We're baaaaaaack

Back from vacation that is.

This year, vacation at the Brokeback Mountain Dude Ranch

It's full of fun for manly men like you!

The most wonderful time of the year

Vacation time was upon us last week and we were in no mood to drive to the beach this year.  Last year's trip to the beach kind of burnt us out on going again so soon, so we decided to go some place different.  After a scant ten minute search on the interwebs, we decided to go to a state park in eastern Kentucky that offered hiking, swimming, and relaxation.

Pineville, KY, where crushed dreams go to die.

We set off for Natural Bridge State Resort Park in Slade, KY on Monday morning.  We took a leisurely drive up through Lee County VA and through southeastern Kentucky, the route we used to go when I was a kid when we'd go back and forth between Michigan and Jonesville.  After stopping in Pineville to look around and quickly getting back in the car and driving as fast as the speed limit allowed through to Corbin where we caught interstate 75 North, I can safely say that not much has changed in that SE KY/SW VA area since the mid 1970's.  Wait, that's wrong, the roads are a little better.

We got to the Berea area around 2:30 that day and we looked around and stopped in a few shops.

A hand of hands in Berea.

After finding out that Berea is a dry town, no alcohol served or sold, we sped up the interstate to Richmond to stay the night.  Our first stop there was a store called 'Liquor World.'  We stayed over night in Richmond because our reservations for the cabin in the park didn't take effect until Tuesday.  We stayed in Holiday Inn Express, which I highly recommend by the way.

Refurbished Richmond after the rain.

My first order of business in the hotel room was to claim the shower cap.  Boo ya.

On Tuesday morning we drove some of the back roads to get to the park and we got there a little after noon.  We checked in, ate lunch at the Hemlock Lodge, and then we went back out to get some groceries.  We got back to the cabin and took it easy the rest of the day and night.  

Wednesday we had planned to spend the day in the park hiking and swimming in the pool but the weather wasn't cooperative. We did manage to hike one of the trails and on it we saw huge rocks, tons of trees, and more huge rocks.  The weather was wet and damp so we decided to get in the car and take a trip to Morehead to see the Folk Art Center.  

 This photo does not do this rock justice, it's fucking huge.

 After taking a rather circuitous route to Morehead, we finally arrived and found our destination.  And let me tell you, the trip was well worth it.  The folks who run the Folk Art Center, which is free by the way, could not be nicer and they are very respectful to the artists who's work they show.  The place is full of brilliant art by self taught artists.

 In the upstairs gallery they had an exhibition of handmade chairs by the late craftsman Chester Cornett.  That snake chair he made is incredible to see up close.  The detail is incredible.  They had twenty to thirty of all kinds of his chairs in the exhibition.  He was well and truly an artist.

 Sparky stalks me.

We had reservations for the cabin for three nights but we decided to see if they'd let us out of staying Thursday night because we wanted to go to Lexington to stay the night and because the park is in such a remote area in relation to other things we wanted to see and do. They let us out so Thursday morning we checked out and off we went to the home of the University of Kentucky.  

Neither of us had ever been there before so we parked downtown and took in the sights.  Downtown is nice and it's pedestrian friendly but there's not many shops or things other than restaurants and offices down there.  But we hiked around, had lunch, and then went off to explore more of the city.

I love this mural in downtown Lexington. 

We drove out to the UK campus to check out the university art museum.  We were pleasantly surprised by the scope and scale of the collection the university possesses.  We saw everything from abstract expressionist work, to prints made in the WPA years, to massive oil paintings made by old European masters, to work made by those in the art brut school of art, to modern sculpture and craft.  I highly recommend you stop in to see their collection if you're in town.

 This public art crow sculpture outside the museum cracked me up because we'd been seeing huge crows all week long in KY.

After trudging around for a few more hours in Lexington, we decided to spend the night back in Richmond at the same hotel where we stayed on Monday and we decided that we'd go back to Berea to take in more of the art and craft scene on Friday morning before we headed home.

Berea is a regular four year college but with one special twist, it's tuition free for students from the Appalachian region.  In exchange for getting a virtually free education, all it's students must work around 20 hours a week at the college.  Some wait tables in college owned restaurants, some work in college owned shops that teach them traditional crafts like woodworking, weaving and other fiber related arts, broom making, printing and print making, traditional music making and recording, pottery, and more.  It's a really neat place and it's been doing business like that since it opened it's doors over a hundred years ago.  Everyone we met, from staff to students to professors, was super nice and helpful.  We got the feeling they'd bend over backwards to help out if need be.  I probably would have gone to college at Berea if my asshole cousin hadn't gone there, I wasn't about to follow him anywhere.

 A woodworking shop on campus.

 A print made by a student. 

We hung out, looked around, bought some crafted items, and then we left for home.  

We stopped in Knoxville for lunch around 1:30 PM and then drove the rest of the way home.

On this vacation I discovered that I don't need to be in or near the water all the time on a vacation and that it's a pretty easy drive from Lexington to our house, provided there no major construction going on on the interstates.  It took us about three and a half hours of driving time to get from Lexington to Johnson City, so in the future, I see another trip to that area and one that will go further afield to Louisville as well.

