Road Trip 2011: Vermont Camping Fun & Dump Cake Fun!

01. July 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Last weekend the boys and I bid farewell to Dave in Harrisburg headed up to the Stratton, Vermont area for some camping with my dear friend (and former college roommate) Megan and her son Aidan. Some mother/son bonding time was had by all 🙂

We had a great time catching up — we last saw Megan in 2008 and Aidan had grown up so much!  Literally, he must be a head taller than Jacob, and they’re only about 3 months apart in age.

It was chilly and rainy most of the weekend. Every day the forecast called for clearing the next day, but then it remained drizzly and cloudy. Ugh! It cleared up our last evening there, and by then the firewood was too wet to burn.  Were it not for the lousy weather, I’d have called it a perfect weekend! The kids got along very well together.

Our trip to the Wanderlust Yoga & Music festival will be saved for another post, but for now here are some pictures of our camping trip, and then enjoy my semi-made-up dump cake recipe for the Dutch oven.

Our set up for 3 days.  No complaints about our tent or the temperatures.  At least it wasn’t a cold rain.  The canopy was a godsend for  keeping the table dry for meals.

This is a white admiral butterfly fluttering near the fire ring.  Common in New England.

Jacob and Aidan were teaching Timmy how to play catcher.  We purposefully chose a tent site near a field so the boys could play baseball.  They played for hours all weekend…this was a game they were playing as soon as they woke up, they’re in their pajamas still.

Our one and only hike at Townshend State Park, which was cut short due to the trail crossing a creek that was running so high and fast I didn’t trust Timmy making it across.

Dave had the good camera, all of these camping shots were taken with my iPhone.

Since the hike was cut short, the boys could spend extra time skipping stones across the creek.

Since it was too wet to make a fire for the hot dogs, we used our camp stove.  Corn steaming on the left, dogs/brats and rice pilaf (cooking on the backpacking stove on the right) for dinner.

Now that you’re drooling from our camp dinner, let’s talk about what we did for dessert.

I had brought along my Dutch oven. I have a 10″ Lodge footed Dutch oven with a brimmed lid.  I’ve owned it since 1997 or so, it’s been great for Civil War reenacting meals and with enough care, I’ve been able to use it to cook on modern family campouts too.

Because of the lousy weather, Megan and I weren’t sure whether we’d use the Dutch oven at all, but on Sunday at the grocery store, I quickly grabbed some cake mix and pie filling and decided to throw together an easy dump cake.

I recalled this popular dump cake recipe, which I’d seen variations of many times, so I brought it up on my iPhone while in the grocery store and did my best to remember the ingredients after I lost the signal.

Except I forgot about the pineapple.  That’s okay, because we had strawberries and blueberries.

Coleman now makes these nifty Dutch oven liners that are essentially large circles of parchment.  No more crazy cleaning!  I put 1 can of cherry pie filling, 1/2 pint of fresh (local) strawberries cut up, and 1/2 pint of fresh blueberries into the pot.  I considered stopping here and just serving fruit for dessert, this looked so pretty 🙂

Take one box of yellow cake mix…

And cut one stick of butter into 8-12 pieces.

“Dump” the cake mix on top of the fruit.

Then dot the mix with the pieces of butter.  Like my berry-stained hands???

Do your best to even things out, but I was seriously winging it here so pardon that this isn’t very pretty.

Now what?  Before I “dumped” the ingredients into the pot, we had fired up a pile of charcoal briquettes.  This website provides some great tips on how to convert the amount of heat you need into the number of greyed-over briquettes.

Since I’ve baked cobblers and biscuits in this Dutch oven many times, I remembered that I needed 24 briquettes, with 14 on the top and 10 on the bottom, to replicate 350F for 30-45 minutes.  Set that in your campsite fire pit and go enjoy your dinner!

The parts of the Dutch oven right over/under charcoal briquettes will become local hotspots, so it’s important to rotate the oven every 15 minutes or so for even baking.  Turn the lid 90 degrees AND rotate the oven over the top coals by 90 degrees in the OPPOSITE direction.

