Panama City Beach
Posted on May 16, 2005 at 11:52 AM EST
Last week my wife and I visited my in-laws who live in Birmingham, Alabama. We drove down to Panama City Beach, FL for a few days and stayed at the Summerhouse which was right on the beach. We couldn’t have asked for better weather - it was nice and sunny and the temperatures were in the low-80s.
We spent most of our time hanging out at the beach and pool. One day, we drove up to Seaside, a small beach town comprised of Victorian-style, pastel-colored cottages with white picket fences. This town was the set in the movie, The Truman Show, which starred Jim Carrey. I couldn’t believe how high the houses were on the market for, especially since many of them are second homes. The lowest-price that I saw was around $1,700,000 and the highest was around $6,300,000. I snapped a few photos while we were walking around and they can be viewed in the photographs section.
There are 0 comments on this post.
Tagged with beach, family, florida, travel, vacation
Viva Las Vegas!
Posted on March 29, 2005 at 10:52 PM EST
I returned home yesterday from a five-day trip to Las Vegas. I met up with my sister and parents in Charlotte, NC then we all got on a plane to Vegas.
We arrived around 10 AM and immediately drove down to the Hoover Dam after picking up our rental car. The dam contains enough concrete to build a 16 foot wide highway from San Francisco to New York City and is one of America’s Seven Modern Civil Engineering Wonders. It would have been nice to be able to go inside the dam, but unfortunately, they no longer give tours because of 9/11. After we got back to Vegas we went to the lunch buffet at the Bellagio. For only $17.95 they had just about anything you could possibly want to eat and everything I had was superb.
The next day we took a two-hour helicopter tour. We flew over the Hoover Dam then went through the western rim of the Grand Canyon and landed on the floor of the canyon. We also saw some extinct volcanoes, the road that was used at the end of Thelma & Louise (when they drove off the cliff), a couple of old gold mines, then we flew over the Las Vegas strip before landing. It was my first time in a helicopter and was definitely a real highlight of the trip.
Later that day my sister and I went to the top of the Stratosphere and rode the Big Shot which is the highest roller coaster in the world and also the XScream which is the third highest thrill ride in the world. The tower is 1,149 feet high and is the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.
After it got dark we went to Fremont Street to watch the VIVA Vision light and sound show. It is a $17 million creation and is the biggest big screen on the planet. This is a must-see if you’re ever in Vegas, although it’s in a rough section of town.
We had dinner at the Hofbräuhaus Las Vegas which was one of my favorite breweries to ever eat at. It’s an authentic replica of the Hofbräuhaus in Munich, Germany that was built in 1589 by King William V. A German band was playing who sang nothing but German songs and they would pause every now and then so everyone in the restaurant (including them) could tip their beers. All of their beer is imported from the location in Münich. I ordered a liter of Münchner Kindl Weiss beer along with Ofenfrischer Leberkäs which is a Bavarian grilled sausage loaf and is served with potato salad. The brewery had great beer and food, and a very entertaining atmosphere and was a lot different than a typical American microbrewery. I’m just disappointed that it isn’t close to where I live.
Friday, we drove out to Death Valley, CA which was roughly a two and a half-hour drive from Vegas. Death Valley is the largest National Park in the United States outside Alaska and covers over 3 million acres. It also once held the highest temperature (132°F) in the world in 1913 and it also has the lowest point (-282 feet below sea level) in the Western Hemisphere. Due to a high amount of rain over the past few months the wildflower bloom was unusually high this year. Many locals have said it is one of the best in modern history. The rain also caused extensive damage on many of the park’s roads so we were unable to go to places like Titus Canyon, Artist’s Palette, and Zabriskie Point. We did manage to see Badwater Basin, Devil’s Golf Course, Mushroom Rock, Salt Creek, Devil’s Corn Field, the Sand Dunes, and Rhyolite Ghost Town. It was a lot of driving for one day and it would have been nice to have another day to see some of the other attractions throughout the park.
The last day there we drove around Vegas most of the day and walked around the strip. We walked through the Venetian and New York, New York then went back to the Bellagio for their buffet. After lunch we returned to the hotel so we could pack our things up because we had to leave at 3:30 AM for our early flight home. We then went back to the strip so we could see the city at night and watched the volcano show at the Mirage.
