I’ve been trying to help support him through this troubled time in his life and it’s even more troubling to know that the house he lived in with his mother will now be silent with only himself to occupy it. I believe that for him, the silence will be deafening. She was quite a quilter and now he begins the process of celebrating her life and performing the necessary tasks of cleaning up (organizing, donating, and throwing items away) after a family members passing.

You know, you go through life and no matter what, you can’t seem to get away from death. Life moves at a fast pace but deaths of family members and friends or people that you have connections with act as stop signs. Times to stop and reflect on life, both theirs and your own.

Since we enjoyed our visit to the first location located in New Philadelphia Ohio, we decided to visit their Canton location. During our first meal, I consumed a plentiful pulled pork sandwich. While the meat didn’t have any distinct flavor, the sauce is what made it pop. I can only describe it as ketchupy but with a sweetness to it such as honey or molasses. There is no spice to it what so ever and is the only sauce they have. I continuously found myself drowning my pulled pork in the sauce. During our second trip, I ordered a half slab of ribs. The first thing I noticed with these ribs is that when I picked up the bone to start eating them, the meat fell off without any of my assistance. This impressed me and told me these folks know how to cook a rack of ribs. The meat had a glaze of their sauce while also having a crispy texture to the top of the meat from the grill. These ribs were delicious. In fact, they were so good that now my fiance believes she has found a BBQ sauce that is better than Old Carolinas which we are still hotly debating.

While their Canton location is farther south than Old Carolina, it just might be that good for me to make the drive. I’ve found myself drinking from the sauce bottle as if it were Mountain Dew, it’s that good. While the new Philadelphia location was more like a biker bar, the Canton location was geared more towards a restaurant atmosphere. If you’re heading on I-77 South, stop by the Canton or New Philadelphia location for some excellent BBQ. Before the suggestion, I’ve never heard of Hog Heaven and now I consider it a hidden gem in Ohio.

I found myself falling asleep a couple of times during some of the other presentations throughout the day mostly because I didn’t have a clue as to what the speaker was talking about. Lack of knowledge on my part but the dry speaking and lack of humor killed my attention span. Out of all the presentations, Eric Altman’s was the most interesting because it dealt with sighting reports that his group was either currently investigating or has investigated over the past 2 years. I wouldn’t mind if somehow, an entire hour or two was dedicated just for folks to get up and tell their story of their eyewitness account or could at least get a few more investigators to speak on what they have discovered via their own research. Although I doubt very many people would be willing to share their sighting reports to an audience of 600 people.

Unfortunately, Don Keating didn’t present on his investigations into the Ohio Bigfoot over the course of the year which is disappointing because I’m unable to make it to the Monthly meetings that he holds. It would have given everyone a heads up as to what’s been going on in Ohio Bigfoot wise. There was also some technical difficulties that at times, made it very annoying to be part of the audience thanks to the interference projected from the microphone. During one of the sessions, there was a loud audible clicking noise that we had to listen to for the duration of his presentation. It was easy to drown out after a while but still, made it hard to focus on the information he was giving out.

Attendees Starting To Fill The Room

Number 24 for Don is up in the air but if he decides to go through with it, I hope the speakers are geared towards more sharing of either personal sightings or accounts, sharing of information via their investigations or just a sampling of recent investigations that person or group has been on.

One of the reasons why I enjoy the Bigfoot conferences so much is because of the substantial discounted rates that the Salt Fork State Park lodge offers. For Friday and Saturday the rates were only $79.00 while staying Sunday was only $29.00. While I look forward to the Bigfoot conference every year, I’m equally content with enjoying a mini vacation in a beautiful park for a few days with my lady friend. Unfortunately, we were not able to hike our usual spots because of the miserable rainy weather over the course of the weekend. In fact, it’s been so wet that a lot of the plants that normally have giant flowers this time of year have yet to bloom or were just starting to. However, we were able to hike close to the lake before the start of the conference and before a heavy thunderstorm came rolling in.

Salt Fork Lake

Overall, I enjoyed my time at Salt Fork State Park despite the miserable weather. After all, I beat my fiancée 5 times in a row in air hockey (I don’t think she enjoyed that part of the vacation). I also won four incredible pieces of Bigfoot artwork for my office wall for $40.00 in an auction during intermission. I’ll be showing those pictures in a follow-up post. The event itself was free to attend and I got to meet up with a couple of old friends. Hope to see news soon of a 24th conference.

