Ever since our first experiment with AirBnB (where we snagged a New York City...
Recent Updates
Top Secret
I’m sworn to secrecy because Shannon is working on a couple of paid assignments for this topic, and last I checked, none of you have sent in subscription payments so all I’m allowed to say here is . . . Lemurs!
Getting Our Pig On
We’ve been mostly making our plans on the fly, with only a vague idea of where we’re heading. We found ourselves in Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, partly because it lies in the southerly direction we’re heading, but mostly because it was chosen in 2008 as America’s Foodiest Small Town by Bon Appétit. But somehow the good folks over at Bon Appétit forgot to mention one of the things North Carolina is best known for: Barbeque. And we’re not just talking about any barbeque, but “eastern style” que, which is surprisingly impossible to find anywhere in the northeast.
To the uninitiated, eastern que includes three basic things. 1) It has to be pork. You can find chicken and beef on the menu, but when you ask for “barbeque” you get served some part of the pig. 2) It has to be slow cooked over wood or wood coals. 3) It has to be served with a thin vinegar based sauce, which may or may not contain some tomato. The result is different enough from what most of us “Yankees” consider barbeque to warrant a special trip to check it out.
Allen & Son plays the part of a modest down-home eatery, located some twenty minutes outside of downtown Chapel-Hill in a seemingly rural section of the city set directly across from railroad tracks and adorned with a weathered sign and emanating the smell of hickory smoke. Inside, patrons seat themselves at tables with plastic checked table cloths and eat under the watchful eyes of a 10-point buck mounted on the wall. But its reputation for great que has spread far from these humble settings and encouraged us to venture out of our way to give it a try.
We both order the first thing on the menu, the “barbeque plate.” Soon enough we’re served up an entrée of pulled pork (no bun), hushpuppies, coleslaw and an iced tea; sweet of course. The pork comes without any sauce, but it is so well seasoned it doesn’t need any. An old ketchup bottle stands on the table holding Allen & Son signature sauce for those wanting to spice things up a bit. Momentarily forgetting where I am, I grab the bottle and give it a good squeeze expecting the thick resistance of traditional sauce. Instead, a thin marinade gushes to the plate. No worries, it’s fantastic; hot and spicy with tons of cracked pepper and a distinctive vinegar bite. This is nothing like any BBQ we’ve had before, which is exactly why we’re here.
The slaw has some of the same vinegar overtones and is a perfect complement to the meat. The hushpuppies are the stunner, though. Crisp-skinned and well-seasoned, they have a surprising hint of sweetness that almost qualifies them as dessert compared to the heat and vinegar of the meat and slaw. But no amount of sweetness was going to keep us away from the peanut butter pie, which was a perfect way to end a great meal.
Friend or Fawn
We were out for a morning jog through the park, when, over our right shoulders, we heard something crashing through the underbrush. My first thought was that from a hungry bear’s perspective Shannon & I probably looked like a couple sticks of tasty bacon bouncing through the woods. We spun around to see, not a bear, but a family of deer. They stopped to watch us for a bit, before galloping off next to us. Pretty neat.
Lazy Days
This pier sits exactly 57 paces from our wonderful campsite in North Carolina’s Falls Lake State Park. Now that the weekend campers are gone, we seem to have the entire park, and this gorgeous lake, to ourselves. It’s quiet, beautiful, and relaxing. I’m not sure what it was about Richmond, but both Shannon & I felt unusually lazy there, almost like the city sapped our strength. But here, I feel more like I did back at the start of our trip. For some reason this spot reminds me of why we set out in the first place. Yeah.
You Know You Have Too Much Money When
You buy a house in another country, have it torn down, crated, shipped across the Atlantic, and rebuilt 3,600 miles from where it first stood. That is the story of Agecroft Hall, a 15th Century Tudor estate originally constructed in Lancaster, England. By the early 1900’s, the estate fell into disrepair and was sold at auction to Thomas C. Williams, who had the house dismantled and rebuilt in Richmond, Virginia.
And that seems to be the entire available history of Mr. Thomas C. Williams. What happened after he bought the house, or how it subsequently became a museum, is nowhere to be found. What we do know, is that his timing was pretty terrible. He bought Agecroft in 1925, four short years before the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression. I wonder if such extravagances as importing houses had anything to do with the fact that the Agecroft Hall is no longer family owned. What might have been the William’s family misfortune accrues to our benefit, though, because now this authentic Tudor estate is open to the public, right here in the good old U.S. of A. No passport required.
Everywhere Once 