Tacos Y Gorditas Santos
Food TruckIt’s been a while since I’ve actually written a blog post about a place in Kalamazoo.
Let me let you in on a little secret. Figure skating is expensive. We’ve curbed our eating out at home because we have to eat out when we’re at competitions. There’s not a lot extra left in the weekly budget to for luxuries until we get through competition season.
I’ve been working a ton of overtime recently and I decided to take advantage of a little bit of padding in the check. Lunchtime Live is back at Bronson Park on Friday’s and I happened to be in the office during the lunch hour.
This was my first excursion to Lunchtime Live this year. There were some familiar trucks but also some new ones that I can’t wait to try over the next several weeks.
I was in a taco mood on this particular day so I got in line at Tacos Y Gorditas Santos.
This small yellow food truck looks like it’s been around for about three years yet somehow I have neve crossed paths with them. They’re based in Kalamazoo and do typical Mexican street foods like tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and tortas.
Kwik Trip (Kenosha/31st Street)
5800 31st StreetYou didn’t think I’d get out of Wisconsin without a Kwik Trip blog, did you?
Our last day in the Kenosha area started bright and early. This was the last day of the Southport Summer Classic at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex. Both kids were skating….finally. B had been so patient waiting for his turn.
We had already stopped at Kwik Trip several times but it was one I blogged about last year so I didn’t have a chance to write a new one. We were coming from a different hotel on Saturday morning and we needed breakfast so the plan was to stop at the first Kwik Trip we spotted.
That first Kwik Trip happened to be the location on 31st Street and Green Bay Road/Wisconsin Highway 31 in Kenosha. The convenience store/gas station is in the parking lot of a Festival Foods. It’s near the very busy intersection of Green Bay Road and 38th Street which is a very heavy industrial corridor.
Angry Brothers Pub & Grill
6501 Washington AvenueWe spent two nights in Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee, IL but we actually needed to stay three nights in the area for a figure skating competition at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex in Pleasant Prairie, WI.
I didn’t want to pay Friday night prices at Great Wolf just to sleep there. Both kids competed on Saturday and we didn’t really want them going all out for the third day in a row at a water park.
The rates at Great Wolf weren’t awful. It was only a little more than most of the hotels in the area so it was worth it to let the kids have some fun for a few nights. We really don’t have the means or time to take a real vacation anymore with all the skating they do so we use this trip and the Traverse City trip as our summer “vacations.”
We still needed a hotel for the third night and I had some Marriott points. I had initially booked a Fairfield Inn in Pleasant Prairie not too far from the rink but as I started looking, I could get a hotel a little further away and only use half the points. The hotel was just for sleeping anyway so I booked in Racine.
My parents were also staying the night as they wanted to stick around and watch both kids on Saturday. They booked the same hotel as us.
L had just an alright day skating. She actually had a solid skate but she wasn’t happy with it and it affected her mood the rest of the day. When we got back to the hotel, it was decided she was going to spend the rest of the night in the room to cool down and refocus.
My parents were hungry though and so was I. My dad noticed a bowling alley right next to our hotel that had a restaurant. We looked up a menu online and it looked pretty good so B and I decided to walk over with them to get something to eat.
The restaurant inside The Lanes on 20 is Angry Brothers Pub & Grill. The restaurant is on the west side of the building located on Washington Avenue/Wisconsin Highway 20 near Meadow Lane in Racine. Well, the address is listed as Racine but it appears to be the Town of Mt. Pleasant. I’m not familiar enough with Wisconsin municipalities to know if this is like a Charter Township in Michigan or what the deal is. The building is right next to the Fairfield Inn on Washington Avenue which is where we stayed. There is a separate entrance for the restaurant so you never have to go in to the bowling alley if you don’t want to. It was easy to just walk between the two parking lots and find some tasty food.
Read more…Andy’s Drive-In
2929 Roosevelt RoadFriday at the Southport Summer Classic was a long day.
L’s events were really spread out. She skated at 8 AM and then not again until 4 PM. She also had a 7 AM practice and we had to be out of our hotel at Great Wolf Lodge so it’s not like we could go back and hang out for a while. We also couldn’t get in to our new hotel until 3:00 so we had a long day to kill.
This is one of the closer competitions for my parents who still live where I grew up near Kankakee, IL. They decided to come up Friday morning and stay through Saturday so they could watch both kids.
My parents, B, and I left the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex not long after L’s first event ended around 9:00 AM. I had an idea for lunch but they didn’t open until 11. We killed some time by going to the Mars Cheese Castle and Tenuta’s Deli to do a little shopping.
