As many fulltimers may already know, once you finally break free from the “real world” and give yourself the opportunity to do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, the options can soon become vast and overwhelming. Not a huge problem to have in the grand scheme of things, but it can make travel planning a bit more difficult. When Brian and I first started out on the road just over a year ago, all we knew is we were going West. Our first stop was in Colorado Springs and we had no clue what to do, so we looked up a brewery and headed for a beer. It turned out to be the most pivotal decision on our trip. Seeking brewery after brewery not only allowed us to see incredible scenery and seek out destinations we never would have discovered otherwise, but even more beneficial was the advice we would get from the locals we would talk to at the brewery. Brian and I joke that it’s our “Visitor Center” when we go to a new city and don’t know anyone we just belly up at the bar and wahllah, you’ve got tips on the best places to eat, see, hike, whatever your pleasure!

After we left Colorado we had visited nearly 20 breweries, which really isn’t that hard to do (there are just over 110 total) but incredible when I look back at it, seeing as we were only in CO just over a week. We’ve slowed our travel pace down quite considerably since then, but the brewery visits have continued. To date we’ve been to 120 breweries and now write about all our visits at TheRoamingPint.com – If you are interested at all in brewery stops while you travel and would like advice just let us know! We love talking brewery visits with people and if we haven’t been to an area yet, chances are I can find some of my beer friends that have and get tips from them. We have also found that RVing to breweries sometimes can be very convenient, street parking nearby or in some cases just crashing in their parking lot! If there was anything worse than driving drunk it may be driving your home drunk, so just don’t do it. It’s not necessary!

After talking with other NuRVer friends we realized it is common to have something to seek out while you travel. Many people we’ve met like to seek out hot springs or outdoor adventures. Sometimes you may seek out a certain food or maybe even wacky roadside attractions. Or if you are like us and have dogs, possibly you seek out dog parks (we like to use the Dog Park Finder iPhone app, brought to you by DogParkUSA.com – very convenient!) We even heard a story of a man that traveled to document every single Martin Luther King Jr. street in America!

So now it’s your turn… when you travel what do you seek out?

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We just arrived in Milwaukee and all I can think of is this the Alice Cooper scene from Wayne’s World.

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It’s been months since I’ve posted! I’ve been working on some new projects the past few months but assure you we are still Trippin!

Enjoying a Surly Bender on the docks at Lord Fletchers on Lake Minnetonka

We spent most of our Spring in Kansas from the end of March until early June (conveniently waiting out the gas spike!) then spent 2 weeks in Omaha and now we are up north in Minn-e-sOda. We have big brewery tour plans for the Summer while we make our way a little further east into Wisconsin and Michigan. Brian continues to work on Popstar and Cool Products stuff and I’m trying to get The Roaming Pint website up and running. Hoping it’s not long now, although it will be months of continuing to get it into shape!

For now you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, all that good stuff except Google+ (yet?! please not another!)

Hit us up and let us know you’re still out there, we love hearing from you!

-Maria and Brian

A better more updated post in a couple weeks I promise!!

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Every year the Kansas Relays draws some of the top track and field athletes in the world to Lawrence, KS. Normally all events are carried out near Memorial Stadium but this year event organizers decided to bring track and field to the people, and thus 125 cubic feet of limestone was laid onto 8th street to erect a shot put pit in downtown Lawrence.

Lawrence, Kansas shot put event

We were lucky enough to be in town when this went down and grabbed some primo spots right next to where the shot-puters were throwing (see arrow). It was quite impressive to some of the top competitors at this sport heaving a solid metal ball down the street. It put my 8th grade shot put accomplishment of 2nd in  the city to shame.

The weather was great and we had enough foresight to fill a back pack full of beers. The only hiccups in the event were a couple throws that approached leaving the puting area and a couple that hit a power line that was hanging a bit too low.

Maria and Brian with Big Jay at the shot put event

All in all a well spent evening in our home away from mobile home, Lawrence.

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Who is Stanley? Well, Stanley is our RV! He takes us all around the U.S. to taste delicious craft beers and meet new friends along the way. We work from the road, Brian is a graphic designer and I am a professional beer taster. I like to call our lifestyle: Working on not working and so far I would say it is working out pretty well.