I was really surprised at just how large Vegas is as it was a lot larger than I had imagined it would be. I took over 400 photos while I was there and will post them to the site as soon as I can get around to it.
There are 0 comments on this post. Post yours →
Tagged with family, travel, vegas
Dogfish Head Brewery
Posted on October 11, 2004 at 10:03 PM EST
Last week I went up to visit my parents and sister in Maryland for a five-day trip. On Friday we drove out to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to have dinner at Dogfish Head Brewery. On the way there we stopped at their brewing facility, which is roughly 25 minutes northwest of Rehoboth Beach. About 35 people had shown up for the tour which was a lot more than I had expected since it’s out in the boonies. During the sampling, they let us try their Lawnmower Ale, Shelter Pale Ale, 60 Minute IPA, 90 Minute IPA, and Punkin’ Ale which didn’t really have a beer taste but tasted just like spiced pumpkin.
At the restaurant, I couldn’t decide which beer I wanted (they were all really good on the tour) so i ended up getting a sampler that had their 60 Minute IPA, 90 Minute IPA, Punkin’ Ale, Raison D’Etre, and Chicory Stout. I then ordered their 120 Minute IPA, which they call the Holy Grail for Hopheads. It had a whopping 20% ABV (alcohol by volume) and it was served in a snifter glass. It was definitely one of the best beers I’ve ever had.
Dogfish Head is without a doubt my favorite microbrewery. They’re very original and have a creative approach with their beers and promotional materials. I like how they have a “let’s make whatever the heck we want” mindset because they’ll just toss in whatever ingredients they want such as raisins, currants, apricots, muscat grapes, pumpkins, etc. They also brew their own spirits which is the only microbrewery that I know of who does this.
I bought a four-pack of the 90 Minute IPA and took it home so my wife could give it a try. The beer was surprisingly very good and tasted just like the beer at the brewery, even though it was out of a bottle. It turns out that Lighthouse Beer & Wine, which is located in Wrightsville Beach (30 minutes away), carries some of their beer! Unfortunately, they cannot carry the 90 Minute IPA, 120 Minute IPA, or Punkin’ Ale because of North Carolina’s 6% law but I’ll gladly settle for what I can get.
I’ve posted some photos that I took of the brewery to flickr. I’ve also added a new page so I can keep track of all the different microbreweries I’ve visited.
There are 0 comments on this post. Post yours →
Tagged with beer, microbrew, microbrewery, travel
Intercourse
Posted on September 27, 2004 at 08:11 PM EST
Last weekend, my wife and I attended Matt and Jessica’s wedding. It was a perfect weekend for such an event. The sky was clear, the temperatures were in the 70s, and the humidity was low. The wedding took place at the Conewago Manor Inn and was followed with a reception at the Catacombs Restaurant in the cellars of Bube’s Brewery. Before dinner, we took a tour of the brewery. The tour guide told us that it was built before the Civil War and was part of the Underground Railroad. It’s the only brewery left in the country that has remained intact since the mid-1800s.
The day after the wedding we visited Pennsylvania Dutch Country in Lancaster County which has a large Amish population. We rode on a train on the Strasburg Rail Road and saw some beautiful farmland. Later that day we drove through some of the Amish cities such as Fertility, Blue Ball, and Bird-in-Hand then went through Intercourse to get to Paradise. It’s kind of ironic to have names like this for cities since the area is known for their religious conservatism.
There are 0 comments on this post.
Back From Chicago
Posted on September 07, 2004 at 09:30 PM EST
We had a great time while visiting Chicago. The weather was excellent and the temperatures were in the low-80s each day. The first day there we walked down to Millennium Park. My favorite attraction in the park was the Cloud Gate Sculpture. The photo above is a reflection off of the sculpture. We walked around the streets outside the hotel and stumbled upon Boston Blackies where we had dinner. They had an amazing half-pound hambuger covered with bacon and onions for only $6.50, which was voted one of the top-five burgers in the city every year for the past 15 years. That evening we saw “Show Title Deemed Indecent By FCC” at the Second City comedy theater. The theater has established itself as a Chicago landmark and treasure. It launched the careers of great comedians such as John Belushi, Chris Farley, Mike Meyers, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and many more. The show paid homage to how radically our culture has changed and was given its name because the actors want to help increase awareness of how much the FCC is trying to censor our freedom of speech.
