We woke up on a warm, humid and sunny Saturday morning on August 17th. Our first activity of the day was going to Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. The day was getting hot so we got there in late morning.
We saw an exhibit by Zhang Huan, that had sculptures and photographs and paintings that were created with ash on linen. Check out some of his ash on linen paintings. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any photos.
We started in the greenhouse-type rooms with all the arid climate cacti and succulents.
Once outside again, we saw there was a lot of ground to cover so we thought we'd pay $3 each to take the tram. Big mistake. It ended up taking longer and we didn't get as many good views of some the sculptures than we would have if we were on foot, which we ended up walking back to some of them anyways.
We went into downtown Grand Rapids after the garden to Founders Brewing Company. Founders is M's favorite brewery. The building had a lot of construction going on when we got there as they are expanding at a crazy rate and it was very busy when we showed up around 2 pm.
We found a great spot at a table on the patio but we were called up to do the tour, which we thought started at 3 pm. This is a kind of a long back story but it shows you another case of what a small world it is.
Remember our friends Chris and Tanya? If you read my blog, you know them. Well, Tanya's mom Donna is engaged to Mike. Mike's son Nate works at Founders. We've never met Mike or Nate but Nate used to be a brewer at a brewery in Wisconsin. When we told Chris and Tanya months ago that we had this trip planned, they gave us Nate's email address to contact him and see if we could hook up with him while we were there as well as ask him if he wanted us to bring him any MN beer since M ended up getting a bottle of Doom from Nate/his dad when he was out there visiting. M and him emailed back and forth a bit and M brought him some Surly on this visit and to have a chance to meet him.
We went on the tour, which was pretty standard as far as brewery tours go and then at the end of the tour, our tour guide Gabe grabbed Nate, who was working, and brought him to us to meet. He came out to the car with us to get his Surly beer and we chatted for awhile. He's worked there since November 2012 but he worked at Thirsty Pagan in Superior, WI before that. I asked him if he knew my cousin and her husband, Laura and Chris as I knew they knew people from that brewery. He did and he said that he donated a keg to my aunt's benefit in March 2012. (Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and M is cleaning out the "junk drawer" in the kitchen and finds a post-it note that says "Thirsty Pagan- Nate" and a phone number on it. M had talked to him on the phone two years ago about setting up a tour.) So, Laura and Chris, your friend Nate is going to be my friend Tanya's step brother. Small world, huh?
After the tour, we found another spot in the building to order some beer and food. I had a pounding headache so I only drank water except for a couple of sips of a beer I hadn't tried before. I ordered a sandwich and M ordered a pizza and both were incredibly delicious.
We stayed here for hours, much later than we thought we would and what we should have according to our time schedule and we we had to be for the rest of the day but we were having a good time. The taproom manager sat down and talked to us at our table for a half hour, knowing our "relationship" to Nate. He left the table and came back with a bottle wrapped up in paper for M. It was a gift of a bottle of KBS. Very nice gift if you know your beer.
We left Grand Rapids and headed south 50 miles to Kalamazoo, MI. Once we got to Kalamazoo, you could tell we were rolling through the hood and we didn't see a single white person for a very long time, until we got into the downtown area. Nothing to be concerned with and I'm writing it here so I can remember going through the not-so-great-neighborhood.
Our next brewery was destination, Bell's Brewery and the Eccentric Cafe. One of the first signs I saw on the wall was for Fitger's. M got a flight while I sipped a little from them. I saw someone with an awesome salad so even though I had just eaten several hours ago, I had to get that salad. We had a good time on the inside but didn't even realize there was a whole patio/outdoor area until we were leaving otherwise we would have hung out there instead.
We walked to a place that our server from Smokey Bones on Friday night told us about. It's called Kalamazoo Beer Exchange and it has a similar concept to the stock exchange. They have 15 minute trading periods where there is a price set for a beer. If that beer gets ordered a lot during the 15 minutes, the price is going to go up. If it doesn't get ordered as much, the price will go down. Supply and demand, baby. M saw a beer that was priced pretty low and decided to wait it out after the 15 minute trading period. After the time was up, the price went up 50 cents so he missed out. He still bought the beer though.
It was already dark by the time we left Kalamazoo and we still had some driving ahead of us and one more brewery on our beer tour. We drove to a little town called Marshall, MI, 35 miles away which has around 7,000 people to go to Dark Horse Brewing. It was already 10:30 pm by the time we got there but they had their Chicken Wing Thing festival going on so it was plenty busy. Instead of paying $10 to go on the lot and listen to bands, we went into their little shack bar and sat at the bar and had a quick beer sitting underneath all the steins they have hanging from the ceiling.
We drove another 30 miles east to Jackson, MI, where our hotel was. Problem was, we showed up too late and they gave our hotel away to one of their high-end members. Instead, they put us up in a comparable hotel just a block away and paid for it. I'll take a free hotel room for the slightest bit of inconvenience. We drove down the street, checked in and settled into bed after midnight with another big day ahead of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment