PEAK PUTTERS

Overnighter at the KOA in Pendelton. Making a run to the Prodigal Son brewery leaving tomorrow around noonish. Campground is about 2 miles (walking distance) from the brewery. Leave Pendelton Saturday morning enroute the Dragons Gate Brewery for lunch in Milton Freewater, only open from 1-5pm. More then likely return home after that. Will be taking the Jeep and tent trailer just because. Maybe see some of you there.

UPDATE: called Draons gate and they sold out of beer last weekend and will not be open this Saturday. Still planning on overnighting tomorrow however and will figure another beer stop somewhere for Saturday.

Downtown Pendelton can be a great time. Crawl most all of the pubs; skip Crabby's and some nasty hole on the north end of main street. It's cowboy country and they like to have a good time.

Arrived in Pendelton around 1:30 on Friday. set up camp and headed into town. the KOA isn't much for the price as you can see in the background.



First proceeded to Prodigal son for lunch and a couple of drinks. food was good but beer was ok, did not return with and prodigal brew. from there we went to Mac's bar and grill to see what they had on tap, not much so I had another porter. on the way out I spotted a decent jeep so we took a few pics.



from mac's to a hole underground where SPR advised against, had to see why. yes, we went to crabby's. crabby's happy hour started at 4 and went to 5 with $1 drafts, I ordered 6 irish deaths unfortunately the bartender did not comply. we got there at 4:55 so we only got 1 $1 draft each. however at 5-6 happy hour was $2 drafts, more irish deaths on order. we did not stay for the 6-7 $3 draft happy hour special. BTW we were 2 of 5 people in the whole place. after finishing up at crabby's we went to hamley's, seemed like a more upscale restaurant bar with a much larger crowd. no too much interesting on tap so we dropped back to blue moons. and once again upon exiting we ran across another oldie.



at this point we walked across from hamleys probably to the other place steve was talking about. and the name made it even more of a bad choice. but off we went to the rainbow café. interesting note for the upcoming round up they have removed all glassware from the building. so we drank out of plastic cups. I switched to TJ D's favorite, Cheladas. an undisclosed amount of beers later we decided we were hungry. so back we went to the prodigal son for some more good food. ordered a bunch of food but ate very little. believe it or not at this point we were beered out and only had water. and finally we were on our way back to the camp. the distance back seemed long than the distance into town for some reason.

all in all a good trip and if I calculated correctly the jeep got 12mpgs towing the trailer.

next stop, Leavenworth.

The old Jeeps are pretty cool, but your campin' Jeep trailer is waaay cooler!

I don't care much for the brews produced by the Prodigal Son but I didn't want impart any bias on your experience. We've had some really good time bar hopping in Pendelton. Each trip is different so sometimes you got to make the best of it. Baker City can be a lot of fun. Maybe we can plan a weekend trip for next summer....

thanks TJD

SPR-didn't much care for prodigal's beer either.

icicle brewery next.

as mentioned above icicle brewery was the next destination and so it has been. once again not impressed with their beers. apparently the older stace and I get the pickier we get. once again we did the camp thing to reduce overall costs. this time we used a different tow rig as seen below. I think "precious" (as stace would call her) was a bit apprehensive. she started acting up Thursday with a CEL that turned out to be P0420, exhaust/mission code. decided to reset it verse throw money at a new exhaust. then on Friday as we were ready to depart I pressed the brake pedal and attempted to shift into drive, no go, the shift knob wouldn't move! luckily I knew the secret manual release button to enable movement of the lever. so not thinking of anything else other than beer tasting off we went.



as mentioned above the icicle brewery was not impressive for either of us but luck would have that the cheesemonger had a nice selection of cheese and beer. so we carefully chose some beers (dark beers) that will hopefully make our trip worth it.



the list is as follows:
orval trappist ale 6.9 %
2x stout double milk stout 7.5%
victory storm king stout 9.1%
finnriver habanero cider ?%
Deschutes class of '88 imperial smoked porter 9.1%
Alaskan pumpkin porter 7%
uinta brewing Baba black lager ?%

sunday morning we awoke to a smokey valley due to some local fires just behind one of the local establishments called the heidelburger.



hopefully they extinguish these hot spots so we don't lose Leavenworth or the surrounding area.

so on the way back stace's parents informed us that the trailer brake lights nor the truck brake lights were working. the issue with the Toyota ended up being a blown brake light fuse that disable the shifter mechanism.

other than the pumpkin porter we have not tasted any of the beers. we shall save them for PUAM.

next brewery tasting trip Seaside brewery in Seaside Washington the weekend after PUAM.

so this past weekend we went to Seaview Washington. no camping this time as we have a friend that has a vacation home a couple blocks from the beach. we did however take stace's cannondale and her mom's autoshift cruiser because my recumbent was a bit cumbersome to pack in the truck.

the weeks previous to this we had researched seaside brewing company and a brewery tour it is associated with. 10 breweries on a tour, if you visit 8 you get a free class from the chamber of commerce. you can't be a town that promotes brewery hopping. anywho, we researched the wrong town but luckily seaview does have a brewery and a decent stout, semper paratus stout. unfortunately they did not have a hefe so stace had a kolsch.

it turned out to be a beautiful weekend. we started packing sunday night for our Monday morning departure by racking the bikes on the back of the truck. Monday morning NO BIKES! Scheize! at this point I'm thinking western washigtonians don't like people who have spent a lot of their lives in Alaska. her mom's bike hadn't been out of the garage for 6 years, take out once and it's gone. stace's cannondale we bought used for $500 but it came with the original receipt for $2100. of course we called the cops. not being the type to sit around and wait (for the cops to stop by) I went for a drive thinking someone only had a short distance to go and would drop them off. 10 minutes later I see a guy riding stace's cannonddale not knowing if this guy is a crack head packing I follow him for a couple of minutes in the truck. he pulls into the back yard of a house with the bike so I park the truck and start walking to get the address for the cops. I get to the house and now he's walking out of the backyard with it. so I turned around headed back to the truck. he approaches me and asks if I have a wedge for splitting wood. I said no and ask if he wants to sell his bike. "I just bought it yesterday at a yard sale for $125" he says, why do you ask? because it's mine I told him. he immediately jumps off the bike and pushes towards me and gives the bike back! "I'm going to go talk to Brice to get my money back", "now I'm out $125 bucks".

yeah, I know likely story but I got one bike back and have a police report in for the other. long winded but thought I'd share. and we did stop at the Astoria brewing company and one other on our way back.

[quote="scumby"]as mentioned above icicle brewery was the next destination and so it has been. once again not impressed with their beers. apparently the older stace and I get the pickier we get. once again we did the camp thing to reduce overall costs. this time we used a different tow rig as seen below. I think "precious" (as stace would call her) was a bit apprehensive. she started acting up Thursday with a CEL that turned out to be P0420, exhaust/mission code. decided to reset it verse throw money at a new exhaust. then on Friday as we were ready to depart I pressed the brake pedal and attempted to shift into drive, no go, the shift knob wouldn't move! luckily I knew the secret manual release button to enable movement of the lever. so not thinking of anything else other than beer tasting off we went.



The Taco with the trailer Ooooozes Expedition goodness. A beer expo is still an expo. . .

Love the brew hopping expos. Crazy story about the bikes. I hope the cops find this Brice guy, get your bike back, and hopefully teach him a lesson about stealing other people's shiz.

next overnight destination TBD, any suggestions?

Not an overnighter but tried Shocktops shockolate wheat winter seasonal beer. Yummy! i feel the need to stock up because of the seasonal status. If you like wheats and chocolates or cocoa it is a must try!