Chuck and I headed up to Itasca County in Northern Minnesota for our annual “first weekend in May” caching trip (our 5th year running) and met up with Craig and Mike for a weekend of food, beer, and caching based out of Craig’s cabin in Nashwauk, MN.

I nearly lost my GPS at the second geocache we did, requiring another two mile round-trip hike to retrieve it and then we spent the day doing a ton of long hikes through many awesome parts of the Chippewa National Forest and other parks and waysides along the way. We got to the Laurentian Divide, saw plenty of lakes that had not iced out yet, and watched as four or five eagles took off together from a deer carcass that they had decimated next to the road right near the Cottonwood Lake Campground.

After blowing off Richie’s due to a gaggle of drunken baseball players, we ate at Marcell, MN’s Timberwolf Inn where I had the Tilapia Sandwich and both Chuck and Craig got their Aussie Burger. There was an on-site yellow lab that was quite possibly the best dog ever.

The end of the day included some more crazy long hikes through rolling terrain and several ticks, of which I was the only lucky recipient — none attached, dinner at the cabin and plenty of beer. We got up on Sunday morning, had an excellent breakfast cooked by Craig, and went and erased a DNF from Saturday before Chuck and I headed back down towards the city.

On our way back we stopped in Mora MN’s Sportmen’s Cafe and Drive In for a Hot, Open Faced, Turkey Sandwich and a Well Done Hot Ham and Cheese Sandwich which was topped off with a nice slice of rhubarb pie for me and strawberry ice cream for Chuck. The bill, before tip, was less than $17 and the food was pretty fucking good. The cafe was a hell-hole and a half but the regulars seemed to like it just fine. If you happen to be heading through Mora on MN-65 and you’re looking for some good pie and a surly waitress, the Sportmen’s Cafe might be the place for you.

Check out all the pictures from this weekend on Flickr here (camera).

Kim and I are spending the week in East Benton, PA at my parents’ new home that they moved into just before Thanksgiving. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been home for more than a long weekend (about 5 years) and it’s nice to be home — temporarily.

We always have a ton of traveling to do when we come here as my family is located all over the place. We flew in to PHL and drove the 2.5+ hours up to the Scranton area where my parents live. Due to delays at MSP caused by air traffic on the East Coast we didn’t get out of there until almost 9PM CST. We thankfully had a direct flight and landed at PHL just after 11:35 PM EST. After getting out bags and making the drive North, we were sleeping just before 3 AM.

We spent Saturday relaxing and took off for CT to visit my aunt, uncle, cousin and grandmother for the day. We were surprised to see my other aunt, uncle and cousin as well. They fed us well, with one of my uncles being a chef in a previous life, and we enjoyed the time together.

On Monday my father and I went out and found a few geocaches in the immediate area around their home. I planned on heading out to the State Park nearby to nab a few of those as well but have been sidetracked with other things in the mean time. After finishing up the caches we did some quick shopping to get my mother some gift cards for Christmas and we were back home so that my parents could whip up Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Eve dinner was scallops, calamari, tilapia, mashed potatoes, pierogies, etc, etc. My mother has done an excellent job in not tempting me with too many good tasting sides and desserts making only a small batch of burned chocolate chip cookies in the oven that she’s not accustomed to operating. We normally open gifts after midnight on Christmas Eve but Kim headed to bed after imbibing too much wine and good food.

On Christmas morning my mother made an excellent omelette just the way I needed it to be. After that we opened gifts. Even though Kim and I already had our own Christmas gift giving before we left, my parents had some more gifts for us. My mother shopped almost solely from our Amazon Wish Lists which caused some problems being that Kim purchased exactly the same things my mother had for me. My mother, ever the efficient Internet user, read my post and returned her gifts to the store (feeling confident she was a great mother being that she could choose the exact same gifts as my wife) and bought me other things on my list instead.

Kim received It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia seasons 1 and 2 on DVD (she’s a much bigger fan of that show than I am but I still enjoy watching it with her) and Apples to Apples Party Box. We got to play Apples to Apples with my parents and I, of course, cleaned house that night ;) My mother also picked up Kim’s favorite chocolates and some other knick knacks as well.

I got Rescue Me season 3 on DVD (if anyone wants to buy me season 2, go for it ;)) and Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s. Kim had purchased Augusten Burrough’s Sellevision (which I finished on the plane) so I was warmed up for reading his brother’s book as well. I just finished that a few minutes ago (and Kim’s just about done with it now). I have really enjoyed all of Augusten’s books and I certainly loved his brother’s book for the same crazy content. While the writing was less refined and the 4 or 5 blatant misspelling/grammar issues were annoying I guess it wasn’t enough to detract from my great interest in the book and the subject matter.

