Saturday, September 6, 2025

We spent Saturday planning the next leg of our journey. We use RV Trip Wizard for travel planning, as it offers many great features like providing RV safe routes and syncing with our truck’s GPS while traveling. However, it’s less intuitive and at times, not as up to date as Google Maps. Usually, we cross-check Google Maps with RV Trip Wizard and make any necessary adjustments.

One of our main goals for this trip is to visit as many National Parks as possible. Before setting out, we got a scratch-off poster of all the parks and have been scratching off the ones we’ve visited in the Airstream so far, but there are still so many to go! The next leg of our journey will take us to two more parks—Shenandoah and the newest park in the U.S., New River Gorge in West Virginia.

At the Airstream Rally, we attended a demonstration on cooking with a Dutch oven using charcoal as the heat source. We had tried this type of cooking years ago and decided to get back into it on this trip, so we brought along our #12 Lodge Dutch oven. Although we were missing a few tools, we managed to order them on Amazon and have them delivered to the campgrounds. These included several Lodge items like leather gloves, a folding cast iron trivet, and tongs for handling the charcoal.

Today’s menu was lasagna baked in the Dutch Oven. Ron fried up ground beef and Italian sausage on the Blackstone along with some onion. We had bought tin foil pans specifically for the Dutch oven and used one to assemble the dish. Ron started the charcoal in the chimney, using paper and a fire starter stick to get the charcoal started. The recipe called for 375 degrees for 45 minutes and to achieve this temperature, we consulted an app designed for Dutch oven baking. In the app, you select the type of cooking and the temperature you need and the app provides how many briquettes are needed on top and bottom of the Dutch oven.

The lasagna needed 26 briquettes, with 8 placed underneath and 14 on top of the lid. To ensure even cooking, it’s suggested to turn the lid a quarter turn clockwise or counterclockwise every 15 minutes, while rotating the base in the opposite direction by a quarter turn as well.

After 45 minutes, we checked the dish and decided it needed 15 more minutes. We think by using the tin foil pan, we either need to add more charcoal or extend the cooking time. Cleanup was incredibly easy with the tin pan, but moving forward, we’ll make adjustments to account for it.

We might be a little biased, but we both agree the lasagna was absolutely fantastic! Equally impressive was the OSU Buckeyes!