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Part of the fun and enjoyment of traveling is
visiting local restaurants, and one of our great pleasures is sampling
locally-brewed beers. Local breweries are often part of a restaurant, so
it's a chance to try a new place to eat as well.
We have visited pretty much every known brewpub
in the various cities and locales we have visited on our trips (but we haven't
hit every one of them in Phoenix and Tucson...yet), and we were surprised and
delighted this year to discover the existence of a new one in one of the cities
we pass through. This one was in the very small (population about 1000)
city of Springerville, Arizona.
| The Wellhead Restaurant and Brewery in Artesia, New
Mexico. Artesia is on the way between Albuquerque and Carlsbad,
and we happened to be passing through right at lunchtime. We had
first visited this brewpub during our 2002 visit to New Mexico. |
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| Getting out of the vehicles and walking up the
street. |
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| We're all sitting around one table, and the kindly
waitress snapped the picture. |
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| Russ is attempting to operate one of the oil well
displays in the brewpub. Hey Russ... it's just a model and doesn't
actually pump oil! |
| Our most favorite brewpub in all of brewpub-dom is
the High Desert Brewing Company in Las Cruces. We discovered it in
2000. Located off of a main thoroughfare in a residential
neighborhood, it is the modern-day equivalent of the quintessential
corner bar. About the size of four phone booths welded together,
it offers frequent live music, an outdoor seating area, excellent pub
food, and the best homemade beer we have ever found. If you're
ever in Las Cruces, and if you like beer at all, you owe yourself a
visit. |
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| I always like to try to take night photos with my
digital camera. This is slightly overexposed, but you can still
get a good sense of the place. |
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| There's always a large selection of beers on-hand.
A green dot indicates that it's currently available. |
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| Getting everyone into the photo by any means
possible. |
The newly discovered brewpub is the Wild Weede
Brewery in Springerville, Arizona. We found it listed on the web before we
left for the southwest, and we made a point of passing through Springerville on
our way from Las Cruces to Winslow the day before our hiking day in the Grand
Canyon. We discovered that it is actually part of a restaurant called Li'l
Ranglers. They had only two brews on tap (which were, at best, o.k.), but the staff
was very friendly, and we had a nice dinner.
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| That's us heading into the restaurant. |
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| Obligatory photo of all of us sitting around a table. |
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