My father and I are going caching tomorrow with some local geocachers and I have some more books to read. I brought three more with me and I need to finish at least two of those before we touchdown at MSP. The next one on the agenda is Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Cross your fingers for me.

On Friday we’re heading into NYC on a bus trip purchased as a joint gift for both Kim and I. Kim has only been to Ellis Island and we came in from the NJ side so she has never seen the city, let alone at Christmas. We’re both looking forward to that trip and stay tuned for the photos! :)

Happy Holiday and a Happy New Year from Kim and I to you.

Kim and I celebrated our second anniversary at the Afton House Inn with dinner at the Wheel Room in Afton, MN this weekend. I had made the plans to stay there sometime earlier this summer and with the current healthy eating I was looking forward to my first restaurant dinner in a month.

In the morning we headed up to Stillwater to do some shopping and browsing. While passing St. Croix Antiquarian Booksellers, I noticed they were selling old maps of MN towns and on closer inspection found that they had some reprints of Russian socialist propaganda posters. This piqued my interest and I found another one of their used/rare book sellers had similar offerings. In one of the antique shops I found several pages from magazines printed in the teens and forties that had WWII advertisements and WWI action maps. After purchasing several of these Kim took them to Michael’s (they are having 50% off custom framing) to have them matted and framed (some will remain just matted for us to choose the frame because they will be of normal size). What a cool anniversary gift!

We had a blast walking around Stillwater and at just about three o’clock we headed down to Afton to check-in to the Afton House Inn for the night.

We found, during a trip over Martin Luther King weekend in 2005 to the Quill and Quilt B&B in Cannon Falls, that we enjoy staying at B&B’s and are looking to visit one at least every other year. For this trip we chose Room #28 which included a supposed two person jacuzzi and a view of the St Croix from our “shared balcony”. Basing my idea of what a B&B would be like from our visit to the Quill and Quilt, I expected a much different experience at the Afton House. What we found was more of a hotel like experience with a smallish spa-tub and a view of the parking lot with some water in the distance rather than what was described on the web. I was especially disappointed in the lame blanket used on the bed which could have been found at any cheap hotel (burn stains and all even though smoking, candles, and incense flames are prohibited).

Dinner at the Wheel Room at the Afton House Inn was something I had been planning all week. I took a look at their menu online several times and pretty much settled on the Seared Ahi Tuna (with pickled ginger, wasabi paste, zesty orange glaze, grilled asparagus and wasabi mashed potatoes) or the Simply Grilled Filet Mignon (served with garlic mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables).

After hemming and hawing over whether or not the orange glaze with the Ahi would be too outside of what I’ve been eating, I went with the filet mignon. For an appetizer I chose the Fumaki Seared Scallops which were served with a seaweed salad and a citrus soy sauce. Kim chose their Crab Stuffed Mushrooms which are served with chive butter sauce and basil puree and for her entree the Goldies Almond Crusted Walleye, served with a browned butter sauce, potato puree and seasonal vegetables.

Kim and I got dressed up all nice for our anniversary dinner and came down. We were seated right away and found that the dining room was nearly empty. There were numerous tables but only four or five actually taken. The decor was campy and cheap and after awhile, a little annoying. Everywhere you looked there was something else that was distracting (like the random flying bird with a huge wingspan hanging from a corner of the ceiling). Everyone in the place gave us the eye, I assume because how we were dressed (not that I feel a shirt/tie and dress is out of the ordinary).

The wait staff that I encountered were not knowledgeable, were under-dressed, and acted inappropriately for the type of restaurant the prices should command. Based solely on the wait staff and their poor knowledge/actions, I would place them at Perkins or Applebees, not a restaurant charging nearly $100 for two for dinner.

After quite sometime, the waitress took our appetizer orders while bringing bread and olives (with pits). As I stated above, I went with the scallops and Kim the crab mushrooms. After that she took our dinner order and I made it quite clear that I wanted my filet mignon cooked rare. After taking Kim’s order she verified my cooking selection as “medium”. I replied, “Rare.” She says, “Oh, medium-rare?” I again replied, “No, rare.” Oh, “rare, right. Ok.” Now, I understand that someone ordering a rare piece of high quality meat might be confusing to your typical waitress in Minnesota being that people here like to cook beef until it is so disgustingly dry that it would be be better to eat your own hair, but I expect when paying $31 for a piece of meat that the wait staff will be able to take the order w/o fucking it up. Oops, I guess I was wrong.

The appetizers took quite a long time to arrive at the table and at first glance were both much larger than I expected. Recently I have become accustomed to seeing only two large sea scallops for an appetizer (although on the East Cost you’ll see quite a few more) and was happy to see three on my plate. Kim had four HUGE stuffed mushrooms on her plate and she said there was no way she’d be able to finish it all. Looking good so far — that was until I took my first bite.

