Skagit River Brewing Co.

Well, Mark was in town about a month ago and we had the pleasure of visiting the Skagit River Brewing Company. Not only was the beer refreshing, but after our recent trip and the many disagreements over our beer ratings, it was refreshing to be on the same page again. We thoroughly enjoyed several of the brews in their sampler, and were quite impressed with atmosphere and variety of vegeterian options on the menu as well. Top notch. =o) Two thumbs up from both of us!

...The End.

Oh, right then... the end of the trip.

Mark flew out of the bay area and Meg and I drove the rest of the way home (after chillin' with Ian and Liz a bit). We hit some heavy snow by Mt. Shasta, and the evergreen state reminded us how it stays ever-green. Rain and all, it just feels good to be home.

Last Day Before the Conference

Mark and I played a thoroughly entertaining round of Disc Golf at Morley Field in San Diego with Boyd and Tony. These guys were classic. Boyd, the middle aged, very cool southern Californian, was plenty out spoken on a whole variety of topics—including the sexual indiscretions of his many employees. However, rest assured that the next time I’m looking for a “gentlemen’s house of pleasure” in Tijuana, I’ll know right where to go. Our other companion apparently had some similar interests, but Tony was much quieter and all around easier to connect with. Tony was also way better at disc golf than either of us. Tony’s Hispanic. He’s currently working two jobs to pay off the $500 ticket he got for driving without a license. In fact, he only got out to play because the woman whose yard he was supposed to be working in wasn’t home yet. Tony sounded like a good guy who’s making his way, and doing it by working way harder than I probably ever will.

We headed out across the bridge from SD to the Coronado Brewery. We enjoyed the place and while we didn’t get any comments on paper, we certainly dug the beer.

Wilderness (?) Lakes (?)

One of the cool things about the Thousand Trails campsites is that they pull us off the interstates a few miles and give us a small feel for the surrounding countryside. Sometimes we get to see little rural neighborhoods, and sometimes, like last night, we get to sleep next to mile after mile of tract housing, among other things. Now, we were warned by some folks at another TT about the smell at the Wilderness Lakes Preserve, but we didn’t really believe them and passed it off, foolish as we are. As we drove through the dark, past the miles of house piled upon house, the smell seeped through the vents of the car. We were hoping for wilderness, and lakes... These were no where to be found. The smell was distinctly manure, and I suggested there must be farms in the area—wrong-o, moose-breath! The smell, we soon discovered, was coming from thousands of cattle, piled almost on top of each other in feed lots directly next door to the campsite. Yes, directly. In fact, there were cattle not more than 100 feet from the doors of our tents. I think this may be enough to push me to give up the one last vestige of my beef consumption—beef jerky. I guess not all is lost, since I now have Smofu in my life.

The Way Home

As we approached the border line, I noticed stores full of small, children’s bicycles. I thought it was curious that bicycles would be a hot item in Tijuana, which is far better known for it’s butterfly knives, blankets and rip-off “jokely” sunglasses. After standing in line for a few minutes, we noticed several people walking right past the line, and decided to check out how they were able to slip through the line. Tossing about (fairly absurd) theories of citizens having a separate line I scouted out the situation. It seemed that people were indeed just filling into this really short line, and I went back to pull Mark and Meg out of line. When we all arrived at the “short” line, a friendly guy in the “long” line leaned over and let us know that this was in fact the bike line. A little frustrated with myself, we headed back to the new back of the long line (which was now about 75 feet longer than when we had first queued up). As we stood in the depressingly long line, we started to see all these people, men and women, in suits and ties, walking along with their trashed little kids bikes in tow. Some people just carried the bikes, not to be concerned with keeping the tires on the ground, losing even the fading illusion of being a bicyclist.

The Landfill

We visited a community center built on the edge of this landfill. We were served a delicious lunch with home made tortilla chips and quesadillas. The air was filled with dust from the landfill which lightly coated our food. I did my best to ignore my suspicions that the dust was in fact toxic…

Ched

Ched. It’s blurry, but I was too embarrassed to let it be known what a fanboy I am by asking for a real picture, so I had to sneak this one. =o)

The Conference

“Developing Hearts That Yearn For Justice” away with a full helping of new and challenging information about the injustice of our global system and the ways that we, the church, should be fighting. After Ched spoke on Tuesday evening, the conference seemed to start skating downhill a bit, and we opted to avoid the heavy LA traffic the next day by getting out a day early. We caught a taxi to the border and stood in line for an hour to get across.

