The person behind the trips

Hi, I'm Jorgy

I live in Des Moines, Iowa. I travel as often as I can, log every stop obsessively, and have strong opinions about where to eat, what to drink, and which roads are worth taking.

Corkscrew Travels started as a personal travel log — a way to remember the restaurants, wineries, and detours that made each trip worth it. This is the public version of that: the places I'd actually recommend to a friend planning the same trip, with no fluff and no sponsored recommendations.

Est. 2017

Trips logged

And counting. We try to take at least 4–5 a year.

312

Places visited

Restaurants, wineries, scenic stops, stadiums, and more.

Wine regions

Napa, Sonoma, Willamette, Finger Lakes, Texas Hill Country, and Midwest.

Years traveling

Started logging in 2017. Looking back, wish I'd started earlier.

Why this site exists

The philosophy

Most travel content is written to rank in search engines, not to actually help you plan a trip. Lists of "Top 10 Restaurants in Napa" that were last verified in 2019. Generic advice that could apply to any destination. Sponsored posts dressed up as honest recommendations.

This site is none of that. Every place on here I've been to personally. Every rating is real. If something wasn't worth it, it either doesn't appear or it's clearly labeled. The goal is to write what I'd tell a friend who was planning the same trip.

"Three sentences about a restaurant tells you more than a thousand-word review full of qualifications."

The format is intentionally short. Where we were, what we did, what we ate and drank, and whether it was worth it. That's the whole thing.

Behind the scenes

How it works

We go on the trip

Every destination is somewhere we actually went. Nothing is written from a press release or based on someone else's experience.

We log everything

I use a personal app called JorgyTrips to log every stop in real time — photos, notes, ratings, and vibes while they're still fresh.

The best ones make the site

Not everything logged makes it here. Only the places worth recommending — the ones I'd tell a friend about without hesitation.

What you'll find here

Things I care about

Wine & wineries

Boutique producers over tourist tasting rooms. Cabernet and Pinot are where most of my attention goes, but I try to stay curious.

Good restaurants

From tasting menus to the best burger within 50 miles. The quality of the food and the honesty of the kitchen matter more than the category.

Road trips

The drive is part of the trip. The best roads, the stops worth pulling over for, and the towns most people drive past.

Sports travel

Baseball parks, football stadiums, and the restaurants near them. The Blue Jays, Iowa Hawkeyes, and Saints are the recurring reasons to travel.

The Midwest

Home base is Des Moines, Iowa. There's more worth visiting in the Midwest than most travel sites give credit for — I try to document it properly.

Scenic detours

The covered bridge roads, the coastal drives, the passes nobody mentions. Getting lost on purpose is half the reason to go anywhere.

The tool behind the site

Built on JorgyTrips

Every place on this site was first logged in JorgyTrips — a personal travel app I built to track restaurants, wineries, scenic stops, and everything in between. It's a living record of everywhere I've been, with photos, ratings, and notes from the road.

This blog is the public-facing layer on top of that data — the best stops, written up for people planning similar trips.

Visit JorgyTrips →

jorgytrips.com

Stay in the loop

New routes,
when we find them