it's my birthday!

Mostly a car day today...driving from Eureka down and east to Sacramento.  We went back down through the redwoods and stopped at a roadside joint called "The Legend of Bigfoot" which contains all things Bigfoot.  Fun!!

We pulled into Sacramento about 5pm or so, relaxed a little, and then went out to a lovely dinner.  Cheers to me!

and dessert was delicious!

A dark chocolate tart filled with caramel and salted hazelnuts...chantilly cream on top.  Gawd.

Time for bed...tomorrow is brewery day...about four of them we need to hit.

eureka? not so much...beer? amazing!

So it turns out there's just not much to Eureka.  It looks like it might be trying to revitalize its downtown and just didn't quite get there, or it tried and said, "fuck it."  Not much there.  The boardwalk is really pretty, but there are no shops, only one restaurant, and some one off condos.  There's a lot of potential, but...

Anyway, we did find good beer here: Lost Coast, Mad River, Eel River, and Local Beer Bar, so the stop wasn't entirely for naught!

Our hotel (a Best Western, mind you) had a shuttle service not to be believed!

And Joe hit his 2500th unique beer on Untappd. (Cheers!!)

I had one of the best beers I've ever had: Mad River's Humbolt Brownie (a double brown ale)

Think double chocolate walnut Ghiradelli brownie...god jesus that's a good beer.  Mad River bottled it, but, of course, they'd sold out of it.  Good news though...I found it online.  (It's on its way to the house!)

Good beers, good weather, good food, good day!  Tomorrow we head for Sacramento!

biggest god damn trees i've ever seen

Yesterday we left Santa Rosa and cruised up the 101 through Healdsburg (Bear Republic Brewery) and on up to Eureka (Lost Coast, Mad River and Eel River breweries).  A small wine making/tasting community, Healdsburg is in Sonoma County, and it's surrounds include rolling hills, cyprus trees, and vineyards.  Beautiful!

And then somebody flipped the switch.

We went through a little town called Willits - the gateway to the redwoods - and suddenly we were in the land of giants.  There's a side road off of hwy 101 that's a scenic route through about 10 groves of redwoods called Avenue of the Giants.  Amazing.  And I'll get to the pictures, but first want to drop a little knowledge on you.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there used to be redwoods everywhere.  Everywhere.  Then the ice age happened.  As the waters receded, only a stretch along the northwest coast of the US, a small bit in the Sierras, and an even smaller bit in China now host these amazing trees.  (Actually redwoods can grow almost anywhere, but nowhere other than these three places do they attain their giant stature.)  Redwoods average eight feet to as much as 20 feet in diameter, and some are 379 feet tall - that's taller than the Statue of Liberty from base of the pedestal to the tip of the torch.  Shit! that's tall.  Some redwoods are larger around and through than a Greyhound bus.  Some redwoods standing today were around well over 2,000 years ago.  Redwoods are likely the largest living thing on earth (besides Donald Trump's hair).  Redwoods have a shallow root system that spreads out for some distance but does not go very deep. With their incredible height, this opens them up to being blown down by strong winds. By growing in a grove the redwoods protect each other from the wind.  They don't get water from their roots, their needles soak it up from fog and rain.  They don't die when they fall over, they continue to grow - sometimes starting whole new trees from their limbs.  They are not like any trees we know.  

Here's the base of a fallen tree.  It's much taller than I am.

Here's a stump...I'm standing about six feet away from it to fit it all in my viewfinder.

Giants.

John Steinbeck wrote about the redwood, "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time."

I'm looking forward to the Sierras and my next grove of redwoods.

yawn

Well, we finally hit a wall.  Not really, but def metaphorically.  We need sleep, relaxation, quiet time, diet coke, something other than pub grub.  So we spent the day shopping, had one flight, then went out to the pool for some sun.  We had a nice dinner at a local Mexican restaurant - with a couple of margaritas.  And now it's time for an early bedtime.  Back tomorrow energized and ready to go!

peace out, golden gate

San Francisco rocks (I guess especially so during an earthquake, but that's not important right now).  We had such a good time in the city.  Good beer, good food, great sites and scenery, met some fun people, and I hit 2500 distinct beers on Untappd (god, that's a lot of beer).  But it's time to move on and head north to Santa Rosa.