Casa De Los Migrantes

Mark thought the place was a bit like a M.C. Escher drawing.

DON'T READ THIS (It's from Meg...)

It was a sunny afternoon in Santa Clarita and Aaron and I were sitting at a picnic table at Central Park.  A couple of feet away was the playground where a number of young children were playing.  Not too far from us a group of three girls, ages three or four, were growing a flower garden in the sand.  I noticed that every once in a while two of the three girls had an adult that would come over and check in on them or they’d run proudly over to tell them something.  The third girl, however, didn’t have anyone come over to her nor did she go over to anyone.  As that didn’t seem to bother her, however, I just assumed that she had come with one of the other two girls.
Aaron was working on my computer as I finished reading Lois Lowery’s The Messenger for the second time.  As much as I tried, I couldn’t quite keep the tears back as I closed the book with a sigh.  I tried to subtly wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, but my nose proved a more complicated matter.  So I got up and walked the couple hundred feet around to the other side of the shack to the women’s restroom, right across from the swing set.
     As I walked in, I noticed that the far handicap stall was closed and heard a man’s voice.  At first I thought maybe I had gone in the wrong room, but then I remembered that the men’s room was on the other side of the shack.  As I walked into the nearest stall to grab some tissue, I innocently thought that maybe a man was with his young daughter.  Almost as soon as I thought that, I dismissed it as I heard him again.  “Oh, yeah, baby!”  And then I heard a woman’s sultry voice heavily reply, “Oh, yeah.  Yes.  Ohhh.  Right there.  Ohhh.”  My eyes grew wide as I realized what was happening two stalls over in the rather unclean and very public woman’s room.  They were still moaning in pleasure as I threw my tissue away and rushed out, a bit embarrassed at what I had overheard.
     By the time I got back to the picnic table I was again wiping my eyes, but this time from laughter.  Mindful of the presence of kids, unlike the two in the restroom, I went around to where Aaron was sitting and told him what I had just overheard.  He kind of laughed and rolled his eyes.  “Oh those teenagers,” he said.  I looked at him doubtfully.  “Aaron, they didn’t sound like kids.  They sounded older than that to me.”  “Come on, Meg,” he replied.  “Who else but kids would be having sex in a public restroom?  And remember, the high school was just getting out when we arrived.”  Who else, indeed.
     A few minutes later a very happy and friendly couple in their twenties appeared and called two kids over to them.  One was the third girl who I had noticed earlier.  The other was a boy who was just at the age where he could run around.  Their two young children had been left to entertain themselves at the playground while they had attended to… well, other needs.  The man was eager to chat with us about how the park was hot (free wi-fi available, but take it as you will) while the boy sat proudly on his shoulders.  The girl excited by the final appearance of her mother, ran ahead, calling for her to chase after, which the mom obligingly did.  Aaron and I exchanged knowing smiles and I struggled not to laugh as I heard a stranger’s reply to the young girl after being told that her mom had chased her around: “Well, your mom’s getting her exercise today, isn’t she?”  She certainly was.

Google Local led us astray...

This is why we made the rule. All brewpubs must be contacted over the phone before we go there. We broke the rule. We thought this was Stone Brewing. Stone Brewing Co. is huge! They make great beer! This… this was a liquor store. Fortunately, after scrambling a bit, we landed at San Marcos Brewing Co., a stop we all thoroughly enjoyed.

Two More Brew Stops

Oggi’s Pizza and Brewing, Santa Clarita, CA

Aaron: Having Joel join us made my night. It’s great to have some fresh company. I was initially totally unimpressed by the 31 TVs located throughout th single room. Fortunately, the quality of both the pizza and the beer won me over. It is a chain (we discovered after we arrived), but I guess it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t good. Cool sampler tray. ----THUMBS UP

Mark: I would recommend this brewery on the condition that one sits faing away from the TVs as I did. Since there are only two of these seats I would suggest ordering pizza and beer to go. The sampler was classy. Great pizza. ----THUMBS UP

