What a start for Team USA in the World Cup last night! Kim and I took the kids down to Fountain Square to watch the match versus Ghana. All of the round-robin games will be televised there on the big screen and last night there were easily thousands in attendance.
GOAL!
The next two events are Sunday, June 22nd from 12 PM – 9 PM, game time at 6 PM, and Thursday, June 26th from 11 AM – 4 PM, game time at 12 PM. I’m hoping to make it down for another fun game watch party.
While in the Great Smoky Mountains area last week we rented a cabin from Timber Tops. They offer everything from small one bedroom cabins to massive fifteen bedroom lodges, most of them hot tubs and amazing views. I was getting ready to pull the trigger on a standard one bedroom cabin but took one last look through the offerings and found a cabin called Bearly Wet.
Indoor Pool
The biggest selling point with Bearly Wet is the indoor pool on the lower level of the cabin! It also has one private bedroom and a loft space with two additional queen beds. Including a pullout sofa, the cabin sleeps eight.
Enjoying The Pool
For most of our stay it was just my wife and two young kids in the cabin, though her brother and his girlfriend did stop by on our last night. We still had plenty of space, though it should be noted that the loft does not have a bathroom, the main level bathroom is inside the bedroom, and the only other bathroom is downstairs adjacent to the pool. This isn’t an issue for one family, though it could be problematic for a couple of families trying to share the cabin.
Hot Tub With A View
We had an excellent stay in the Bearly Wet cabin and Timber Tops was very easy to work with. In fact we were offered a discount special when calling them which was not offered online. I would be sure to give them a call before booking to see what they can do for you. Also I would not hesitate to rent from them again, and this particular cabin comes highly recommended.
After an exhausting day in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, my wife and I decided to order carry out for dinner. While she made a quick trip through a nearby grocery store, I placed an order over the phone with Bennett’s Pig Bar-B-Que. Placing the order was simple and the kind woman on the other end of the line said that our meals would be ready in five or ten minutes, which I think is a really quick turnaround. Upon arrival at the restaurant ten minutes later, our food was ready and the transaction couldn’t have been easier.
Ultimate Pork Shoulder Sandwich
Back at our cabin, I opened up the bag to find our individually packed meals. I ordered their ultimate pork shoulder sandwich with grilled onions, topped with sweet honey-bbq sauce, and served on garlic toast with pickles ($11.99). This included two sides and I went with fries and coleslaw. The meat was moist and tender. The sauce was too sweet for my taste, but the onions on my sandwich helped balance it out a little. The fries were still pretty crisp, even after traveling awhile in the Styrofoam container, and the slaw was pretty good as well.
Bar-B-Que Pork Shoulder
I thought I ordered my wife the Carolina pork sandwich ($10.49), but when we opened her box there was no coleslaw on top of the sandwich. No worries though, I just gave her some of mine to top off her sandwich. To round out her platter she chose bar-b-que beans along with macaroni and cheese. The sandwich was roughly the same as mine, just on different bread and with slaw instead of onions. The beans were good but a little too saucy and sweet. The macaroni and cheese was surprisingly great.
Overall I would have liked to have tried some of the other sauces that the restaurant features, as I was not a big fan of the sweet honey-bbq sauce. Besides that fact, the food was good and I would not hesitate to eat at Bennett’s again. The service was also top-notch.
My family and I spent a few days last week exploring the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and surrounding areas. Our first full day in the area was completely dedicated to the park. We first made the hour or so drive from our cabin to Cades Cove.
Black Bear
Within the first fifteen minutes we had our first wildlife spotting along the eleven mile Cades Cove motor trail, a black bear. The bear was a little tough to see in the fairly thick wooded area, but take my word that the black spot in the center of my picture is indeed a bear. We also saw a few turkeys and white-tailed deer.
Methodist Church
In addition to the chance of seeing various wildlife in Cades Cove, there are a number of historic buildings dating through the 1800’s and very early 1900’s. The kids seemed to enjoy exploring the Cable Mill area the most.
Cades Cove
Cades Cove is one of the most popular areas of the park, and traffic can move very slowly at times. We spent between two and three hours in the area and only made a couple of stops along the way.
Newfound Gap
All of my passengers in the car fell asleep pretty quickly after leaving the Cades Cove area. I decided to keep exploring the park and drove along the Little River Road to the Newfound Gap Road. I followed Newfound Gap all the way up to Clingmans Dome, at which time everyone was up and ready for a little more exploring.