Here is the finished product after 45 minutes…there were some areas of dry cake mix remaining, and that’s my lack of even butter distribution, sorry 🙂

A nice big closeup pic for your enjoyment.  The butter melts and combines with the cake mix and fruit juices to make this super-sweet gooey dessert!

Now I wish I had at least picked up a tub of Cool Whip or a can of Redi-Whip….this was SO SWEET!  But delicious!

Sadly, this was our leftover cake.  It’s very very rich…a little goes a long way.  Megan was able to pick up the whole piece of parchment and plop it into a storage container to take home the following morning.

Road Trip 2011: A Few Hours at Penn State….

01. July 2011 · Comments Off on Road Trip 2011: A Few Hours at Penn State…. · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

We had an invitation up to visit a famous (in N-scale model railroading circles) basement model railroad in Lewistown, PA, while we were in Hershey for the N-Scale Convention.  I asked if we could “swing by” Penn State at least for lunch and some souvenir shopping.  Lewistown is about 1/2 hour southeast of Penn State.

We had a good time, with lunch at The Corner Room, stops at our favorite souvenir stores (Student Book Store, Family Clothesline and McClanahan’s), and of course pictures at the Nittany Lion!

The boys had fun posing all over the lion.  Then we used a nearby garbage can as a poor-man’s tripod to get a nice family shot.  I was quite impressed!

We wrapped up our short visit with a trip to the Creamery*…yum!

I’m a bad bad Penn State alumna — I didn’t bring PSU clothing for the boys on our trip.  They didn’t get new t-shirts until about 2 hours after this picture.

This fine photo is courtesy of a well-placed garbage can near the Lion.

Road Trip 2011: Tornado Season 2011 Up Close…

30. June 2011 · Comments Off on Road Trip 2011: Tornado Season 2011 Up Close… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,

The route we planned from Florida to Pennsylvania took us right across some of the destruction paths from this past spring’s Tornado “Superoutbreak” of April 25-28.  On this trip I crossed three of this past spring’s tornado paths, each are discussed below.

While part of me as a “weather weenie” finds a fascination in getting to see a tornado in action (I’ve never seen one…but that’s for another discussion), I also find incredible sorrow in seeing what can get left in it wake and the pure helplessness society experiences about it.  You rarely can get more than 10 minutes’ notice once landfall has been detected, and if the tornado is large enough (such as with Joplin, MO), even 10 minutes won’t help save your valuables; the best you can do is protect yourself.

The pictures here are not mine, we proceeded so quickly through each of these areas I didn’t have the time to get the camera ready.

This experience also had me thinking about those poor folks who were innocently driving on I-59, I-81 or I-91 and suddenly a tornado screams across in their path!  I also thought about all the victims, dead and alive, and the families dealing with the aftereffects.  Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.

About a week before I left for my vacation, a college friend had sent me some pictures from his trips to Joplin, Missouri to help clean up.

Joplin, Missouri.  This isn’t my friend’s picture, but his are VERY similar!
After this once-in-a-generation awful tornado season, here’s hoping for a safe and effective cleanup and recovery.
The Red Cross is still working with victims of all these storms — please take a moment to consider helping out, either by donating supplies through a local charity collection, or else via the American Red Cross website itself.  You can also text “REDCROSS” to the number 90999 for a quick and easy $10 donation to be added to your cell phone bill.  This is a contribution to their generic disaster relief fund, which is also supporting the midwest flooding and southwest wildfire relief efforts.

Trenton, GA

Remnants of home swept off a ridge overlooking Trenton, GA after an EF-3 tornado on April 27, 2011.  Photo: National Weather Service

We weren’t expecting it, but as we proceeded northeastward up Interstate 59 in Georgia, we pass through the small town of Trenton that’s abuzz with bulldozer and crane activity.  The trees that lined the interstate were destroyed.  We see piles of rubble on top of foundations.  Zipping by at 70+ mph, we saw it all so fast, it was tough to process what we had seen.

Two were killed in Trenton, GA.

