Get Away & Go Local

back from the break… on with the awards!

Category: Food & Drink

Barbecue

   First place: pulled pork, Oklahoma Joe’s, Kansas City, KS

   Runner up: pork sandwich, Gates BBQ, Kansas City, MO

   Honorable mention: ribs, our house

Beer

   First place: milk stout, Wynkoop Brewery, Denver, CO

   Runner up: chocolate stout, Vine Street Pub, Denver, CO

Food from places we’ve been before

   First place: wings, Anchor Bar, Buffalo, NY

   Runner up: PMP, Shortstop Deli, Ithaca, NY

Food we’ve had, but not from these places

   First place: muffaletta, Mother’s Grocery, New Orleans, LA

   Runner up: pizza, Beau Jo’s, Idaho Springs, CO

   Honorable mention: lobster, Thurston’s Lobster Pound, Bernard, ME

New food experiences

   First place: frozen custard, Ted Drewes, St. Louis, MO

   Runner up: cold Italian soup, Stock Market, Granville Market, Vancouver

   Honorable mention: scones, Jeremiah’s, Salt Lake City, UT

Category: Experiences

I can’t think of categories for all of these, so in no particular order:

waking up at 4:45am for sunrise at the Grand Canyon, sitting on the edge of the canyon as the sun came up, with no one else around; walking around the French Quarter in New Orleans with a giant cup of frozen alcoholic drink at 11am; Katherine and Jevon’s entire wedding weekend; Margarita Monday in St. Louis, with Ted Drewes to cap it off; hanging out at King Street Pub in Seattle; standing in the Great Room in Carlsbad Caverns; grocery shopping with Rosemary in LA, and hanging out with her and Greg that evening; sampling 20+ beers in as many hours in Denver; standing on a cliff on the Oregon coast; driving through Zion National Park; watching bats swarm from under a bridge in Houston; dinner in San Diego; the first great sunset we saw, at the side of the road in northern California; the herd of bison crossing the road within 5 feet of our car at the Grand Canyon; playing speed Uno across the country; our meal at Summerton Diner; driving through the vast openness in Montana; seeing houses with spray painted markings left on them from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans; taking pictures of lightning in Guadalupe Mountains National Park; the fog so dense we couldn’t see the ocean in Newport; and probably many more that I”m forgetting.

And that concludes our awards, our trip, and our blog (at least for now).  I want to thank everyone who followed us on our trip, everyone who bought us gas, everyone who made suggestions of places to visit, everyone who left us comments to get excited about, everyone who put us up for a night (or more), and anyone who made it this far in this post.  We absolutely loved this trip, and are so happy we were able to do so much in such a (relatively) short time.  So, that’s it!  Until our next trip…

Category: Preparation

Things that wasted space in the car

   First place: exercise gear

   Runner up: camp stove

Best purchases made for the trip

   First place: Alfred’s camera

   Runner up: wireless broadband internet card

   Honorable mention: tie between my motion sickness bracelets (aka my “I can’t hang” bracelets) and our inflatable sleeping pad

Things we should have brought

   First place: another pillow

   Runner up: more warm clothes – specifically warm clothes to sleep in, most nights we camped I had to sleep in my jeans, not so comfortable

Category: Camping

Worst camping experience

   First place: Crater Lake National Park – pulling in after midnight and finding the campgrounds full, having minor breakdowns over what to do, finally setting up a tent illegally next to a hiking trail, getting little sleep because we were afraid of getting caught, and waking up at dawn to pack up before the rangers found us

  Runner up: Yellowstone National Park – it was so windy that the rain fly strap scraped against the tent all night and kept Alfred awake thinking bears were outside, then as we packed up we found our tent poles had snapped

Best camping experience

   First place: Acadia National Park – we called ahead to get one of the last spots for the night, were set up before dark, and had running water and toilets!

