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This Bud’s for You
One of the best free things to do in St. Louis is to take the Budweiser Brewery Tour. My family and I finally took the tour last week. It is infinitely better than the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour in Vermont and not just because you get two free beers at the end. You get to see actual beer being made, not a movie and a replica of the equipment. The tour starts with an up-close look at the Clydesdales.
One of the more interesting stops is the beechwood aging cellar. The beechwood chips, some of which come from Tennessee, help in the carbonation process. I stuck my camera in one of the empty tanks to see what it looked like inside.
Elsewhere along the tour we saw huge brew kettles. The green barrels next to them contain hops that will be added to the wort for flavor. We also saw two production lines, one for bottles and one for cans.
During Prohibition, Anheuser-Busch brewed a “near beer” called Bevo. The Bevo mascot, Renard the Fox, is represented in stone on one building’s corners. I wonder if the sly fox knew some secret way to convert near beer into a full-strength drink.
Causing a Komo-tion
Jamie Lynn Drohan broke the news last night on her Facebook page. She is leaving Knoxville for a job at KOMO-TV in Seattle. Her last day at WATE-TV will be December 2. She starts at KOMO in January.
I often saw Jamie Lynn around town at various fundraisers and tweet-ups. Most notably, she earned a perfect score at Star 102.1’s 3rd Annual Dancing with the Knoxville Stars. Her dance costume was reminiscent of “I Dream of Jeannie.”
Once she’s settled in the Emerald City, I hope Jamie Lynn looks up my friend Bean and his wife Donna. Donna designs fashions and is the owner of Elsie Katz Couture. I also recommend a trip to the Space Needle and a Duck tour.
When she visited Seattle for her job interview, Jamie Lynn saw ABC’s Bob Woodruff using the KOMO studio to file a report for the network. When she commented on Woodruff’s presence, the person giving her a tour of the newsroom said, “Welcome to the top 15.”
Pretty Big Stuff
Smoky Mountain Morning, the online video show I’ve been co-hosting with Taz Cable, is changing and growing. On October 15, a new version of the show, now called Smoky Mountain Magazine, will premiere on East Tennessee PBS. It will air weekly on Saturdays at 10:00 a.m., right before Marshal Andy’s show. Taz has been working very hard to make this deal happen. As you can imagine, I am extremely happy about the news.
Smoky Mountain Magazine will be a show for anyone who uses the Smokies, whether they live in Tennessee, North Carolina or anywhere. The broadcast signal of East Tennessee PBS reaches four states. Clips from the show, along with timely updates, will be available online to viewers worldwide.
Because locals and tourists use the Smokies as a place to relax, the show will focus on recreational activities and entertainment. I’ve already been contacted by someone who wants to teach me fly-fishing for a segment. Taz and I are also looking forward to covering performances and festivals around the region. I’m already wondering what different foods I’ll be able to try, like the duck taco I ate at Bele Chere in July:
Boomington, Minnesota
The World’s Largest Prairie Chicken could have improved our trip through Minnesota. Last month, my wife and I visited the last four states on my quest for all fifty. Because we were going to be in the neighborhood, relatively speaking, we added stops in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I had visited those two states but my wife had not. Both turned out to be a bust.
My wife read about a restaurant in La Crosse that was designed to look like the betting parlor in “The Sting.” However it was closed on Sundays and holidays, which meant bad news for us over the Fourth of July weekend. After a long day of driving, we elected to skip the town’s Riverfest, even though two-hit-wonders the Spin Doctors were playing. I figured that the $7 per person admission fee could be better spent on buffalo burgers or loose-meat sandwiches in the days ahead.
Because we love the movie “Fargo,” we originally planned to drive through Brainerd, Minnesota. We scrapped those plans and chose a more direct route to Fargo, North Dakota. Along the way we stopped in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Some quick research revealed that they had a giant river otter statue. Unfortunately neither the customers nor the employees at Walgreen’s could give us usable directions to find it. We drove around the wrong city park several times, only getting frustrated. Things immediately got better once we reached North Dakota, thanks to the staff at the Fargo-Moorhead visitor center.
Two days ago, my friend Bean shared a photo on Twitter that he had received from one of his followers. It showed the World’s Largest Prairie Chicken. I Googled the bird to learn more about it. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that it is just off I-94 in Rothsay, which is about halfway between Fergus Falls and Fargo.
In the Mood
“Are they closed?” My wife wondered as we parked outside the Glenn Miller Birthplace Museum in Clarinda, Iowa. I reminded her that we were often the only visitors at a tourist attraction. In fact, our visit to the South Dakota Hall of Fame started that way. We added Clarinda to our itinerary after seeing an ad for the museum in a copy of Our Iowa magazine on the first day of our trip.
Sure enough, the Miller museum was open for business. The woman in charge ushered us in to a screening room and started a documentary about the bandleader’s life. She said we didn’t have to stay for the whole thing but by the time we started getting restless, it was almost over. We couldn’t walk out right before they got to Miller’s untimely death. If they do choose to edit the film, they could probably shorten a few of the interviews and show highlights of the musical performances instead of full songs.
The museum is a year old and its collection is growing. Among other things, they had gold records, sheet music and musical instruments on display. My favorite item was the metallic bandstand donated by Tex Beneke. He inherited them after Miller’s death and used them for years. The museum replaced Tex’s name with a replica of the letters G.M. that had been there originally.
The museum is adjacent to the home where Miller was born. The birthplace is being restored and furnished to how it would have looked in 1904. They removed a part of the house that was added-on by a subsequent owner in 1912.
Stamp Site
The choice of a Nebraska tourist attraction was a no-brainer. Boys Town was founded by a Catholic priest; it was the location of an Oscar-winning movie; and it is home to the World’s Largest Ball of Stamps. My wife found a reference to the stamp ball when looking online for free things to do in Omaha.
The ball, which was featured in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”, was completed in the 1950s and is the centerpiece of a stamp-collecting display. A nearby workbench offers a “penny bin” of old stamps that kids can add to their own collections. A small message warns visitors to not add any stamps to the ball, which means someone must have tried it.
I bought a couple of postcards featuring the stamp ball and some air-mail stamps from the 1960s to use as postage. I also supported the cause by buying a pound of flavored coffee. I chose English Toffee, which I am enjoying as I type this. The clerk told me that their most popular flavor is “Jamaican Me Crazy,” which I found somewhat amusing since we were only a few hundred yards away from their behavioral health facilities.
Nebraska Five-O
The conclusion of my 50-state quest came as we drove across the Missouri River from Yankton, South Dakota, into Nebraska. My wife and I stopped at the Corps of Discovery Welcome Center in Crofton. The center is on a bluff with a nice view of the river, looking back toward Yankton. It offers clean restrooms, a map for visitors to mark their hometowns, and free coffee… when they’re open.
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