CanYouFind.Us

Before we left town again, we were able to celebrate with Averi Clemons as she was about to turn 6. They threw a rollerskating party which made for a great Saturday evening, and a few nice pictures! Scroll through the gallery and see how we enjoyed her special day.

We are now geocachers. One of Karen’s friends mentioned geocaching on her website, and she quickly googled it. Within minutes, I had an email telling me she wants to try this thing out. Less than a week later, we have a new handheld GPS unit being mailed to us.

The quick and dirty of it all, is to think of this as a high tech scavenger hunt. You are giving a set of latitude and longitude coordinates, and try to locate that spot. When you get to that point, you look for the hidden box, where you can sign the log and claim you were there.

Today, we set out on our first hunt. We looked around on geocaching.com for a while, and realized there is one right up the street from us. Today we grab the coats, leash up the dog, and convince our niece to come with us. I light a cigar, and we hit the road. As we approach the park we start checking the GPS, and realize it’s not doing what we want. The model we bought, was preloaded with these cache locations. Of course we manage to pick one that ISN’T in our unit. We read the clues and look and look and look. I’m pulling up google maps on my phone, and we just KNOW we are in the right area, but can’t seem to find it. Eventually, we decide to call it off since we can’t ‘prove’ we are even in the right area. If we had a GPS device that would confirm we were in the right area-it might be possible. We walked back home, grabbed another print out, and packed into the truck.

A few minutes later, the TravelingGeoTrio +Niece, were headed to another site. Again, we have the problem with our unit not able to confirm which area to park in (and yes, it did actually matter at a park of this size) and we finally pick one. As we are walking along the trails (going only by the descriptions we found online) I start toying around with the device a bit. Hidden deep in the menus, only found by hitting some weird button combos, I find it. Just what was needed to save us-our actual location. I could go into a lot more detail on how this managed to save us-but I imagine it’s fairly obvious how large of an advantage that was.

We found it. It took some looking, but that’s half the point! After that excitement was over, we drove back to the first spot and gave that another round. Care to guess what happened? Well, I’ll tell you-we found it. Well, sort of. We found the first leg of the hide. At the second spot we are sure we were in the right location-but the actual find evaded us. Don’t worry, we won’t give up. I am going to go back, but next time I will have a flashlight handy.

Till then, I think we figured out how to make our GPS device at least get us by, till we are ready to upgrade to a nice fancy model with a color touch screen. Maybe one with a camera?

and it was a great way to get back into the kitchen. Since we parked the RV nearly a full year ago, I haven’t been cooking all that much. On my short trips back home, I have typically reverted to our favorite recipes. I did try a great Armenian Pizza a few weeks ago (I really need to get that posted..) but a classic hearty chili will be my ‘welcome back’ post.

When you start trying to find a recipe for chili you face a lot of variables. Do you want it to be sweet, or spicy? Do you want it with or without beans? How about cubed meat versus ground meat?  This recipe was found on recipezaar.com and was filed as Kelly’s Chili. Her chili has won her 3 awards, and it is an amazing recipe that has plenty of wiggle room for personalization.

To make this Our Chili, I cut back on the brown sugar by 1 tablespoon, and added one more can of beans. We also prefered the heat of leaving the seeds and ribs in the jalapenos; you can deseed those to pull out some of the spice, or add additional peppers for more heat. The recipe I have posted reflects the alterations that I had made, so feel free to customize it for yourself!

Chili is such a wonderful dish to kick off the fall. Our giant stockpot filled with this comfort food is going to be reused for many meals. Serve it over Fritos for a crunchy meal, or wrap it up in a tortilla with cheese and onions for a handheld-sit on couch type of meal. We paired ours with a light salad and a firm Ozark Style cornbread. That was my first attempt at a cast iron cornbread, and it went perfectly with the chili.

Wow. I almost don’t know where to begin this post. I’m so extremely disappointed with my most recent DISservice at this place. But before I get to that, I’ll elaborate with a small amount of back-story.

Nearly a year ago we had gone to this location to pick up burgers and onion rings for a group of 4. We were all quite hungry as it was getting late in the afternoon, and nobody had managed lunch yet. I ordered 4 Jr. Double Cheeseburgers, 2 onion rings, and 2 orders of tater tots. 10 minutes later when we are sitting down to eat, we open the bags and realize they had failed to give us our onion rings. Their reported ‘award winning’ onion rings, and they shafted us out of 2 orders. Lovely.

Being that I’m a full time traveler, and a full time lover of local foods, I was more deeply saddened by this discovery. There is entirely too much good food, and way too many good places, to be able to go back to a place with such poor service. I’m always in pursuit of the favorite local haunts-and I hate to find one that can’t even be consistent-or give me what I paid for!

So for over 8 months, I refused to go back to Hi-Boy. Several people told me I was just being absurd, and one experience was no reason to totally write off a place. Today, I finally let my girlfriend convince me of that fact. I gave  up, and loaded into the truck for some Hi-Boy.

When I pulled in I was very pleased to notice they had some new menu additions. They now offer fried pickles (which I don’t care for-but my better half loves them) and the thing I’m most addicted to-sweet tea. I placed my order and pulled around for my total and my food. When I get home I grab a few plates and open up the bag…only to find that I had yet again, been shorted the onion rings!

Normally I’m very quick to write a company about excellent service, but slower to complain about poor service. I know I can be extremely critical about my food when I go out, so sometimes I will try to write off my complaints as me just being over the top. However when a place consistently fails to give you what you ordered and paid for-I think it’s time to spread the word about how lacking that establishment is. Their burgers are good, but not good enough to add in the cost for sides that you never see.

I finally had time to get back up to Stone Henge, but the weather wasn’t the greatest. It was chilly and windy-and obviously a bit gloomy. Regardless, I took quite a few pictures-several of which I’m quite pleased with.

After a very long day of flights, I made it back after just 7.5 months away. I do want to find the genius that had the idea to put a TOUCH SCREEN video game system into the headrests of international flights. Instead of 6 hours of sleep, I was greeted to 6 hours of the guy behind me tapping the screen furiously.

Needless to say, I was rather tired once I began my 5 hour drive to the hotel. I hadn’t managed to grab the big camera out of the suitcase, but I did have my new work camera close by-which was great when I rounded a hill and spotted Stonehenge!

Turned out there was a major mix-up with my hotel, and right now I have no idea at all where I will be staying as of tomorrow. I did take a few more pictures from my current hotel, and the view it has of the beach nearby.

Enjoy the pictures.