   Runner up: Grand Teton National Park – all of the campgrounds were full, we panicked a bit, then found a gorgeous spot up on a mountain overlooking the Tetons and valley below

Category: Location, location, location

Best unplanned detour

  First place: Los Angeles

  Runner up: Oregon coast

Favorite stops suggested by others

   First place: Zion National Park

   Runner up: Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Parks

Places that didn’t meet our expectations

  First place: Crater Lake National Park – it’s a big lake.  In a crater.  End of story.

  Runner up: Glacier National Park – too far out of our way, didn’t live up to the hype

Places I want to move

   First place: San Diego, CA

   Runner up: Boulder, CO

   Honorable mention: Washington, DC

Time for a brief intermission – back with more, after the break!

My posting rate is certainly dropping, mainly because I went back to work today.  Yes, it’s true, I’m still employed after a 6 week hiatus.    Anyway, we spent the rest of yesterday at home, sampling our smoked goods.  We had the smoker running all day, and just kept putting things in and taking them out as they were finished.  We tried cheese (good flavor, strange texture), almonds and walnuts (both good), peanuts (not so good), stuffed peppers (interesting), and salt (really good), then had smoked chicken and pork sandwiches for dinner, along with 2 types of homemade cole slaw.  Heavenly.  We finished that up with some tiramisu (more successful than my attempt in Boston) as a birthday dessert for Doug, whose birthday is next week.  Since the shuttle launch was cancelled in the evening, we didn’t need to stay up so late, which was good after all that food put us into a coma.  We played a little Mario Kart and went to bed.  After all, I had to wake up early this morning.

Alfred was still off of work today, so he and Doug got to hang out all day.  They were nice enough to come take me out to lunch at O’Steen’s, where we had awesome fried shrimp, hush puppies, and corn fritters.  Oh, and their pink sauce, which I could eat with a spoon.  After lunch I had to go back to work, but the boys were able to do a little sightseeing.  They rode the trolley, visited Ripley’s, and then came for a personal tour of my museum from yours truly.  They had the most fun at the museum, as far as I understand.

I came home from work to find Doug and Alfred both hard at work on dinner.  They used some of the smoked onion, eggplant, and tomato from yesterday to make manicotti.  It’s in the oven as we speak.  We’re pairing that with some Caesar salad (we had a little extra dressing the other night) and some really delicious wine.  It’s going to be so sad when Doug leaves tomorrow.  Then our vacation will really feel like it’s over.

St. Augustine/Palm Coast Photo Album

I suppose I have to admit that our trip is over.  I go back to work tomorrow, Alfred goes back Thursday.  And so, by popular demand, here are some statistics from the trip.  Let me know if I missed anything in this post.  I’ll recap some of our favorites (and least favorites) in another post.

Miles driven: 12,763.4

Approximate driving time: 272 hours, 36 minutes

States visited/driven through: 37 (including DC)

Gallons of gas consumed: 475 (approximately)

Pictures taken: 6,466

Wildlife seen: deer, black bear, turkey, elk, California condors, bison, seals, mountain goats, jackrabbit, armadillo, antelope

Car maintenance: 3 oil changes, 1 new battery, 1 new tire, 1 rotate and balance

Marriages witnessed: 1

National parks visited: 19

Breweries visited: 8

Farmers markets visited: 4

Number of nights spent in hotels: 7

Number of nights spent camping: 11

Number of nights staying with friends (new and old) or family: 25

Alcohol consumed: incalculable

Calories consumed: inconceivable

Our meal last night consisted of Alfred’s famous ribs (using some barbecue sauce that we bought in Kansas City), grilled artichokes, and Caesar salad (complete with homemade dressing and croutons).  All that, paired with some great red wine, was just a fantastic meal.  We didn’t eat until about 9:00 I think, but it was so worth it. 

After dinner we had some time to kill, which some more wine and some TV helped with.  Alfred took a little nap.  At about quarter after one, we headed up to the beach by our house to watch the shuttle launch.  We’re about 50 or 60 miles north of Cape Canaveral, so we can generally see the launch pretty well.  Being at the beach at that hour was pretty surreal.  The waves were crashing really loudly, the sky was clear, so we could see a lot of stars, and there was lightening far out to sea.  Definitely a new experience.  During the twenty or so minutes that we were there, the clouds rolled in pretty quickly, and unfortunately the launch was scrubbed.  Bummer.