Caroline didn’t get back from the conference until late in the afternoon on Friday so we didn’t get a chance to do a lot of sightseeing that day. We ate dinner at Buca di Beppo which is a family-style Italian restaurant. The food was served in portions that were meant for sharing and their “small” was enough to feed two to three people.
The next day we went to the Shedd Aquarium which is the largest indoor aquarium in the world. It took us over two hours to go through all of the exhibits (Amazon Rising, Pacific Northwest, Caribbean Reef, Fishes From Around the World, and Wild Reef). We ended up eating dinner at Baja Fresh because several friends had suggested it was good and they don’t have any locations near where we live. The food was excellent and is nothing like Taco Bell. After dinner we walked down to the Navy Pier and watched the fireworks over Lake Michigan. I was kind of surprised at the number of fireworks during the show. Their weekly show certainly had a lot more than what my local town of Wilmington, NC has on the 4th of July.
The last full day we were there we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. A few of the famous paintings that we saw were A Sunday On La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, American Gothic by Grant Wood, Water Lilies by Claude Monet, Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte, and The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso. There was an exhibit set up for Seurat which displayed 40 paintings and drawings that ranged from rich yet delicate crayon studies to oil sketches on small wood panels, to nearly full-sized paintings which were all studies for A Sunday On La Grande Jatte. The exhibit also had a full-size digital reproduction print that showed how the painting looked when it was first seen by the Parisian public in 1886, before the painting darkened somewhat. After visiting the art museum we browsed through some of the shops along the “Magnificent Mile” including the Apple store that recently opened, Virgin, Pottery Barn, Burberry and several other stores. We then went to the Goose Island microbrewery and took a tour of the brewery. They were very generous with their taste testing and let us try 10 of their beers. My favorites were their India Pale Ale, Red Felt Ale, and Hefeweizen. We ended up spending around four hours at the brewery and chatted for several hours with a few other people we met on the tour.
Overall my wife and I really liked Chicago. We both agreed that it’s the city that we like the most of out of all the large cities we’ve visited. The food was amazing wherever we ate, the city was really clean, the weather was nice, and there was plenty to do and see.
There are 0 comments on this post. Post yours →
Tagged with beer, chicago, travel
Chicago-Bound
Posted on September 01, 2004 at 10:13 PM EST
Early tomorrow morning my wife and I are flying to Chicago for a five-day trip. While there, she has to attend a conference for the American Political Science Association. We’re going to stay at the InterContinental Chicago which is on the famed “Magnificent Mile” so we’ll be right in the center of everything.
It’s funny because I was just in Chicago last Thursday when I got on a connecting flight on the way home from Seattle and now I’m going back less than a week later. We’re planning on visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, Navy Pier, Shedd Aquarium, Second City comedy theater, and the Goose Island microbrewery.
There are 0 comments on this post.
I'm Home!
Posted on August 29, 2004 at 11:42 PM EST
Yesterday evening I returned home from my trip to Washington State. I had a wonderful time and enjoyed spending time with my parents and sister who I only get to see a few times per year. The forecast called for rain every day we were there, but we got lucky and it only rained on two of the days.
We left Baltimore around 5:30 PM EST on Friday and arrived in Seattle at 1:00 AM EST. After a short night’s rest, we drove down to Mount St. Helens. I was amazed to see that even though the volcano had erupted over 24 years ago, it looked as though it happened just a few months ago. On the way up to the lava dome, we drove up many mountains that had nothing but trees (around two - three feet in diameter) which had been knocked over or snapped in half as a result of the 450 MPH blast. In many areas there was very little vegetation growing and the ground was extremely barren.
After visiting Mount St. Helens, we went to Mount Rainier, which is the highest mountain in the United States and is 14,410 feet in elevation. We drove up to Paradise, which is the highest point that you can drive to and is roughly 5,400 feet in elevation. Along the way we passed many waterfalls that cascade over lava flows, including one that was 168 feet high.
The following day we drove up to Port Townsend, a Victorian Seaport on the Olympic Peninsula, and went to Fort Worden. The fort was established in 1902 and served as the first line of defense to guard Puget Sound cities and the naval shipyard at Bremerton. It was also the fort that was used in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman which starred Richard Gere and Debra Winger. The navy closed down the fort in 1965 since coastal artillery forts were no longer necessary.
