To say that the last few Thanksgiving road trips have been…not fun…would be a bit of an understatement. We’ve had terrible traffic, terrible weather, and there is nothing like an 8 hour drive (this is with traffic) taking 12 hours to set a 4-day weekend off on the wrong note. And yes, lots of people ask why we don’t fly instead, because it would take less time and probably be less stressful (headed from Washington DC to upstate NY).
This, this is why. And as she gets older, I have a harder and harder time spending holidays (or, well, pretty much any day) away from her fuzzy little ridiculously demanding personality. Maybe I always had a hard time spending time apart from her. Attachment issues are not just for the dogs, you know. Driving it is. So this year, we took a bit of a different approach: mainly back roads (mostly up route 15), with two planned stops to check out craft breweries in NY and PA. Driving responsibly, of course. Please don’t take a “beer tour” and drive irresponsibly, if I need to say such a thing.
We chose our breweries by those that had animal names. Kidding. Sort of. We chose breweries that were no more than 1 mile off of our planned route (there are surprisingly more fitting this criteria than one would imagine) and then chose those with the best animal names. Note to future brewery owners–your name matters, and bad names mean bad logos and no one likes that. I’m just saying.
Bullfrog Brewery – www.bullfrogbrewery.com – 229 West Fourth Street, Williamsport, PA
Anyway, Bullfrog is located in Williamsport PA, and is one of the “old standby” craft breweries, established in 1996. It’s really one of the first craft breweries in Pennsylvania. In addition to beer, Bullfrog also serves food, so we opted to have lunch there as well. Williamsport is a cute little town, though it seemed very vacant, with no one downtown. Surprisingly, though, there were lots of people at Bullfrog, making us think it’s a favorite spot of locals (it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving after all).
In terms of beer Bullfrog has some interesting varieties; their most well known beers are the Flanders-style sour ales, which they also bottle. The flight that we ordered include one of these sour ales, as well as a blueberry beer, a stout, a red ale, and a farmhouse cider. DH loves cider, and this one was no exception. I mainly had a few sips of the blueberry beer and tried the stout, as I was still driving at that point. The blueberry was significantly more sour than expected, but tasty. The stout wasn’t quite stout enough for me, though DH enjoyed it. They didn’t have any of the beers in bottles, so instead we opted to get a bottle of one of their award winning Flanders sour ales, which we haven’t yet opened. Hoping it is delicious! The food was also quite decent–we had seafood mac and cheese as well as a philly cheese steak. Good, but definitely not cheap. Was a bit surprised to see DC-style prices in Pennsylvania.
Roosterfish Brewery – www.roosterfishbrewing.com – 111 North Franklin Street, Watkins Glen, NY
From Bullfrog, we had just a little over 2 hours until we hit Watkins Glen, NY. For those of you that know the Finger Lakes region for wine–craft beer is the new “it” thing, with more and more wineries offering both (not sure how I feel about that), as well as hops farms and farm-based breweries these days. We opted for Roosterfish, since again it was literally on the way (and I mean on the way…we would directly pass it), and well, Roosterfish. We didn’t know that the Roosterfish was actually a type of fish–but thanks to Google, we do now!
Roosterfish started distributing their beer in 2006, and brewing a few years before that. It is New York State’s first farm brewery, meaning that all ingredients are primarily grown in New York. While we both agreed on the merits of the logo, DH was not at all excited to go to Roosterfish, complaining that there were too many pale ales on the menu. We arrived at Roosterfish just in time–they were closing at 5pm, and we had (well, I had, since DH was now driving) time to try a flight of samplers.
To our surprise, there were SO many good beers on the menu! I couldn’t decide what I liked the most–it was a toss up between the cocoa porter and the triple witch. We also tried a hefe, a wildflower wit, and a a different porter (I believe an oatmeal porter). To satisfy, we bought a six pack of the cocoa porter and a growler of the triple witch to share with family. Sparingly.
Still in love with that logo. All in all, this Thanksgiving road trip was a smashing success. Even with two stops, we still managed to reach our destination in less time than the previous two years, puppycakes was thrilled she got to make two stops and have an exploratory walk (she is very good in the car and it was a perfect temp to leave her for just a bit), and we enjoyed seeing two more craft breweries and stopping for lunch at somewhere other than a gas station.
I think this may become a Thanksgiving tradition, to find two good places to eat and/or drink, and make the road trip more of an experience and less of a nightmare. Now, if only we could get Roosterfish in DC. That’d be amazing. I’m still craving more of that cocoa porter…
Oh my gosh this all looks fantastic!!
http://www.maggiealamode.com
Totally wish we could get that beer here!