Big Travel Weekend

This weekend kicks off the travel season for America. So in classic travel form, today's salt and peppers are the classic travel companions, the family car and a trailer.
You don't see this combo very often anymore. The RV has taken over and the trailers are too huge to tow with a car. Now you need a $50k truck to pull your trailer.

A friend of ours decided to do the vintage travel trailer and purchased this.

We wish them a lot of luck getting this in tip top form. Having old VW's and "art cars" in the past, I'm sure this will be rockin'. I mean, really nice.

So hopefully you'll be out there with the rest of America and traveling this weekend. If you don't have reservations for your favorite B&B, it might be too late. Camping in Oregon, too late to. So plan ahead for your travels this summer. Who knows, you may drive by a field and find an old trailer that needs a new family.

Beer-cation

Beer-cation, that's right, a vacation trek in search of beer. Sound good? Pacific City is home to the Pelican Pub & Brewery as well as our bed and breakfast, The Craftsman B&B. They are an award winning brewery, we are and award winning B&B.

Darron Welch, the brew master at the Pelican entered 11 beers to the Australian International Beer Awards this year and won 11 medals. That's an awesome accomplishment, a master at his craft. See all the awards their beer has won here.

We have won BedandBreakfast.com's Best of the West and LanierBB.com's Best Historic Renovation.

We think it's time you visited Pacific City, our still tiny beach town and see how one of the nicest places in the North West will inspire you to greatness.

Don't be afraid of staying at a B&B. We are the "no lace, do doilies" B&B. Men love our place and women love it too. TripAdvisor.com rates us # 1 in Pacific City and #3 for the Oregon Coast.

Come to Pacific City for the beer, stay for the friendly people and great hospitality.

30 years ago today

I am not the only post you will see today regarding what happened 30 years ago today. I have seen quite a few over the past few days. But I do have the best Salt and Peppers to commemorate the event.

These come from a friend who visited Mount St. Helens after seeing our collection at The Craftsman B&B. She was inspired to add to our collection with this awesome, creative idea for a S&P. As you can see, it's before, above and after, below.

May 20th, 1980 Mount St. Helens blew its top. Ash all over, even where I was living in Denver, nearly 1,300 miles away. This wasn't a big deal to me at the time, but now that I am a "North Wester," it's a part of the history of the area.

Another thing that makes this set one of my favorites is that they are glazed in ash from the eruption.

Just a few minutes and the mountain top was gone. I have seen some good links floating around the web today, here are a few: National Geographic has posted some pictures of how the mountain has transformed after the 123 years of hibernation.

The person who gave me the S&P's linked to a blog post today about what people remember on this day, 30 years ago.

Our local news station has a good video and photos posted to this page.

This didn't happen without warning. Earthquakes started in March followed by phreatic, steam, and ash eruptions. Then the big eruption and pyroclastic flow, I like that word, pyroclastic, on May 20th. Wiki has a great article here.

Do you have a set of Salt & Pepper shakers that depict a natural disaster?