Later that day we went to Hurricane Ridge, which is located in the Olympic National Park, just south of Port Angeles. We parked at the Visitor Center then walked to the end of the mile long trail at the top of the mountain. Here we saw an incredible view of Port Angeles with the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the background.
The next day we took a ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca over to Victoria, Canada, the capital of British Columbia. After getting off the ferry, we got on a double-decker bus that took us to Butchart Gardens. The gardens were 16 miles from where our ferry docked so our driver gave us a guided tour of the city. The bus had been used in England in the 1970’s and to make the tour even better, our driver was originally from Nottingham, England so he had a strong British accent. After visiting the Butchart Gardens, we went to Crystal Gardens which had a large variety of tropical animals and plants.
The day after we got back from Victoria, we drove out to Rialto Beach, which is located on the Pacific Ocean and is one of the most popular beaches on the Olympic Peninsula. I thought the sea stacks (steep pillars of rock with trees) that were out in the ocean were interesting since I’m used to seeing nothing but flat land and sandy beaches here along the Carolina coast. We then drove down to the Hoh Rain Forest, which averages around 150 inches of rain per year and is the only temperate rain forest in the United States. It was pouring down rain when we got there, which was quite appropriate for a rain forest. We ended up taking the Hall of Mosses trail which just under a mile long. It was neat to see all of the moss that was on the trees. Many of the trees were close to 1,000 year old Sitka spruce trees and were over 200 feet high and 12 feet in diameter.
We spent the last full day of our trip in Seattle. After getting off the ferry from Bremerton, we went to the Redhook Brewing Company in Woodinville, which is about 20 miles east of Seattle. I was really excited about visiting the brewery since they make one of my favorite beers that I regularly drink, Redhook India Pale Ale. This was the largest microbrewery that I had ever visited. It was modern, beautiful, and located in a nice rural area. My Dad and I went on the hour long tour of the brewery and we tried all of their beers and saw where the beer is mixed, brewed, and bottled. After we left the brewery, we went to Pike Place Market. The variety of fish and vegetables was out of this world. Just about all of the vegetables and fruit that I saw were perfect. There were many vendors selling flowers for around $4 which would have easily been around $25 back home. We walked around the Waterfront for a while then headed to Pyramid Alehouse which is located next to where the Mariners and Seahawks play. This is another beer that I frequently drink and when I looked at their beer menu, I was surprised to see so many different beers that I thought I would like since many of them are not available where I live. I usually see three or four different beers that I like at a microbrewery, but I saw nine that I liked at Pyramid so it was tough to pick which ones to order. Their Apricot Ale, which is one that I drink a lot at home tasted much better on draft and had a much stronger apricot taste than it does when it’s from a bottle.
I ended up taking 270 digital photos and 2 rolls of film. It was cloudy the entire time we were in Washington, but we were fortunate to have sunny skies in Victoria, Canada. Because of the gray skies, it wasn’t ideal for taking pictures on most of the trip. I still have to go through the photos and resize, retouch, and crop the images, but I will post them to the site within the next few days.
One thing that I am really going to miss is Alaskan Amber, my new favorite microbrew. It’s available on tap at just about all of the restaurants or bars in Northwest Washington and I ordered whenever it was available. I could always have it shipped to me, but unfortunately their bottled beer doesn’t taste anywhere near as good as when it’s from a tap.
My favorite part of the trip was definitely Mount St. Helens. It was surreal to see the devastation of a natural phenomenon that was equivalent to 1500 atomic bombs going off simultaneously.
There are 0 comments on this post. Post yours →
Tagged with beer, canada, family, seattle, travel
Off to Seattle
Posted on August 19, 2004 at 04:59 PM EST
In a few hours I’ll be flying up to Maryland to meet up with my parents and sister. Tomorrow, we’ll all be getting onto a plane bound for Seattle for a seven-day trip. I’ve never been to Seattle before and have been wanting to go for quite some time.
While there, we’re planning on taking a ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and going to Victoria, Canada. Also planned is a trip to the Pacific Ocean, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Seattle Waterfront, Pike Place Market, and the part that I’m especially looking forward to, the microbreweries!
I am planning on taking lots of pictures and will post them to flickr after I return home.
There are 0 comments on this post.
