Back in late November Boxergrrlie came up with the great idea for friends & friends to be to make a pilgrimage to New Glarus WI. Now if you aren't familiar with the name New Glarus you obviously aren't a beer drinker because New Glarus is home to, you guessed it, the New Glarus Brewing company. It's a little Micro-Brewery that has some great brews like Spotted Cow, Fat Squirrel, and of course Uff Da which was the big hit at Beemerhill's Oktoberfest in 2005.

I think within 24hrs I had confirmed and was really looking forward to a mid-winter getaway and a chance to meet some of the people I've come to know through different forums. Yea I know that most people consider warm places for their mid-winter getaway but I was just happy to go SOMEWHERE, ANYWHERE!  Little did I know how much I would need the getaway. It turns out that three of the four people in my department were heading off to Germany for either one or two weeks and the entire week prior to the Field-Trip (damn, i forgot to get my permission slip signed) was spent prepping them and getting not-so-psyched to be the only person locally supporting the IT functions of our company.

11:00am the Friday of the outing hit and I was out the door ready to kick back and relax before all hell broke loose. By noonish Amy and I were out of the house and on our way. It was about 90 minutes later and we were rolling into New Glarus and went past the very brewery we would be touring the next day.  Mmmmmmmm Beer..

New Glarus is also known as "America's Little Switzerland" and is named after Glarus Switzerland which was the homeland of New Glarus' first settlers. The town is small and I mean REALLY small so before we knew it we were at the Chalet Landhaus Inn which is where we would be staying for the night. This place took the Swiss heritage as far as having our toiletries reflect a Swiss origin. After we checked in we ran across the street to get some non-glass, whirlpool safe beverages to throw on ice for later and when we came out of the store the snow had started to fly. I had heard we might get a couple of inches and was just hoping it wouldn't spoil anyones plans to make the trek.

Ok, now that the important stuff was taken care of it was time to venture out and explore the town. One thing was immediately obvious, this town was into Cows. There were painted cows everywhere and the hotel even had a little scavenger hunt game where you had to locate the cows that contained the 16 patterns on the list. I never really did find out why but I was just guessing it was because it was a farming community. Or, maybe painting farm animals is a Wisconsin thing because if you go to Oshkosh you will find the town has done something similar except with pigs. The restaurant that we would be eating dinner at that night even had a cow at one of it's entrances that, from across the street with my lasik corrected eyes, looked like it was wearing fish-net stockings. When you get closer I guess they look like chef's pants but once I had the image of fish net stockings in my head it wasn't going away.

There was really no need to drive anywhere from the hotel. We were able to wander into town and check out everything that was open. Some businesses were closed because it wasn't exactly tourist season but you could still see what I imagine is the Swiss architecture on the outside of the buildings. One place that was open was the local Police Station. I made special note of where it was and what their car looked like in case we ended up wantering from pub to pub later, juuuust in case...

It turns out that in addition to beer, New Glarus also has a local Winery. I've been making a personal effort to develop more of a liking to wine and this looked like the perfect opportunity to take advantage of so we stopped in at the winery, looked at the touristy things they had on sale, tasted some wine, and chatted with one of the owners.

No she didn't take all of those bottles out for me but I did get to taste them all. Lucky for me the amount she poured was very small or I might not have been awake when everyone else arrived. The winery does an interesting thing for their customers. One of their flavors is a rhubarb wine and for every 15lbs of rhubarb someone brings in, they give a free bottle of wine at the end of the season. Personally I wasn't crazy about a lot of the wines I tasted. I felt they had more of a fruity taste that what I enjoy. I did of course ask her why they had that taste and she was more than willing to enlighten me on some wine facts. What I got out of it was that wines that are grown in the Midwest have a shorter drying season so they tend to have a stronger fruit flavor than say a California wine. Not really knowing the process of making wine it made sense to me but I was able to find three wines that I enjoyed the tast of and grabbed a bottle of each.

After that it was time to head back to the hotel and hit the whirlpool and take a nap for a while. I figured that most people would start arriving after 4:00pm and dinner wasn't until 7:00 so I had plenty of time.

Sure enough when I came back downstairs to grab some stuff out of the car there were people there hanging out in the lobby. I'm guessing the bar wasn't open but but when I came down for the second time the party had moved into the bar.

