DISCLAIMER: The photos in this post are not great. Also they are not edited in any way, save for cropping. Mostly they’re not great because I was taking them on the Messenger app to send to my sister, as a way to document my evening but also so I could send photos of meat and desserts to my sister, both of which my sister is not too keen on so I’m glad to annoy her in that way. 🙂
I made dinner tonight. Ribs. On the grill. Something I’ve never done. I’ve never made ribs before, at least not on my own, and I’ve never really grilled anything before. So. I did my best. I prepped the ribs the night before in some brown sugar and spices, then let them hang out in the refrigerator. Today Brittney and I moved the grill from its place in the shed to the top of the long ramp attached to our house where it could be easily accessed from the back door. After we moved the grill, I fired it up.
The ribs were in an aluminum pan with some liquid (chicken broth and apple cider vinegar, I think), and so I left them on the grill for a good long time while Brittney and I were busy doing other things, like chopping up vegetables to be sauteed to go with the ribs (mushrooms, onions and bell peppers), washing, peeling and shredding potatoes to become potato pancakes, something else I’ve never made before, dicing up dill and chives for the potato pancakes, actual making and frying of the potato pancakes, and working on looking up a recipe for a no-bake cheesecake because our plan to make brownies fell through earlier in the day due to an issue with the gas stove, in that the pilot light might be out but I am not entirely sure how to fix it. But that’s a story for a different day. Instead of brownies, no-bake cheesecake it is! With Oreos, because why not.
So, yeah, then finally getting back to the ribs, who by this point, have spent a good long time on the grill. I brought the ribs in, and as I removed the tin foil, the liquid I had mentioned earlier, had become more black than liquid. Oops.
So I removed the ribs, which had become more-than-slightly charcoaled onto the bottom of the pan, and placed them on the cutting board to cool. Brittney was going to shred the ribs, essentially, by removing the edible parts from the non-edible parts. She’ll read this and think, oh it really wasn’t that bad, and I know this because she told me so but still. I think we should get a “Grilling for Dummies” book or some shit like that, because like I said, I’ve never grilled before and I’d like to not charcoal everything. Anyway, after I got the ribs out of the charcoal mess of an aluminum pan, Brittney shredded and tossed them with BBQ sauce. I finished frying the potato pancakes and by then the veggies had been sauteed to a satisfactory level.
An Oreo crust to the cheesecake had even been made, and popped in the freezer. We got our $0.25 plastic plates from Walmart, pink or blue tonight (I got blue), and we had a pretty delectable supper. Brittney agreed.
After we ate our food, Brittney and I had a wonderful video chat with our dear friend Misa from Jamestown, and then I finished making the cheesecake. So many Oreos.
It sat in the freezer (which, by the way, is a brand new freezer and is therefore very good at its job. Same with refrigeration. Keeps things very crispy – like cold crispy, not hot crispy.) for like 25 minutes so it was fairly solid when I did cut out a piece for Brittney and myself. It was so totally melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Yum!!
All in all, I’d say it was a successful Sunday, and our delightful supper was the perfect cap to the weekend. It was a good weekend. Here’s to many more good weekends!
Oh yeah, we forgot to add the coleslaw. Thought of it every time I opened the refrigerator to get something else, and forgot about it when the time came to take it out and dish it up. But that’s probably just the story of coleslaw’s life.
T. R. National Park is a lovely place, though. So many hills and so much dirt. Colorful dirt, though. I believe the rock that this area is known for is scoria. It’s a fancy red volcanic rock. Lovely. So, side note: I collect rocks, quite avidly. Not for any particular reason other than to clean them and place them in a jar with a label. I have approximately 70 some jars of rocks from places I have been. No clue what I am going to do with them, but for now I have a good shelf at my parent’s house in Minnesota for them to rest upon. Anyway, the national park. It was a good 40-ish mile loop around the South Unit of the park, and we stopped occasionally for photos. We stopped at this one place, called Wind Canyon. It was, you guessed it, a canyon with the Missouri River flowing through it, and several rock formations with fancy holes in them from the wind being powerful and windy and forming said holes. It was rather neat.
We made it back to our campsite and decided to nap, which turned into a 2.5 hour sleep. And then we were hungry so we went back into town for more pizza. And we had the same waiter from South Africa. And of course he remembered us. Also we happened to sit in the same booth as we had the night before. But the pizza was 100% times better, as we got a cheese and mushroom pizza, with half pepperoni because Dan needed to have meat on his pizza. Which means it wasn’t spicy, so my mouth was happy. We had more wine and got pleasantly drunk. We were walking around Medora at like, 10 pm and “apparently” I was being “rambunctious” because I was doing “crow pose” in the “street.” Improper use of quotation marks? Of course not. But maybe.