I had a little bit of Fujita-scale forensics education in college, so I remember that piles of rubble on foundations being indicative of strong EF-3/weak EF-4 damage.  I looked up the details of the storm and the National Weather Service, Peachtree, GA office actually tracked not one but TWO tornados through Trenton, GA during the April 2011 superoutbreak.  Look for the “Dade/Walker” tornadoes in the far northwest corner of Georgia on the interactive map.

Glade Springs, VA

On I-81 in extreme southwest Virginia, as the sun was setting, the family was admiring the orangeish glow on the mountains to our east as we drove through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Then we see a swath of dead trees cut into the side of the mountain.  And again with the bulldozers!  This was the town of Glade Springs, VA, which experienced an EF-2 tornado the night of April 27th.

Another tornado damage path across the interstate???

Springfield, MA

This one really took me by surprise, since I made a last-minute decision to take I-91 straight south through Massachusetts out of Vermont on Monday.

On June 1st, a tornado struck downtown Springfield, killing 4 people.  The National Weather Service confirmed it as an EF-3.

Reminiscent of the aftermath of the 2004 hurricane season that our family experienced, just south of downtown Springfield, blue tarps dominated the rooftops.  Once again we were greeted with the telltale broken tree trunks and blown over road signs.  The track of the storm was nearly perpendicular to I-91.

I was thinking about how old the town of Springfield, Mass. is and how old many of those buildings must have been.  Statistically, such strong tornadic thunderstorms are rare in New England.

Road Trip 2011: Wordless Wednesday Edition

29. June 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,

I’ve never done a “Wordless Wednesday” before, but I thought we’d have a good time with these pictures Dave and I took of Amtrak’s 40th Anniversary exhibit train at the Strasburg Railroad in June, pulled by a P40 locomotive.  Considering these to decorate Jacob’s room, since he’s a fan of Amtrak.

Road Trip 2011: The Numbers Are In…

29. June 2011 · Comments Off on Road Trip 2011: The Numbers Are In… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
We had our truck about 14 months before learning about the “Average Fuel” setting that ties to the trip odometer.

Yep…that’s the total number of miles driven on our two-week road trip in the lower right.  And, as an added bonus, we have the average mileage.  That’ll come in handy for some additional calculations.

Let’s check out some more numbers. You guys know me and numbers, right?

Number of days: 14
Number of states we drove though: 14
Number of gallons of gas: 197.9795
Average gas price during this trip: $3.55
Based on averages, how much our gas cost probably cost: $688.63 (all the gas transactions haven’t posted to the credit card quite yet)
Number of hours of driving: Approximately 54
Number of days worth of driving: 2.25

I have quite a list of forthcoming blog posts about the assorted adventures we had over these past couple weeks!  Stay tuned!

"Really?" Florida is a REALLY BIG STATE

15. June 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

We learned this already on our drive to Orlando last weekend.  Navarre, Florida to Orlando is about 6 hours worth of driving.

We were able to get from Raleigh, NC to Washington, D.C. in less time.

But when we started doing our driving planning for our annual June trip to central PA for Dave’s family reunion, we were floored to discover that our upcoming drive will only be 70 miles less than the drive from Bellevue, NE!

Wow!

At least, that’s the word according to Bing Maps:

Navarre, FL to our stop in central PA: 1078.7 miles…16 hours, 6 minutes.

Bellevue, NE to our stop in central PA: 1146.9 miles…16 hours, 31 minutes.

As we typically do, we stop somewhere overnight.  Don’t worry, my USAF Safety Officer friends 🙂

The Real Fine Print…

15. June 2011 · Comments Off on The Real Fine Print… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

I found this flyer that was handed to me when I turned on the Disney World Tickets last Thursday.  I remember stuffing it into our backpack as soon as I got it, and while cleaning out the backpack yesterday I found it.  This is the no-kidding real fine print about the extension to the Disney Military Salute promotion.  I’m not finding it very well online, so here it is for you.  Note the new block out dates.  Click the image to see it full sized.

Return to Disney World!**

14. June 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

**I’m reminded of all those Disney reprise movies: Return to Neverland, Return from Witch Mountain, Return to Halloweentown, Return to Snowy River, etc.

