Saturday, April 9, 2022- Bitchin Kitten Brewery, Morrisville, PA

      The story behind this trip is a little hard to follow, even for us.  It's origins lay in a trip Scott wanted to take to Gettysburg last November for his birthday.  We had paid for hotel rooms and made arrangement to meet his college friends that day, but we ended up having to postpone the trip because there was a cold or flu passing around our house and we didn't want to spread COVID (or anything else, for that matter).  We found a way to move the website's hotel reservation to Easter instead.  In the meantime, we took the big Disney trip over Christmas with Julie's parents.  We got to enjoy several Disney You-Tubers while we were preparing for that trip.  When Tom Corless of "WDW News Today" opened with joke news about the Peppa Pig Theme Park, we thought it was completely made up.  Turns out it's real.

     We will surely write more about Abby's current obsession with Peppa Pig, but for now, we'll just say that she is her favorite.  Julie believed that if we ever wanted to visit the Peppa Pig Theme Park while Abby is still enthralled by her, the golden time is now.  Peppa will be passé if we wait.  Our Gettysburg stay seemed set in stone, but Julie still played with ideas where we would drive to Florida for a few days in order to see Peppa in person.   

     The week before our new Gettysburg date, we decided to see if we could move the date one more time.  We moved it to Columbus Day weekend in October.  That opened up almost all of our Easter Break for a return to Florida.  The trip became our Peppa Pig pilgrimage.

      We were up late packing last night and it was hard to get up this morning, but we were on the road by a little after 7:00 am.  The drive went pretty smoothly.  Perhaps the most significant thing about it was that we passed through New Jersey, which is a new state for Abby.  We were almost to Scott and Dawn’s house when we passed the Washington’s Crossing State Park and we stopped for a few minutes there.  We had been there once before in (2008?).  Scott walked quickly through the displays in the Visitor Center, but we didn’t stay long.

     The GPS took us to the home of Scott and Dawn in Yardley, PA, just a few minutes away across the Delaware River.  Tricia arrived a few minutes later.  Thus the three friends from college, Scott, Scott and Tricia, were reunited again.  The last time we were together was four years ago when the three met up in Gettysburg.   We rested for a bit in Scott and Dawn’s lovely house and Abby was happy to play with some toy dinosaurs that Dawn had found from when their own two kids were young.

     Scott- we’ll have to call hm Scott W so it doesn’t get too confusing- was a chemistry major at UB and works as a chemist now.  Home brewing beer had long been a hobby for him, but last fall he and a friend opened an actual brewery.  It is called the Bitchin Kitten and is in .  Although it was a little cool and very busy, we got a table outside.  Scott F. will often try a flight of beer when we visit brew pubs like this, as a way to sample different beers, but he is far from a connisuire.  This time, he and Tricia ordered two flights each in order to go completely through the nine beers that they currently have on tap there.  It was fun to listen to tScott W. describe the process of beer making, the work that they had done to open the brewery and his philosophy of brewing as we sampled both the food and the beer.   All of the beer has cat related names because of the name of the brewery.  Scott F.’s favorites were probably Pangur Ban (and Irish pale ale), The Last Clancy (an Irish red ale), Cheshire Cat (a bourbon barrel porter), and Chief Mouser (an extra special bitter, which really wasn’t bitter at all).  His favorite name, though, was probably the Kilkenny Kats, and Scott W. recited the children’s poem about the two cats who fought each other until there was nothing left but their tails.  We all shared appetizers including some sliders, a beer cheese dip, and some excellent onion rings.   We met Scott W.’s friend, Michael, who is the owner of the place and congratulated him on the way the business seems to be going.  Abby eventually fell asleep at the table because she hadn’t taken a nap on the drive down, so she and Julie missed the tour of the brewery that Scott W. gave.  It’s clear that he is really excited about what he is doing here.  We’ve taken brewery tours in other places, but this might have been the clearest and most entertaining description of the process that we’ve heard. 

     We took the party back to Scott and Dawn’s house where we were able to relax and talk.  Tricia gave Abby a present- a picnic playset and a great book called, Not Quite Narwahl- the story of a unicorn who had been raised by a family of narwahls and discovers his heritage.  Dawn prepared the toppings for everyone to make their own flatbread pizzas and we enjoyed them as a later dinner.   Of course, we stayed up for a while.  Scott F., Tricia, and Scott W. eventually went to bed after midnight, after chatting about everything and anything that came to mind.  It was great to be together again, and its so easy to talk to them.  New friends are silver, but old friends are gold.