Beerfest in Boise - Playing Tourist

Black History Museum - Boise, Idaho

Cute Little Goat at Petting Zoo

Zoo Boise Resident

Abe - Huge New Statue Near the Black History Museum

Me and Abe Hanging Out in the Sun

Playing Tourist at Zoo Boise

Jennifer and Dave Ready to Pour

Ready to Roll - Bring on the Beer Lovers!

Mr. Blackvelvetrav Icing the Kegs

I Thought this was an Artichoke on my t-shirt. DUH! It's a Hops!

Icing the Kegs (Jennifer and Dave)

Jennifer and I After we Check in for Duty

All Smiles as we Man our Station

Ready to Pour

The Calm Before The Storm

Last Saturday Mr. Blackvelvetrav and I volunteered at BeerFest in Boise. A friend from work and her husband also volunteered and ended up pouring at the station right next to us. According to the Idaho Statesman approximately 25,000-30,000 attended the three day event and they estimate 15,000 beer mugs were sold. There were over 178 beers on tap and I think they had about 500 kegs ready to roll. The event always starts out quiet in the morning by the time they open at 11:00 a.m. but my mid afternoon we had wall to wall beer lovers in a never ending line for their favorite brews. We poured beer for about 9 hours on Saturday until we finally begged for someone to take our spot about 3 hours past our shifts end. When you pour beer you realize pretty quickly that you will end up covered in it and I think just about every inch of us smelled like a brewery. Together I think we blew at least 4 kegs during our shift. In total we were serving 4 different beers.

After we escaped from the Beerfest checked into the Hampton Inn for the night and had a nice quiet meal at a downtown restaurant called Solid. The noise at Beerfest was so loud in the tents that we could not even hear the live music on stage. It was refreshing to sit in a pretty quiet (and air conditioned) restaurant after all the chatter, partying and noise. After dinner we decided to catch a movie and the only one playing at the right time was Despicable Me. I thought it was pretty cute. It's funny to think that I volunteer at an event like Beerfest and I don’t even drink.

Sunday we decided to play tourist after breakfast and visited the Boise Zoo and Black History Museum. It was really interesting because the museum is in a historic church that was once a Baptist Church. I had actually been to a service in that church once years and years ago. It is wonderful to see if restored today in it's new location. We caught our second Movie at The Flicks called The Kids Are All Right, had an appetizer at TableRock Brew Pub and then returned to Beerfest to actually spend our tokens that we received for volunteering. We mostly people watched and Mr. Blackvelvetrav finally got to have a pulled pork sandwich and fresh corn (he was craving it from the day before). After our visit there we decided to catch one last movie and saw Winter's Bone (excellent film) back at the Flicks. I tend to gravitate to happier movies but this one was very intriguing and even a bit scary when you realize that people may actually live like this (the mentality). Isn't the truth stranger than fiction? I might like to pick the book up from this film as it was really good and suspenseful. Mentally I still need to piece a few things together.