We embarked on our RV journey with Stanley in August 2010. So far we have visited over 13 states and nearly 80 breweries along the way. When we first started our trip we hadn’t planned on visiting so many breweries, but when the first state you visit is Colorado, packed full of some of the countries best breweries, and you don’t have an agenda a brewery is a great way to familiarize yourself with a city and most importantly the locals! Breweries are typically located in prime neighborhoods across the US or sometimes, even better, located in off-the-beaten-path locations that you might not have thought to seek out. Now that we have started this traveling tradition we figure it is too good to stop!

If you are new to the Stanley blog, Welcome! Thanks for stopping by! If you’ve visited our blog before, thanks for following us on our journey! There are going to be some changes these next few months to the blog. We are currently hanging out in Lawrence, Kansas (where we consider “home”) resting and reuniting with our friends, getting ready to embark on the “second leg” of our trip, June 2011. Previously we were using the TrippinWithStanley blog to update family and friends on our travels, but now we plan to focus this blog more on our love of learning more about beer. TrippinWithStanley will soon feature brewery reviews, beer reviews, master brewer and home brewer interviews.

We are also on Facebook now and will be using that more to update family and friends of our traveling antics. Give us a “like” if you want, we hope to bring you big things so keep in touch for all the latest news. We are excited for the upcoming site updates and second leg of our trip. Thanks for following!

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The media is strangely drawn to Maria, so it was no surprise to me when Channel 6 Action News picked Maria out of a crowd of over 100 to interview for opinions about Kansas basketball.

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As I type this I sit on a beautiful outside patio on S Congress at a coffee bar called Jo’s. I am surrounded by Mac Book Pros and I can almost see all the tweets swarming around my head. I am sure this is a common occurrence in Austin, but the sight is even more so now, as we are here the week of SXSW. South By Southwest, or “South By” as the attendees call it, is a three pronged festival for Music, Film and Interactive geeks. Hipsters from all over the world migrate south this time of year to attend top notch keynote speaker sessions, rock their socks off to the next new indie band you probably won’t ever hear on the radio, and be the first to debut new independent films. The city has over 40,000 visitors this time of year and everyone’s buzzing around with their heads buried in their iPhone or iPad, tweeting to find the next meetup.

Photo courtesy of miguelandia.com

We have absolutely enjoyed our time in Austin and are enjoying some really great beers. There are so many breweries in the area we’ve mainly frequented The Ginger Man which has over 80 beers on draft and 2 on cask. From there we have sampled the 512 and Independence local breweries as well as a couple different Real Ales and many different types of Shiner (close in the area). We also made it over to LoveJoys based on a friend’s recommendation, they had great beer! Beer here is very good and the conversations have been fantastic. We’ve had the privilege to meet up with a couple of our KU buddies, Taylor, Courtney and Jonny, as well as other NuRVers and travelers, most notably @ZenNomads @Technomadia and @Technosyncratic and @OverYonderLust. If you are interested in RVing or traveling definitely check out these blogs, great resources for newbie and even the experts.

While in Austin I’ve learned a few facts that I think are incredible. There are over 1400 food licenses for the city of Austin, 900 of which are mobile food trucks. They are everywhere! And the cool thing is they setup say 4-6 in an area and surround them with picnic tables, you can get a cheap, delicious meal and enjoy it outside. Torchy’s Tacos seem to be among the locals favorite, we sampled some our self and can not disagree! The other cool fact: There are over 750 tattoo parlors in this city! That is 7.5 shops for every 1,000 people! The Texans sure like their tats I guess. I’ve seen more sleeves here than I did in Cali. It almost makes me feel obligated to get one, but Brian is next! He just needs to figure out what the hell he wants to get.

The idea to “unattend” sxsw was a great one. I recommend it for anyone close to the industry or anyone who just likes to be in the middle of a lot of action. The conference passes are around $800, so not cheap, unless you can get your company to fork out the change. Unattending has all the great perks of networking, there are plenty of free events that don’t require badges, and more importantly free food trucks sponsored by the big guys handing out treats. This week I had a brown butter and candied bacon ice cream sandwich on chocolate chip cookies from Cool Haus with thanks to Mozilla, and it was delectable!