Sue, being a trooper of an Ambassador to the BMWMOA organization thought it would be nice to introduce some of the local residents. Well, lucky for her Mike was sitting at the bar and he HAPPENED to work for the Brewery and still had his work shirt on. It didn't take her long at all to convince him to swap her favorite BMW sweatshirt for his official New Glarus Brewery shirt.

The time finally came where we had to head over to the New Glarus Hotel for dinner. Some walked, some drove, some drove there and walked back only to find a ticket on their car the next day ( DOH!! ) . Everyone handled the snow pretty well considering people were from all over the US including places us Northern types escape to during winter like Texas. With no riding gear available we got to see a pretty creative pair of waterproof boots that might need some slight changes before going into production.

We ate, we drank, listened to a fun Polka band and quite a few people got out there and danced the night away. This was probably the most excitement the town and restaurant had seen in quite some time but everyone was really friendly. Tina ( Red Hot ) was even able to cut in on one of the local couples for a dance.  I don't think CJack and Viki were even done with their meal before they hit the dance floor.

Dancing wasn't the only activity for the night either. The band managed to get the Ring Leader up on stage for a little yodeling. When they had successfully trained her their next victim/volunteer had a little more southern personality. The Veg did some good yodeling himself and I think he even threw in a ye-haw every now and then. So if you are ever riding near BG or TV and you think you hear yodeling coming from under the helmet, you probably do.

Then from out of nowhere a woman shows up with, well, a frog purse. No it's not Kermit the Frog or some other cute cartoon character. It's an actual frog that has been skinned and made into a purse. I think her comment went a little like " I saw three at a store in Mexico so I bought two of them. I haven't seen then any where else since." Ummm Hello, did you really think you would? Poor Tracy walked in towards the end of the conversation and seemed a bit confused as to what she was looking at. I think at that point she was thinking of having a drink..

That was about it for us on Friday night. We wandered back to the hotel and called it a night. Come Sat. a bunch of people were heading out to Blue Sky Restaurant for breakfast and then a brewery tour at Lake Louie Brewery. I opted to have breakfast in the hotel and take some time to go out and walk off the malted beverages I had drank the night before. Of course I regreted not going with them after hearing the stories of the great tour where they even got to taste some beer straight from one of the brew kegs. But hey, that gives me a reason to take a nice ride up there once the snow has left for the year.

Those of us that stayed back gathered in the hotel lobby by the fireplace in the early afternoon. That was nice because again I had the chance to talk to some people like Jim and Tina who I had mostly seen or talked to online. For me, the hardest thing all weekend was name association. Introductions usually involved sharing real names and then screen names and I have a heck of a time keeping that straight. Gene had a great idea and wore his name tag earlier Friday and I think I may get one of them myself.

At a little before two we headed over to the New Glarus Brewery for our brewery tour. I've been on a bunch of brewery tours and I have to admit, this Brewery has some of the nicest looking gear I've seen. It's obvious that they really take pride in what they do and try to maintain a lot of the tradition throughout their process. This goes from their copper kettles that they brought back from a brewery in Germany that was going out of business to the wooden wine barrels they got from a winery and now use to make their fruit beers.

The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the way the tour itself was run. I'm the type of person that likes to take tours led by people and the people at micro breweries tend to have a passion about their jobs that make the tour that much more interesting. At New Glarus you get a listening device when you arrive. From there you move through the tour at your own pace and punch in a number that coincides with the station you are at and put the device up to your ear and listen to a pre-recorded message. Just look at the excitement of other tour goers as they use these things.

After the brewery tour I grabbed a case of various brews and headed home but we had to make one stop first. It was off to Mount Horeb to see the Mustard Museum and wander through the Troll capital of the world.  Where else but Wisconsin can you find painted pigs, painted cows, and trolls. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not??

Once at Mount Horeb we took wandered around the Mustard Museum and got to taste a wide variety of mustards. Some were good, some were not so good but we ended up walking out of there with about 5 jars and a bunch of recipies to try. Poupon U wasn't running so we couldn't learn all the ins and outs of mustard but the two women working knew more about mustard than I ever thought you could know. I can't wait to try the XXX in some deviled eggs.

With the car loaded up and a fresh bottle of water to rinse down all the mustard tastes it was time to point the car in the direction of home. Not really wanting to take the slab I trusted Mr. Garmin and the "Avoid Interstates" to find us a nice route home. It managed to take us through some very nice rolling hils and farm country. This was the good end to a really fun weekend. Just what the doctor ordered to break up the hum drums of a Wisconsin Winter.

Can't wait to do it again ;-)