The Igloo and a tubing trip

On Saturday, we headed up to Crumpler, NC to go tubing. This is our second time going there, last year, Noelle and I surprised John and Nate for their 30th b’day with a group of people up there to go tubing and picnicking. There were about 13 of us going Saturday, but most of them were staying up there to camp. John and I and Megan and Chris decided against camping so we carpooled up together. We left around 10, packed up coolers, towels, change of clothes, lots of sunscreen and bugspray and were off. We were looking for somewhere to stop for lunch and passed the typical fast food places, but for some reason, we kept on going thinking there had to be a cute, local place in one of these mountain towns if we just kept going. Well, this is where we ended up.

We actually passed it first when someone in the car pointed out that there was an igloo restaurant back there. Right then, Chris did a u-turn in the intersection and we pulled into the parking lot. Upon walking into the place, this is one of the many signs adorning the front door. Wow, we must be in rural NC.

Must be a problem

Seriously, do people even write checks anymore? Especially for a $5 meal? Really? Wow. The menu consisted of burgers, hot dogs and ice cream. I saw something called a “French Burger” and I asked what it is (I don’t know, I guess I didn’t expect a place like this to have brie on burgers, but still, I was curious.) Turns out, it is a French burger because it comes with mayonnaise and is served on Texas toast. I still don’t get the name, maybe if it was served on French bread… but I really don’t get the correlation between France and Texas. Anyway. I ended up with just a cheeseburger and John got a hot dog “all the way”. The four of us sat down to eat and enjoyed the scenery of a dilapidated shed sitting atop cinder blocks. I must say, I think we all agreed that the food was fantastic! John decided that he needed some ice cream to top it all off, and I wanted a vanilla shake and both of those were really good too.

John with ice cream and a shake

Ok, so we go back inside the igloo because we all had to use the restroom (of course they did not have one) but Chris & John really wanted to stop back by there for dinner, so we found out they were open until 8. Perfect, we would make it for round 2…

The tubing was fun, but long. By the time we got to the river, it was probably 2:00 and we did not get off until 7. I wish I would have gotten a waterproof camera for the tubing trip because we would have had some funny pictures. We tied up all of our tubes around a giant raft holding 3 coolers full of beer. I made up a little mix of pomegranate martini for Megan and me so we drank that. We got stuck several times along the way and someone would always end up falling out, thankfully we never flipped the coolers. All in all, Brad lost a shoe, Chris lost sunglasses, and John got sunburned (even with SPF 70), but it was a great time. We left right away in hopes of making it to the igloo by 8. Our conversation in the car was all about what we were going to order, Chris was campaigning for ordering 1 of everything (it was all so cheap) just to try stuff.
We pulled into the parking lot at 7:55. On the way in, we were greeted by 2 workers carrying a huge vat of grease out the door. We were informed that the kitchen was already closed; they were only open for ice cream now. The guys especially were so bummed, I was too but mostly because I was starving by that point and would have eaten almost anything. So, we got back in the car and drove another half hour or so and stopped at a Wendy’s.

Sunday was not so relaxing; we started on the paint project spawned by the big paint mistake which I made a few weeks ago. We got the kitchen and hall done, but realized this morning that it is going to take a second coat. I selected a really neutral color (Behr’s Crème Brulee) so hopefully we don’t have to repaint when we go to sell our house, but it was much lighter than the color on the walls originally which was more of a dark wheat.
So, we are going to try and tackle some of the painting after work this week, but will (hopefully) finish the rest next weekend.

UPDATE: Just found out that John has to be on a jury this week, so in the evenings, he will be catching up on his work stuff. How convenient, I will be the one doing all the painting.