We have been lying low the past two days, trying to get some work done so we can let loose tomorrow on our favorite holiday of the year. No, we will not be drinking green beer, but it will be black and it will be plentiful. Although, I will leave the rest for another post. Slainte friends!! And thanks for following…

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Our buddy Dane informed us that there was a zip line through the Freemont Experience in downtown Las Vegas and we decided to check it out. When we got down town there was a constant zing overhead as the zip lines were constantly running. It was only $20 a ride so we decided to give it a try.

It was a pretty shaky looking scaffolding structure that you enter from the 5 floor of a parking garage. The line was about 35 people long and seemed to take forever because the temp had dropped that nite. The ride lasted about 20 seconds and took you half way down the a constantly lighted Freemont Experience.

Maria grabbed these pictures of pictures on her phone from the guys trying to sell us “commemorative photos” for $20.

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Here are some pics from our time in Sedona. We stayed with our good friend Brenden and his girlfriend, Britta, in Cottonwood, about 20 minutes from Sedona and Jerome.

They were the most excellent hosts taking us around to places Stanley shouldn’t dare go, including a killer hike up to Cathedral Rock. Luckily, it didn’t kill us, but the views sure did stun us. We hope to return next October to hit up the Grand Canyon, Page AZ and St. George area with them. The post is short and sweet, because the pictures say more than my words could ever paint.

From Sedona and Jerome AZ, posted by Maria Scarpello on 3/02/2011 (28 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

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We had plans to meet up with our Nu friends Bill and Debbie in Phoenix after we left our troubles in Tucson. Maria was able to convince Debbie that it would be a good idea for all of us to go golfing in Phoenix since we had both been lugging our clubs around for the last 6 months and in turn Debbie convinced us to do a Hash later that evening (twist our arm!)

Meet Bill and Debbie from South Lake Tahoe

Only lost one ball!

Maria and Debbie

Maria and I probably had our best round of golf ever! Didn’t hurt that most of the holes we could tee off with our 9 iron.

Left: Bill and Maria Right: Maria about to crush it!

After golfing we headed back to the RV resort for some hot tubbin and noodle floating. It was a quick relax in the sun before we headed off to hash.

What is a hash you ask? Well, let me tell you:

Is an international group of non-competitive running, social and drinking clubs. An event organized by a club is known as a Hash or Hash Run, with participants calling themselves Hashers. (wiki)

Drinking and running? Sounded good to us and to top it off it was a PBR hash. Which meant we were drinking nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon all night.

Basically we met the group in a parking lot and had some pre-game drinking as the rules were explained to us newbie’s. It goes a little something like this:

• A few runner’s called “hare’s” are set off about 15 minutes before everyone else to go and mark the path.
• They will mark the ground with chalk symbols and dollops of flour to mark the path.
• Three true path marks in a row means you are on the right trail.
• There are false trails that will lead you off in the wrong direction. “YFB”.
• Lots of whistling and yelling back and forth will help keep you on the “true path”. “On On!”
• There are usually a series of checks points including beer checks where everyone drinks. “Beer Near!”

At one point we were drinking in a random ally and another we were drinking on top of a parking garage in downtown Phoenix.

When the run is over, the whole group forms a circle and shares “stories from the trail”. These are incidents of un-Hasher like behavior that result in public shaming in the form of beer consumption called a “down-down”. Drinkable offenses include competitive behavior, wearing new shoes, coordinating your outfit to well, or pretty much anything that someone thinks is funny.

Hashes usually have themes. A well known hash is the "Red Dress Run" in which men and women take to the street in search of beer in red dresses.

There are more than 1,700 chapters spanning all seven continents. Most major cities are home to at least one chapter. Chapters typically contain between 20-100 members, usually mixed-sex, with some metropolitan area Hashes drawing more than 1,000 hashes to an event. (wiki)

We had a great time as this community is extremely fun and energetic. Now everytime we go to a new city we are looking for Hashes. You can usually find one by typing in Hash House Harriers and the name of the city into a search engine. We think some of our friends back in KC might really like this too, so hopefully the hash groups in Kansas are as crazy as the Phoenix and South Lake Tahoe hashers we have met.

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