Mid-September brought the Northern California Homebrew Festival (NCHF), otherwise known as “beer camp.” Beer camp is a 2-day weekend beer festival held in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. All the Northern California homebrew clubs get together to share homebrew, food, and stories in a beer-fest environment.
The festival is held at the Lake Francis RV Resort, near Dobbins CA. It was about a two and a half hour drive from my house last time, so I allowed three hours to get there pulling the teardrop.
To ensure that I got a level spot with a hook-up, and to hold spaces for fellow members of my homebrew club, I reserved a site through the resort for Thursday night. When I got there, I discovered that my campsite was directly adjacent to the restrooms and two giant water tanks.
I wasn’t the only one to arrive early with the idea of staking out sites for club members, there were representatives from three or four other clubs at the top of the hill around my campsite.
Since NCHF is about the food and beer, and not so much about camping, I spent little time in my camp other than to cook a couple of meals. On Thursday evening, I made burritos for a fellow homebrewer from the Davis club and me and on Friday night I made penne pasta in meat sauce as my contribution to Dennis and Don’s pot luck dinner. Here’s a nice photo of me working on the pasta dish. Photo courtesy of Jon Sheehan.
Cooking for the Friday night pot luck dinner
I enjoy cooking in the teardrop galley. With the side table, it’s just the right size for camp cooking. If I had more space, I’d make more ambitious meals, requiring more prep and clean up time. And that’s what I go camping to get away from ;-)
The NCHF trip was the last scheduled camping trip of the season. After brewing a couple of batches of beer to tide me over, I’ll be pushing the teardrop into the garage for some more improvements and renovation. Look for posts about my improvement projects starting soon.