This morning we were woken up by the pest control company, coming to inspect for termites.  Doug going for a run inspired me to exercise, so that’s good, I suppose.  Need to start burning off all the barbecue, beer, and ice cream we’ve eaten over the past 6 weeks!  Of course, right now we’re hard at work on yet another exciting meal.  We’ve got the smoker going outside, and the boys are experimenting with a whole bunch of different foods.  Apparently, we missed cooking!

St. Augustine/Palm Coast Photo Album

We all slept in this morning, seeing as how we didn’t go to bed until 2:00.  The rest of the morning was spent doing errands: laundry, cleaning, unpacking.  In other words, nothing fun.  By about 1:00 we were ready to roll, so we decided to head up to St. Augustine.  Doug used to work at a winery in Napa, so we took him to experience some Florida wine at San Sebastian winery.  We got to do the tour and tasting and everything.  The winery employee gave a little pop quiz about wine, and of course Doug got all the questions right.  He was only allowed to win one prize though, after that he was just whispering the answers to me.  The wine was decent, too.

Next we took a little driving tour of the town, taking Doug by a couple of places to see (including the apartment we used to live in).  Along the way we spotted the fort (Castillo de San Marcos) and decided to go inside.  We were there just in time to hear a talk about weapons and defense in the 1800s, so that was cool.  It kept Alfred interested, at least!  He got some good pictures, too. 

After the fort, we were done with history for the day.  We started walking down St. George Street and quickly decided on Sangrias for a drink.  We were there during happy hour, and our waiter was nice enough to give us 2 for 1 pitchers of sangria!  So we had 2 different pitchers of sangria, plus some tapas that were like Cuban sandwiches rolled into tortillas.  We sat on the balcony, enjoyed our food and drink, and people watched.  It was quite pleasant.

Once we were good and sangria-ed up, we started making plans for dinner.  Alfred had started ribs earlier in the morning, so we needed to make sides to go along with them.  We stopped for groceries and supplies on the way home, and are now at home and almost ready to eat.  Doug’s a really great cook, so we’ve been playing sous chef for him.  He picked out some wine for us to drink, too.  Hopefully we’ll still be awake and sober enough to go up to the beach in a few hours – there’s a shuttle launch at 1:30am!

St. Augustine/Palm Coast Photo Album

It turns out that most barbecue places are closed on Sunday.  Actually, a lot that we found were only open 2 or 3 days a week.  In other words, barbecue was out for dinner.  Instead we found Summerton Diner, in Summerton, SC.  This place was crazy.  We started our meal with a piece of strawberry pie, since it was the last piece left, along with some of the sweetest sweet tea I’ve ever had.  For our second course we had a basket of cornbread and the most amazing homemade biscuits ever.  While waiting for our chicken to fry, our waitress brought out some congealed fruit salad (i.e. jello with fruit and cream cheese).  The main course was fried chicken along with a whole mess of sides: squash casserole (phenomenal), mac and cheese, sweet potato souffle, mashed potatoes (made with chicken fat), and pole beans.  For dessert, the best banana pudding I’ve ever eaten.  Oh, and we took some pecan pie to go.  All this for $40, including tax and tip, for all three of us.  Absolutely fantastic.  We were all stuffed to the brim, and buzzing hard on sugar, but it was so worth it.  One of the best meals of the trip.

The rest of the drive was rather uneventful.  We made it back to our house at about 1:00am.  The only issue we found was mold in Alfred’s car.  Apparently, moisture got in somehow.

We unloaded about half the stuff from the car, then gave up and went to bed.  Only two more days of vacation before we have to go back to our real lives.

Last night, after our amazing burgers, we had all sorts of big plans to go out and drink.  Seeing as how it was our last night on the road, it would have been appropriate.  But Adam had to run into his office for a few minutes, then we cracked open a bottle of wine, and then… we never left.  So, a low key night in the D of C.  Probably better than getting drunk anyway though, considering we have a 12 hour drive ahead of us today.

