My Honeymoon…the beer details.
A little more than three months ago, my wife gave me the most amazing wedding ever…at Founders Brewing. Almost the entire wedding was beer themed, so as you might guess, the honeymoon included some great craft beers and stops as well. The pictures capture a lot of the fun so be sure to check them out and read the captions, but here’s a little more back ground:
Our first day was spent in San Francisco. We started the day early enough that it seemed like we had the entire city to ourselves. After walking around for a few hours, we found Jack’s Bar to be a great place to quench our thirst. It was the perfect place because we could continue to be outside and enjoy the beautiful weather while back home, everyone was getting tons of snow dumped on them.
The next day, we made our way up to Santa Rosa to meet and stay with Krista and Eric, friends we had never meet. This is how awesome the craft beer community is. Because of the impact of combining social media and craft beer, we had connected with them long before the honeymoon. They just happen to live less than ten minutes from Russian River Brewery (RR), which was a huge destination stop on our honeymoon. They were very generous in inviting us to stay the night and take us to our first ever visit to RR. We can’t say thank you enough. They were an incredibly fun, generous, kind and lovely couple. Perfect for two people to spend time with on their honeymoon. Thanks to them we also got to meet Tommy. If RR had a personality, it would be Tommy’s. After a wonderful evening at RR, we headed back to Krista and Eric’s and enjoyed the perfect combination of two things: great craft beer and great conversation. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it all over again.
The third night was another night in Santa Rosa, but in a hotel generously paid for by a friends Marriott points. And what better place to meet up with him than Russian River Brewery. And we got Tommy as our server again. This provided for another great night of awesome beers and great company. It was fun getting to know Mike, a friend of Lynell’s from Grand Rapids who just happens to now live less than ten minutes from RR.
The next few nights were spent in Ripon, where Lynell has a great deal of family. It was great meeting many I had not yet met and great to see some of those I already had. They even threw us a great west coast reception. What a great family to be able to call my own now. Since this is the beer version of the honeymoon, I’ll mention that this is where I enjoyed one or two or several of the Pliny the Elder’s I bought when we stopped at Russian River Brewery for the third day in a row before leaving Santa Rosa.
On Sunday we made a three hour trip north to stay at Coram Ranch near Mt. Shasta. What a beautiful place. If you’re looking for a destination retreat for a group of people, this is a fantastic spot. No cable TV, no internet, no cellphone service…just us. We’d go back in a heart beat. It was here that I enjoyed a few more Pliny the Elders along with a few other gems I found along the the way.
In the end, we put almost 1,000 miles on our rental car. It was a perfect honeymoon. Yes, there was so much great craft beer, but that was just an added bonus to a fantastic Northern California trip with my new wife.
Cheers!
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