'Twas the Night Before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the camper, not a creature was stirring, except a restless French Bulldog, a pleasantly plump lab and an overly caffeinated grandma.  

The stockings were hung on the slideout with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas would soon be here. 

Barb and I have celebrated Christmas to its fullest for 38 years now. Mostly with friends and family, a couple just by ourselves. This year finds us in Greencastle Pennsylvania celebrating Christmas with our daughter Jessica, her husband Shane and their two kids Dylan and Kendall.

The last time we celebrated Christmas with them was in 2014 when the kids looked like this.

Now they look like this....

Shane and Jess are in the middle of a very busy few days. With many friends and family in the area they have several get togethers planned. Our day with them was today, Christmas Eve. And tomorrow morning before they head off to Shane's family gathering. 

Several nights before Christmas found Shane and I at the kitchen table surrounded by 9 bottles of bourbon. We had a challenge in front of us. To sip each of them, ranking them in order of our least favorite to our favorite. 

Barb and Jess were the moderators, pouring and numbering each of the mini dixie cups so we would not know what was in which cup. Then the tasting began. Just enough to wet the palette and get an idea of the aroma, flavor and taste. 

One by one we went through the 9 cups placing them in order. Some we could not tell the difference between at all, while others were absolutely horrible. Granted, this was not a controlled test as the flavor of one often carried over to the next. The results were surprising to both of us. 

First, our choices were almost identical, with only a few variations. Secondly, since it was a blind tasting, we did not know until the end that one that we had thought was our favorites, actually ended up near the bottom of our list (Weller). 

Our top 4 (although not in the same order) were Blanton's, Eagle Rare, Sazerak and Elmer Lee. Our bottom 4 were identical; Hartfield, Weller, MannCave and Bakers.

Here is the thing about doing blind taste tests. We started out with 9, then someone goes to the cabinet and says "You gotta try this one!", then they do it again, again and again. That was several days ago, and I still do not even want to look at a bottle of bourbon. This is what we looked like an hour or so later...

Just for fun, we had the girls take a sip of some of the worst tasting ones just to get their reaction. Here is the results of that. This was a very peaty Scotch Whisky. 

Then momma, thinking she was Super Momma jumped on the Hoverboard and started hovering around the kitchen. 

Pretty impressive for a almost 64-year-old grandma. What the video does not show is when she biffed a few minutes later and she hit the back of her head on one of the chairs in the kitchen. Grandma is not allowed on the hoverboard anymore.  

Not to be outdone, Jess jumped on to show her mad skills. Her's, however, did not end as smoothly, ending in a death spiral. 

To keep us busy during the day, we started a project in one of the living rooms. This house was built in 1850ish and has lots of small rooms. Three of the rooms have fireplaces; the kitchen and the two living rooms. None are functional anymore and Jess wanted at least the look of a fireplace in the living room they spend more of their time. 

So, away we went! It is still a work in progress, but here is where we are so far. We framed in the old chimney, ran some electrical for the fireplace and the TV, then sheetrocked it. We talked about leaving the old brick, cleaning it up and exposing it, but it is in really rough shape and is not the route they wanted to go.

There is absolutely nothing square about this house. The walls and ceilings are off over an inch in a matter of a few feet, so every cut was a custom cut. The walls are made out of horsehair plaster and if you cut into them, they basically disintegrate in a puff of dust. 

We are working on a fireplace surround at the same time. Shane had a surround from an old job that I needed to cut down to size. We tried every antique store in the area trying to find one that was already the right size, but no luck.  

This one needed 10" cut out of the middle bringing the overall width to the same as the wall. I am happy with my cuts, after the girls finish scraping it, I will attempt to put it back together hiding the seam as best I can. 

Next up, we need to finish the tape, mud and then paint. We hope to get it wrapped up before we leave in a week or so. 

Last, but not least, our Christmas photo. No one really wants to see us and I know Harry would love to see the girls dressed up and ready for Christmas. We took this picture a few weeks ago when Sophie was visiting. 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Eastward Ho!

The day finally came, and we left for our next adventure!

Those of you who have been following us for a while know that we are just a bit off our rockers (Barb more than I), so rather than head to a warm weather locale, we headed east. I mean, anyone can head south to the warm weather, but what is the fun of that!

