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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

North Padre Island, Texas

Today turned out to be another long day.  The original plan was to drive from Edmond, Oklahoma to South Austin, Texas.  Once we found out that our Padre Island airbnb had a cancellation, making tonight available, we decided to push on.

We saw billboards for fried pies in Oklahoma and Texas.  Julia was intrigued and ordered a peach fried pie, shortly after we passed the Texas state line.



I took a bite, but that was enough for me.  The peach filling was ok, but the pie crust's grease coated my entire mouth in just one bite.

Interstate 35 was not very interesting, but the road was in good shape, and the speed limits were very accommodating.    I can't remember the last time that I drove on a stretch of road with 85 mph as the speed limit.

We drove across the bridge from Corpus Christi to Padre Island just as the sun was going down around 6 p.m.  

 

It was a beautiful, familiar sight, and the temperatures were still in the low 60's.  Readers will remember that we stayed in the same general area in 2021.  This is a different airbnb--smaller, cheaper, not on a channel but closer to the beach, very bright and clean.  We met one of the friendly owners upon arrival.  Our first impressions are positive.

We will be here for eight days and then continue our travels for a couple of days in San Antonio before crossing the Mexican border.  At least, that's the plan.




Comments

greg said…
Ahh. So that's why you thought the I-35 corridor wasn't so bad, you bypassed the whole Austin Metro mess. Does this mean the construction tangle in Fort Worth and Waco are finally cleared up? (Haven't been that way in forever because it was such a mess)
John said…
It was probably a combination of luck and going through mid-day. There was some construction on the north end of Fort Worth, but it didn't really seem to slow down the flow of traffic. Just annoying concrete barriers that were too close on one side with semi trucks on the other. I don't remember construction being an issue around Waco; we were listening to a book downloaded from the library and the miles flew by. Around Austin, google maps sent us down Hwy 130, and then we were on two lane highways the rest of the way to Corpus.

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