Boonville Beer Festival Weekend

Posted onAuthorLisa

The guest bathroom and other house projects had been going on for over a month. Joe had a fairly busy teaching schedule and so when we saw an advertisement for the Boonville Beer Festival we decided to go IF (and it’s a big IF in that area of Northern California) we could find a decent hotel room. Most beer festival goers camp in tents in the parking lots and camp grounds and turn the weekend in to a huge boozing event. There were only a few hotels in the area (as we didn’t want to have to drive too far after beer tasting). Luckily we found the last room at this small hotel — The Madrones. 

This would be our first road trip in our Tesla. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t that good for the Saturday of the festival – on and off showers and cool. But none of the thousands of people that were there to taste the 80+ craft breweries beers seem to mind (or maybe they just weren’t aware of it). Joe had organized his list of the breweries we wanted to taste…ones that we could get in tap rooms or stores near us, or in Oregon or Washington states where we would be traveling in July/August on our upcoming road trip. We really did only take a small taste as otherwise not only would we be loaded but we wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the beers. The larger percentage of the attendees were there for quantity unlike our plan. There were the usual cast of characters including the person dressed up as a watermelon (complete with seeds) and the marching band with multiple tubas playing more and more off key as the day went by. We knew that we had our fill when all the beers started tasting the same. So, we headed to the hotel which was lovely and quiet. We had a delicious meal in their small little pizzeria restaurant. 

The next day we decided to take the coast road home. We traveled west on the winding mountain road to Point Arena Lighthouse. The coastline views were magnificent. We took photos at the lighthouse and continued south on Highway 1 through Sea Ranch to Fort Ross Winery. We stopped at a little hole in the wall restaurant with wonderful views of the ocean for lunch before climbing up to Fort Ross Winery for a tasting. The views from the winery deck were spectacular. Boy, it’s great to live in Northern California.