Tuesday, July 5, 2011

HattenFest 2011

As you can tell from my earlier post, we enjoy celebrating Independence Day by drinking lots of delicious American made craft beer.

We also always celebrate up north with our friends. Andy asked if I wanted to take the Midas up to Red Oak. I think he took my 10 minutes of hysterical laughter as a HELL NO. Not only did I want to avoid breakdowns, but I also had the desire to get better gas mileage than 8 miles to the gallon. Although driving a vehicle that burned ridiculous amount of fuel probably would have been more patriotic.

Before departure, Andy and I purchased some classy $3 T-shirts for the holiday.



We played standard yard games, including frisbee, cornhole, bocce ball and washers.





That's Andy showing off last year's patriotic T while also demonstrating excellent frisbee technique - throwing without spilling his beer.

The boys also exercised their second amendment rights.



One evening we had a beverage blind taste test in three categories: Colas, shitty beers, and IPA's.

Results?

Most people preferred Pepsi (over Coke, RC Cola and Faygo Cola). Everyone had a hard time deciphering between Miller Lite and Bud Lite, O'Douls and BW 55, but nearly all of us identified PBR. Bells Two Hearted and Big Sky IPA were the favorites amongst the microbrews.



We played Dog Bingo while sitting around. This is where you secretly drop a piece of food and put your bets on which dog will find and eat the morsel first. Gordie is usually at the top of the odds list and Toby is obviously always at the bottom as the dark horse bet.

The dogs had an excellent time in general, but all that bingo and play sure was tiring.





And we did our best to keep the pups cool in the hot temps.



We kept ourselves cool by tubing down a river a few times. No pictures, because water + me + camera = bad news. This was generally enjoyable, but we happened to see a group that brought 2 babies and 3 young children and DIDN'T PUT LIFE JACKETS ON ANY OF THEM. I almost got patriotic right up in their faces, but refrained.

We also saw a bald eagle while tubing down the river and named him 'Merica.

We ate SO. MUCH. FOOD. Including the famous Hatten Boil.







And we had to wash that food down with something of course.



Because, afterall, isn't it truly American of me to eat copious amounts of food and get stupid drunk?

God Bless the USA.

2 comments:

NotAppealing said...

I love your weekend/vacation/holiday recap posts =)

Monica said...

Nice 4th of July happenings! :) If you guys were tubing down the river I think you were in the area I'm thinking of, I can't believe they'd take kids tubing down it sans life jacket!