We finished up at Tenuta’s around 10:30. Still a little early but we were close the diner I wanted to eat at so we just drove over there and sat in the parking lot until it opened.
Andy’s Drive-In is one of several 60’s era drive-ins still operational in Kenosha. Andy’s is on the corner of Roosevelt Road and 30th Avenue in the middle of the city. The vintage red and white building has been on this corner since the mid-1960’s.
Read more…Jimano’s Pizzeria (Gurnee)
7010 W. Grand AvenueWater park can be exhausting!
B and I came back to Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee around noon. We had been up early to watch L compete at the Southport Summer Classic at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex in nearby Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
L didn’t want to leave when she was done. She still wanted to watch her friends and teammates. J brought B and I back to the resort so he could swim.
B swam for a couple of hours then we went back to the room to chill for a while. We put Netflix on the TV and watched Minions thinking the girls would be home around dinner time.
They ended up staying pretty late so I suggested just picking up pizzas when they got back.
Great Wolf Lodge has a pizza place and it was really close to where our room was. I could have taken the easy way out and just ordered from Hungry as a Wolf, but we did that once in Traverse City and the pizzas were Little Ceasars $5 Hot ‘n Ready quality but way more than $5. Like I’ve said a lot in my blogs about our stay at Great Wolf Lodge, it was fine.
But Gurnee is close to Chicago and there is much better pizza.
I started looking on Google and found a couple of highly rated places nearby. I, of course, chose the one with online ordering.
Jimano’s Pizzeria is on Grand Avenue and Brookside in Gurnee just to the west of the Gurnee Mills Mall. The small pizzeria is located in a pretty generic shopping plaza that also, weirdly, has a Firestone Auto Center. This is one of nine Jimano’s locations. Most are in the northern Chicago suburbs but there is also one in nearby Pleasant Prairie and two in Colorado.
Read more…Buckets Incredible Craveables (Gurnee)
1700 Nations DriveB couldn’t wait to get back to Great Wolf Lodge.
We had to get up really early morning Thursday morning to get L to the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex. She had her first practice at 7:00 AM then her skates were at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. It was an early day for us with an early out.
L wanted to stay and watch her friends so J took B and I back to the hotel. He had very little interest in hanging around and wanted to get back to the pools.
It was lunch time and I hadn’t really eaten much. We stopped at Kwik Trip on our way to the rink and grabbed some sandwiches and drinks but that was all I really had.
J wanted to get back to the rink and B wanted to swim. So lunch wasn’t an option.
That was fine. I figured I’d get B to the pool then just grab something there to hold me over until dinner time.
There are a few options for food inside the water park at Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee but I went with the the simpler one.
Buckets Incredible Craveables is a staple at Great Wolf Lodges. The one in Gurnee has access from both the waterpark side and the arcade side so you can grab something real quick without having to go in to the water park to do it. We have ordered from Buckets before when we stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City so I knew what I was in for when I walked up to the counter.
Read more…Barnwood (Gurnee)
1700 Nations DriveOur first evening at Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee, IL was great. The kids had a blast playing in the pools on going on the slides. Hell, they even got me to go down the slides a couple of times with them.
We were in the area for a figure skating competition at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex just up the road from Thursday to Saturday. We had gotten to Great Wolf on Wednesday night because L had 7 AM practice in Pleasant Prairie and there was no way we were driving that early Wednesday AM to get her there.
We let the kids run around for a couple of hours while J and I just kind of hung out. It was kind of nice. This was the first time we didn’t really have to watch their every move. They’re old enough and tall enough that they can do things on their own. We’d just walk around occasionally to find them to make sure they weren’t getting in to trouble.
We headed back to the room around 6:00. J and I had discussed dinner options while we were sitting at the pool. Great Wolf has a couple of dinner options so that was in the discussion. We also looked at a few nearby Gurnee restaurants.
Eventually we decided the difference in price was only going to be about $10-$15 and the convenience of just staying at the lodge won out.
We chose to have dinner at Barnwood. This is Great Wolf Lodge’s kind of upscale dinner restaurant. It’s located in the main lobby right near the check-in desk. The restaurant doesn’t open until 5:00 so it’s a dinner only place. The space kind of melds into the surroundings as there really isn’t much of a wall seperating it from the lobby. It kind of has the feel of a hotel bar with some lodge like aesthetics.
