Today was our last nights camping on this trip to Alaska. We took care of some business at the Navy Base getting Ton’s military ID card updated, we also did some shopping at the base. We picked up a collapsible wash bin for plates, and a new mini-rice cooker.
We both really enjoy Whidbey Island and spent the rest of the day visiting some of our favorite places and a new brewery. We ended the day by going to one of Ton’s favorite restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. It is Christophers in Coupeville and it has the best mussels we have ever had. We had our biggest meal of the trip, and we will probably get two more meals out of the leftovers.
We appreciate sunsets so much more when we are in our campers.
We made it back to the campsite just in time to enjoy another spectacular sunset over the Puget sound. Another great day on the trip, hopefully we will have many more in the future.
Today was our 36th anniversary so we decided to take it easy and celebrate in a town we had been intending to visit for a while. We had visited Wenatchee in the past with our sons as part of a hockey trip and remembered it as a small farm town. We had heard that it had boomed since we last visited.
After a lazy start to the day we started the visit by trying to get a spot at Confluence State Park in Wenatchee. They did not have anything available but overflow in the day use parking lot, but the location was good even if the price was not ($25)for what was nothing more than a parking lot. We decided to stay there anyway.
Next stop was Costco to stock up on some final things before we headed up to Canada. We were looking for some good local beer, and some fruit. We found them though it was a little pricier than we expected. So far Wenatchee is not cheap.
The next stop was Pybus Public Market it was billed as the newest attraction in Wenatchee and was indeed nice. The best thing for Ron is that he got to see the last twenty minutes of the Timbers game, and even better, they won.
While at Pybus we were looking for a nice place for dinner when Ton realized that most of the restaurants in town were closed on Sunday. This caught us off guard as we are used to the restaurants in Portland all being open on Sunday. Since we were now committed to the area we had to look at our alternatives.
Watching the Timbers and sampling beer.
Leavenworth was about 20 minutes away and had a lot of open restaurants so we headed there for a German dinner. We also visited a couple of breweries. So thank you for saving the day Leavenworth.
It is still extremely hot and smoky. The high was 96 degrees, and visibility was only a couple of miles. Hopefully we get a break soon.
The final day of “Good Brew Hunting” had us dealing with some disappointment. The first two breweries we had planned to visit were not going to open until 4 pm which was too late if we were going to get home at a reasonable hour.
We did visit 7 Devils Brewing in Coos Bay. We enjoyed their IPA a great deal. This is another first class facility. The owner is an artist and has done a first class job of decorating the place.
Ton liked the painting of Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy.
We had planned to make Yachats brewing the last stop for the day. The beautiful weather we had been having had finally broken and we had more typical Oregon Coast weather, a mixture of sun and rain. The drive from Florence to Yachats is really spectacular and we enjoyed the views. When we got to Yachats we found the brewery closed despite their website saying they were open, there was a note on the door reflecting limited winter hours that was not reflected on their website.
At this point we punched home into the navigator. As we were driving thru Newport we came to a seafood place we had always talked about stopping at, so we did. We split a Captains Platter of fish, shrimp, scallops, and oysters. After our late lunch we headed to the house.
The “Good Brew Hunting” trip was now over with 11 breweries visited in three states. Ron’s favorite brewery was Arch Rock and his favorite beer was the lager from Arch Rock from Anderson Valley. Ton’s favorite brewery was Anderson Valley with Arch Rock a close second, and her favorite beer was Anderson Valley and her favorite beer was also from Anderson Valley their Brother Davids Triple.
A rainbow as we were pulling into the neighborhood.
The “Good Brew Hunting” tour was a total of 3818 miles over 20 days and Scout averaged 13.26 mpg. One thing we have noticed that with the heavier tires we put on in Alaska we are averaging almost 1 mpg less, but I think it is worth it for the extra weight capacity.
Paul, Dee and their girls were going to head off to Crater Lake despite the smoke that was still lingering. Ian and Julie were going to go swimming and Julie was going to prepare a proper English Roast Meal. Ton and I decided we would contribute by heading into Medford to get some beer.