Love the little wisp of cloud at the top.

See you next time.

While the road to - and the actual city of - Santa Rosa is no great shakes, the reasons we're going there are.  Russian River, Moylans, Bear Republic, Lagunitas, just to name a few.  While most people think of this region as wine country (and they are right to do so), the craft beer industry has established a firm foothold here.  Pliny the Elder, consistently ranked as one of the best beers in the world, is brewed here.  Lagunitas opened a distributorship/brewery/taproom in Chicago last year and is bent on world domination.  Moylans makes the best goddamn Scottish Ale (Kiltlifter) I've ever had.  

Another reason?  The Marriott has a coin-op laundry room.

you know i'm all about that beer, 'bout that beer, 'bout that beer

Today was a beer day.  I know, I know...every day is a beer day.  Not surprising.  Hell, we've seen all the scenery...time to cover the beer.  And there is a ton of it.  Most within walking distance.

We started off the day with a bit of shopping (okay, so not ALL about the beer).  We hit Macy's and DSW.  Let me tell you, DSW in SFO is quite the experience.  I bought a new purse.  MMMMMM...new purse.  At Macy's Joe bought a new belt and a new wallet.  Those of you who have seen Joe's wallet KNOW that the purchase of a new one was about a year overdue.  Yay wallet sale!

We met up with friends for lunch...at the Thirsty Bear brewery.  Food was really good (Spanish oriented) and the beer was average.  Thanks to a reco from our Dallas friend Jeremy, we took a quick walk down the street to Cellarmaker.  BEST. RECO. EVER.  Such good beer.  Fun folks.  Cool vibe.  We spent all afternoon there.  And, by the way, I hit 2500 beers on Untappd there...yay, me! (I'd like to thank my liver for sticking with me through good beer and bad.  My parents would be so proud.)

Sitting next to us was a girl who has the job title: Bar Manager.  She works for a tap house in Livermore, and she's the one who gets to decide what beer they're going to tap.  I want this job!  She goes around to breweries, works with distributors, and visits festivals all to choose beers she wants her tap house to carry.  Did I say I want that job!  I would kill at that job.  That job would be perfect for me.  That job would be begging me to stop going to so many breweries, stop trying so many beers.  Damn.  I would be the king of that job.  Note to self: get that job...but in Denver.

After Cellarmaker, we caught a quick cab ride to Mikkeller.  Great food, incredible beer and nifty bar (it's not the brewery, but hosts all the Mikkeller beer, plus some really impressive guest beers).

Finally, finally, we hit a wall.  Time to pack it in for the evening.  Tomorrow?  Sleep in, check out and head toward Santa Rosa (Moylan's, Lagunitas, Russian River and Bear Republic...among others that I'm sure will pop up on our radar).

i am full of beer and chinese food

We slept in this morning.  We're sort of on a layover here in San Francisco...we're staying for three nights...so there's no 'jump up in the morning, repack the suitcase, and hit the road.'  Instead, we lingered (apparently past housekeeping stopping by - they left us a note that they'd been by but the Do Not Disturb sign prohibited them from cleaning the room) and finally hit the trail about 11am.  Nice!!

Since we've been to SFO before and done all the tammy tourist things, we're sort of on our own with nothing to do but drink.  Sound familiar?  Anyway, we walked from our hotel down to the Embarcadaro...a marketplace with loads of local foods and artisan wares.

It is the gateway to the Port of San Francisco.  Bay tours, whale watching, fishing expeditions...you name it, they all leave from here.  Most importantly they have the largest number of clean bathrooms in the city.  I don't actually know that for a fact, but it sure seems like it.

From there we hopped a cable car and headed to Pier 39 - a bazaar of San Francisco eateries, souvenir shops, and buskers.  And further afield...Alcatraz.