So off we went heading east. Barb the ultimate planner has our entire adventure planned for us. Back in the day, we would drive 7,8,9 hours a day to get where we were going and when necessity dictates we still do, but ideally, we try to keep them around 4 hours now. The other thing she tries to do is find free places for us to stay overnight. This is not only part of the adventure, it saves us money and allows us to spend it on other things. 

Day One took us from our home to Vivian South Dakota, an hour or so east of Rapid City. What is in Vivian you ask? A truck stop. That is about it. I once read a blog where a traveler stated that there is absolutely nothing special or redeeming about the small town they were staying in. I could not disagree more. small town America is the heart and soul of our country. It is the location of someone's dream, where they are going to work, raise their family and the place they would rather be, more than anywhere else in the world. 

So, I took that as a challenge. To find something special about every town we stopped in. But, I did not do it alone. I solicited the help of good friend and fellow blogger, Jim from exploRVistas. Cell/Internet service is sometimes sketchy along the way so I would text Jim our location and he would tell me an interesting fact about the town. 

So, back to Vivian South Dakota; population 98. The Black Hills area of South Dakota gets a lot of hail in the summer. In fact, our comprehensive insurance is double what most areas of the country are. Annual glass breakage insurance is more than the price of a replacement windshield, so we opt out figuring if we make it through a season without replacing a windshield, we are money ahead. What does this have to do with Vivian? Well, Vivian South Dakota holds the record for the world's largest hailstone! Weighing just shy of 2 lbs (.88kg) and measuring 18.6" (473mm). Imagine that thing hitting you on the head! Now, if that is not something to be known for, I do not know what is!

Knowing most of our first month of our travels were going to be in subfreezing temperatures, we left the rig winterized, Meaning no running water for us. The temps that night dipped down in the teens, we set the thermostat to 55 and snuggled in for the night. 

The next morning, we carried on eastward, spending the night in Holstein Iowa; population ~1,500. Home of Major League, Biggs Wehde, pitcher with the White Sox in 1930/1931.  

Our next stop continued with the baseball theme and is a town that many of you will recognize. Dyersville Iowa. If that is not enough of a clue of what that town is famous for, then how about this quote. If you build it, they will come. If you still do not know, I give up. 

Although it was bitterly cold, and there was no corn, one cannot pass through Dyersville without checking out the Field of Dreams set, an iconic movie filmed in 1989.

We walked the grounds and visitors center. The guy in the gift shop said we were the only ones to stop by that day. Things get pretty quiet in the north during off-peak times!

That night was one that we had been looking forward to for a while. Back in February, when I took that distilling class in Denver, Barb and I met a couple (Lee and Karrie) who own a winery in Dyersville, Iowa and bonus, they are also Harvest Hosts! 

We went to check in and was greeted by Lee who spent pretty much the entire evening with us He gave us a tour of their facility. They make both wine and some distillation products there. 

Wine making area.

They also have a full restaurant, if you pass through there, you have to try their ribs! Karrie joined us as we were finishing our meal and we spent a few hours catching up with her as well. We bought a few bottles of wine, said goodnight and headed to our camper. 

They had a electrical for us to plug in outside, it was much appreciated as our batteries were getting a workout with the furnace running much of the time as this was our third night in a row where it hit the teens. 

Curious Zoey checking out some curious horses.

Day 4 found us continuing east to another town we had been looking forward to for quite a while. Frankfort Kentucky is home to one of the most famous distilleries in the country. At least it is famous to me. The Buffalo Trace Distillery!

Buffalo Trace is the maker of several very good and very hard to get bourbons and whiskeys. 

Buffalo Trace, Blantons, Weller, and Eagle Rare are on my list of bottles that I look for anytime I go into a liquor store and are nearly impossible to find. So hard, that last year I only found one bottle of Buffalo Trace all year long! 

Buffalo Trace has almost a cult-like following of people trying to get their hands on some of these bottles. They carry most of their products in their gift shop, but not everything at once. There is even a Facebook page dedicated to listing what is available on a given day. Each day they offer one of four of their rarest bottles. On the first day we were there, they had Weller available, limit 1 every 90 days. Barb and I each bought a bottle ($40). They scan your driver's license to keep track of who bought one. Now that we each bought one, we cannot buy another for 90 days, this keeps people from coming back day after day and buying these allocated bottles.