Another thing you may or may not be aware of:
NORTH DAKOTA GROWS ITS OWN CACTI. LIKE, WHAT? They were the cutest little cacti and I really really really wanted to take one but Dan said no. He said that it wanted to stay in the ground and that I would likely kill it during transport from its natural dirt home to a new fake dirt home. So I reluctantly moved on. After taking some pictures, of course. 🙂
So we hung out with the light house for a while before making the trek back to the car. We headed down to the beach to sit on driftwood while Jennifer ate her apple. At least I think it was an apple. Was it an apple, Jen?
There was a couple sitting on a bench near this area, and they had a pair of binoculars and were “ooo-ing” and “ahh-ing” at something. They turned to us and told us that there were a couple of whales out in the distance, and proceeded to borrow us their binoculars so that we too, could “ooo” and “ahh” at the whales. They were quite lovely; having never seen a whale in the flesh before, I thought they were quite extraordinary, as well. The couple (hailing from California) also pointed out the seals to us, frolicking down in the waves. Oh they were just so cute! Gosh.
After we had our fill of whale- and seal-watching, we decided to head back. We made a solid attempt at going down the cliff-side to get to the beach, which would have ended up being a shorter route back to the campsite, but the path got real sketchy real fast, so we just went back the way we came. That’s right, all 2.5 miles of death-trail.
We drove the last six hours to Sol Duc, the campground where we would be spending the night. Sol Duc is located in the Olympic National Forest, in Washington’s beautiful Pacific Northwest region. Or, as Sara liked to call it, the GNP (Greater North Pacific), which should not to be confused with the GOP (Grand Old Party). We pitched our tent, a feat which all should be thoroughly impressed with. It took a bit of effort, but we did manage to make it stand up (by itself!) in the end.
Just kidding.
Okay, so the elevation was only about 1700 feet vs. the 4200 feet of Mount Brown (refer to my post “The Story of Mount Brown” for the full story of Mount Brown), but seriously who accidentally climbs a mountain, not once but twice in one week? Apparently, we do.
So we made it to the top of this mountain, and we found Deer Lake. Sara, our line leader for this expedition, shrieked with excitement when she saw the lake, which spurred Jennifer and myself on. We were thrilled to be off this weird trail.
Sara and Jennifer had continued on the path; we were going to attempt the trail to Mink Lake, which would then lead us back to out campground. I think. I wasn’t 100% sure on the logistics of this hike. I was more focused on taking photos of the trees and the moss and the water. Which I did. I just followed Sara and Jennifer, and trusted that they knew the way. Or at the very least that they could interpret the map.
The three of us made it to Spokane (a rather surprising feat, for there were some foreboding signs on Highway 200 in Montana about big horned sheep and 433 killed and 55 mph. We’re still not entirely sure what they mean; 433 big horned sheep killed? Or have the big horned sheep caused the death of 433 humans? Also, this was over the course of a 19-mile stretch, and so that seems like a very specific area to have had so many deaths. The deaths per square foot must be incredible. Additionally, what is the time frame that we’re looking at; for the last year? 10 years? 50 years? So many questions, so many theories and speculations, so little knowledge about big horned sheep and their death rates.) around 10:45 p.m. Pacific time and stopped at Walmart for a couple of camping necessities. We also stopped for gas and coffee, found I-90, and headed west into the night.
We stopped for breakfast, and kept right on going. I was provided a two-hour reprieve, during which time I had a nice little nap. I decided I wanted to drive again, because it was my vehicle we were taking (a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee, white) and I just like to drive. And drive we did. Montana is a huge state, nearly twice the length of North Dakota. It took 5 hours through ND, which meant that we had about 9 hours to go through MT. However, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day for a drive. The three of us grew up in southern Minnesota, and so we were not used to such terrain. The hills of Montana were exciting, but when we saw the mountains we (meaning I) became ecstatic. There were squeals of excitement all around. Mainly from me. Of course, we had to stop once we were close enough to take some photos of the impending mountains.
After our lovely drive through the mountains, we made it to the west side of Glacier National Park, and we found our hotel in Columbia Falls around 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon. The beds were very inviting, and I ended up taking an hour-long nap, which increased the number of hours I had slept in the last 18 to a whopping total of three. Later that evening, Sara and I decided to do a bit of exploring. We found a nice little lake to sit by whilst watching the sunset. It was a gorgeous evening, albeit a bit buggy, but that is to be expected. It was around 65 degrees, no wind, and it smelled like forest. Wonderful.
After our nice little sit by the lake, we returned to the hotel for a much-needed repose.
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