As I’ve written before, Amanda and I love to travel and we try to do so relatively frugally. Two things that we really like to do that don’t cost much at all are to hike and to take brewery tours.
As we researched and prepared for our trip to Kauai in March, I came across multiple articles which strongly recommended hiking shoes since the island is one of the wettest places in the world. Although we had always hiked in tennis shoes before, we found some hiking shoes on sale and found them to be extremely helpful (mine were $48.13 on sale and after some discounts we found). The aggressive tread of the shoes kept us from slipping and falling in places where you inevitably would if you were wearing tennis shoes.
Shoes, water, snacks, and gas to drive to where you want to hike. That’s all you need. That’s not a very large expense to be able to see some of the most amazing sights that you’ll ever see in your life and that sometimes are only reachable by foot. Some of the most amazing hikes that we’ve done that I remember off of the top of my head are the Devil’s Bridge Trail in Sedona, the Camelback Mountain Echo Canyon Trail, and the Kalepa Ridge Trail.
Yesterday, we hiked the Devil’s Courthouse Trail and the Graveyard Fields Trail in Asheville. Pretty morbid theme.
Brewery tours are typically free or very cheap (think $5) and often offer free tastings. The reason that I love brewery tours is because they take you through the entire process of creating their product while sharing their story and the history of why and how the business was started. It’s inspiring to me to see entrepreneurs utilizing local ingredients, resources, and labor which ultimately benefits the local economy. It’s awesome because they do this while earning income from doing something that they love.
One of the breweries that we visited today, New Belgium, has a tab on its website dedicated to sustainability. New Belgium publishes an annual Sustainability Report which states that in 2016, 99.9% of the brewery’s waste was diverted from landfills. Additionally, it states that the company makes enough money from recycling to pay four salaries. That’s pretty awesome!