Semi-impulsively, this past weekend we took a “short” trip down to Disneyworld and joined our friends Suzy and Andy’s family, and along with their neighbor’s family.  They flew down from Ohio for the week, while we joined them part way through the week after the boys were finished with their school year.

We took advantage of this year’s Disney military salute tickets…while not as big a discount as we experienced in 2009 (when Dave and I each got 5 complimentary days), 4 days + water parks for $138 per ticket is still the best Disney deal there is!  Consider that the 2-day Florida resident ticket is $133!

On this trip we used 3 of the 4 days, we’re considering a future trip combining the last Disney ticket day with Sea World and perhaps even Legoland when the weather turns cooler.

There were 12 of us (6 adults, 6 kids).  Since all 3 families had been recently, there weren’t pressing needs to meet characters, search for Hidden Mickeys or ride particular rides.  I was pleased to get to ride a couple things we didn’t get around to in 2009: Space Mountain, It’s a Small World, and Maelstrom.

It was incredibly hot on this particular trip, which made a marked difference in the boys’ behavior.  We didn’t hear the whining/complaining till day 5 when we went in December ’09.  On this trip, it was halfway through the 2nd day…Timmy sat himself down in the middle of the sidewalk at Hollywood Studios and refused to walk.

Instead of just giving you a random bunch of pictures, I thought I’d instead share some of the cool stuff we found out about this time around.  Enjoy!

1.) Announced in April 2011, the Disney World military promotion has been extended into 2012.  Tickets purchased in 2011 now don’t expire until September 30, 2012!  There is a lot of “fine print” to this promotion change, so I’ll just refer you to this website for the details.

2.) Did you know you are not restricted to that one hour window printed on your Fast Pass?  Fastpass is Disney Parks’ rider management system.  Grab a Fastpass ticket for your favorite attraction and come back at the designated time for shorter wait times…or no wait at all!  The attendants are only ever checking the start time, but if you don’t make it in that one hour window printed, come back anytime afterwards before the attraction closes and ride attendants are instructed to let you through anyway.  They don’t advertise this, since Fastpass is designed as a ridership management tool and they need most riders to return in that one hour window for the program to work smoothly.  More information about how to maximize Fastpass can be found here.

The most popular ride in Hollywood Studios.  See the non-Fastpass wait time on the left?  People waited anyway!  Even more popular than Star Tours on a Star Wars Weekend!  They are typically out of Fastpasses by 11am!  In 2009 one of us ran to this attraction as soon as we got to Hollywood Studios to grab the Fastpass.  And it was still for about 6 hours later.

3.) Disney Dining now has a mobile website that you can use from your smartphone to make dining reservations!  While we were enjoying some air conditioned goodness at Disney Quest (see #6 below), I was able to hop onto the mobile website and make dinner reservations at House of Blues across the street at Downtown Disney.  The following day, Dave got us lunchtime seating at the German Biergarten buffet on our drive into EPCOT.

 

4.) We caught our first glimpses of the “new Fantasyland” under construction.  Suzy and I commented to each other, “It’s about time Disney decided to do more with the more recent Princesses!”.  However, based on the article I linked above, recent “policy shifts” in Disney’s princess marketing is resulting in some last-minute changes to the original plans.  Based on the concept art, it looks like there will still be big areas dedicated to Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid.  Set to open in Fall 2012, we’re excited to get to see such quick progress.  (It was also very interesting to see such huge construction areas in general…I figured Disney would have been more discreet, do you?)  A friend who was there recently said that my pictures from June 9th had so much more visible than what she saw just 8 weeks prior.

You can see Beast’s castle in the upper left, and The Little Mermaid’s area towards the top.
Progress so far on Beast’s castle.
I love my camera’s zoom!