Meg: Well, the homemade lasagna (sic.) was quite good. But the pint of Sunset Amber was pretty disappointing—I didn’t even finish half of it. It was fun having Joel join us, and overall it was a good evening. ----THUMBS ASIDE

SUPER SPECIAL GUEST, Bishop Mitchell: What a joy to get the last minute call that these guys were in town. I haven’t done a sampler in a while, but I enjoy the diversity of it. The hef and the stout were the best ones, I’m not sure I would by anything else. The pizza was good, but the company is what made it all worth it. ----THUMBS UP

San Marcos Brewery and Grill, San Marcos, CA

Mark: What can I say… San Marcos is the man—and the brewery. The architecture kicks toshie and they get props for the outdoor fire pits. The food was good. The stout was excellent, and Carson is letting us crash on his floor—good times! I’d drive out of my way anytime for this place. ----TWO THUMBS UP

Aaron: What a relief! All we had to do was get south of LA and everything starts looking up. Thank God for San Marcos. Er, well, I really have no idea what the place is like, but I sure Enjoyed the brewery. Tonight we included Meg on th sampler tasting (relieving her of DD duty), and that heavily swayed the numbers on the ratings. Until the Stout and Pale, I liked everything they didn’t and visa versa. This all resulted in high numbers for the place, which, on the whole, I think it deserves. Oh! And thy had nachos, a first on the trip. ----THUMBS UP

Meg: Well, I certainly enjoyed San Marcos. Perhaps it was because I tried the sampler tonight. I thought that the majority of the beers were great and I was surprised that for four of the six Mark and I agreed on the rating. The murals were cool and if I lived in the area, I’d definitely come again. Oh yeah, and the food was just what I wanted tonight. ----THUMBS UP

Chilly times at the Soledad Canyon Thousand Trails Preserve

"Now let's just hope that whoever is running the place is very forgiving and that your parents aren't camping right now" says Meg to Mark. It had occurred to us that because Mark doesn't have his own TT membership number, if his parents were to go camping and use the number on a night we wanted to camp, we would probably get turned away, and his parents were thinking about camping. Anyway... We pull into the Thousand trails campground, across the railroad tracks. "Oh, no," says Mark, "Not the one with the railroad tracks!" I mentioned vaguely remembering the name of the preserve, Soledad Canyon, from our trip two years ago, but Mark remained convinced, or at least hopeful, that this was not the place where we were kept up all night by trains rolling by at all hours. A very official and somewhat disgruntled Thousand Trails gate-keeper steps out of the gate shack as we pull up, obviously put off by the fact that our car gets 23 miles to the gallon and there's no four ton trailer behind us. Mark gets out and gets it done. Soon we're off, as the guy says to us, "Stay warm," as if he knows that we're doomed to freeze!

On the way back and forth to the bathroom, our feet crunch over the frozen grass carpeting the ground. Yes, that was FROZEN grass. Soon our fingers and noses were joining the grass in this chilly state, but all was not lost. We boiled up some water and each of us slept in the company of a 200 degree nalgene bottle. Our bags kept us warm enough, and even the trains took pity on us, remaining quiet for most of the night.

Introducing Chuck and Toni

After a good night's sleep at their place, Mark's aunt and uncle took us out to lunch in their '39 REO crew-cab truck. After lunch we got a lengthy tour of Chuck and Toni's incredible vintage trailer collection. They travel around the country, towing this vintage trailer behind their amazing truck. The trailer has been gutted, and Chuck himself admits that the roof is all that remains of the original. The love and attention to detail that has been invested in each of piece of sheet metal, rivet and custom window is mind boggling. Very impressive.



Their house was also host to about one hundred coffee grinders (of which I am aparently one of only a few people to correctly identify...). The grinder collection got Mark and I dreaming about all the things besides coffee that could be ground in one... cheap vintage grinders run $10-$20 on ebay, and one could grind corn, nuts... imagine the custom nut butters! Obviously I felt like I could talk shop with them over the obsessive collections, being rather familiar with the habit as I am. Anyway...

On To The Beer!!