Mount Le Conte
The hike to the top of Clingman’s Dome is only a half mile, and it is paved, but it is really steep and provided a pretty good workout as I pushed our double jogging stroller all the way up the trail and to the top of the observation tower. At the top we had 360 degree views of the entire area, including Mount Le Conte, the third highest peak in the park.
Clingmans Dome
Clingmans Dome is actually the highest point in the park, and it is really cool that it is so accessible for all to see. I wish the sky would have been a little clearer, but I could still make out the cities of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge with my naked eyes.
Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Trail also crosses the area at the top of Clingmans Dome. As we were leaving the observation tower, we saw a group of four backpackers making their way along the trail, which was cool to see. Having visited the two most popular areas on the park on our first day, we spent the following day exploring Gatlinburg before returning again to the park the following day for a quick hike, which I will write about in the coming days.
Clingmans Dome Family Shot
This past weekend I took my wife and two kids out to the Nelsonville Music Festival for our first visit. Not only was it our first time at the festival it was our first time in the Hocking Hills area of Ohio, but for sure it will not be the last time. The area is full of wooded, rolling terrain, along with plenty of little towns along the way. Nelsonville is one of those towns, which is home to the Hocking College, site for the music festival.
Frank Turner
Jason Isbell
The four-day festival kicked off at 6 PM Thursday. After making the less than three-hour drive from Cincinnati, and then settling into the cabin that would server as our home for the next three nights, we made our way to the festival for a couple of hours to enjoy the sounds of Frank Turner and Jason Isbell. I was already a fan of Frank Turner, but had never heard much of Jason Isbell, other than knowing that he used to be in the Drive By Truckers. I left the festival a big fan of his and will be downloading his catalog soon.
Shakey Graves
The Men Porch Sitting
Friday we made our way to the festival site in the mid afternoon. The first act we caught was Shakey Graves, and he made a huge impression on me. I immediately thought his solo performance sounded a lot like Xavier Rudd, who I really enjoy. He had a couple of friends join him for some of his performance, but I actually liked his solo work better. We also caught performances by Grupo Fantasma, The Men, and a local group by the name of Total Blam Blams before retiring back to the cabin to rest up for a big Saturday.
Festival Babies
We’re no strangers to taking children to music festivals, and from what I’ve seen this has to be one of the most family friendly music festivals out there. There is a really interesting children’s zone with various activities throughout the day. Plus the Robbins Crossing Historic Village offers a handful of cabins and trees to escape the heat and explore. There were a ton of kids in attendance and many brought along great toys to share with everyone.
Pokey LaFarge Cabin Performance
No-Fi Cabin
Kid’s Zone
We originally intended to arrive in the middle of the afternoon again on Saturday. But after realizing that The Avett Brothers set wouldn’t end until at least 11:30 or likely later, we decided to hang at the cabin until the temperatures dropped a little bit. We were still able to catch the No BS! Brass Band, Pokey LaFarge, and personal favorite The Head & The Heart before enjoying the entire Avett Brothers set. Our plan worked our really well.
Hula
The Avett Brothers
Group Shot
I was really impressed by our first visit to the Nelsonville Music Festival, and I know everyone else in our group was too. We had six kids between the four couples and everyone one of us has already said that we should make this a yearly trip. The only thing I wish I could change would be the headliners set times, as I wish they were a bit earlier so the kids could try to enjoy them as well.
We’ve been spending a lot of time at the lake over the last couple of months. This winters very frigid temperatures left us with some busted pipes that needed to be replaced. Fortunately that work is mostly complete and we were able to actually enjoy the lake on our last visit a couple of weekends ago.
Jr. Lifeguard On Duty
Paige’s First Lake Swim
Mother Son Kayak Trip
To kick off the holiday weekend, my family and I joined my brother and his girlfriend for my first Reds game of this year. The Cardinals were in town, which always brings excitement to the park. And it was a Fireworks Friday game with an impressive post-game fireworks show.
Craft Beer Bar
You may have read about the new 85 foot long bar at the Reds Brewery District inside Great American Ball Park this year. The massive bar with five draft towers is located along the third base line and offers 60 taps. Nearly half of the space is dedicated to local brews, which is pretty awesome!