Several months ago, Barb had gone on line to schedule us a tour. These tours are also very hard to get. She was on line the morning the tours for our date opened. Within minutes the first tour she wanted was booked, but she was about to get us a tour for the next time slot. All the tours for that day were booked within 20 minutes! Why are they in such demand? Well, they are free for one, plus it is an awesome tour! We were supposed to go with our friends and former neighbors, Jim and Brenda, but they had to cancel at the last minute, so it was just the two of us.

We went on The Hard Har tour, which is a behind the scenes tour into the depths of the distillery. Their mash cookers and fermenters are huge!

We ended the tour with a tasting. Although we liked everything being tasted that day, we both agreed that Weller was the best. I take that back. The Bourbon Cream mixed with root beer was delicious!

Funny story about the napkins above. As we were waiting for our tour just outside the tasting rooms, we noticed these two people who looked like a mother and son cleaning up the room. Upon closer inspection, they were not cleaning up, they were taking all the napkins left over from the previous tasting and shoving them in their pockets! People are so weird!

This it was still early in the day, Barb looked up to see if Woodford had any tour openings for that afternoon. As luck would have it, they did so we headed over there!

Just walking into Woodford had a totally different feel to it compared to Buffalo Trace. Pretentious and snooty are two words that come to mind. The Buffalo Trace tours are free. Woodford was $32 each. The bottles in Woodford were $10-20 more than you would find in a liquor store, at Buffalo Trace they were $10-20 less. We were immediately turned off by the experience. We even thought about asking for a refund. But we powered through and went on the tour and we were glad we did. 

Their fermentation vats were very old and very cool (above). The rickhouse was also very interesting, as were their pot stills. Huge, all copper stills, hooked up in a series. 

We tasted each of their products liking the Double Oak the best. 

But distilleries is not all Frankfort has to offer. Our uber researcher told us that Frankfort is the home of Danial Boone's gravesite. How could we not stop and see that!?!? Now, I doubt that I will ever be buried, but if I were, this is the view I would want!

We were going to go a few miles down the road that afternoon, but we decided to stick around, get up bright and early and see what if Buffalo Trace had a special allocation bottle available the next day. And are we glad we did! When we arrived, the line was about 200 yards long weaving back and forth.

As we were waiting for 9:00, we just people watched and looked at the surroundings. One thing you will notice around almost every old-time distillery is the trees are black and there is a black fungus growing on many of the buildings. The tour guide referred to this are whiskey fungus, common at many distilleries.

At 9:00, they opened the gates and started letting people in 20 at a time. We did not know for sure what the allocated bottle was, but the speculation of Facebook was that it was Blanton's or Eagle Rare. When we got into the area where they check driver's licenses, we saw this sign:

Blanton's! When our time arrived, we went in, got our two bottles of Blanton's and hit the road. 

Still heading eastward, we made our way 6 more hours to another Harvest Host in Weston West Virginia. MannCave Distillery is about as far off the beaten path as one can get. 5 miles down a one lane gravel road where you are praying you do not meet any opposing traffic. Luckily, we didn't. It was almost dark when we arrived, and they were within 30 minutes of closing. Again, I think we were their only customers for the day. Feeling somewhat bad for the kid (20 something) behind the counter, we did a tasting, bought a couple of bottles, left him a healthy tip and hit the hay. 

We woke up early the next morning excited to hit the road. Today was arrival day! We were finally going to get to our daughter's in Pennsylvania! We called her when we were an hour or so out. They were going to be going shopping, so we just met them at a feed mill store where they were looking at the Clydesdales. 

So happy to see them, so happy to be here. We are here for the next couple of weeks where we have multiple projects planned to keep us busy and out of trouble!

Where do you Come From?

"Worst gift ever", those were the words a friend told us when speaking about the gift of a DNA testing kit his father-in-law had received a couple of years ago. The ensuing scandal is still talked about years later. I know of several such incidents where people have taken DNA tests only to find out things were not quite as they seemed. 

Even so, Barb and I were curious to see what our ancestry was. No, we did not take the test, but traced our ancestry back on paper.  We used the free FamilySeach. The results confirmed what we thought we knew in some areas and surprised us in others. 

Here is a brief summary. 

On my dad's side, the records only go back to my great-great grandparents, my dad's dad's immigrated from Sweden, my dad's mom's side from Norway.

