Ohio State game, bye to our summer home, and on the road again

Spent Saturday at the rig watching Ohio State play with the Davis family.  It's almost become our end of the season tradition.

Smoked some bacon wrapped stuffed chicken thighs.  Men liked them, women not so much.  They were thick.  Was really excited about making them, was equally disappointed in them.

Friday was Connie's last chemo treatment in Ohio.  Had originally planned on leaving Timber Ridge Monday, but pushed it backed to Tuesday to give her an extra day recovery.

Did most of the seasonal things all last week, then packed Sunday.  Today (Monday) she was in great spirits and said "let's go today", so I finished everything up this morning and got ready to leave by early afternoon.  Will give her a good night sleep, then all day tomorrow to spend time with her Dad.

Always tough saying goodbye to folks, especially "The Sisters".  They've been such wonderful friends and we'll miss them.

Got into Caesar Creek around 7p.  Didn't have a reservation, so we took a "walk up" site.  No biggie AND we saved the reservation fee Reserve America charges.

The new steps and back up camera all worked great.  Also had a bonus a few weeks ago.  Camper at Timber Ridge put out a bunch of "free to good home" stuff.  Had been needing to replace my leveling blocks and he had a whole set of them.  Grabbed those babies up and tried them out today.  Perfect!

Some closure in Amish country

Connie had her PT session on Thursday, which meant she was a) going to be tired and sore and b) she was going to score a lunch out of the deal.  We need shoes for our upcoming cruise.  Me because mine got ruined last January in the couple trips back to Ohio.  Connie because, well, they're shoes.  Me:  "hey, there's a place that has Buy One, Get Half Off 2nd pair shoes".  We go there.  Result?  She walks out with two pairs of shoes, I have none.

We went to lunch at Brown Bag Burgers, which we'd always passed and never gone in.  Not really a lunch type of place, was more for 4p drinks followed by some gourmet burgers.  Connie said the wings were good, my chicken breast was very good.

Made a 2p appointment with the local guy from Edward Jones, so in the interim I could go somewhere and buy some shoes.  The small amount we were going to be investing wasn't really enough for him to mess with and he was a super nice guy, but he did give us a good idea about CD laddering.

Last Friday was a day I was dreading, and a day I was looking forward to in equal parts.  6 months had elapsed since my mother passed away, and it was time to close her trust.  The part I dreaded was dealing with FC Bank for hopefully the final time.  Man, I had nothing but problems with them.  It was my Mom's local bank, the only one in her little town, and just a pain.  I looked at their locator map and saw that Shiloh, Ohio was the closest branch to me.  I was looking forward to it because my time as executor was about to be over.

I get up Friday morning and took the hour drive through Amish country.  Passed a couple of buggies. GPS said I was there, but I was at an Amish market.  Yep, sure enough, FC Bank had an office in there.  Girl who closed out the account couldn't have been nicer, AND I got to score some Amish cheese and some Amish butter.  Bonus.

Then, I had to drive to the nearest PNC Bank on my way home which was in Norwalk.  Another great run through farm country.  Amazingly, there were no detours, no construction along my route.  I'm thinking the Amish buggies don't tear up the roads too much.

Get home and start looking over CD rates.  Best rates are at the First Internet Bank of Indiana.  (It had kind of a cult name.  Kind of like all those dodges to get religious breaks, like the First Internet Church of God.)  But, after some research and phone calls, we decided to go that way.  Better than the 0.1% APY PNC bank offers in my savings account.

Sunday, I smoked a pork butt.  Been awhile, and never in this smoker.  (Not one of Connie's favorites, but Bethany loves pulled pork).  You can follow it along here.  Result was one of my better efforts.  The process was awful.

If you're going to cook all day, you need a base

I've got a pretty big smoking project today, and two of the three recipes call for bacon.

Here's the link to the Smoked Meat Loaf.

Here's the link to the smoked tomato and onion salad dressing.

Here's the link to the smoked Mac N Cheese.

If you're going to cook bacon, you've got to eat bacon.

My Brinkmann grill has a little griddle that goes in place of one of the grates.  So I used it for the bacon we're going to have for breakfast, and that leaves room for the stainless steel pan where I'm going to cook the bacon we're going to cook with.

Since I'm just cooking and crumbling the cooking bacon, I'm stealing a tip from a friend at our old boat club (shout out Sally White!) who used to cut the bacon into pieces, then pan fry it.

After the first round of bacon (Connie's round) is done, I added the best fundraiser item I ever bought (Shout out, Maddie Porter!)  It's a little round mabobbie that holds the egg after you break it.  Smash the egg yolk, let it fry and boom you've got an egg McSims.