Medford and Ashland between them have 8 breweries now. We decided to check out 3 of them. The first stop was Walkabout brewery. This was the one we were most interested in, but when we pulled up the parking lot was empty, we got out to verify it was closed and it was, as we were walking back to Scout a guy walked out and said sorry they were closed. We asked when they were open and he asked if we were from out of town, we said we were and he said come on in and try a sampler. You have got to love people who are passionate about their business. We had a great chat about beer in the area, and enjoyed some good beer. Of course we took some back to share later. The other two breweries were ok, but we picked up samples none the less. Mission completed we headed back to the park.
The smoke finally cleared out a bit.
While we were gone Julie had cooked up a wonderful authentic English Roast meal. Good food and good beer made for a great night.
Today we spent the day at the Eastern Oregon Livestock Show. It is a combination of a 4H fair, horse racing, and Rodeo. I have always wanted to visit a small town Rodeo. Union with a population of 2120 meets the small town criteria. It seemed like the whole town was out for the Rodeo and everyone looked like they were having fun.
There was quite a bit of action with horse races mixed in with the rodeo events. The rodeo is a kind of minor league for the big time rodeos you see on TV.
Note all of the cowboys wearing pink for breast cancer awareness.
After the rodeo we payed a visit to Barley Brown’s Brewery to fill up the growler. We also bought a nice half-growler to use for water, but first we will have to finish the beer that was included.
Today was another travel day heading north. We had a slow start due to the after affects of last nights wine. We stopped in Reading to check out the Sundial Bridge there. It is a nice piece of architecture, and we observed a new form of dance. Three people were hanging by lines from the Sundial part of the bridge and were practicing a performance “dance” while suspended from 30 to 60 feet above the ground.
A dance rehearsal for a festival later in the week.
Then we continued north to Bend where we stopped to pick up a growler of beer from Ton’s favorite brewery Boneyard. We then did our obligatory pass thru Costco, and finished up the day by trying a new for us brewery in Bend, Worthy Brewery. Breweries are spring up in Bend and every time we come it seems there are 2 or 3 new ones to check out.
We called it a day early today to watch the three game 7’s of the Stanley Cup Playoff’s. Tomorrow we will be dropping Scout off at the Provan dealer to get some warranty work done.
Today is Dylan’s birthday so we planned a big day around town to celebrate. We started out with a seafood brunch at Point Loma Seafood. It is part fishmonger and part restaurant, definitely a laid back California experience, but the food was really exceptional, and was a good start to the day.
Our next stop was Cabrillo National Monument on a bluff overlooking San Diego harbor. This was the first day it was open after the government shutdown and a lot of people were coming out to use the facilities. It is an interesting place located on former military property with stunning views of the harbor and the ocean. The monument has exhibitions on Spanish explorers, as it is believed the monument contains the landing place of the Spanish explorer who was the first European to land in San Diego. It also has a whale watching platform, some nice tidal pools, and exhibits on the military uses of the area. We really enjoyed it.
The Cabrillo Monument to the first European to see San Diego Harbor.
Next we headed over to another San Diego brewery located right next to Point Loma Seafood. We had a couple of rounds of really excellent Lagers and IPA’s and were quite impressed with Epigg Brewing. Our next stop was going to be Pariah brewery for Pizza and beer. When we got there Pizza was not available so we headed down the road for a great Mexican meal to wrap up the day. Thanks Dylan for a fun week in San Diego.
Not a very interesting travel day. Both of us have been dealing with nagging medical issues so we decided to use today to go by a clinic and get them looked at. We both had our diagnoses confirmed and got some prescriptions to deal with the issues.
In the afternoon we went to downtown San Diego for dinner at Melvin’s. We had a great dinner of Thai Curry. This brewery is originally from Wyoming and was the house brewery for a Thai restaurant, which is an unusual way to found a brewery. Their beer is considered one of the best micro breweries in the country. We then finished the night by taking a walk around downtown San Diego.
Ron and Dylan in front of a monument to craft beer.
Dylan swung by to pick us up about 930. After a breakfast of noodles prepared by Ton we headed off to our first stop of the day the Tijuana Slough Wildlife Refuge. It is one of the areas that the office Dylan works in manages. He took us on a nice walk through the slough and he explained some of the challenges of managing wildlife refuges in a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million people.
Tijuana Slough Wildlife Refuge.