On my mom's side it gets more interesting. My mom's mom's goes back as far as 1460 to Appelhülsen, Kreis Münster, Westphalia, Prussia, Germany.  That side was almost all German, but one branch went back to Ireland and Austria. We were surprised when one of my nieces did a DNA test recently that showed we were 20 something percent Irish. And all these year's I skipped St.Patty's day. I have a lot of making up to do!

Barb knew little of her lineage and was surprised to find her dad's side almost exclusively Scottish. Her 8th great grandmother on her dad's side was born in Somerset, Pennsylvania in 1685 and lived 86 years Think about what she saw in her lifetime!

One branch on her dad's side goes back to 0300 and includes a number of Counts, Ladies, Lords, Countesses, Sirs, kings and queens. (King Eystein of Heidemark is one). I do not know how anyone could ever even start to trace lineage back that far. 

Here is a little peek at what we found on Barb's side. 

Do you see any resemblance? Barb now insists I treat her like royalty. I am beginning to think it was a bad idea to research this. 

Her mom's side was boring by comparison with that branch coming from Austria. 

Very interesting. But that is a rabbit hole that could suck you down for hours, days, even years researching individuals. Ain't nobody got time for that!

The rest of our week consisted of us getting the camper ready for our next big adventure. Even though we will not be here for Christmas, Barb decorated the house, so we at least get a little taste of the holidays. And bonus, we got a Christmas card! This is likely the only one we will get. One or two might even recognize this scene. 

We have the feeders full and a new bale out for the critters. The new tractor and bale fork worked like a champ!

On the hiking front, we not only conquered one peak, or two, we conquered three! None of them were very strenuous as you could drive to within 10-30 minutes of each of the summits. 

Each of them is on Forest Service Roads that are snow-covered and not traveled too much this time of year. With beefy tires and a winch, we felt confident that we would not get stuck. As we were coming around one corner, we saw several sharptail grouse on the road. I grabbed the camera quick hoping to get a picture or two. They took off just as I was focusing on them. Like a blind squirrel, I accidently got a couple of good shots through the windshield!

Some of the summits offer great views, some of the summits are in tree covered areas. Some of them have markers, others have a stack of rocks, others have nothing at all. 

Here are our pictures from each of the summits. 

ODakota Peak, the 3rd highest peak in the hills              Green Mountain, the 5th highest at 7,164'

Copper Mountain, the 15th highest at 6,920'

I thought this week I would take you with us (if you want to go) with this video.

Neighbor Jim got a really nice buck with his bow Monday night. We spent part of that night processing it and finished the rest on Wednesday morning in the comfort of our workshop. I then drained all the waterlines, put antifreeze in the traps and got it all ready for winter.  

Wednesday night we headed over to Dan and Bonnie's for a quick happy hour before we headed to Hill City for one last hurrah with the gang. Kevin met us over there after work. Unfortunately, Cheryl's brother passed away this week, so she was back in Minnesota taking care of things. 

We all jumped in the jeep; I don't think Kevin was complaining too much about the tight accommodations. 

The food at The Alpine Inn never disappoints, and they were decorated to the 9's for Christmas.

Barb and Kevin

The following night it was off to Hot Springs with neighbors Jim and Carmen to try out the new Jalapenos restaurant. Barb and Carmen each had a margarita flight. We would recommend both the flights and the food. 

Friday night, it was off to Kevin's for a pheasant supper. One last get together before we head off. 

We have a herd of mule deer pass through Thursday morning. What used to be so plentiful, now are an uncommon sighting. They were obviously looking for water. The snow all melted yesterday, and it got cold last night. Meaning all the ponds and puddles were frozen, and with no snow on the ground, there is nothing for the deer to drink. They stopped by the water tank for a few minutes, came up by the house and nosed around before heading west looking for something to drink. It is supposed to get up to 55 later today, so I know they will find some eventually. 

The next two days will be spent getting ready. The camper is on, we are pretty much packed. Barb, the ultra-organizer has lists going on what needs to happen before we leave. I looked at her list for the first time the other day. The first thing on her list? "Make List" Seriously? And it was not crossed off? How can one write "make list" on a list and not cross it off? I was later informed that this list was not the list, so it does not count. Upon hearing that, I slowly walked over to the liquor cabinet, poured myself a strong one and sat down to contemplate what my brain just heard. 

I gotta go, her highness just rang her bell and if I do not come a running when she rings, she will probably have me beheaded!