First of all, for those of you who don't know, I'll be beginning my MBA at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania this coming summer. But in order to make that happen, I need to leave Seattle and make my way across the United States to Philadelphia. Cue 3,000 mile roadtrip. So that's what this blog is all about: my wife's and my month-long journey traversing this beautiful country.
Here's what you need to know (in bullet-form, as any typical engineer would do):
- Mode of transportation: 2000 Jeep Cherokee with 128000 miles on it and an intermittent A/C; don't be surprised if you hear me complaining about this in Arizona and Utah in July
- Sleeping venues: primarily car camping and backpacking with an occasional hotel thrown in for good measure.
- Cuisine: While I'd love to say that we'll be sampling the western U.S.'s favorite cuisine, it's just not going to happen. Baked beans, ramen noodles, sandwiches and salads will do the trick for the car, with tons of dehydrated meals for backpacking, with my occasional backcountry specialties as a treat
- Beverages: lots of filtered water. Lots of filtered and unfiltered beer (see below)
As you're probably aware, this country has infinitely too many things for anyone to do them all in their lifetime, let alone in a four-week road trip. So my wife and I decided to put some constraints on the trip. Well, not so much constraints as two points of focus: National Parks and some of the western U.S.'s best breweries.
If you know us, you know that we love the outdoors, but we love beer even more. Given the sheer number of great breweries there are in the western United States, we decided that this would be a great complement to our backpacking, hiking and drive-throughs of national parks. The list below is what we're shooting for, but we'll see what happens.
Breweries:
- Deschutes (for Black Butte XXI release party)
- Full Sail
- Cascade
- Pelican
- Rogue
- Ninkasi
- North Coast
- Russian River
- Lagunitas
- Valley Brewing
- Port
- Lost Abbey
- Alesmith
- Stone
- Oskar Blues
- Great Divide
- Avery
- New Belgium
Parks:
- Olympic National Park (see previous posts)
- Black Sand Beach (Mendocino)
- Point Reyes National Seashore
- Yosemite
- Grand Canyon
- Zion
- Arches
- Bryce
- Canyonlands
- Rocky Mountain
With that in mind, if you really know me, you know that I'm incredibly organized and love to plan out every little detail. However, I realize that my next two years of school are going to be so busy and structured, that I wanted to throw that all out the window. So for the next month, we'll be living without a real agenda, no schedule, and no requirements to be anywhere any time. So really, while I've listed the stuff above, who knows what's going to happen? We might spend two weeks in Yosemite and skip a ton of stuff. We may only have time for 5 breweries (though I'm pretty sure that won't happen). The point is, I don't know what's going to happen, so feel free to follow along this adventure with me.
The posts from here on out will be from a phone, so I apologize for the brevity, but hope you enjoy the updates and pics along the way. And if you have suggestions, comments, etc. shoot me an email or just post in the blog. I'll try to keep up. Take care and enjoy!
Wow, that is an awesome set of parks and breweries. Love the focus and passion! Looking forwars to yosemite pics-- one of my favorite places in the world.
ReplyDeletebullet points. i'm impressed. i thought architects were the only ones.
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