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Road Trips
taiyaki
Veteran
I plan on going on a road trip for a week or so around Michigan.
I've never seen Lake Michigan and it's beaches so that is my first destination.
Then I'll probably stop at Chicago for a while.
I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for places to stay or camp out at. Or maybe some attractions or beaches to check out.
How about food joints or breweries?
If not, I am curious if anyone else has gone on road trips. Maybe you could share some tips or advice. Or how about a story about your road tripping adventures?
Either way this is a discussion about Road Tripping!
I've never seen Lake Michigan and it's beaches so that is my first destination.
Then I'll probably stop at Chicago for a while.
I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for places to stay or camp out at. Or maybe some attractions or beaches to check out.
How about food joints or breweries?
If not, I am curious if anyone else has gone on road trips. Maybe you could share some tips or advice. Or how about a story about your road tripping adventures?
Either way this is a discussion about Road Tripping!
0
Comments
http://www.miottawa.org/ParksVI/Parks/rosymound.htm
where will you be coming from? also, are you a vegetarian? i've been to many breweries around the state and i'll give a better reply when i get home from work tonight
i've dabbled in vegetarianism here and there. my girl friend is a fully on vegetarian though. =]
rosy mound beach looks amazing. thank you for the link! i'll definitely be checking it out.
Take me with you!:)
founders brewery in downtown grand rapids has some of the most complex and well crafted beers in the country, imo. the ambiance is okay, nothing super fancy or crazy or anything. let's just say i've always gone there for the beer.
http://www.foundersbrewing.com/
if you're traveling south to chicago, you should stop in kalamazoo for bells brewery. it's been a few years since i've been there, but as i recall, they had a really awesome hop garden in the back.
http://www.bellsbeer.com/
if you've never been, you need to stop by the frederik meijer gardens in grand rapids. AMAZING outside sculpture park with bio domes of different habitats. the place is huge and breathtaking on a nice day.
http://www.meijergardens.org/gardens_experience/
as far as camping goes, i've stayed in private campgrounds and chain campgrounds. now, if i don't know someone who has personally stayed there, i just try to hit up a KOA. they aren't as cheap as some, but at least i know what to expect.
http://koa.com/
tell you how it goes!
i just remembered that michigan brewing company is located in webberville, right before you hit lansing off of 96. i've actually never been to this brewery, but they have some pretty decent beers. if you like IPAs, their 'high seas pale ale' and their 'mackinac pale ale' are both pretty good. they also make 'badass' which is kid rock's beer, if you care, lol.
http://www.michiganbrewing.com/
i lived in east lansing for a few years, and try as i might, i couldn't think of anything note worthy in the city, lol. the best i could come up with was my favorite bar, which was called Crunchies. their thursday-saturday night karaoke was to this day, my favorite karaoke experience. crunchies is sort of the nastiest hole in the wall you will ever find. it's one of those bars that lets you write/carve your name on the walls. if you ask for a bucket of beer, no joke, they will give you a paint bucket FULL of beer (no bottles) and a cup to scoop it out. typical E.L., people are such a wreck by the end of the night, but it's fantastic people watching and you never feel like you'll be the worst singer there... someone else ALWAYS trumps you. i think they got in trouble with the fire marshal at one point, because there is always a line outside due to a strict limit of people. it never takes long though, and there's always a lot of room inside because of this. they also have a fantastic tap selection, btw.
http://www.crunchyseastlansing.com/
i was also thinking that if you're heading to chicago, you should check out goose island brewery. the reason i know so much about breweries, btw, is because i was head server at a bar that specialized in its beer selection and as a result, many breweries arranged private tours for us. nobody did more for us than goose island though. they actually rented a hotel room, gave us a private tour, paid for our food, and then their rep literally took us all over chicago and showed us all the awesome clubs, picking up the tab everywhere we went.
but seriously, they have awesome beer as well. if it's in season, i highly recommend the 'matilda', there is nothing like it. on a side note, i personally prefer their clybourn brew pup location instead of the wrigleyville one, but if you're a baseball fan, you might have more fun at the latter.