One of the biggest changes this year that I noticed is that the gift shop located within the lodge carried some bigfoot related merchandise which included a hat, a T-Shirt, some key-chains, books, and a doll of the hairy creature itself. I ended up purchasing two key-chains and a hat. The hat is black with a white bigfoot looking creature on the front with a foot print located on the side. Pretty cool to wear out in the field to let other people know you’re crazy. The other big change is that there was no guided tour on Sunday. Due to safety concerns with respect to an event that happened the year prior where someone lost their life not directly related to bigfooting, Don decided to just cancel the tours. However, he told everyone where they could go if they decided to venture out for themselves. Despite it being dangerous, the Hosack’s cave area has a rich history of sightings. Definitely don’t go anywhere near the trail once it hits dark or you could very well end up getting yourself killed.

As for the conference itself, Dr Jeff Muldrum had an interesting presentation on his research into the Asian variation of Bigfoot. After Jeff presented, Tom Yamarone played one of his bigfoot inspired songs to the crowd which sounded pretty good. I’m thinking about picking up his CD which contains four tracks. After the song, the moment I think a lot of people in the audience were waiting for happened when Bob Gimlin took the microphone. It was an honor to see Bob make it out to the conference and the crowd let him know by giving him a standing ovation before his presentation. Bob recounted the events that took place the day Patty was filmed by Roger Patterson. Bob came across as a very sincere man and I didn’t smell any signs of him participating in some sort of elaborate hoax. If I am going to believe anyone when it comes to the PG film, it’s going to be Bob since he was there as an eye witness. Everything outside of the scope of what Bob has said is speculation and speculation has harmed the bigfoot community more than helped. After Bob presented his story, he received another warm standing ovation. Bob stuck me as a down to earth, incredibly humble man who feels as though he has done nothing special. I told him that he was the most famous Bob I knew and he replied “I’m just Bob“. The guy had a great sense of humor and a smile that was great for pictures, as you’ll see below. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t get any better in the bigfooting world than to be in the presence of Bob Gimlin unless of course, I’m in the presence of an actual Sasquatch!

Small clip of Bob Telling His Story. Apologize For The Sideways View

Second Small clip of Bob Telling His Story.

Between 7PM and 8 was the scheduled amount of time for dinner. My fiancee and I generally eat the buffet which is at a reasonable price. This year, they had turkey, ribs, potato and macaroni salad, salad, corn bread, green beans, mashed potatoes, and moose for dessert. Now I’m not sure what the heck caused it but soon after dinner, during the 8PM presentation, I felt something that I could only describe as a bomb being set for detonation in my stomach. The next 20 minutes of my life were agonizing as I thought I needed to dial 911 because I was going to die on the shitter. After that was over with, I found out that my fiancee vomited at about the same time I was in the bathroom. This has me thinking that we encountered some mild food poisoning. We both ate the same thing. Macaroni salad, turkey, salad, some mashed potatoes, a few green beans, some whole kernel corn, and I had a chocolate moose while she had a pink moose. My suspicion is that we received the food poisoning from the macaroni salad but I can’t confirm this. If you attended the conference and ate at the dinner buffet, I’d love to know if it had the same effect on you.

From left to right: Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Bob Gimlin, Larry Lund, Tom Yamarone, John Horrigan, Don Keating

All in all, Don Keating put on yet another great conference filled with interesting speakers. I’m not sure how you can top a bigfoot conference after having Bob Gimlin present his side of the story other than having an actual dead bigfoot on display at the event. I joked around, telling Don that Tom Biscardi could help out with that which generated a good laugh from those around me at the time. My fiancee and I enjoyed our time at the lodge which we always use as a mini vacation throughout the year as the rates on the rooms are fantastic, especially for the conference. We saw a red-tail fox, a large number of deer, hawks, a few toads on the trail, but no bigfoot. Maybe next year!

View the entire photoset from our trip via Flickr.

The brand had been in limbo since founders Hoby Buppert and Christina Staalstrom were forced out by investors late last year. In January, the company slashed staffing levels and effectively ceased operations as investors sought a buyer for the brand.

My hope is that the Speedway just down the street from me will once again, carry the unique blue bottles with the 16oz cans of an energy drink that is in a class of its own.