Go for the beer, stay for the food

Beer Geek and I have been to a lot of brewpubs.  I think I could safely say more than a hundred for me and way more for him since he travels for work.  Obviously, we go for the beer, but one thing we have discovered is that the majority of the brewpubs have fabulous food.  Sometimes it’s more upscale (which is ok with us), but a lot of times it’s a reasonably priced place with good sandwiches or pizzas or local specialties.  Almost universally, they are family friendly.  (That’s your travel tip for the day, you can thank me later.)

Our trip to Alaska was no exception.  We hit every brewpub and brewery in or near Anchorage and on the Kenai Peninsula, with the exception of the Moose’s Tooth.   We would have hit that one, but we needed to return the rental car and it wasn’t walking distance.  Instead, we hit Humpy’s, which had a phenomenal beer selection and I got one of the best meals I had on vacation.

Out of four non-breakfast meals in Anchorage, we had three at brewpubs.  We hit Glacier Brewhouse, Snow Goose Restaraunt/Sleeping Lady Brewery (where I had a crab stuffed halibut that was amazing along with their Scottish Ale and the boys LOVED their root beer (second tip of the day – many brewpubs make their own root beer and most do not have caffeine or high fructose corn syrup)), and Midnight Sun Brewing Company.

Once we got to the Kenai Peninsula, we hit mostly breweries.   We hit Homer Brewing (where they sold us a liter of beer and then let us have a picnic lunch behind the brewery.  The beer was yummy.  We were able to return the empty bottle after lunch, ahem.), Kassiks Kenai Brew Stop (LOVED the porter), and Kenai River Brewing (took home a growler of the Scottish Ale). *

We did manage to eat at one brewpub in Soldotna, St. Elias Brewing Company, where, as expected, both the beer and food were wonderful (the Mother’s Milk Irish Stout was yummy.)  Finally, we hit the Denali Brewing Company/Twister Creek Restaurant in Talkeetna when we drove up with hopes of seeing the Mt. Mckinley (we didn’t).  Their stout was served using nitrogen and I could have drunk a whole lot more than I did.  Thankfully, I had a wonderful halibut sandwich and some of the best sweet potato fries I’ve ever had in my tummy to absorb the beer.

In addition to drinking lots of beer and eating lots of yummy food, Beer Geek was also able to refresh his beer t-shirt collection with 5 new short sleeve t-shirts and 1 new long sleeve t-shirt.  Somehow (despite a 0 growth mandate) his beer glass collection grew by 3 glasses as well.

Thank goodness we walked/hiked a lot.  I certainly didn’t do enough running to overcome all that I ate and drank!

Back to the “real world” (oh yeah, I’m supposed to talk about running, right?),  I had a fabulous 5 mile run yesterday.  I ran it as a 4 mile progressive (9:43, 9:28, 8:4, 8:21) with a mile cool-down.  12 days of running in a row and I was able to do a couple of sub-9 miles!  Woot!  I think the cooler, low humidity weather played a big role in it.

Also, so far there are 52!!!! people signed up for the “Mama Goes Masters” virtual race.  I think I’m going to have to come up with some decent awards (ooh, an excuse to go to my LRS LOL).  On that note, anyone with skillz want to make a race bib for it?  I have some ideas but zero artistic ability LOL.

*Beer notes are for Jamoosh. ;o)