Beers and Boards 2008

We are on day 6 of our trip... I can't believe that we have been gone that long. It seems like we've only been gone a few days.

Our trip started by visiting two fun breweries in the tri-cities area. The first was Whistran in Prosser. If you are a Jack Black fan, you should visit this brewery. Brian, one of the brewers, looked just like Jack Black (have you seen the scene in High Fidelity where he dances?). He gave us a tour and sent us on to Ice Harbor Brewery in Richland. (http://www.iceharbor.com/). Great food and awesome beer. Everyone was so nice and Ed did get to tour that one as well.

We hauled ass to Kuna, looking forward to some entertainment (ie: bikini barrel racing) but found out that the cover was $15 per person. Apparently there isn't $15 of entertainment to see at the bikini barrel races so we decided to see the booming metropolis of Kuna and hung out in a local establishment called the Red Eye. We even got to hear some of the locals singing karoke. Scott and Amy (oh hell no. Not me!) from our group also sang and I must say that they were the best in the bar. We tried to get Mark to sing, we even put $72 on the table and he still wouldn't do it. We spent Sunday watching the Daytona 500 and eating some of Brad's dutch oven cooked prime rib. Yum-yum.

Monday Ed and I went up to Bogus Basin mountain and he skied. I sat in the lodge and graded all of the papers in my school bag. We met Suzy and Brad at the Table Rock Brewery for dinner before heading up to McCall. It was awesome seeing Brad and Suzy. I miss her daily.

Tuesday was spent skiing at Brundage mountain. I sat in the lodge and read a book. The weather was beautiful and Ed said that it was the best skiing he's ever had at Brundage. We had to be off the mountain by 3:00 because Ed had to make a business call and there was no cell service on the mountain. We spent Tuesday night at the Lewiston Super 8.

Unfortunately there was no Ranger voice to wake me up Wednesday morning. Ed also had to make another work call, which we did from Orofino. (I love to say the name of that town!) We drove over Lolo Pass into Missoula, Monatana. When we were almost to the top of the pass, we saw this small red truck in front of us slide on the ice and slam into the snow that the snow plow had plowed to the right of the road. The damn truck almost tipped over on it's driver's side! Scared the living crap out of us! We stopped to make sure that the occupants were fine, which they were, and offered our help, which wasn't needed. We stopped at the top of the pass, took the obligatory picture and went pee.

When we finally arrived in Missoula, we were able to visit the Kettlehouse Brewery http://www.kettlehouse.com/, and the Bayern Brewery http://www.bayernbrewing.com/ . Both have really great beer. We'd visited the Kettlehouse last year on our way through but hadn't been to the Bayern. They brew the traditional German brew style, so lagers only. Their best beer was their Dopplebock but they also had a dark Hefeweizen that was amazing.

After visitng those two breweries, we headed north towards Whitefish. On the way, we stopped in Poulson at Glacier Brewing Company, http://www.glacierbrewing.com/. We hadn't stopped last year so we were really surprised to see that they had built a really great tasting room. We got to talking to one of the owners and he told us of a new brewery in Lakeside called Tamarack Brewing Company, http://www.tamarackbrewing.com/. He said that they had really great food so of course , we had to stop. As we were sitting there having dinner, we kept seeing the patrons leaving the brewery and going outside. I said to Ed, "What's the matter with these people? They keep leaving. They are weird." Come to find out, there was a lunar eclipse, which I new, but, was spacing off. When we left and saw the eclipse, we laughed because I'd been making fun of everyone leaving the restaurant to go and look at it. Duh.

We spent this morning with Ed on a business call then hightailed it up to Big Mountain. Ed skied for an hour, came in for another business call then spent the afternoon skiing the backside of the mountain. I continued to read my book.

We drove to Marion, MT to visit the Lang Creek Brewery (http://www.langcreekbrewery.com/) but they were closed at 5. Bummer.

We are now sitting in the Super 8 in Sandpoint, (and no Tina, we aren't putting our heads on the pillows or touching the floor with our feet) waiting for Paul and Kim Van Atta to meet us to ski with Ed tomorrow.

I'm tired of eating out and I've probably gained 110 pounds. I can't wait to get back home so I can go to the gym!