Brewsday: Russian River Brewery

A lot of people will tell you that you should go to Sonoma County, CA just for wine right? 

Au contraire (french for on the contrary in case you didn't know).

 You see, in the midst of all the hills of grapes lies Santa Rosa.

 Santa Rosa is for beer, what Napa is for wine. 

It has some of the best beer (with 5 award winning breweries all within a 35 mile radius) and the best mountain biking on the west coast. 

Luckily, when we visited Santa Rosa last May, our bikes hadn't been stolen yet.

We had also already learned by then how to fashion a makeshift sling to transport our growlers via bike. 

We got to hit up three breweries while we were there, but Russian River Brewery was the by far the best, or the bees knees if you will. 

Pliny the Elder was one of our favorite beers. 

It is an 8.00% Double IPA that has won many awards. 

Needless to say, Pliny the Elder made us very hoppy (get it?) 

IPA's are known for their strong presence of hops + it made us happy = pure hoppiness 

They also had brilllllliant coasters which served as roofie blockers/seat savers/beer savers when you left to pee

This is also where Em fell in love with barrel aged beers and barleywine.

They age the beer in old wine barrels for 12 months, which allows for a slight taste of wine to absorb into the beer.

It was her heaven.

Coolest sign I have ever seen in a brewery. Found one on ebay and will be purchasing.

Pliny the Elder was the beer we chose to fill our growlers with. 

The growlers at this brewery were awesome too by the way.
They sold carrier you could buy for your growler, but why waste you money when you can make a
"Quick makeshift bike lock growler carrier sling"?

or a "Quick makeshift brown leather belt growler carrier sling?"

More Brewsdays and Totally Terrific Tunedays coming soon!

-Josh

Tunes we love: A.V. Undercover

This past year the website AVclub.com produced a series of videos entitled AV Undercover. 

This project is definitely among the ranks of other online music video series like Black Cab Sessions & LaBlogotheque Take Away Shows.
Viewers voted on different songs to make the cut, and then each week a different singer or band would choose a song to cover from the list of the top 25 songs.

Here's a little montage of all of the song choices from each week:

I enjoyed keeping up with the song choices each week, but my personal favorites are:

Baths cover LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends"
Rocky Volato and Matt Pond PA cover the Human League's "Don't You Want Me?"

Smith Westerns cover Tom Petty's "American Girl"
Matt Nathanson covers Prince's "Little Red Corvette"
Iron & Wine covering George Michael's "One More Try"

(We got to see Mikey from Bon Iver cover this song when he played with Gayngs in Austin last year . . . nuts)

They also did a series in 2010 . . . so hopefully they will do it again in 2012!
One of the videos was The Swell Season covering Neutral Milk Hotel
(Side note: The lead singer of Neutral Milk Hotel, Jeff Mangum, is from Ruston!)
check 'er out!

Rock Climbing at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch

The cool weather time of year reminds me of one of my favorite rock climbing expeditions of last year.

The trip was right after we got Charlie, so we didn't feel right just leaving him behind (even though our cabin had a no pets allowed policy, oops).

I'm praying every day for Josh to get a job that doesn't require him to work weekends anymore. 

(So that we can make another climbing trip soon)

Basically, what I'm saying is . . .

 HIRE HIM.

Anywayssss,

The trip was wonderful. 

Perfect weather & even more perfect scenery.

Arkansas is gorgeous in the fall. 

. . . as for Arkansas in all the other seasons, bleck.

kiddding

Horseshoe Canyon Ranch is often considered one of the best sports climbing locations in the south, particularly the best in Arkansas.

Nothing in the world is cuter than puppy Charlie sleeping on a monkey beanie baby.

. . . or a water bottle?

Sometimes I impress myself with these amazing photography skills.

Just kidding, it's just the camera's amazing photography skills, I promise.

But if I were to enter any photo in my DSLR camera lifetime into a photo contest it would probably be this one.

Thanks to our handy dandy guide and his handy dandy Arkansas rock climbing route book, Josh managed to figure out what routes to attempt and what routes to avoid.

. . . while I kept Charlie warm.

Our first route.

Josh was a pro at lead climbing and setting the anchors.

It's a super scary task and requires you to be very brave and awesome.

What a hunk.

I could probably sell this picture to Kavu for a million bucks, you think?

The view of the ranch from the top.

After our first day of climbing, we headed back to the cabin and took a few touristy pics on the way.

. . . with Josh's odd passion for wolves, it was only appropriate that our cabin was the wolf cabin.

I still can't figure out if his love for wolves is a joke or not.

Wolves aren't thaaaat cool.

View from the back porch of the cabin.

Ok, overload on Charlie pics. 

I know.

. . . but scruffy Josh and handsome Charles are just too darn precious.

Can you spot Josh?

He's 60 whoooooole feet high!

This route was called Cotton Candy.

Even though it was only a 5.6 rating, it's often considered one of the greatest 5.6 routes in the world.

. . . bringing out the super duper zoom lens.

I made it!

My first time to lead climb!

I did it.

All. By. Myself.

How did I get so lucky to be able to hang out with the two greatest boys in America? 

Last mushy pic, I promise.

Kavu and Land Rover should probably both pay me for this one.

It doesn't get much cuter than that.

RIP 'ol Cannondale.

You are missed.

If not for the internet, we would probably starve

Thanks to my mom's recent Pinterest addiction and my love for cooking blogs, we have been privileged enough to sample all sorts of recipes around my household lately.

I came home Sunday morning to find these little cuties:

Lemon blueberry cheesecake cookies

For dinner we had

Bacon Cheddar Bubble Bread

(as seen on HowSweetEats.com)

Dad claims it was the best bread he had ever had in his life. 

Bold Statement, Stanto.

 . . . with french onion soup

(via HitherAndThither.net)

Diet starts today.

Saturday morning funnies

I'm spending the weekend with one of my favorite people in the world, Allie my college roomie, who is visiting from Jackson Hole, so no time for blogging, catch ya later!