Apparently the chefs at the Wheel Room are not used to preparing scallops as they were fishy and terrible. While there was no grit inside the scallops, sometimes found in low quality restaurants, the fishy taste was just too much to overcome. The seaweed salad and citrus soy sauce was nearly inedible and I left it all on the plate. I was extremely disappointed in this dish and was now looking forward to moving on to something no one could possibly mess up — steak.

Kim’s dish, while huge, was also poor. When I asked her what she thought, she just sorta shrugged her shoulders and said, “eh, it’s all right.” Now, because of my food selections of late, I wasn’t able to try an entire one like I would have preferred but on the small taste I did have, it was pretty much terrible and tasteless. I certainly wouldn’t recommend either of these dishes to anyone and the chefs should be ashamed for serving them to anyone. Now, before someone goes off and says, “well, they might be having a bad day!” or whatever, remember that I’ve been sustaining myself with processed foods heated in a microwave and salads containing fat free (or fat free and sugar free) dressings, fat free cheese (which isn’t cheese at all) as well as soy chips and bad representations of other dishes that look a lot like snot. After a month of that, I would expect that anything I ate out would give me a smile…

Our main courses were also slow in coming out and I was again shocked at the size of the dishes. Kim’s piece of fish was so large that it covered almost the entire plate but it was barely discerned from the mashed potatoes underneath. I could smell the fishy taste from where I was sitting and knew she wouldn’t care for it. If there is one piece of fish Minnesota restaurants are able to cook without issue it’s walleye. The Wheel Room apparently failed even that basic task.

My filet mignon was absolutely huge. They didn’t list the weight on the menu but I would guess it was well over 10 oz and probably in the 12 to 14 oz range. It was a slab of beef! I had asked that there be no potatoes with my dish and instead asked if they could substitute another vegetable. I was told that they probably only had asparagus — what?! It’s not even in season! But told the waitress to double that side up and that would be just fine. Well, if the asparagus that came out was double what I would have gotten (9 pieces), I’d be hard pressed to say that it would have been a side.

I cut into the piece of meat with the steak knife they provided and found connective tissue throughout. This was a completely unacceptable piece of filet mignon and probably was “choice” rather than “prime” and that’s obviously why they chose to give such a large piece. While I never did ask what pieces of meat they serve, I’m sure the waitress wouldn’t have known anyway. I would have much rather had been given a prime piece that was a quarter the size for $31 than the shitty piece I ingested last evening.

While the middle of the meat was rare, the first half I ate was not. If anything it was on the high-end of medium rare. The chef should not have allowed that poorly cooked, shitty piece of meat to leave his kitchen. When the waitress asked me, with an obnoxious inflection that only someone looking for no tip would dare, “Is that rare enough for ya?” I replied with a simple, “No, it’s not.” No, “I’m sorry” or anything. She just moved on to the kitchen where I hope she planned to tell the chef that he should be fired. Only in my dreams.

Kim ordered a piece of Tiramisu to go and we paid the $92 tab. I did tip the waitress although I probably shouldn’t have. Her service level, especially for the lack of customers, was on the very low side and her tone really irked me as if she was saying, “How dare you eat something rare?”

As I was paying the bill, I finally had it with the numerous flies that had been buzzing our table throughout dinner. I was trying to have a nice time and hoped that they would eventually be drawn to someone else but with our fishy tasting courses, I’m not surprised that they chose to hang out with us. I have a feeling that everyone else was also having a problem with them. It wasn’t solely a problem with the dining room however, as I had exterminated two in our room when we first arrived only to find several more that had miraculously appeared after we returned from dinner.

Overall, while I had an excellent evening with my wife and we enjoyed getting out, I cannot recommend staying at the Afton House or eating at the Wheel Room on site. The prices they charge are exorbitant for the service level and the quality of food presented. If you’re looking for a piece of properly cooked prime beef, you’re much better off paying someone else for it as the Wheel Room probably is not going to provide it.

While we have only been to one other B&B, I must say that the Afton House pales in comparison on all levels. The breakfast at the Quill and Quilt was something out of a chef competition. The breakfast at the Afton House was served in a lower level bar and was on a level slightly below what you’d find in a McDonalds’ Big Breakfast. The addition of leftover ribs and chicken and the expired yogurt (Today was September 3rd, not August 2nd you cheap and disgusting fucks) were a pleasant addition to the dead bugs lining the window sills we ate next to. Apparently that buffet is normally $9+ a person but thankfully it was comped as part of our stay…..

See all the pictures from this weekend here (mobile).