MUSHY'S MOOCHINGS

Showing posts with label seafood. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

DID I TELL YOU I'VE BEEN TO THE OUTER BANKS?

It was one of the best vacations I've had, what with Judy and Katie Bug doing all the driving! I only had to drive the last 100 miles home, and that

was a pure pleasure. It did me a world of good too. I'm feeling so much better and stronger now, and hopefully I'll keep up a more active daily routine.

Katie drives like Judy and me. When she first got her license I taught her how to drive East Tennessee mountain curves - "...go in low and slow and come out high and fast!" She really smooth at it too and barely lets the car scrub off speed.

She's got quite a sense of humor and confidence too! She shocked me once when she came around a curve where a man was mowing his yard close to the road with his back to traffic. She blew the horn loud and long - the man jumped and I jumped and could hardly believe what she had

done! She's always blowing at passing cars and waving like she knows them! She is not bashful.

Anyway, after a 9 or 10 hour drive Judy rolled us off Hwy. 64 and onto Hwy. 12 and headed north to Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks. The "banks" is just a narrow strip of land in the Atlantic about 200 miles long at the tip end of North Carolina. It is broken down into several small towns or villages, each unique, with a plethora of seafood

restaurants and fresh fish markets. Naturally, there are too many Wings souvenir shops! Who needs that many t-shirts and towels anyway?

Katie couldn't get over the three or four "Brew Thru's " (link is slow) located in the Kill Devil Hills/Nags Head area!

The first couple of days were chilly, with frequent periods of light rain. We, me particularly, kept our jackets on outside, and I even wore mine inside the condo. Judy kept the AC too darn cold for this old boy and I sat watching TV shivering! Who's the boss? I guess she is!

Katie did a lot of texting and calling while in the room, but on our outings she would leave the phone in the room or put it securely out of sight in the glove box.

The first night on OBX (short abbreviation the locals use for "Outer Banks North Carolina") we patronized "Awful Arthur's Oyster Bar". I got "Arthur's Oysters" with bacon, and Judy and Katie got the crab dip and sweet tater chips! Delicious with Fat Tire!

This was just the beginning, we also visited "The Dunes Restaurant" twice, once for lunch and once for breakfast, "Stack'em High" for breakfast, "Sugar Creek Seafood Restaurant" for dinner, "Miller's Waterfront Restaurant" for dinner, Judy and Katie at at "Dirty Dick's Crab House" one evening and brought something back for me (not feeling well that night), and we even got great tasting seafood at "Crabby Fries" one evening when we were too tired to go out! We did not have a bad meal and the seafood all tasted fresh, with the sweetest tasting scallops I've ever eaten! If we had stayed 2 weeks, we could have found a new restaurant each night!

We walked the beach one evening, sat in the sun (me under an umbrella) another day, and the other days we spent either at a lighthouse, on the dunes at Jockey's Ridge, at the Wright Brothers Memorial, or searching for wild mustangs on Carova Beach! There is plenty to do, and it you want to see what we did CLICK HERE and go to my Flickr page for Outer Banks photos. Click on "slideshow" and sit back for all 141 shots!

The trip was made even more enjoyable by having Katie along...and not just to drive either. She was always making funny remarks and forcing us old folks up dunes and onward in her search for something special to do. Oh yeah, we also had to watch scary movies one evening! It was great!

The sad part of it all is that this may have been our last time to have her by herself. She graduated from high school this year, which was part of the reason for the trip, and soon she will be off to college, having even more boy problems, getting married, having babies, and forgetting about us (to some extent). Gone are the days of overnight stays and one-on-one conversations. Life changes, people grow up, and we must move on...sadly.

I just hope she remembers the good times, the laughs, and the love we shared enough to come visit once in a while and bring the grand-babies to visit!