It was a lovely day today...clear skies, about 74 and a light breeze...no fog, no clouds, no soggy summer.  It was perfect...for drinking beer.  From the Pier we stopped at a diner for lunch and then headed out to drink.  21st Amendment and Black Hammer were on our agenda, but the nice girl at the front desk of our hotel recommended Hogwash (all day long I kept calling it Hogwarts).  Hogwash is a bar next door to the Rex Hotel downtown with about 40 REALLY INTERESTING beers.  We made friends with the barkeep and sampled several beers we'd never even heard of.

About 8pm we showed up at R&G Lounge.  When we were here eight years ago, a friend told us that if we went ANYWHERE in Chinatown, we should go to R&G.  I know why.  There's something about their special R&G beef that makes me want to eat a shit ton of it.  Very special!

Tomorrow?  Alamanac, Cellarmaker, Thristy Bear, Toronado?  Who knows.  And maybe some more R&G beef!

monterey/san francisco

We tooled around Monterey today (after sleeping in a bit).  We walked down to the wharf and took in the touristy sites...so much fun.  And beautiful!

The bay is gorgeous and really clear!  We could see the seals playing underwater...and then pop up!

"Please, sir, may I have another fish?"  Too cute.  We saw some sea otters, too...lying on their back cracking clams or oysters or their knuckles...who knows...they were too far away to tell.

The weather today was perfect: sunny with a slight breeze.  But I could feel a tinge of briskiness  - foretelling our further adventure north.  San Francisco here we come. 

We figured since we were doing a beer crawl, we might as well crawl as much as we could.  We're heading to San Francisco and then up to Santa Rosa and finally Eureka (I always want to put an exclamation point behind that) before turning towards home.  There are so many breweries in northern California, we just couldn't pass up visiting them.  You know...when in Rome!!

We haven't been to SFO in a few years, but I love the vibe of the city.  And the food.  

highway 1/monterey

It's the thing on your bucket list that just never gets done.  It's the reason you say to yourself, "Man, I need to watch 'Citizen Kane' again sometime."  It's that giant mansion on the hillside that looks like way too much work to turn off and see.  But you should.  We did.  And, oh yeah, we'll be watching Citizen Kane again really soon.  Today we toured Hearst Castle.

What an amazing place.  You don't get to see a lot of the place, but what you do see is incredible.  Wow...what I wouldn't give to have been a hollywood star in the 30s and invited up to the mansion for the weekend.  

After our tour, we headed up the coast to Monterey.  Lots of curvy roads and beautiful scenery!

And, of course, since this is scenery AND suds, we capped it off with a beer or two at Cannery Row Brewery in Monterey.  Tomorrow we'll go looking for Steinbeck.

santa barbara and north to paso robles

Santa Barbara is beautiful  And so high-end.  So much so that one of the mayors of the city couldn't afford to live there and, instead, lived in Montecito.

What a lovely place.  We stayed in a hotel (Best Western Beachside) about 100 steps from the beach and a 15 minute walk from two breweries: the Santa Barbara Brewing Co. and Figueroa Mountain Brewing. The weather started off cloudy and really unappealing, but then the sun came out and gave us a chance to hit the beach...at least for a bit.  The sand was soooo soft and fine.  Like powdered sugar...but sandy colored, rather than white.  It was warm and pretty much cleared off by the time we got there.  A delightful short nap followed.  Loved it.

This morning we got up and headed to Paso Robles and Firestone Walker.  But on the way, we HAD to go check out Solvang - a little Danish community in the Santa Ynez valley.  So cute and so viking!

Of course we went to the brewery.

Back on the road we decided to check out a little brewery in Santa Margarita: Dunbar Brewery (and I'm totally glad we did).  This small brewery only had two brews on tap, but they were dynamite.  And the guest taps were an A-List of CA beers.

Once in Paso Robles, we settled in, then took out for Firestone Walker...just a little homage.  Their facility is enormous!  And the food is fabulous.  We ate, drank, shopped, and drank some more!

We also heard about a brewery called BarrelHouse.  I guess if you're down the road from Firestone Walker, you ought to be brewing some really good beer.  And they do.

My only complaint is that I have never NEVER seen so many children running around...it was like McDonald's playland.  The beer was good, but the vibe was disneyland.  At least no one asked me to curtail my fucking language! 

Tomorrow?  Hearst Castle and Monterey.