Read more…Great Wolf Lodge (Gurnee)
1700 Nations DriveYou thought after all these recent trips I might get back to writing blogs about Southwest Michigan, didn’t you?
My bad.
We’re on the road again. This time it’s personal.
We headed to the Illinois/Wisconsin border for a figure skating competition in Pleasant Prairie. It’s one of our big trips that have become an every year thing. The Southport Summer Classic at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex is one of our favorite competitions.
This year B got to come along and compete too.
L’s events were Thursday, Friday and Saturday while B’s events were only on Saturday. A lot of his friends didn’t make this trip so he didn’t really have anyone to hang out with at the rink. I figured that was going to be the case and several months ago, I booked a room at Great Wolf Lodge. I figured we could all enjoy the water park Wednesday night then he and I could hang out at the water park after L competed on Thursday.
The Great Wolf Lodge in Illinois is in Gurnee. The indoor water park/hotel is on Nations Drive just around the corner from the I-94 interchange with Grand Avenue and just down the street from Six Flags Great America. As wild as this sounds, J and I have actually been to this resort before. It was built as a Key Lime Cove in 2007 and operated as such until 2017. J and I joined my brother and his family along with my parents for a Christmas time trip in 2011 just a little over a month before L was born.
Read more…Sam Jones BBQ (Raleigh)
502 W. Lenoir StreetWe were not going to leave North Caroline without getting some BBQ.
We were on a very quick trip to North Carolina for a job assignment. We literally drove 14 hours, worked for about three, then got back in the car to drive another 14.
We were leaving Wilmington around 1:30. My colleague had a Zoom call that he had to get on from 2:00-3:00 while we were driving. We both wanted some of that Eastern Carolina BBQ before we left but we didn’t have enough time in Wilmington and really, nothing jumped out to me as a place we had to eat before we left.
My plan was to head back to Raleigh.
I found Clyde Cooper’s BBQ which had great reviews and has been in downtown Raleigh for decades….but when we got to the door about an hour before closing, there was a sign that they were already closed for the day because they ran out of food.
We needed a back up so I quickly Googled what was around us. There was another BBQ joint that amazing reviews that was only a couple of blocks away so we got in the car and headed over there.
Sam Jones BBQ in Raleigh is one of two locations of this BBQ whose story goes back decades to Skylight Inn BBQ in Ayden, NC south of Greenville. Sam Jones’ grandfather, Pete Jones ran that place and Sam is now part of the family group that runs that historic BBQ joint. In 2015, Sam and a longtime Skylight employee partnered to open Sam Jones BBQ. There are now locations of that restaurant in Raleigh and Greenville.
The Raleigh location of Sam Jones BBQ is on the corner of West Lenoir Street and South West Street near downtown Raleigh. This building actually used to be a garage/repair shop named Dusty’s. It’s kind of crazy if you go back and look at the Google street view images from before 2019 to see what it was and what they’ve turned it in to now.
Read more…Waffle House (Market Street, Wilmington)
5041 Market StreetWe ended up making the entire 14 hour trip to Wilmington, NC in one day. It was a late night but my colleague and I pulled in to town around 12:30 AM.
We didn’t book a hotel until we figured we were going to make it all the way. The plan was, if we got too tired, we’d pull off somewhere and finish the drive in the morning.
We had a 10:30 AM appointment so we really didn’t want to be too far away from Wilmington. I was still wide awake once we hit North Carolina so we just finished the drive.
While I was driving, my colleague made hotel reservations. He decided to play nice with the company and went with something cheap.
He regretted that decision once we got checked in.
We stayed at the Baymont Inn & Suites on Market Street kind of in the center of Wilmington. Honestly, the rooms weren’t that bad but it did give off sketchy vibes when we pulled up. I was fine with his choice. He was looking forward to morning and getting out of there.
When we got up the next morning, I got a text saying the hotel breakfast room looked sketchy and we should go somewhere else.
The day before, I joked the whole way down we needed to stop at a Waffle House. It’s kind of a tradition for me when I travel south for work. I love the place but last time I took him to one…which was our second visit to one in Miami Gardens, he just got a Coke, so I was a little surprised when he said we should check out of the hotel and hit Waffle House for breakfast.
Lucky for us, there was one right down the street.
There are several Waffle House locations in the Wilmington area but the one we were closest to was the location on Market Street west if New Center Drive. Like most Waffle House locations, this one is just a small, standalone box with the traditional red awning and yellow roof line. For some reason, this location has a random palm tree right in front of the square letter logo sign.
SW Michigan Dining 