Travel bits, bites, and adventures.
![The MilkWood at Edward Lee's MilkWood, Louisville, Kentucky [dailyblender.com]](https://dailyblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Louisville_Milkwood-330x210.jpg)
There’s never been a debate in our house on how to pronounce Louisville. When I was a kid, my stepfather made frequent business trips south, guiding his Kentucky sales team on the best practices for selling snowblowers before the Midwest winter began.
![Toronto, Canada [dailyblender.com]](https://dailyblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/toronto13-330x219.jpg)
It was tough to sleep on the red-eye from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Toronto, Ontario. When I initially booked my tickets from Portland, Oregon, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the cheapest route put me through Canada, which I certainly didn’t mind. A short jump to Vancouver, a red-eye flight, and a day to play in Toronto before I boarded for Brazil.
![Boise and Snake River Valley [dailyblender.com]](https://dailyblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/grapes-e1550563835930-330x213.jpg)
Aside from your relationship with potatoes, you hadn’t really crossed my mind over the years, your state little more than a hostage to the French fry existence. As it turns out, there’s more to you, with over 180 agricultural products, a top producer of Austrian winter peas, trout, barley, sugarbeets – and yes, potatoes. You also have a serious relationship with wine. Who knew?
![Hedges Family Estate [DAILYBLENDER.COM]](https://dailyblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/tricities7-330x191.jpg)
My knowledge of the Tri-Cities area had been somewhere between the Hanford Site and the Kennewick Man over the last fifteen years of my Northwest residence. It seemed a flat, uninteresting corridor in the lower middle of Washington state with nothing but space to offer, overshadowed by the evergreen of Seattle further west.
There wasn’t much English being tossed around on my flight from Canada to Brazil. Throughout the nearly-eleven-hour trip, I heard Portuguese, Spanish, French, German – but very few words I understood.
Piling into a crowded, frenzied amusement park is generally the last on my list of trips to take, but as a parent, it is inevitably a moment that arrives at some point, the pulling of ones heartstrings, t-shirt, and wallet until tickets are purchased, hotels are booked, and comfortable shoes are packed.
I hadn’t seen the Southern Cross in nearly twenty years. Back then, I was a junior in college, studying abroad for a semester along the southern coast of Australia, thousands of miles away from family and friends.
![Tucson, Arizona [DAILYBLENDER.COM]](https://dailyblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ariz_sq-e1544907436562-330x209.jpg)
There is something magical to the end of a year. It’s as if we’re given the opportunity for a do-over, to do away with another twelve months that may or may not have served its purpose.
Oh, Portland. After a decade, you’re finally starting to grow on me. Your rivers, your bridges, your crazy cyclists. The food and drink selection, however, is certainly one of your shiny bits.
We’re venturing to the west coast today, to the place where hearts are left and the Fernet flows freely – beautiful San Francisco, California. The iconic city by the bay is not only a tourist’s dream, it’s food and drink destination, with an abundance of cocktail pioneers and Michelin stars.
This round of ’48 Hours in…’ was penned by my dear friend, Erin Edds. A fellow entrepreneur, Erin and her husband, Stephen, are the operators of the wildly popular Hoosier Momma Bloody Mary mixer line – a favorite at Colts games, the Indianapolis 500, and Kentucky Derby.