Downtown Brewing Co., San Luis Obispo, CA

Aaron: Well, for a sports bar, this place wasn’t so bad… but for a brew pub, it was. Nice building, just filled with the mesmerizing lights of too many large TVs. Our $9 sandwiches were palm-sized, but the curly fries stood out. Beer was OK to poor, and the service, while friendly, left something to be desired. OK first stop. ----THUMB DOWN

Mark: I’ve been trying to be less negative lately. But this place makes it tough. I’m going to say there must be a different beer culture in Southern California—a culture I have a hard time appreciating. I hope the waitress and her cute little blonde kids do well here. But I’ll surely never come back. ----THUMB DOWN

Meg: To start off on a positive note, the company was good and the honey ale I had wasn’t bad. The service wasn’t great though, and the prices were rather high given the equality. I wouldn’t choose to come here again. ----THUMB DOWN

Wolf Creek Restaurant and Brewing Co., Valencia, CA

Mark: Despite the lack of wolf décor and disappointing décor, I liked the home-made mugs on the wall (see picture! –a) and the free bread/olive dip. The beer was OK, but no stout! ----THUMB DOWN

Aaron: Loved that Winter Wonderland! Great caramel flavor. Too bad the place is in a strip mall, right by a Ralph’s and Rite-Aid (see pic with Starbucks and Blockbuster). Pizza was OK. ----THUMB ASIDE

Meg: Other than the fact it was in a strip mall and the noise level seemed a bit high, I enjoyed it. My turkey avocado melt and garlic fries were delicious and I loved the Winter Wonderland. ----THUMB ASIDE

Day 5: Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita

Day 5: Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita

Today we got a slow start, dried some stuff out and even took a dip in the spa before picking up camp and heading out of the Rancho Oso Thousand Trails Preserve. Mark and I played a round in Goleta at the Evergreen Green Space (someone on that committee should be held responsible for that name…). The course was easy and rather pleasant until we entered the swamp. While the difficulty level remained unchanged, the atmosphere did. This was the dark, dirty kind of swamp that dead pets come back to life in, where creepiness becomes a tangible quantity. The swamp issued forth two of its denizens—henceforth to be known as the chubby kid and the mean kid. The mean kid was giving the chubby kid a hard time as they made their way across the scattered logs that made a bridge over the muck near hole fifteen. The harassment made our hackles stand up when he turned and said, “You don’t want me to put you through therapy again, do you?” The evil glint in his eye made me at once fearful for the chubby kid and glad that we were apparently just a part of the scenery, safe from his scheming. The Burbs . . . Just like in the film with Tom Hanks, they have such a nice venire of peace and calm over the Stephen King novel lurking underneath.

Tonight we get to sleep with a roof over our heads (thank God!), courtesy of Mark’s Uncle Chuck. Of course, I lost the coin toss with Mark for the bed, so I’ll be sleeping on a couple thermarests. Oh well, I can still enjoy the roof.

Day 5: Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita Pics

Day 4: Hollister to Santa Barbara

Today’s drive down to San Luis Obispo was incredible. From Hollister to King City we got to drive down Hwy 25. I had to keep taking these deep breaths and remind myself that, “oh, it’s me driving… LOOK AT THE ROAD, AARON!!” These pictures weren’t of the most amazing parts of the drive, but as we climbed out of the San Benito Range, I realized that the vistas were being left behind and I had to capture some of it. Left behind were the beautiful rolling hills lit by vivid sunshine peaking through the scattered clouds. Left behind was the FULL RAINBOW that spanned the valley, ridge to ridge. If it had been just me in the car, I’m sure it would have taken three hours to make the hour drive, so many photos there were to be taken.

In Paso Robles we made use of a pleasant café with wireless internet so we could plan out the remainder of our day. Nice to have two computers on the road (this is a very high tech trip…). Meg said her latte was among the finest in her memory.

Mark and I played a tiring but enjoyable round at Waller Park in Santa Maria. I managed to get not one but two drives stuck up in trees, the second of the two was something like 40 feet up. I started climbing but got wise as the branches got smaller and ultimately got it down with some shaking. (I couldn’t leave my favorite driver stranded in California, could I?

We drove back to San Luis Obispo to get beer. I mean, it’s about time that the brew part of our Disc Golf Brew Tour got some attention. We brought our business to the Downtown Brewing Co. (Reviews to follow tomorrow…)

Our day ended with another cold night in damp sleeping bags, but it didn’t rain again, and now pretty much everything is dry, and tonight we’re sleeping at Mark’s uncle’s place anyway. Here’s to a good, warm night’s rest!