The next stop was some shopping at the Navy Exchange and Commissary in San Diego where we saw a food cart advertising Thai Hamburgers. Of course we had to go see what Thai Hamburgers were. Well they are not hamburgers at all. Dylan actually guessed that the “rolls” would be sticky rice and he was right. The meat is barbeque pork that Thai call Meu Ping, and it was delicious. The three of us split a “hamburger” and pronounced it a messy but delicious meal.
The final stop for the day was to join the Timbers Army San Diego group to watch the Timbers. They were going to meet in a pub downtown so we headed downtown but were quite early. We wandered around for a while and blundered into one of Ton’s other items on her list, Oscars Mexican seafood. We each had an excellent Fish Taco, and some ceviche.
The game was a huge disappointment as the Timbers looked listless, and were never in the game. We left a little early to head back for the night.
Today we headed into San Diego to spend the weekend with our son Dylan who is working there for the Fish and Wildlife Service. We had a slow start as we wanted to wait for traffic to die down before taking off.
Ton saw a Mexican Grocery next to the hotel so while Ron went to get some fuel for Scout she had a good time shopping for good cheap vegetables and a Mexican pastry for breakfast. She was very impressed with the quality, variety and cost of the vegetables.
The drive into San Diego was thankfully uneventful and we arrived at the Navy RV park we will be staying at around 130pm. Dylan was able to get off work a little early so we knocked off two of Ton’s items from the agenda. The two breweries she wanted to visit in San Diego were fortunately only a couple of blocks apart so we were able to knock visit them both. The first was Alesmith and we were quite impressed with both the facility and the beer. The next stop was Mikkeller Brewery. Mikkeler is an interesting operation as they are from Copenhagen Denmark. They consider themselves gypsy brewers who work out of different breweries around the world. The brewery in San Diego is the first brewery they have had that is their own. The beer was interesting and the art in the brewery was very nice. When it came down to voting on the best beer Dylan and Ron picked Alesmith and Ton declared a tie.
Dylan enjoying a taster at Ballast Point Brewing.
We ended the day with a nice meal at the campsite.
It was time to finally leave our friends Pae and Supachai. For our going away Pae prepared a great Thai breakfast of Cao dom. Ron really loved it. Thanks to our good friends Pae and Supachai for hosting us and showing us around the bay area.
Ron enjoying a beer at Central Coast Brewing.
Heading south we camped up in San Luis Obispo. We visited a really nice brewery called Central Coast. We enjoyed a couple of beers and were really pleasantly surprised when the bill came as we did not realize it was happy hour and the beers were $2 off. The last stop for the day was the Madonna Inn. It is a hotel that has been the place to be in San Luis Obispo for decades. Trip Advisor describes the decor as eccentric and Ton says they are right. Below are a couple of pictures that prove her point.
The dinning room at the Madonna Inn. That is a lot of pink.
Good Brew Hunting continued today with two stops as we continue our very slow pub crawl north. After a slow start in the morning we headed towards Boonville California to a brewery that we had targeted called Anderson Valley Brewery. To get there we covered about 25 miles of twisty mountain roads until we dropped into the valley. The beer was delicious, and we debated calling it a day there, but decided to push on north.
Anderson Valley Brewing our favorite brewery on the tour.
After another three hours we ended up at the Mad River brewery in Blue Lake. The beer was good but not quite up to the standard of Anderson Valley. However, they were having a sale on cans so we picked up a case of a nice lager for the next trip in Scout.
The scenery among the coastal mountains of California.
Tonight we are urban camping in a casino parking lot near the brewery in Blue Lake.
Ton has dubbed the rest of our trip north good beer hunting. The plan is to move north roughly following US101 through Northern California and Oregon searching for breweries.
With Ron still a little under the weather the plan was to take it easy and only visit one brewery today. We chose Russian River brewery in Santa Rosa. It is famous for two IPA’s Pliney the Elder and Pliney the Younger. They have a national reputation and even though we have tried them both we thought we would go by the brewery to try one on site. When we got there, the line to get in to the brewery had about 300 people in it. It turns out it was the release day for this years Pliney the Younger and also the San Francisco beer festival. When someone from the brewery came by and informed us that the wait to get in would be five hours we decided to go somewhere else.
Russian River Brewing where the line to get in was 5 hours.
