Today we are going to continue the story of the 5 day epic beer trip from July of 2020. When we last left off the story, we had arrived back in Gladwin for the night after visiting breweries in the Northwest corner of the State of Michigan.
We woke up on July 26th of 2020 and bid farewell to our designated driving hero Leona. Not all heroes have to wear capes by the way, sometimes they are the designated driver. Crystal and I got into our car and started heading towards our final destination for the evening, which was Holland, Michigan. Although it was our end spot for the night, there were plenty of stops to make along the way before we reached Holland for the evening.
The first stop of the day had to be a brewery with food. Since we were out drinking the night before and had a long day of stops planned out, we needed to get something to eat before we put in some serious work. This was the big day of our trip where we had the most stops planned on this particular day.
We left Gladwin and headed towards US-131 to head down into the Grand Rapids area. At this point I asked Crystal to look up a brewery that had food in the Grand Rapids area. She responded almost immediately with Perrin Brewing Company has No Rules on tap currently. This is one of Crystal’s favorite beers of all time, I am one of the few that can’t enjoy this beer due to my coconut allergy. I knew what this suggestion meant though, we better stop at Perrin for lunch or else………
As we were making our way towards Perrin to grab lunch, we were around the Big Rapids area when a massive Hawk flew right in front of our car on the freeway. There was no avoiding it at 70 miles an hour and I hit the Hawk head on. It hit the front license plate on our rental and caused no damage to the car other than a bent license plate somehow. There was a loud, sickening thud that it made when it hit the car, although in good news, I did not see a dead Hawk in the rearview mirror as we drove on. I hope he somehow flew away since we weren’t able to see him in the middle of the freeway. There is no way that he made it out of this transaction unscathed, but maybe he was only slightly injured.
When we pulled into Perrin’s parking lot, we decided to scope out the damage that the Hawk did to the car. We were very nervous the entire rest of the drive that there would be some serious damage done to the car and since it was a rental, we were praying that it wouldn’t be major damage. As mentioned earlier, a bent front license plate was the only damage the massive Hawk did to the car. I still really hope that the Hawk made it away okay, I didn’t mean to hit you buddy.
After having our nerves rattled, some lunch and a beer were definitely in order. We were the first customers of the day at Perrin on this particular day, we were in the parking lot 15 minutes before they opened. I started looking at the food menu first, Crystal didn’t even look at the menus when we got there. In a Breakfast of Champions move, she ordered a full size pour of No Rules. Nothing like starting the day off right with a 15% ABV Vietnamese Porter, way to go Crystal. I went with a Perrin Black to start my day, I was the driver after all. We enjoyed our beers and lunch before it was time to move on with the day.
Our trip from Gladwin to Perrin Brewing Company was our longest trip of the day before we got to hit a brewery. From here on out we were going to be hitting breweries at a ferocious pace the rest of the day.
Next up on the list was my very first visit to Brass Ring Brewing in Grand Rapids. Brass Ring is a brewery that made my top 25 list in the State of Michigan and I have been back a few times since this trip. I wish they were open on Mondays, I definitely would have stopped in for a beer or two on my trip to Grand Rapids last month. I highly recommend that you make a trip to Brass Ring if you haven’t done so already. If you like your beers served the way you would get them in an English-Style Pub, this brewery is an absolute must stop on your travels. Question for Brass Ring, Do you guys have a corner in the brewery that I can pay you rent for? Or bartend to pay rent to live there? I’m asking for a friend, wink wink. Even though I could’ve spent my entire day here, we did have to move on, we had more breweries to hit.
We traveled a little closer towards our destination of Holland for the evening and our next stop up was Hudsonville Pike 51 Brewing Company in Hudsonville, Michigan. We were relatively quick on this trip to Pike 51. I have been back to Pike 51 on subsequent trips to the area, but this was our first visit and we spent about 20 minutes there tops. We had the goal of being in Holland around 3 o’clock so that we could check into our hotel room before we met up to have dinner with my Grandfather Don and his wife Claudia. We enjoyed a flight of beer and continued moving along with our day.
This day was a day packed full of breweries and great experiences along the way, so we are going to split July 26th into a two part post and we will continue the story in the next couple of days. Until part 3 of the story, Cheers!
#cheers #beer #beerlovers #craftbeer #drinklocal #michiganbeer #brewery #brewerylife #roadtrip
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