Hot Stacks
The game was fairly crowded, but we still managed to find a bit of room to spread out. Our seats were in the sun/moon deck with a great view of the field, scoreboard, and the downtown skyline. We were also just a section from the stadiums iconic smokestacks, which erupt with flames after any Reds pitcher throws a strikeout. We were so close we could really feel the heat from these fireballs.
Beautiful Night
It’s hard to get the kids to sit in the seats for the entire game, but they made it through almost half of it before running off to find the play set, which was so crowded. My wife later found a somewhat hidden sandbox area, which was much quieter for our little ones. It was a beautiful night for a baseball game and was made even sweeter thanks to a thrilling 5-3 victory for the Reds!
After work this past Friday we met up with Kim’s dad and her brother Nick at Kings Island to get our season passes processed and ride a few rides. Even with our 7 PM arrival, we were able to squeeze in quite a few rides in just over a couple of hours time.
The new ride this year is called Banshee and it is a record breaking inverted coaster that reaches 68 miles per hour on nearly a mile of track. It also features seven inversions and a 150 foot drop. We were shocked to find just a fifteen minute wait! Nick and I took advantage of the situation and rode it twice, the second time from the front row. It is an amazing roller coaster and I will definitely ride it again this year.
WindSeeker
After Banshee we took a quick ride on the Racer before heading over to WindSeeker for my first ever ride on the 300 foot tall swing ride. The view from the top is pretty impressive and the ride was actually a little more scary that I had anticipated, despite only moving at 30 miles per hour.
Character Carousel
From there we headed straight for The Beast to make sure we got a ride in before the park closed. There really is nothing like riding The Beast at night. The way the track follows the contour of the wooden terrain and speeds through the tunnels is truly breathtaking.
Kim took the kids to Planet Snoopy while the rest of the were riding The Beast. We met up with them afterward and I was even able to squeeze in a last second ride with the kids on Trey’s favorite, the Woodstock Whirlybirds. He had already ridden it twice before, but he wanted a third ride with his dad. We may likely never see Kings Island as empty as it was on another Friday night this summer, so we had to do as much as we could before the fireworks capped off the night.
There is such an abundance of Thai restaurants near our house that there are a few that I’ve never tried. After this weekend I can finally scratch off Blue Elephant from that list. My wife called in a delivery order and about an hour later a variety of Thai dishes were on our table. Blue Elephant also specializes in sushi and Italian food, which I find very odd, though from looking at the menu again it appears that there are only a few Italian style dishes offered.
Our Buffet
We dined on the Thai style basil chicken, Thai spicy chicken, and Pra Ram, stir fry with a Thai peanut sauce ($12.95 each). The basil chicken was served with ground chicken, which I have never seen before. However it was a really tasty mix of flavors with green bean, onion, and bell peppers added to the mildly spicy sauce. The Thai spicy was indeed a spicy dish of red curry sauce with stir-fried chicken and mixed vegetables. This was my favorite of the night. The Pra Ram came dry with the peanut sauce on the side. The chicken was thin sliced and served over a bed of steamed veggies. I thought this one was a little on the bland side and was my least favorite.
My Plate
So, how does Blue Elephant stack up to Lemon Grass, Ruthai’s, Bangkok Bistro, etc? Overall I don’t think the food was quite as good as some of the other nearby restaurants, but it is still above average. However bonus points are awarded for being the only one that delivers to your door. For that reason alone, we will likely order from Blue Elephant again in the future.
My latest homebrew batch is now ready to enjoy. After the big brew day a few weeks back, the beer sat in the fermentation bucket for about two weeks before I added my dry hoping dose of simcoe hops and let that sit for another ten days or so. I then used a spare chest freezer with a temperature regulator to cold crash the beer down to roughly 37 degrees. I was hoping this would help filter the beer a bit since I didn’t have the right equipment for a secondary fermentation, but as you can see from the photo below, the beer is still really cloudy.
Hiss Hiss
I force carbonated the keg of beer for a few days and have enjoyed a couple of glasses recently. Despite the less than stellar look of the beer, the taste is easily my best homebrew yet. I’m attributing the pleasing results to my growing collection of brewing equipment as well as my increased experience with brewing techniques. Stop over for a pint sometime soon or else I’ll have to drink it all myself.
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