Virtual vacation, Days 6-10

It’s time we reveal a poorly kept secret: I’m a beerhound. I’ll detail my long history with beer another time. It’s enough today to acknowledge my on again/off again streaks of brewing beer at home over 15 years, the refrigerator purchase ten years ago for the sole purpose of holding more than 12-24 bottles of beer, and that when I packed our car for this trip I put the suitcases in the back seat of Mr. Lincoln because the three ice chests in the rear of the vehicle precluded putting the luggage back there! In discussing the itinerary of the vacation which had to be reoriented twice, I was left with the question, “what do we do after two or three days in Grand Rapids?” It didn’t seem like the one to two days left could be put to good purpose by visiting greater Detroit (sorry, CIMPLE), when it finally hit me about the same time as my wife: just stay in GR. Visit more breweries. See more sights. LRR.

Saturday, Day 7, we drove meanderingly into central GR, aborted the idea of trying to get to Belknap Lookout in Belknap Park when we saw about a thousand Goths all lined up to get into some concert/event there, spent about 30-45 minutes trying to find a place to park, then began an aimless trek from sight to sight. GR has retained many of its old brick buildings to its credit. However, its modern architecture, while striking, jars the eye as one looks past a 19th-century church. Not having recovered from the previous day’s food, (or perhaps from having killed a growler purchased in Mackinaw City), I spent this day in shaky fashion. I took only a few photos, and we stopped a couple of times to “refresh” ourselves: first, at the Brick and Porter then at Grand Rapids Brewing Company. Dinner? Overpriced and gimmicky–I won’t mention the firm’s name.

Our worship Sunday morning occurred at the Calvin Ecosystem Preserve & Native Gardens just up the road a bit from our hotel. Calvin University is a Christian school more than 125 years old, founded as a theological seminary. These frogs were amazingly frustrating. We could hear them everywhere from the moment we walked by the first pond, but we couldn’t see any. We heard them arepeatedly on our walk. Finally, we stopped where the path went over a very small creek, relaxed, spent some time, focused, and there they were! Everywhere. Everywhere! Just in this one small area were at least two dozen. They sounded like a belch crossed with a bullfrog’s deep ba-rumph.

Having fulfilled our quota of tourist-y activities, we repaired to Mitten Brewing Company for a few tastes, then srove to the outskirts of GR to Perrin’s brewery. The latter introduced me to the black ale style, a very nice discovery. We ended at Brass Ring for some of the best versions of English-style ales I’ve enjoyed and traditional English pub fare. Unfortunately, something didn’t agree with me–likely the food–and I spent more than half of Monday in bed. Our truncated day followed in similarly disappointing fashion. Not having learned our lesson on Friday, we drove west on a boring state highway hoping to catch a few sights of Lake Michigan, but all we saw were resort houses and buffer zones of trees. Topping it off, we drove to Holland expressly to visit the New Holland Brewing Company which Google told us was open on Mondays. It is…to people who have business to discuss with the brewery. To the casual beer drinker, however, they are not open, referring them to one of several brewpubs. One was back in Grand Rapids. Of course.

We put a feeble but valiant effort in at the end of the afternoon, visiting Brewery Vivant and stopping by Harmony Brewing only to walk out again due to the weird vibes and poor customer service. You know it’s been a poor day when dinner at the hotel sounds like a good idea. At least the food was decent, and the service was even better.

Our last day in Grand Rapids ended well. Just a few miles up the road from our hotel we visited the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. A huge, impressive site: though we spent two to three hours there, we never saw much of the sculpture. We decided to focus on the nature and see the sculpture another day. I’m going to reserve most photos to appear later, but here are a few:

After this lovely start to the day, we took pause before heading out to a large beverage store. Our trips to local establishments had proven disappointing when it came to “collecting specimens”; this trip more than filled our three coolers. Beers from all over Michigan were in the cart, as well as a few from Indiana and Illinois, plus a couple breweries which don’t distribute to North Carolina (or do so minimally)–North Coast Brewing from California and Alaskan from Juneau, AK. A refined dinner at Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant capped a delightful day.