This morning, Adam brought us to Osman and Joe’s, a diner near his house, for breakfast.  We sat at the counter, so we got to watch them make our breakfasts on this little griddle that could fit in our kitchen.  The pancakes were awesome.  After breakfast we said goodbye to Adam, then went to pick up Doug.  He’s coming home with us to visit for a few days before he flies back to California.  We loaded him in, and were off.

After enduring a bit of traffic on our way out of the city, we started planning our first stop.  The three of us are all fans of barbecue, and since we’re going through the Carolinas it only seemed natural to try some.  For our first lunch, we stopped at King’s Barbecue in Petersburg, VA (south of Richmond).  You could smell the smoke as we pulled into the parking lot.  We all got chopped pork, plus sides, and it was awesome.  The sauce totally made it.  It was a vinegar and tomato based sauce, so not too tangy but not too thick and sweet.  They also had sweet potato sticks, they were fried with a creamy delicious sweet potato center.  All very tasty.  We waddled out, and are now headed south on 95 again.  We’ll basically be on 95 from just outside DC until about 5 miles from our house.  Next stop: South Carolina BBQ!

Washington DC Photo Album

Alfred lived in Washington for a total of about a year and a half, back in college and then after he graduated.  I lived here for a couple of months too, during the summer after Alfred graduated.  DC was actually where we were originally planning to live after I graduated, though as we know, that fell through.  In other words, we’ve seen a lot of the attractions here already, and had a couple of places we wanted to go see today.  Mainly, Tortilla Coast, a Mexican restaurant that has all you can eat fajitas on Saturdays, and pitchers of frozen margaritas.  Adam and Doug (another friend from Cornell, the one coming home with us to visit for a few days) joined us as well.  It was as good as we remembered. 

After lunch Adam had some errands to run, so Alfred, Doug and I started walking along the mall to do some sightseeing.  By the time we got to the Air and Space Museum, it had started to rain, so we went inside to look around and stay dry.  We learned about flight for awhile, then decided to brave the elements and went next door to the Hirshhorn Gallery.  Here we enjoyed some fine art and culture.  After that we were pretty finished with learning, so we arranged to meet up with Adam again at a bar in Foggy Bottom.  That’s where this second picture is from.  I don’t remember the name of it, but it had pitchers of Yuengling, always a plus. 

Doug had dinner plans, so we dropped him off and the three of us went to get our own dinner: burgers at Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington.  Adam said these were the best burgers he’d ever had and wow, were they good.  I had one with bleu cheese and onions, Alfred got one with jalapenos.  They have so many combinations to choose from, we could probably eat there for weeks and not try everything.  They had root beer on tap, too.  Good stuff.

Washington DC Photo Album

After leaving Philly, we were on our way towards Washington, DC.  We decided to make a quick detour to Baltimore to visit the only famous landmark there we knew: Charm City Cakes.  You may know it from the Food Network show, Ace of Cakes.  My sister is a pretty big fan of the show, so we went by and took pictures.  Alfred took a couple of me looking embarrassed in front of the entrance, but I liked this one better because you can see the black plastic they taped over the windows.  They’re all hard core private and stuff.  Other than that, it looks just like it does on TV.  We didn’t see anyone there though, except for some weird guy swinging an umbrella out front.

From there we continued to DC.  Luckily, there can be traffic there virtually anytime, day or night, so we managed to run into quite a bit of it.  We finally made it to Adam’s house, where we’re staying while we’re here.  Adam’s a friend of ours from Cornell.  Adam and Alfred actually lived together for about a year in DC after they graduated.  We were meeting some other friends for dinner at Southside 815 in Old Town (Alexandria, VA) so we drove together.  We were meeting Troy and Kasey, who both went to Cornell, and meeting Alison, Troy’s girlfriend, for the first time.  It was a really fun night, lots of catching up and whatnot.  As has often been the case when we’re out with friends on this trip, we didn’t take a single picture tonight.  We’ll try to do better tomorrow.

Washington DC Photo Album