Today we got up
early to 13F and snow in the parking lot, not what we were hoping for
as we head south, but other than getting our vehicles coated in salt,
no big deal.
Our first stop was
the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, PA. This stop was picked by Tom
just to break up the drive….it was a good call. It is our country's
oldest brewery, it looks it, and has always been owned and run by
a member of the Yuengling family.
At first you think,
it might not even be open, old brick building that you can walk right
into and you wander through a few empty rooms before you actually
find people. But once we found the gift shop things changed, the
people are very friendly and the tour, which takes about an hour was
really interesting. In addition to covering the history of the
brewery, from inception in 1929 through prohibition, to present, our
tour guide was quite entertaining.
Most interesting are
the caves below the building where there cooled and racked their beer
in the old days, during prohibition the federal government came and
blocked off the caves and some of the remains of the brick walls are
still present.
The tour ends in the sampling room, they had 7 different beers on tap, I tried the Porter and the Black and Tan both which were pretty good. I have only seen the Yuengling Lager around home.
After the tour we
stopped at a hardware store in Pottsville and had lunch in our RVs
and headed for Virginia. We arrived around 4:30PM, Fred screwed up
and missed the exit to 15 south and ended up on 495 with all the
traffic, Tom loved it, but it could have been much worse, we never
really got completely stopped. Our campground is a county owned park
with electric only hookups, which is just fine for us. It is pretty
empty this time of year. Temps are still a bit cool but the sunshine sure feels nice.
After we set up, I called our friends the Malloy's and they will be here before 8AM tomorrow to take on a guided tour of DC...what more could we ask for.
