Friday, April 14, 2017

March 2nd - Pentagonal Brewing

Only the second craft brewer to open up here in this part of the Imperial Valley, Pentagonal Brewing is in the town of Imperial.  Imperial might as well be called El Centro North.  It's hard to tell where one stops and the other begins.  It might be at the railroad tracks up by the Ford dealer or just as you get to the local airport.  You can tell the neighborhood looks a little better.

Pentagonal is easy to get to and is very roomy inside.  They are working very hard t create some nice brews.  They have a porter which is pretty good and a barleywine that is great.  For this visit they had a bourbon barrel brewed version that was excellent.

The whole idea fo dogs and children being allowed in these places is weird to me, but the law allows it.  They have karaoke nights and usually a decent food truck there as well as board games.




Tuesday, April 11, 2017

February 8th - A trip to Calexico

GEOCACHING  GC26MYM - Power up with star
We started the day by going a couple of miles south of us where there is a row of caches in the "power up" series.  This series stretches over 20 miles.  They run along a row of major high voltage power line towers.  We only did a couple of them.  What we saw were small containers hidden at the base of the towers.

After that little adventure, we continued southwest to see what there was to see in the famous border town of Calexico.  I have to admit, we weren't expecting much.  A small border town that should look a lot like El Centro, but smaller. 

A lot of 60s and 70s Spanish style southern California style buildings and houses, with a newer area growing up with modern shopping centers.  The biggest issue was the long line of cars rolling down the highway through the town headed to and from the border crossing into Mexicali.  We drove around town a little bit, and stopped at the local war memorial park.  There are a number of memorials, but it was disappointing that one, a soldier's cross, was broken off from the top of the boots with just a piece of rebar sticking up.  There is a wall of heroes that has a waterfall on it, but the water was turned off at this time. 

The was also a geocache here, GC2MB0Y - War Memorial That we collected. 
It wasn't a long day, but we were curious and had the chance to run down there and see it.

Power up cache









Saturday, April 8, 2017

February 4th - Point Loma

We started our day in North Park an then we went to lunch with her sister Linda at a place she loves in Point Loma.  It's a nice place and more upscale than your usual taco shop.  The food is great and the view from the upstairs patio is pretty good.  Afterwards we drove around the area a bit and stopped later at a couple of taprooms and such on the main street.

Just a lazy afternoon in an area of San Diego that we don't usually go to for hanging out.






Wednesday, April 5, 2017

February 2nd. Where have you been?

Last and final apology for the space between us.  I haven't been blogging, because we haven't been doing very much.  The situation with the truck not running well, having to come up with the cash to fix it, and then suffering a shortness of funds as a result badly curtailed our wanderlust adventures.  Still, we got a few in. 

One of the great things about the reason we travel, that being her career as an RN, is we get to meet people she works with and make many new friends from all over the US that way. 

One of the great nurses Laurie met was Janey.  A nice fun person.  We had never been to the local town of Holtville.  The carrot capital of the world I guess.  One of the few craft brewers make their home out there and we decided to make a visit to Humble Farmer Brewing. 

The selection was what you would expect for Southern California tastes. A few IPAs, a Hefewiezen, and the usual assortment of blondes, lagers, and ales.  They did have a decent Barleywine, and a passible stout.

After our tasting, we went to a local restaurant for dinner.  I had some great ribs and there is a large projection TV screen which was showing a recording of the Crossroads Guitar Festival featuring Eric Clapton.  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_Guitar_Festival ).  We got into a discussion with Janey about geocaching and since there was a cache a couple of blocks away we went there to score a find.

GC2K91M The Holtville Cactus Garden.  A pretty easy find even in the dark.  There a a requirement of a picture to be posted, so I took a purposely goofy selfie for it.  The actual find was dated the next day because it has to be verified by the owner.

Yeah, our truck wouldn't start, so we got a ride home and a ride back the next day to get it.

Humble Farmer in Holtville, CA



Janey


Goofy geocache selfie