Days 10 - 15! In the Land of Beer and Honey Mead...

So, turns out leaving your home, travelling across country, and living in a van is really easy, as long as you're not always travelling and living in the van.  We haven't spent a night in the camper since Great Sand Dunes!  We've had comfy beds, home cooked meals, and restaurants for the last 10 days, and now even home-brewed beer!

Enter the Wilsons...

We've known Jim and Gemma forever but they've been residing (with son, Jack!) in the Denver area for about 5 years, currently in Longmont, CO.  Longmont is a cool little town outside Denver and next door to Boulder where the craft beer industry was basically born.

Which is really convenient because Jim likes beer, a lot.

So much that he keeps a keg at home!

We promptly emptied it when we got there so Jim loaded up the little guy in the Caddy and we went to get more.

Yay Beer!

Nothing like a cruise in the Caddy to get a keg of locally brewed beer...

While at Boulder Beer we might as well have lunch and sample the beers...

Gemma and Angie can't contain their beer excitement!

New beer is heavy, but we don't mind.

Avery Brewing was nearby so we had to sample those too...

Kipper made a new friend.  Here he is with "Alice".

Awww puppy love.  This is one of the few times they weren't rough housing.

Angie, Jack, and Gemma take a plunge at the neighborhood pool.

Meanwhile Jim and I were running errands in preparation for a July 4th BBQ.

Zoom in on this photo and you'll see that there's 4 racks of ribs resting on that keg, 

rubbed with Jim's special seasoning.

He not only made his own rub but also a homemade BBQ sauce.  So good.

Jim, doing what he does best...

...although he does this pretty good too.

The ribs were awesome!

Later we got to take in a good ol' fashioned fireworks display that the city of Longmont provided.

The neighbors put on an equally impressive display.

After fireworks, Jim,poured us some of his homebrewed beers, barley wine, and honey mead.  All were delicious.  Here's Jim pictured with his award winning "Hoodlum" homebrew.

We had such a great time hanging with Jim, Gemma, Jack, and Alice that we stayed 6 days!

We would have gladly stayed even longer but it was time to hit the road.

Thanks Jim and Gemma!  You really spoiled us with your generous hospitality!



The Pre-Departure Festivities

We are now 9 days into the "non-Camping, non-Road-Trip" part of our road trip.  All this time "off" has given us a chance to catch up on our posts and we realized that we were soooooo busy before we left, that we totally neglected to write about all the pre-departure festivities!!  Which were MANY.

There was bar-b-q in Elgin with Grandpa,

and swimming with my god-daughter, Maxie,

and a helicopter ride with Greg's mom, Barbara, to celebrate her birthday,

(she liked it a lot!!!)

(and so did Greg!)

and happy hours with the girls,

and hangin' with my bro and sis-in-law,

and hangin' with the niece and nephews,

(goofy kids!!)


and a happy hour with the co-workers,

(my boss, Shirlene.  She's the best.)

and a dinner party given by our dear friends, the Boyets. Ania is from Poland and made some of her favorite Polish dishes.  I don't have any pictures of them, but everything was delicious! 

(here we are..."helping")

(I thought everyone was going to do the "thinking" pose.  I was wrong.)

Amy making the party favors...paper hats!!!

Stefon and Thad tie for wearing the best hat....just check out that 'tude!!


And then there was the biggest surprise EVER.........
SURPRISE!!!!

That was Jess, my bestest and oldest friend.  She lives in Rhode Island and arranged with Scott, Amy, and Greg to surprise me.  Obviously, her diabolical plan worked!

She got a chance to check out Le Tigre

and she and Amy put their stamp of approval on it. 

And then she joined us for an afternoon hang at an aptly named bar, The Tigress.

(Mike likes The Tigress)

 

We love you, Jess!!!

And, finally, the night before we left, we had pizza with the DeValpines.

There was a Candi gig too, but I've already written about that.

It was a great send-off.  We're going to miss our friends very much!!  And we hope to see many of them on the road (hint, hint)!!!

P.S.  You've got to check out this video.  It has absolutely nothing to do with Le Tigre or the trip, but Greg, Scott, Amy, and I must've watched it about 186 times before we left.  And we forced everybody we knew to watch it.  It's just that good! 

Watch me!!

Spoiled Rotten

OK, so we're supposed to be on this huge road trip, right?  With a strict budget, and a small camper, and close quarters, in the nature, and all the other stuff that goes along with it.   Well, since we left Austin (11 days ago), we've slept in Le Tigre exactly five times.  The rest of the time has been spent with friends and family.  That means that we've slept in real-live beds (in the AC! with laundry! and showers!) the other 6 nights, and we've got 3 more nights to go.

And we're being spoiled rotten.  It all started when we got to Mom and Grandma's last Sunday.  Greg's earlier post mentioned a smorgasbord of food.  Well, he wasn't lying.  There was queso with green chilies, fried chicken, pasta and crab salad, sauteed trout, buffalo burgers, ice cream, cookies, pork loin, baked potatoes, corn....oh yum.  Any weight I lost the first week was quickly recovered in the cool confines of Grandma's!!  But it was worth it to spend some relaxing days with her & Mom.

And we were able to re-pack (AGAIN) and get rid of some more things that the first couple of days camping made obvious we weren't going to need.  Like Kipper's life jacket.  Mom took one look at his lime green doggie flotation device and said, "Well, he'll be laughed right out of Montana in that thing.  Dogs up there are TOUGH!"  Soooooo, Kipper's life jacket will have to wait til the second leg of our journey, when we're near the Gulf and city dogs are more prevalent.

And, since we got rid of more stuff, Le Tigre is much more roomy!

 

Kipper liked the yard.  It's big and green and covered in soft grass.  Heaven.