This is the first leg of my Trip to Florida, I made plans to pick up the Masterbuilt Electric smoker that I won on Cyndi Allison’s Barbecue Master Blog a few months back since Masterbuilt’s contest could only ship within the United States I had to make arrangements to have the smoker delivered in the USA.
I could have had it shipped to my parents in Florida directly but I thought it would be better promotion if we could get a picture of Cyndi presenting the smoker in person. (I will cover this in more detail in my Oshawa Ogre’s Views, News and BBQ’s Blog in the near future)
Being that Salisbury North Carolina is pretty much half way between Oshawa and Fort Myers Florida, this seemed like a no brainer.
Normally I fly down to visit my parents but since I now have a very fuel-efficient VW Jetta TDI Diesel I wanted to drive down this year anyways, I really enjoy driving and the fact that I was going alone did not bother me since I could enjoy listening to tunes on my new Freeway DVD Car stereo that I just got for Christmas.
Seeing that it is a 13 hour drive according to Google maps I wanted to hit Salisbury between 5 and 6 pm and in order to make that dead line (had dinner plans arranged with Cyndi and her family at a local BBQ Restaurant ( more on that later too) I needed to leave Oshawa at 3am on Friday morning Jan. 21st Argggggh that is my normal time for going to sleep!
Being a huge Toronto Maple Leafs fan I had to watch the Leafs Ducks game and that went til 10 pm so I did not get to sleep til 11 pm and had my alarm set for a way to early 2am wake up alarm.
But I did get up and have a shower to wake myself up and was out the door at 3am, though I went to top up the fuel on my car and wouldn’t you know it I picked a station with a big line up at the pumps (mostly taxi’s) so I did not get on the highway til 3:20.
As you see above Coolio and the gang were fresh and ready for the drive, though I wonder why penguins would want to go down south, maybe they thought I was going to South Antarctica?
Why the penguins you may ask?, It is a bit of a long story that I will cover in a future post, so stay tuned for that one.
As you can also see from my pic above it was snowing when I left Oshawa but the worst of it came when I was in the Niagara Falls area and through New York State and Pennsylvania when I Drove through Blizzard conditions 4 different times and if not for the tail lights of the cars in front of me I think I would have drove right off the road like many others that I had seen do.
Further south you would expect it to get better right?…. Wrong!
Road conditions were terrible even though the snow stopped falling except for flurries the odd time through West Virgina, the amount of roads that were still snow covered would make your head (and my tires) spin.
It is a good thing I bought new Snow tires a couple of days before my trip my old all season tires would have put me in the ditch or worse for sure!
I did not stop seeing snow on the ground and still on the roads for that matter til I was well into Virginia! and to top it off I saw the remains of at least 4 tractor trailers that had jack knifed rolled over or was facing the wrong way on the Interstates.
I will say this, I normally drive I75 to go to Florida which is a very boring drive and a lot of big cities to drive through with traffic, but the trip from Oshawa to Salisbury NC was (except for the snow) a scenic drive and I enjoyed the landscapes that I had not seen before.
Remember I said I wanted to be in Salisbury for 5pm? well I pulled into the Days Inn at 5:15, and I would have been even earlier if I had not missed a couple of exits that my GPS was ordering me to take, But I must say that Garmina does have a nice British accent, If I would have listened to her!, I did say I like listening to my tunes while driving and the car was kind of rockin’ out!
After unpacking the car I called Cyndi and she along with Jimmy and her son Eli drove over to the hotel and dropped off the smoker and some very nice gifts from local NC product producers, but before looking at those we went to have a great dinner (just as much the company as the food) at Winks BBQ not too far from the Days Inn here in Salisbury.
I will review them more on my BBQ Blog when I get a chance to write that but as you can see above we had some great BBQ (I found out that I liked Fried Ocra! (did not even know what it was) and I found out that Hush Puppies actually do taste great and I do like them! (after a bad first impression of them back in Oshawa) Helps when they are fresh and not reheated from frozen Buster Rhino’s North Oshawa!
I also had Chopped Pork with a vinegar based sauce which was very good, the sauce is different from what I am used to in Canada but still tasty, though if I am totally honest I think I like the pulled Pork with ironically the Carolina Sour sauce with Slaw on top from Rubbs Barbecue better.
Cyndi’s family is not huge on slaw so when they asked for no slaw I kind of got the same treatment. I will say this though the portions served were more than enough for us all and we ordered the small plates!
After dinner Cyndi pointed out to me at the back of Winks that they are stick burners which means they cook using chunks of wood for fuel not gas, electric or charcoal. It made for a great flavour in the pork.
Jimmy then drove us around for a tour of Salisbury and by their recommendations I have Breakfast planned at another BBQ Joint that has a fantastic biscuits and gravy I am told. I also was shown the Catawba College that Cyndi teaches at and it is a beautiful campus for sure.
Back to the Days Inn and we Took promotion photos for the Smoker and exchanged some gifts from our local areas mostly BBQ Items but also some other local items that both of us will enjoy including sauces and rubs that we can review for our own blogs in the near future.
Cyndi was able to write a blog post within an hour and a half of leaving here on her Barbecue Master Blog.
I started to write but I was preoccupied with a Carolina Blonde!
I had better explain that lol, Cyndi gave me a six pack of a locally bottled beer that is called Carolina Blonde as pictured below and I must say that beer has a wonderful taste, and this is being said by someone who does not like american beer, but this rivals anything I get in Canada.
Well been a very long day I need some rest, I have been awake for over 24 hours now and I will be going to meet more BBQ peeps tomorrow at Lexington 1 BBQ and may also do some sight-seeing around town.
I have more pics that I wanted to add in this post but working on this little netbook is proving difficult, I will try more later on.
Life at 50+ 