Day 3 was a complete bust. I just waited for the Repair shop to call and walked over to the local mall to explore and eat food at The Yardhouse. I was pretty demoralized, but I decided to abandon the California portion of the trip, fly to Portland and rent a car and continue. Flying saved me money and let me make up a day, so I have more time in Portland and Seattle. I have rearranged the schedule to make things easier and position myself to get back to Colorado to pick up my car and finish the stops in Fort Collins before heading home. So, day four was flying to Portland, renting an SUV, and driving to a stop I probably would have missed on the original plan.
I headed West from PDX and went to De Garde Brewing in Tillamook. I am glad I made it there. Really fun people behind the bar. Plenty of my favorite psych bands playing on the stereo. I tried four nice beers. Each of them is well-balanced and with its own flavor profile. The clear winner was the Apricot Ivy. You could taste the fresh apricot without it being overly juicy. The Peach was also quite good. More of a golden wild ale with a much less fruit-forward approach, but you could still taste the peach. I also really liked the Kriek BuVeaux, very tart with a clear cherry profile, again without tasting like it’s back-sweetened. The last sample was The Oxiversary. I probably should have tried this one before the fruit ones. It had a nice funk and an earthy taste I couldn’t quite identify. It’s a shame the Apricot was not available as a bottle, but I grabbed a bottle of the 2018 vintage, The Broken Truck, Tableau Lily, and a few of the other available fruited ones, including The Peach and Kriek BuVeaux.
I drove towards Washington after De Garde, and I’m going to complete the swing of the Western peninsula tomorrow to get it out of the way (two of my stops are only open on Saturday, so I’ll do them this Saturday instead of next. This puts me back on schedule for Oregon and then back to Washington for the Seattle area and leaves me the option to leave on Friday to trek back down to Denver and pick up the car.