We love you Katie Bug!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

AN ALL YOU CAN EAT TUESDAY BUFFET

About 45 minutes west of Harriman, up on the Cumberland Plateau, is Cumberland Mountain State Park. We have gone there for years starting way back in the 60’s. It’s a lovely little state park with gently rolling hills, deep untouched forest with winding trails, a lovely lake brimming with fish, a huge swimming pool, lots of cabins and camping sites, and rustic sandstone lodge sitting right in the middle. Inside this main building is a wonderful kitchen that turns out delicious food almost every night, served up buffet style.

No, it’s not an ordinary buffet where all the selections taste like all the food was cooked in the same pot. This buffet has never failed to please all my senses: my vision, my olfactory, and my gustation! Seriously good tasting chicken, roast beef, BBQ, catfish, with all the vegetable and bread trimmings! Tuesdays are set aside for a seafood bonanza that includes: fried and peel-and-eat shrimp, scallops, fried and baked catfish, crab legs, and salmon cut in the shape of a crab shell and stuffed with crab stuffing! OMG folks, it was all great…and then there were the hush puppies!

The other offerings were coleslaw, a pea salad, a salad bar, chocolate cake, banana pudding, and soft-serve ice cream! Tuesday is not the only fantastic evening either:

Cumberland Mtn. Restaurant Dining Schedule - Open 7 Days a Week

Monday - Saturday: Lunch - 11:00 a.m.- 2:30 p.m. - Dinner - 4:00-8:00 p.m.

Sunday: All day - 11:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Tuesday - Seafood Buffet with All You Can Eat Crab Legs - 4:00-8:00 p.m.

Friday - All You Can Eat Catfish (baked or fried) - 4:00-8:00 p.m.

Saturday - All You Can Eat Rib Night - 4:00-8:00 p.m.

Well, I jumped right to the eating part, and left out the visiting Neena and Ron at their campsite! Their grandson Chandler (“Chan Man” as we call him) has been visiting with them this past week and so they took him to Cumberland Mountain State Park to camp, swim, hike, and eat!

Charlotte and Gary drove up to the park as well. We had a great time visiting before and after the feast. It was very pleasant today with the temps in the high 70’s to mid-80’s and bearable humidity. We were also thankful that the only bugs we saw were a few flies that only visited briefly.

We all got a kick out of Chandler climbing around on everything and playing in the campfire. It reminded us all of our own youth and how the fire always seemed to be the center of the camping trip. We would play in it, disregarding the warning that we would “wet the bed” if we played in the fire! It was something my grandmother always threatened me with so that I would not poke things down into her wood stove, or spit on the top to watch the water dance off into oblivion!

You can also see that Judy was trying to excite me with her tongue-to-straw-action! It worked!

Ron and Gary both have campers, Ron’s, as you can see is a “pull behind”, while Gary’s is a mid-size motorhome. Judy and I struggled with the idea of getting one as well, but after a couple of weeks of agonizing over it we came to the conclusion that an RV was just not for us. It was amazing how relieved we both were to finally come to that decision.

However, Ron/Neena and Gary/Charlotte all seem to love their campers, so more power to them.

We can hardly wait for them to camp at Cumberland Mountain again, so we can drive up, eat, and come home!

Monday, May 11, 2009

SO, DID I MENTION I'VE BEEN TO FLORIDA?!

Well, here are the meals we enjoyed while at Cape San Blas! If you want to see the beach photos and wildflower pictures, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/23056599@N00/sets/72157617881015893/ and check'em out! Mine you...you'll need a 15 to 20 minutes of free time.

The seafood was wonderful...after all, Apalachicola is the "Oyster Capitol of the World!"

We had them raw. We had them Mexicali Baked. We had them Rockefellered (no it ain't a word)! Great either way!

A little hint, next time you are at a fancy seafood house, order Basa fish! Wonderful! Some places sell it for Grouper anyway, so you might as well order it by its proper name! Great tasting fish!

Anyway, here are the photos of the food, and Cape San Blas is so remote that each meal was a minimum investment of a round trip drive of 50 miles...some were over a 100, but worth every minute of the investment!