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Starkweather Beer Company

 When I moved back to Madison to attend law school in 1987, we moved to a crappy little apartment near the banks of Starkweather Creek on the unfashionable east side.  Today, the east side is booming, and one of the newer brewpubs is called Starkweather Beer Company. It was Saint Pat's Day.  While Guinness is a decent light-bodied stout, I opted for Starkweather's dry Irish Stout, named "Jamestown Jackdaw." Coming in at 5.9 ABV, it had a malty chewable backbone.  It's a new favorite stout for me.  Julia had Late Winter Haze, a New England IPA that didn't have as much fruitiness as she likes in a hazy.  It was still well-executed. We walked down the street to the Harmony Bar, where Julia enjoyed a complete corn beef and cabbage dinner.  I opted for the Reuben sandwich.  Mine was washed down with an Edmund Fitzgerald porter from Great Lakes Brewing.  Julia enjoyed her Chaos Pattern IPA from 3 Sheeps Brewing.  Both are great beers. Justin update:   After a long h

Bisbee: Hiking Cochise Stronghold

 From February 2022

On February 18th, we drove north and east from Bisbee for a little over an hour to the Coronado National Forest. The Stronghold Trail has been on my bucket list for a long time, and it did not disappoint.

The four mile dirt road in was heavily rutted.  There is a national forest campground at the trailhead, and I spent some time talking to a Scamp owner before the hike.  Even though it was a weekday, the campground was full.

It was a perfect day for hiking.


The terrain was rugged.  Cochise and his group of 1000, including 250 warriors, were obviously tougher than the day hikers who spend time here now trying to capture some of the spirituality of place.


Cochise was never conquered in battle and lived in the stronghold for about 15 years.  His body was secretly buried somewhere within.  Sounds a lot better to me than a gravestone or a monument.

This is a 9 mile out and back trail.  We just did the eastern half of it to the divide and then came back the way we came.


 

The last picture was where we spent some time.  I like to think that Cochise's people thought this particular spot was special too. 


Comments

MFH said…
Glad to see you got there!
John said…
Yeah, it's time to stop reading about some of these places and time to start going there. This was a special one that I'd like to repeat.
greg said…
My experience with that campground was the same. Seems like a lot of the less pretentious snow-birds use this as part of their rotating 14 day stops.

There's also some Scamp-able boondocking spots on the west side of the divide along fr687
John said…
Thanks. I made a note to myself for the boondocking on the west side of the divide.

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