The second place was about five miles away called Bear Republic Brewery. We had a taster tray of 9 beers ranging from a pilsner to a stout. There were several good beers though we thought the lighter beers were better than the darker beers.
Bear Republic Brewing had no line.
Ron is still a little worn out from the flu, so we headed over to a nice campground in dairy country near Petaluma that came with over 180 channels on their cable. While Ron took a nap Ton was able to watch her favorite hockey team on the TV.
The California Dairy Association has been running adds featuring their “happy cows.”
We had a slow start to the day. One of the things about staying on a military base is that sometimes you share your campground with Marines training. This morning a platoon of amtracks (a floating armored personnel carrier) went thru the camp.
Two LVTP7 Amphibious Tractors, known as AMTRACKS.
They then took off down the beach.
They are going to enter the water a little further down by the safety boat you see in the water.
We headed over to Oceanside for the afternoon we shared a fish and chips lunch at a nice restaurant. We then had a nice walk thru town and down to the pier. A lot of California coastal towns have piers, and Oceanside’s is nice, and not quite as commercial as some of the others.
On the gentrified Oceanside Pier.
We watched the surfers for a while from the pier. Ton pointed out one older gentlemen mixed in with all of the younger surfers. After a while though it was clear the old guy was by far the best surfer.
The first job for today was to try to sort out our camera. It suddenly stopped working. We are not sure if the battery has given up the ghost or it is something bigger. It is 6 or 7 years old so it may be just at the end of its’ life despite Ton’s meticulous maintenance. For now we are in possession of a new camera we bought at Costco. While Ton was sorting out the camera and doing some grocery shopping, Ron took Scout for an oil change.
After that we headed out to check out the north part of San Diego county. Once again Ron is shocked that an area he remembers so well from 20 years ago has changed substantially. Oceanside has gentrified tremendously, and Carlsbad is positively upscale now. We really enjoyed checking out the town including the Belching Beaver Brewery, a Pizza place that also brewed beer, and the farmers market. In fact we had such a good time that we decided to spend another night here.
Checking for the next brewery.
Last night most of the sites around us were empty, when we returned tonight we were surrounded by a bunch of large RV’s. It turns out it is a group of Elks from around Moreno Valley California who are here for the weekend. They seem like a bunch of nice people and invited us to join them tomorrow for a card tournament. We will see.
Today we started out at Torrey Pines State Nature Area. The Torrey Pine tree is only found in two places in the world, one grove near San Diego and the other on one of the channel islands near Santa Barbara. The Preserve has an interesting mix of plants in a small area. In addition to the Torrey Pines in the same area there are ferns and cactus. The micro-climate in the area allow this diversity in plant types.
The Torrey Pines are the trees behind the cactus.
From Torrey Pines we headed to La Jolla to see how the other half lives. It is a pretty community. Along the waterfront there were a flock of Pelicans sitting on shore, and a few Sea Lions sunning on the beach.
Pelicans.
We went to small dive restaurant in Pacific Beach that was reputed to be the best in San Diego. The food was excellent and Ton pronounced the Ceviche as the best Mexican Ceviche she has had.
As I said yesterday we were spending the afternoons in Breweries so today we went to Ballast Point Brewery. This was by far the poshest brewery we have ever seen. The trend we noticed in San Diego was that the breweries seemed larger and more commercially developed then their counterparts at home. We sent our friends a picture from Ballast Point, and one texted back that we needed to visit Karl Strauss brewery. We figured it was our last day so why not. It was in what was clearly an old Japanese restaurant complete with a Koi Farm. Turns out this was not the original brewery. We did a taster tray and it was very good and the waiter was quite knowledgeable.
A taster tray of good beer.
Ended the day doing our laundry and having a nice conversation about Scout with a Marine who was getting ready to retire. Ron got another reminded that he was an old Marine as the Navy newspaper was talking about the decomissioning of a 35 year old amphibious ship that was launched when he was a Lieutenant.
The theme of the trip to San Diego is mornings doing touristy things and the afternoons visiting breweries. San Diego is a great town to look around and despite living only 80 miles away for 5 years we had not seen a lot of the city.