After that's all cooked (finished product is below), it's time to make my sammie.  

Cut my home made bread in a diagonal, add the egg:

Add the bacon:

Often I'll add cheese and an onion, too.  But, I've got WAY too much to do today!

Mt. Pleasant to Alexander, AR

Didn't really do much in Mt. Pleasant.  Was awoken night #1 to the sound of my fridge beeping and saying there was no flame.  That was weird, because it should have been running on electric.  Instead, for however long, it didn't flip over to AC and sucked out all of my propane.  I wasn't happy, especially knowing that the temps were going to be dropping like a rock in the next few days and the fireplace wouldn't keep up with it.  Ran over to the Mt. Pleasant KOA (looked like a dump, too) and got propane in one bottle, then Monday en route to Alexander, Arkansas (which is just south of Little Rock) I got the 2nd bottle filled at the Flying J.

I left a little earlier than planned on Monday because some Jack Wagon NEEDED to get on the road early (like started at 6:30a) and had to make sure his diesel was warmed up.  The ride here up I-30 was miserable.  Drove into a north wind and a driving rain the whole day.

Got to Cherokee Lakes RV Park around 2:30p after a leisurely stop at the Flying J since the guy didn't know how to run the propane machine and a lunch stop at a rest area with the girls.  Was a little bit of an issue because there was no signage where the GPS brought me, only a locked gate and No Trespassing.  I drove a little further, pulled off into a Volunteer Fire Station and called the joint after seeing on the Passport America site that, yes, it was gated and in a nature preserve.

The guy said he "didn't expect me so early."  I told him about the Jack Wagon, and I'll be damned if in walks Mrs. Jack Wagon!  They had come to the same park.  After we exchanged hello's, I told the owner "I'll bet they got here before me, didn't they?"  Sure enough, next morning, I'm up at 7:30a mainly because the sun comes up here at 6:30a, and they were already gone.  I don't get it.

I've gotten a little of chippy stuff done here for work, fixed some website things, updated our phone system, etc.

 This being my last "leisurely" stop before I start a run of "in day 1, stay day 2, out day 3", I decided to do a little cooking.  Smoked a Boston Butt and two chicken fryers on Tuesday, along with using my blueberries for a Blueberry Bread.  Freezer is full, everything came out wonderfully.

4 bags of pulled pork, 5 bags of cut up
chicken ready for the freezer.

Sloopy has been absolutely miserable.  First, its been cold.  Never a good thing for her.  Second they don't allow X-pens here.  So, she's constantly wanting out to lay in the sunshine, and doesn't understand the sentence, "they don't allow X-pens here."

Here for one more day, then we take off for West Memphis, AR (where I KNOW they allow X-pens.]

Great day in Indy!

We've been to Indy a few times, so we're looking for a couple of things to go see and get us out of the rig on these hot days.  We chose to go to the Canal and White River State Park.

We started with the USS Indianapolis Memorial.  The USS Indianapolis was the ship to transported the Atomic Bomb during WWII.  It was so secretive, that when it was torpedoed on July 30, 1945 by the Japanese, it wasn't missed.  Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remainder, about 900 men, were left floating in shark-infested waters with no lifeboats and most with no food or water. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later only 316 men were still alive.

Indy has done a terrific job of upgrading their downtown living around the canal.  Beautiful condos overlooking the walk.  Has to bring a ton of people downtown.

Got to see a stadium!  We toured Lucas Oil Stadium (home of next year's Super Bowl and the Big Ten Championship) last year.  Here is the home of the AAA affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Indianapolis Indians.

This has been a bit of a AAA tour.  Starting with Tucson (AAA home of the Padres), we've been to Albuquerque (AAA home of the Dodgers), Oklahoma City (AAA home of the Astros) and now Indianapolis.

The canal walk featured great views of downtown

 We also saw the home of the NCAA and Hall of Champions.  I believe this is where the Tournament Committee meets to decide the March Tournament.

And finally, we saw Conseco Fieldhouse, NBA home of the Pacers and home to the Big Ten Tournament on a number of occasions.

So we bought a grill a month back for a few reasons:  it had two burners, a built in thermometer and would fit in the truck when we load up and roll to the next stop.  Did my first smoking attempt on this grill tonight and it was delish!  Had a half rack of ribs left over from a while back.  Connie put a rub consisting of brown sugar, garlic salt and paprika on them, I put my smoker box with apple chips on the opposite burner and smoked those babies with indirect heat for almost five hours.  Put BBQ sauce in our pot for the fourth hour, then started applying the sauce a half hour later.  Put a couple of baked potatoes on in the second hour and moved them over direct heat on the warming rack for the last two hours.