Right after the bar, we went to Clearwater, Florida for a week where it rained all but the first day and the day Matt and I left. My parents and my aunt and uncle rented a house, so we tagged along. As a thank you, I made them all dinner one night. No pictures because I didn't want them to think I was too weird, but I will recommend the dishes. The two main dishes came from Giada's new cookbook. They were so good! I made Rotini with Salmon and Roasted Garlic (which is not available on the foodnetwork website, so I won't post it here) and Prosciutto Ravioli. Both received rave reviews.
One day my uncle rented a pontoon boat and we spent the day on the water. Despite being nearly killed by a lightening storm, we had a pretty good time. We saw so many dolphins and one came right up to our boat and even waved at us! He totally mimicked what we were doing to him. It was awesome. Here are a few pictures, but it's hard to tell. The white spot in the pictures are most likely his nose or fin.
The water splash is air coming from our buddy's blow hole.
This is when he waved at us. It was so cute!
After Florida, my husband and I headed to the Smoky Mountains for a 5 day backpacking trip. It was so hard but so fun! It was my longest camping trip and longest period of time without a shower. I gotta tell you, we were ripe. Here are some pictures from the trip, some of them even cooking related!
First day on the trail.
This was our second campsite. It was so pretty! It was right on the creek and was by far our favorite site.
Dinner our second night was spaghetti with canned sauce. Not a huge fan of the canned sauce, and it was a little bit of a disaster since our cheapo Wal-Mart can opener crapped out on us.
This was the biggest hole I could get in the can. It took some coaxing to get the sauce out.
Matt trying to boil our drinking water. Everything was so wet ("smoky" means "humid", apparently), we were only able to get a small flame with lots of smoke. We had a camp stove Matt made from pop cans, but weren't sure we had enough fuel, so we tried a small fire. The water tasted smoky, so that batch was dubbed "the smoky water".
Day 3 hike was 3.3 miles STRAIGHT UP. It was a super challenging hike and I was not sure I was going to make it. But we did! Here's the proof, standing at the divide.
Beginning of our Day 4 hike. This time, we got to go downhill (after 1 mile climbing back up the divide). Much better, though I did fall in the stream 3 times that day.
Our last breakfast on the trail. This is Matt's attempt at pancakes in a pot on top of a pop can stove. Not easy.
After the first disaster of a pancake, Matt decided to make what he called a pancake biscuit. We just ate it out of the pot with a spoon.
Our last hike was about 6 miles and ended at the Indian River Falls. Super pretty, but I was ready to sit in a dry car with air conditioning!
We made it! Smelly, but in one piece. Woohoo! Now we're ready for our next backpacking adventure.
1 comment:
Linda, congrats on the bar and the lawyer stuff and all that!! WOW, you're my hero! And your backpacking trip looks like it was so much fun!
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