http://www.gooseisland.com/
i will definitely check out goose island as i've had their tasty beer before!
i've only heard good things about the bells brewery! i love oberon and the two hearted ale.
since you know so much about beer.
i've been wanting to explore more beers like blue moon and oberon. there is nothing like a beer & orange combination!
got any good suggestions? i've tried the arcadia whitsun ale and it was okay. it's probably better on tap.
ah well many thank yous and more thank yous!!!
wheat beers aren't exactly my forte, i much prefer some stouts or porters, but every now and then i get in the mood for it.
goose island has a rather popular wheat beer called the 312. i actually haven't had it in a while, but i would say it tastes a lot more crisp and a little lighter than most wheats, as i recall. i remember a very slight citrus flavor and a little hop(that gives that nearly bitter/flowery taste, if you like Two Hearted, you should know what i mean). of course, you can always add a lemon/orange into any beer to bring out the citrus.
usually, my go to for wheats is Hoegaarden's Witbier. it's much more cloudy (due to the lack of filtration) and has the traditional orange peel and coriander spicing profile. most garnish with a lemon. it's pretty popular but if you can find it on tap, i recommend this. the bottles are okay, but the tap is great. a note about taps though, i prefer to go to bars that are known for their eclectic beer selection, otherwise you might get an old keg. the more popular a place is for different styled beer, the more likely they are to have a steady rotation of kegs. working in a bar and noticing the keg rotation, despite best efforts, sometimes you notice a huge difference between the flavor of an old keg and a freshly opened one.
Wittekerke is also a good witbier. it's rather light and mild compared to some of the others. it doesn't have the heavy feel or slightly sweet flavor of Oberon. you can actually get this one in cans, which i don't know why, but i seem to prefer.
but you know, there's no replacement for Oberon. that's why it's become such a huge success. i asked the head brewer at bells why they don't sell it year round and he simply said, "for the hype." makes sense.
my suggestion to you is to find one of the liquor stores that sells beer bottles individually priced. i'm not sure about the detroit area, but since you're heading through lansing, maybe you should stop at one of the Big Ten liquor stores on your way. it ends up sorta pricy, but still cheaper than drinking at a bar (1-3 dollars per bottle), and it's definitely cheaper than forking out a bunch of money for a six pack of a beer that you discovered you don't like. i used to go to the one in okemos on jolly road.
http://www.bigtenpartystores.com/index.php
the best thing to do is to figure out which types of beers you prefer, and simply try other beers that match that description. both Blue Moon and Oberon are wheat beers, but Oberon has some characteristics of a pale ale and Blue Moon is styled after the classic belgian witbier. but you also mentioned you liked Two Hearted, this beer is a super intense hop experience. it's classified as an india pale ale(IPA), which gets the name from the high hop varieties that were selected to withstand the long boat trip from england to india back in the day. most breweries have an IPA (or at least a pale) on tap, but interesting ones that come to mind are Stone's IPA and Short's Humalupalicious. Shorts is another michigan brewery, btw, but it's way north, past traverse city.
For the road trip, small cooler, lots of snacks, some good CD's since apparently there is no good music between Denver and Chicago (my apologies to country fans) and if you are a writerly type I got a voice recorder to do my journal while driving. Also if you are coming from the west the worlds LARGEST truck stop is in eastern Iowa. It is worth the potty break.
We always carry a plastic Buddha and pose him at rest stops and other places throughout the trip as part of our photo memories.
Ive always loved the idea of going on a road trip on my own to take myself off and just be with ME...
Meditate and write.
Hope you have a good time whatever the reason your going.
here ya go: the grill house
Weird...
As for breweries....it's not a Chicago exclusive thing, but Rock Bottom is pretty good.
Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with many places in Chicago proper. Despite living in the area for 6 years I've mostly stuck to the west suburbs. There's a couple of really great restaurants on the North Side, though, that I'd love to recommend to you, but I cannot now recall the names of them to save my life.