The morning we visited Balboa Park which is one of the best parks in the US. We were particularly impressed with the Prado and the Museum of Man. The buildings were built for an exposition in the 30’s and have been used for many purposes since, including a garrison and hospital during WWII. There are also many different types of gardens and fountains that are quite beautiful. Ton really loved the cactus garden though she would have like to seem some name plaques on some of the cactus that we were unable to identify.
Balboa Park in San Diego is home to some great gardens and museums.
After finishing with Balboa Park we headed out to Escondido to visit Stone Brewery. The facility was really large and impressive. The beer was ok, and the food very fancy. The tour was really good and the “beer indoctrinator” was really knowledgeable about beer and the industry. Stone brewery is quite large for a craft brewery and is in the process of opening a brewery in Berlin. I am curious how it will be received, there was a German couple on the tour and they thought it might go over ok, as there are actually not that many breweries in Berlin compared to the rest of Germany.
At the end of the day we decided that we wanted to see La Jolla and check out another brewery, luckily we were able to get the last spot available for tomorrow in the Navy RV park so we are extending in San Diego.
ell last night we had a talk about where to go next. Ton said there was a great road from where we were camped into San Diego. She had fond memories of a trip to Coronado Island we took about 20 years ago and wanted to see how it has changed.
We took California Highway 78/79 over the San Jacinto mountains and it was nice. A continuation of the high desert environment, with a few California Oaks occasionally. Not too hard of a drive and worth the effort if you need to go east to west versus I-8.
We were hoping to get into the Navy RV park on Coronado as it has a great view of San Diego Bay and all of the ships. Unfortunately it was full so we ended up staying at a RV park near the Junction of I-8 and I-15.
We headed over to Coronado to do some shopping at the Navy Exchange and Commissary. That taken care, of we went downtown where to Ron’s amazement things had change since he was last there in the Marines 20 years ago. We had a nice beer sampler at Coronado Brewing Company. It is worth a stop. Final stop for the day was a drive down the silver strand between San Diego Harbor and the Pacific. Great beaches some of them public and some belonging to the Navy.
Today we had another fun day with Pae and Supachai. Supachai was meeting some of his friends from work at an Apple Orchard and we were invited to tag along. It was a pretty place, but it reminded Ton and I of how many more people there are in California than in Oregon. There was a quite a crowd, though everyone was having a good time.
After the apple orchard we went over to a brewery near by (of course) to check out the local brew. It was a nice setting and they were serving beer, cider, mead, and wine. We had a nice lunch and shared tasters of all of the beverages that were available. The beer was good, the cider was good, the wine was fair, and I still have not developed a taste for mead so I do not know if it was good or bad.
Pae and I enjoying our Beer, Wine, Cider, and Mead taster.
Next stop was Placerville which is another old gold mining town, but much gentrified. We visited the downtown which had some good antique shops including an old bookstore. Walking down the street we noticed that the main street in Placerville was our old friend California Highway 49. As Ton and I were walking down the street we saw a sign in the window of a cafe proclaiming Highway 49 as the Mother Lode Highway. We checked out the sign as we like to collect highway signs of roads we have enjoyed, but this one was considered an antique and out of our price range.
Today the weather was tremendous, the nicest weather we have experienced since we bought Scout. In addition there was exceptionally high surf along the whole coast which just added to the views along the PCH.
Really high surf today made the coast even more spectacular.
The drive today was slow but, really beautiful. The combination of the bluff top views and the surf made for a fun drive. Scout handled the twists and turns of PCH very well and we were rarely the slowest vehicle on the road, turned a couple of heads when we would catch up with cars moving slower than we were along the highway. It was a really happy day for Ton as in addition to the beautiful weather, the wildflowers were out at all of our stops.
In addition to the spectacular sea views the wild flowers were out on all of our stops.
In Gold Beach we met a Chinese couple who had a rental RV, we did not speak much with them beyond helping the husband find the place to check in as their English was limited. Yesterday we saw them a couple of times and today when pulled off in Bodega Bay I looked up to see the wife waving at me as they drove by.
After checking in at the Coast Guard base in Petuluma for the night, Ton pointed out that Lagunitas Brewery was located in Petuluma so we were off. Good Beer, Good Weather, and a Good Band made for an enjoyable night and the end to a great day.
Lagunitas is one of the biggest independent brewers in the US.