5.) A newly-designed Star Tours 3-D attraction opened at Hollywood Studios on May 20th, in conjunction with the first of their 4 Star Wars Weekends that are held every May/June.  The ride was closed from September 2010 for the renovation.  Dave and I had been on Star Tours in 2000, and after riding it again in 2009 it all seemed the same and rather uninteresting.  But this time around, it was WAY more interesting: the ride is now in 3D and it’s interactive in that a random passenger is photographed and shown as a “rebel spy” (our godson on our particular ride).  The movement in the ride is now smoother and flows with the storyline better.  To me, the coolest part is how there are now 54 permutations to the ride, by combining which storylines your “tourship” travels through.  In our case, we wound through Kashyyyk and Coruscant.  At the end, Princess Leia’s holographic message thanks us for protecting the rebel spy for the Alliance.  I was impressed with whatever they did with Carrie Fisher’s mouth movements to make that work…the images were straight from the original Star Wars.

I wrote about our Star Wars Weekend experience for GeekMom.

Dave looking super cool in his 3D glasses!

6.) Disney Quest: One of Walt Disney World’s best-kept secrets!  After dealing with the most crowded, hottest Disney park experience in my entire life at Hollywood Studios for a Star Wars Weekend, we left mid-afternoon and enjoyed a couple hours of air conditioned goodness at Disney Quest.  This is an interactive theme park located at Downtown Disney West Side.  We bought the military promotion tickets that included Disney Quest admission, so we spent a couple hours there and enjoyed unlimited video game play.  Usually Disney Quest is very crowded in the evenings, so to go over there from 4-6pm was delightful, we had a chance to play every video game we were interested in!

School’s Out — Let the Travel Begin!

08. June 2011 · Comments Off on School’s Out — Let the Travel Begin! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,
In the shade of our garage, we were able to load the car in relative comfort…OUT of the 90+ degrees  at 9am!

Not only is our summer full of travel, but we couldn’t even wait for school to end before taking our first trip!  Since we’re taking the SUV up to PA/WV/VT next week, we’re going to use the Prius to drive down for a couple days at Walt Disney World.  We took the boys out of school a half-day early.

But to easily fit two kids, two adults and our stuff into our Prius, we loaded up our roof-top carrier.  We usually only need to use this when we’re moving from one house to another, but to save us some mileage, we thought we’d use the car.

Better do it now while the weeds kids fit easily in the backseat…

A Blast from the Past: Smarties!

07. June 2011 · Comments Off on A Blast from the Past: Smarties! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

A small British grocery store opened up right up the street, called The British Pedlar.  The ladies who are running the store are very kind and they have just about everything that I remember from my childhood, when my mom would frequent the British grocery store in Virginia Beach OR she’d bring things back from our trips to Hong Kong when I was a kid.

The store has everything I remember except one thing: Bovril!  Click that link to read more about Bovil not being available in the U.S.  The ladies said it’s just too complicated and the FDA is really slow-rolling the customs approval process even for the non-beef version.

On my last couple of visits to the store, I’d pick up some treats for the family: locally-made banger sausages (Mom, we’ll hit the store and I’ll get you some while you’re visiting next month, they have THREE brands to choose from!), McVitie’s Digestives, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bars and Smarties candies.  I’m accustomed to the Smarties being sold in small cylindrical containers like this:

Ha ha!  Fooled many of you, didn’t I?  Perhaps the introduction about British food tipped you off…but I’m sure many of you were still thinking about “American” Smarties:

For the unfamiliar, Nestle’s Smarties are very similar to American M&Ms.  Chocolate drops covered in a hard candy shell.  But there’s a…well…fruitiness to the Nestle Smarties that I’ve always enjoyed.

Anyway, on my most recent visit this week, the store was out of the smaller packages of Smarties, so I picked up a bigger box.  I’d never seen the bigger box in detail, so I was intrigued by the picture on the back.

Love the “colours”!

Spirulina?  Really???  http://www.foodnavigator.com/Legislation/Spirulina-faces-legal-questions

I knew there was a fruity flavor (flavour?) to the Smarties but I never realized I was tasting the all-natural coloring to the candy shells!  The kids got a kick out of the picture and the information, then got a bit squirmy about eating any more of the green ones, ha ha!

Eating Nestle’s Smarties brings back so many memories, and I enjoy sharing these things with the boys.

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