Spring Break With Josh Part 2

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This is a continuation of the spring break that my friend and I went on in 2008. You can read the first part here.

We arrived later in the evening at my grandparent’s house in Phoenix. We talked with them for a while and stayed there for the night before waking up very early the following morning to go to San Diego. While driving, the highway takes you very close to the Mexico border, and we got stopped a few times by the US border patrol as they inspected all cars passing through certain checkpoints. We weren’t smuggling anyone or anything though, so we passed by without any serious delays.

We arrived in San Diego in the lat morning after about 5 hours of driving. We did the classic thing of walking around before we went to the USS Midway, a retired aircraft carrier turned museum. I unfortunately didn’t take any actual pictures of the entire aircraft carrier, but you can see some shots by looking it up in google.

Regardless, I did take a picture of a model of it.

USS Midway model

As well as various other pictures from within. Continue reading →

Cheap Czech Beers

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This is a follow-up from my previous post about Czech beers. This isn’t so much of a review of quality, but rather of price. Czech beers are cheap. The cheapest I have ever seen. The next beer (after the ones in my previous post) that I had taken any pictures of was a Velkopopovický kozel dark, which was only about 2€ in a restaurant, which is already a great price for a beer in a restaurant or bar.
Velkopopovický kozel dark beer I unfortunately didn’t actually write down any notes about the beer, so I can’t give an honest review. I do recall liking it, but that’s about all that I can remember unfortunately. Continue reading →

Spring Break With Josh Part 1

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Back in the spring of 2008, I was in high school, and as it goes in spring, we had a spring break where we had 2 weeks off (which is a week more than most schools got, but that is just the schedule that our school district fell into). My best friend, Josh, and I decided to go on a road trip in my Jeep. Our parents were hesitant at first, but they ultimately agreed to it since we were both pretty good kids who didn’t get into too much trouble. And so we were off! It was an amazing rush of freedom to truly go out on your own and be on your own, states (which in the USA can mean thousands of kilometers) away from your normal safety nets.

We left from Jackson and drove south to Utah, where we first visited Josh’s grandparents, which is where we took the following pic:
Just Acting Silly Continue reading →

Various Czech Beers

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Last year, I was on vacation with my dad here in Europe, and we went to a few cities in Germany and the Czech Republic. It was at about this point that I started actually taking the idea of making a beer and backpacking blog a little more seriously, and I tried to write down some notes on the beers. Fortunately, I managed to find my old notes in one of my journals. Unfortunately, my notes are sparse at best, and so I figured I would more or less just make an aggregate rating of my general opinion on Czech beers based off of my memory and my sparse notes.

The first place that we got some Czech beers was when we we just crossed over the border from Germany into the Czech Republic’s Bohemian Switzerland National Park (although it’s not even relatively close to Switzerland…). My dad and I took a ferry across the river dividing the 2 countries at that point and we stopped for a few beers at a bar. Continue reading →

Fat Tire Review

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Someone has already mentioned to me that my “Beer” section is glaringly empty. My original plan was to get through all of my travels up until the point where I started recording my old notes down regarding my thoughts on beers (which I believe was about when I went to the Czech Republic, I will have to dig through my old notes and pictures to be sure) before I started posting about beers. I will still focus on travels, but I suppose I should also post beer posts as I can (notably because I have a large case of various beers that were given to me by friends that I need to get through).

beer chest

Continue reading →

New Logo

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There isn’t too much to say with this post, other than the fact that I have a new logo. While I haven’t published much yet (I need to make sure I still have stuff for the future), I am going to take this blog seriously, and I have enlisted the help of an friend of mine, who is studying to be an artist, to make a logo for my blog. I am very pleased with the result:

 

Backpacking and Beer logo
I like the simplicity, but how it also shows what the blog is going to be all about. His name is Sascha Hellberg, and if you would like to contact him about doing any sort of work for you (he does amazing physical paintings and drawings, but he is also very good at digital paintings and other stuff, like the logo you see here). You can contact him by emailing him at sascha-hellberg@frereigeist.ws.

Continue reading →

New Zealand

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New Zealand

Since this will be a travel blog, and since this is my first real post, I figured it most fitting to make my first post about my first real big international journey. I unfortunately don’t have any of my pictures since they are not digital and are locked away in storage, but my aunt was kind enough to provide me with some of hers, so I will show some of those throughout this post.

My Aunt lives in New Zealand, and she was kind enough to invite me there for a few weeks, so I went during the 2 spring break in high school, plus an additional week on both ends, so I was down there for 4 weeks in total. I was only 14 at the time, and while I had done some traveling with my family within the United States, this was my first international experience, and the first big trip that I at least traveled alone for a portion of the journey. Continue reading →

Hello World

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This is my new blog, where I will finally start writing about all the journeys I have been on. A few people have asked me for a blog, and I guess it is now time to comply. I might also take the chance to write the occasional review for some product I used while traveling.

I am also a big fan of beer, so I will also start writing about different beers I have tried in different places, and my thoughts about said beers. There are so many beers to try, so I don’t believe I will run out of content there.

I Hope to post something every week or two, so I hope you come back on a regular basis!

-Bridger