Trippin'

More vacation photos to come on Facebook.

Vacation!

It's not true

There is no truth to the rumor that I spent any time with Britney Spears older more retarded looking sister while I was at the beach.

And I certainly did not share any of my onion rings with her.

That's all I'm going to say about the matter. I mean it. Now leave me alone.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Well boys and girls we're back from the beach. We've gotten our fill of Atlantic Beach, North Carolina for another year, and since they can't very well move it, we may go back next year despite the loud and noisy protestations of the locals.

It was a damn fine week. We had hot sunny weather all week long with nary a rain drop in sight, well there was a stray cloud that put a drop or two on us but it was short lived and it ran away as soon as we shook our fists at it. The wind kicked up a day or two but it was nothing in comparison to what we've been through in years past. All in all we could not have asked for better weather.

Even though we started off an hour late due to the some people, and those people's initials would be the girlfriend's sister, sleeping in, we hit the road last Saturday morning.
Damn, look at that great pack job. I was proud of myself for getting all our stuff stuffed in the Scion with room to spare. The gf's parents Jeep Cherokee however had a decent pack job but it was nothing like mine.

We drove all day last Saturday with only a few stops and we got to the beach at around 5:30 PM.
After we unpacked he went for a walk on the beach. I saw this little girl surf fishing and she could not have been more than five or six and that rod she is using was about three times her size. She was cute as a button so I had to take her picture.
After our cheap ass made in China beach umbrellas bit the dust on Sunday we went to Wal Mart, I know I know "Mr. I hate Wal Mart with a passion and so should you" went to Wal Mart after telling you to boycott them for months. Well, I had to, I was out voted. Anyway we went and bought a beach canopy and it was the best damn sun protection, outside of sunscreen that we've ever used. (While we were in Wal Mart a female voice came over the intercom and said, "I need a male member of management to help a customer load something heavy. I repeat I need any male member..." Before she could finish I was laughing my ass off and my gf said, "Calm down, Mom and Dad are with us Mr. Smart Ass.")


The gf peeking out of the aforementioned canopy. Notice that she is wearing her bucket hat. Now, notice that this fat bastard, me, is not wearing his bucket hat that he bought specifically to wear at the beach. Notice also how I could stand to lose about 50 pounds. Yeah, yeah, one of you smart asses is saying that I could lose ten ugly pounds by chopping off my head, funny. Real funny. Leave the jokes to me. This is my blog after all. Just for that insolence, you get an extreme close up of me:Don't feed me or I'll follow you home. Notice how red my nose is. It got blistered over the next two days. From what you ask? Why fishing of course!


I lost my bucket hat in the first ten minutes of fishing off the pier. It was really windy and when I bent down to unhook my hook from under the pier, my first cast went horribly awry, my hat blew off into the ocean and it quickly floated off. Some damn dolphin is probably wearing it now.


I go fishing exactly once a year and that's when we go to the beach and if we went without her parents and sister I would not go fishing then but I actually do like it when I'm at the beach because we usually catch enough to cook and it's fun hanging out with the gf's Dad. He loves to fish but he won't go by himself since he's getting on up there in age so it's no skin off my nose to take him fishing a couple of times while we're on vacation.

Here's the gf's Dad with one of the many Blue Fish he caught and that we later filleted and cooked and ate.

Here's the biggest fish I caught. It looks small but it was about 13 and a half inches long and it weighed about 3 pounds. Unfortunately I had to toss it back because it was under the size limit. Had it been another inch long I would have filleted it and we would have ate it. That was the biggest fish I was to catch all week. The rest I caught we small fish that we used for cut bait.
However Sleepy, the gf's sister, stepped up and caught a shit load of Bluefish. And the ho even caught a flounder that we filleted.This one barely measured out and we cooked him later. She and her Dad caught a bunch more Flounders but they had to toss them back because they were under the size limit.This was from about half way through the first day's fishing. Later we turned them into this:

After soaking the Bluefish and the Flounder in Buttermilk the gf's Mom breaded them lightly and fried them. They were mmmm mmmm good.

We did a bit of sight seeing while there also. We saw Sand Henge.

And the famous pastel houses of Atlantic Beach.

Actually these houses are for rent and I checked into renting one of them. It turns out $5000 a week is a bit out of our price range. But the condo we stayed in was super nice anyway. It was spacious, clean, and tastefully decorated.

We saw some celebs at the beach. I know I was as shocked as you to see A Flock of Seagulls in North Carolina, but there they are. They hung out with us for a moment then they ran so far away.

The beach was kind of crowded on Sunday and Monday so I asked a bunch of people to write in the sand what their favorite blog was and they all wrote this:

Well there was one gal who started to write "Politits" but I told her that a shark was eating her kid so she ran off. And there was another chick who started to write "FranIam" but when I started to cry she quickly changed it to "Never What You Think It Should Be." I gave her five bucks to change it so she did and I took the picture above before she could change her mind.

I took a shit load of pictures so I'll be posting more soon and I'll also tell more vacation tales as well so stay tuned. I'm wiped out right now after driving all day and then grocery shopping and then cooking dinner tonight so I'm gonna leave you now with a spooky looking picture of the dunes and vegetation from behind the condo where we stayed.