7 years

Today Andrea and I celebrate our 7th year of marriage. It's hard to put 7 years into perspective. In some ways it feels like a long time and in other ways it feels like a blink of an eye. I do know that I am a very lucky guy to have found someone as special as Andrea. She does wonders to keep me sane, even though I know she often time feels helpless.

Our weekend started out awesome as we headed to the Brewery Tour. The tour itself was of the "old brew house" which stopped beer production in 1998. The highlight of this tour was of the original brew kettle.



It was fashioned prior to 1900 for a cost of $25,000 dollars. To put that amount in perspective, August Shell built his entire Mansion for $5,000 dollars at the time. It was a huge investment and to think it lasted for so long is a testament to the original hand craft work that created it.



In this close up, you can see the individual hammer marks on the elbow joint. It probably took a huge amount of time to finish just this one section.

After that it was straight on to the highlight of the tour, FREE SAMPLES!



Not only did we get 6 beers to share between our table of 4 people (one beer not pictured), but after that you could go up to the tap and get as many more beers as you wanted. Many people were walking out with 2 (or more!) beers in hand.



As Andrea and I headed outside to enjoy our beer, this woman walked up to us:

"Where do you get the beers at?"

She seemed a bit disappointed to find out you actually had to attend the hour long tour first before getting access to the free beer. You see, according to the law they cannot sell beer at the brewery, but they can give it away for free!

The last interesting fact that we learned on the tour was that 1919 Root Beer is named as such because that is the year prohibition started. In order to stay in business, the Shell's Brewery started making soda (root beer) and "near beers". This may seem obvious to some people, but this was an interesting tid bit for someone like me who knows absolutely no history. Leif Ericson? Isn't he a baseball player?

Anyway, after the Brewery tour, slightly buzzed we headed over to check-in at our Bed & Breakfast. I'm going to break my weekend report into two posts, so you'll have to check back tomorrow to read about our B&B adventures...