Yeah, it makes me cringe, too. I’ve got bad memories of cross-country road trips where I wasn’t smart enough to plan ahead and have good beers at the ready. The low point may have been the time I had to buy 3-2 beer (that’s half-strength 3.2 percent alcohol beer—and this was Dos Equis, no less!) from a Wal-Mart in El Reno, Okla. I learned that it is biologically impossible to get drunk from 3-2 beer. Dry counties also seem to haunt my road trips. One otherwise forgettable journey, I was ready to stop for the night after a 13-hour drive took me to Nowhere, Ark. When I pulled into a gas station for my own personal fuel, I was told that there was no beer to be had for another 60 miles. I hastily drove to the next sane county. (Unfortunately, I had to settle for Icehouse, which left me feeling kind of dirty in the morning. Like if I stayed at a motel on Central and agreed to some “entertainment.”)

• food and beverage
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• craft beer
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Sergio Salvador salvadorphoto.com

A garden of surprises

Stepping into the pragmatically named Thai Cuisine II is like taking a 15-hour plane ride in the blink of an eye. While it’s not exactly Thailand inside, the dining room is a pleasant sanctuary, warmly painted in earthy red and sunset orange, and hung with near-florescent paintings of colorful, idyllic scenes. You quickly forget that you just walked into a red metal roofed A-frame that looks like an old Dairy Queen.

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• thai
• sushi
• curry
• salad
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• local
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