beers.
The beer was all pretty hoppy. Not really my thing, but still delish! What I really loved about this place was the artwork for the bottles & all over the pub. Alpha King is their most popular beer.

The beer was good. & if you’re not into their hoppy beer, they have an incredible collection of microbrewed beer from all over the place. The food was amazing! We split an order of the Belgian style fries as a snack.  I’d totally go back!