Open Water Grill was literally a stone’s throw from the condo. Now, the original website I found for OWG did not have a menu on it and when I googled around, I found a Yellow Pages site that had the menu. My daughter was excited that there was BBQ brisket on the menu. (Our last vacation last year was to the Wisconsin Dells and we had dinner at Paul Bunyan’s and we had the BBQ brisket and she was quite taken with it.) Well, turns out that menu was from 2015 and there was NO BRISKET !!!!
My daughter ended up getting chicken tenders and hush puppies. They were really good she said. I got the fish ‘n chips. They are made with the catch of the day and I’m not sure what it was, but it was great. The crust was kind of a combination of breading and batter. When cut with a fork, it didn’t all crumble and fall off. Came with an unusual spicy kale slaw that was good.
This was an expensive dinner. With tip it was about $70. That’s how the food bill adds up quickly !
We took another mighty fine family vacation this year and as we did last year, we went to the Outer Banks.
And as we did last year, we stayed over night at Beckley, West Virginia rather than driving straight through as we did the first time going to the Banks. (Will never do that again !!)
It was a pretty good drive. 9 hours and 21 minutes with just a couple of quick stops at the Speedway gas stations in Greenfield, IN and Chillicohte, OH for gas, snacks and bathroom breaks. The weather was fine and there were no traffic issues of note. I have a new car, as my last one was totaled in an accident and one of the really neat features is that I can plug my phone into it and use Giggle Maps with GPS !!! I used to print up maps and mark out any major intersections or turns and the such, but this is a real game changer. I think the best part is it I can see traffic issues on my route and plan accordingly. That came in very nicely on the drive home.
On the the trip home the previous year we stopped at a “Bojangle’s” restaurant. The family still says that it was the best chicken at any fast food place we have ever had !! So on this trip, I made sure to map out all of the Bojangle’s on our route and as luck would have it, there was a new one in Beckley, WV !
I did have to wait a bit for my order and the pretty girl added a couple of pieces for my time. As great as the chicken is, the biscuits are even better. The fries are good, but because they are seasoned fries, I can’t call them great. Now, truth be told, for dinner I just ate the fries and my biscuit, hard to believe, but I really didn’t have much of an appetite. The good news is, I finished the chicken on the next day’s drive to the The Banks and gosh darn if that chicken is just about as good cold as it is hot.
Everyone has their own super secret way of cooking a steak.
I don’t have a secret.
It’s really just not too difficult.
I use a gas grill, have for almost 30 years.
I like it for the convenience and the ability to control the heat.
So here I go with my 16 minute steak:
On this day, it was filet.
Never my first choice and one of my least favorite cuts of the cow. But the in-laws were coming over and the grocery store had filet on sale for $4.99 for 6oz. Much higher than my price point for steak, but that’s what I got. Filet is just always too dry for my taste.
There are just two ways to cook a steak:
Rare
Medium rare
Anything beyond that and you should just go have a boneless skinless chicken breast.
My dad still lives in the house (for now) that my great grandfather bought about 1890. Separate from that house property is a small piece of land that is wooded about a mile away. It was fairly common back then to have a plot of woods for firewood, lumber and hunting.
The red square is my dad’s land, and the yellow, is the pathway. One of the downsides is that there is no direct access from the county road. We have been using that pathway since about 1890. Now, about five years ago, the $@#!^$@ jackasses that were leasing the land that had the pathway on it put up a gate at the county road entrance and locked it. They also plowed up most of the pathway and were preventing access to my dad’s land. About $5000 later in court, we had access to the pathway legally back. (Access Easement).
We used to go out to “the woods” when were kids with my dad to get firewood or dig up a tree to replant, but I hadn’t been out there for probably 25 years. My brother on the other hand deer hunts out there every year. Since the little piece of woods in yellow, just next to the red square, is not our property, it is not maintained by the %#@*!&@$ jackasses. It’s not a long walk to park off the county road and walk in, but the path in through the little piece of woods was not passable. (The court order also prohibited us from parking on the ^$$@*#^ jackass property.)
Soooooooooooooooooooo, I can stand at a firing line at the range or at my brother’s ALL-DAY-LONG, but I want to take my skills up a notch. I wanted to set up a shooting course in the woods. (Plus it would be just dang fun!!). Since I wanted something, I would have to do the work to get it.
This video is the “Before” shot.
I had shorts on so I did not go in too far for fear of any of about 30 plants that would result in me being very itchy.
Now, I planned on shooting the same day and brought my IView glasses and GoPro for filming, and I was planning on documenting myself working. Well, once again I greatly overestimated my ability to do manual labor. The work itself was not really that hard, but since it had rained the night before and the woods were so dense that no wind blew through, it was like being in a tropical rain forest. Added to that I was wearing a hoodie with the hood up to keep the mosquito’s off. While the mosquito’s were not a problem I left the hoodie on just so I wouldn’t waste time swatting bugs while I was working. After about 30 minutes, I was literally soaking wet. I finished after about three hours of work and was in absolutely no condition to do any shooting !
The above video was the “After” shot of me driving in the next day
This is the drive from the county road to the woods:
I drive a small crossover and is not really made for four wheeling. But as long as it’s dry, it should be OK to get in. This video was the day after I cleared the path. The video is at 2X speed to make it a little less boring.
I hauled in a weed wacker and chainsaw to do the work.
Just waiting for the next weekend to get out to the woods again !!
Bacon Time !!!!!! 