Memorial Day Weekend

Jason and I went on vacation over the holiday weekend with our friends Kristi and Gerrit. Last year, six of us went camping over Memorial Day Weekend and decided to make it a tradition. Unfortunately this year our other friends Rachel and Clifton weren't able to make it but you'll read about our make-up camping trip over the 4th of July.

Kristi and Gerrit are from Michigan so we decided that a camping/winery tour of the Leelanau Peninsula would be perfect. I believe this peninsula is essentially the pinky of Michigan on the west side of the state. With Jason and I on the trip a few breweries also were added to the bill including a second trip to Bell's in Kalamazoo.

We left Thursday afternoon and headed for Three Floyds Brewing and our first overnight in Munster, Indiana. Friday we stopped at The Livery in Benton Harbor for lunch and then New Holland Brewing Co. in Holland on our way to a homestay with Kristi's family. We didn't get many pictures of lunch except for Kristi's giant burrito that we all helped her eat.

It always helps to show gigantic food next to Pleepleus to put it in perspective.

The Livery



Great Hops! Check out New Holland's sign.




















 

Saturday and Sunday we visited wineries on the Leelanau Peninsula as well as the Jolly Pumpkin Traverse City location. Jason took most of the pictures on his video camera so I don't have them to share yet. He's putting together a video of the trip so maybe I can post it here soon.


Maricaibo Especial at Jolly Pumpkin






Monday we stopped by Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids on the way to stay with Gerrit's parents.



At Founders in our homemade Pleepleus t-shirts.



HopCat is also an awesome beer bar. Beer Advocate rated HopCat the 3rd best beer bar in the world...so naturally we had to check it out when we were literally in the neighborhood.

We enjoyed talking to the bartenders, one of which treated us to an empty growler for coming to visit all the way from Missouri. I paid back the favor by filling the growler with one of their in-house brews Hoppopotamus.

We seem to have a hard time leaving the state of Michigan without a trip to Bell's Brewery. On our way home we swung by Kalamazoo to have lunch at the Eccentric Cafe at Bell's.

This brewery makes Jason's favorite beer Two Hearted Ale. In fact this is how much he loves Bell's...

His tattoo of their logo that he got in Alaska, May 2009

Happy man outside their door on Tuesday for lunch.

Pleepleus showing off the sampling boards at Bell's in the shape of Michigan.

Thank you for humoring my tour of Michigan breweries led by a monkey. We had so much fun with great friends and Michigan insiders Kristi and Gerrit. Their families were wonderful hosts and so generous. I'll try to post more on the wine side of the trip soon.