Dear Moby,
Please just shut up and play your music. It is very entertaining, but there is no need to prove to the world how stupid you are.
Regards,
Everyone.
Travelogue
March 24-27 Grand Rivers, KY
It has been a while, but I thought that I would write about it anyway. March the 24-27, Amy and I took a short and much-needed weekend trip to Kentucky with Brandon and Miranda. It couldn’t have been a better trip. We got a cottage on Kentucky Lake, at a place called Lighthouse Landing. LL is in Grand Rivers, KY, and is located at the north border of the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. This is really the first time Amy and I have taken a weekend off to go anywhere other than Mobile since we moved to Huntsville.
LBL is a great place to go. The park is huge. It took us over an hour to drive through the length of it. We got to see many different types of wild animals… Bison, elk, deer, turkeys, skunks… All I can say is that Bison are freaking huge. The first one I saw was from a distance, and I just thought he was a particularly hilly part of the terrain. I was quite surprised to see this hill stand up and walk around.
We left from our house on Thursday morning, drove to Nashville, then got onto I-24. About 6 miles from the TN/KY border, Brandon called back and wanted to stop for an early lunch. He saw a Subway sign, and headed for it. When we got to the Subway, it turned out to be one of those Subway-in-a-gas-station thinggies that I typically distrust. In the process of ordering, we worked-out that some weeks previous, this particular deli had severed all afflilation with Subway. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the worst meal of the trip. Fortunately, no one got sick.
We got to Lighthouse Landing about 3 hours and 20 minutes after leaving home. The place is sort of 3/4 marina with %25 cottages and RV campground attached. The weather was still just a little too cold
for most people at that point. Which means that it was perfect for me, and had the side-effect of keeping most of the people away. We also got a good discount on the cottage.
The cottage was about the same as staying in a fully furnished extended-stay hotels. The kitchen came fully equiped. Stove. Microwave. Toaster. Coffee Maker. Freaking dish washer. There was some wicker furniture, a table, a bedroom, and a bathroom on the bottom floor. The top floor had a bedroom and a foyer with a pull-out couch. You could have easily had 6 people stay here without too much stepping on of toes. Most importantly, there was a very nice Weber “One Touch” grill outside, which we used regularly.
The first thing Amy wanted to do was to go check out the Bison. So, we did, and killed most of the afternoon driving around the park, checking things out. Brandon and Miranda took their bikes out for a ride instead. We met back at basecamp at about 4, then drove to Paducah, KY for food, since none of us had packed any. We ended up eating at Applebees for some reason. After that, we hit up the Wal-Mart for things to grill over the next couple of days. Left Wal-Mart, and went on a beer hunt. Selection was rather limited, but they DID have Chimay White, so I can’t call it a bust. I got a bottle of the Chimay, Brandon got one too, plus a couple of Sam Smiths (one IPA, one other I don’t remember).
Later that night, we fired up the grill. We ate brats, and drank good beer (including my brown ale and abbey ale) from metal camping cups I had brought. Man, it was great. The weather was cold enough to keep those metal cups and the beer in them cold and quaffable. Perhaps I’ll have people harass me about wasting Chimay white with brats around the grill. All I can say is that it was damn good beer, and I’ll probably never forget the experience. The only problem is that we drank it all up the first night.
Friday we went horse-back riding. I hate horse-back riding. There is something about the smell of horse crap and hay that I find… disgusting. It cost way too much money, and the horses… well just put it this way, if the horses had been donkeys, you would have described them as “sad assed.” They had been taken care of, but were just really old and slow. I took great delight in making mine walk through the mud when ever he tried to walk around it and pin me against a tree. Fortunately, the saddles were western, not English… so I didn’t fall off.
More grilling Friday night. Dry county. No beer run. I really liked that Weber grill. I think I’m going to buy one. I actually managed to get grill marks. Excellent.
Brandon and Miranda left Saturday morning because they had peeps coming into town for Easter (maybe peeps wasn’t the best choice of words). Amy and I went back to Paducah because she wanted to go the big fabric store. We got there only about 20 minutes before they closed, but she wasn’t disappointed. The place was huge, and her eyes lit up as we walked in. I wish we would have had longer to stay there. It was painful for me, but she was digging it the same way I dig poking around a record store for hours.
Did more beer hunting in Paducah. Jackpot. Found this place called “Proof Brothers.” Too bad Brandon had left already. Came back with many beers, including but not limited to:
- Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (INCREDIBLE! Scored a 97 in the latest “All About Beer” Magazine I had seen before going)
- Anchor Brewery Old Foghorn
- Unibrou Terrible
- Bellhaven Wee Heavy (Very good too)
- Scotch de Silly
- Ommengang Three Philosophers
- Fuller’s Vintage Ale (Looking forward to this one. Only 90,000 were bottled. Mine is #66000-something )
- Stone Brewery 8th Anniversary Ale
- A four pack of historic beers from Scottland, including “Alba — Scotch Pine Ale”
They had many more, and I could have spent HOURS and thousands of dollars there. Fortunately restraint prevailed.
After that, we drove across a very scary bridge over the Ohio River into Illinois over US Hwy. 45. We ended up in a place called “Metropolis.” They had posters and statues of Superman everywhere. Truth be told, the place was more like Smallville than Metropolis. It was entertaining for about 2 minutes.
Easter Sunday. Packed-kit and headed home. Took about an hour and a half longer because we drove down through the park. Did I mention that place is huge? I think we’ll probably go back in October. I’m already saving my pennies for the next beer hunt.
People are just weird….
So, I was at work this morning, cleaning my French press coffee pot at the sink. Here is a picture of it.
So, I'm standing at the sink, rinsing the thing out, and this guy comes up and asks me if I'm cleaning a fishing pole.
Uhhh…
