The lengths I'll go to for food. Two and a half hours and 134 miles, it turns out.

The lure of raw, roasted, fried and stewed oysters drew me, my wife and a friend down to Urbanna, Va. The tiny town along the Virginia coast is home of the annual Urbanna Oyster Festival.

It was a hike down there, but we weren't the only ones making the trip. Urbanna was overrun with tourists and bivalves. At one point, I overheard a girl say, "This is town has 600 people and there are more than that along this street." She was right, the place was packed.

And why not? There was fried, roasted and raw oysters for sale up and down the main drag. The main event -- the oyster shucking competition -- was crowded despite a downpour. Those of us willing to brave the rain to watch the shucking were rewarded with trays of free oysters passed out by local kids.

The free oysters were great, but the crowd was there to see Deborah Pratt (wearing purple) and her sister Clementine Macon (wearing red) go to work. The pair have dominated the women's competition for years. They were even featured on Food Network's Glutton for Punishment teaching Bob Blumer how to open oysters at a competition pace.

The amateurs who opened the competition had six minutes to shuck 12 oysters. Most of them needed most of the time. The pros had six minutes to shuck 24 oysters. Deborah and Clementine needed about four minutes. And although Clementine was faster, Deborah was cleaner, which proved to be the difference in her latest win.

If you haven't shucked oysters before, trust me, 24 oysters in four minutes is damn impressive. I taught myself how to shuck oysters last year when I got to bright idea to serve them as an appetizer for Thanksgiving. I'm an idiot. It is a lot harder than it looks. All the time I've spent sitting at oyster bars watching professionals do it convinced me that I could do it, too. I can, but I'm really slow and I swear a lot more than Deborah and Clementine.

   
Once the rain let up, we made our way to the food vendors and ate our way through the festival. There  was the enormous seafood fritter sandwich (scallops, oysters, shrimp and crab), two dozen raw oysters, one dozen roasted oysters, a dozen fried oysters, half a bottle of White Fences wine, a basket of clam strips, and a couple ham and biscuits (it was a dinner roll, actually. Disappointing).

A moment for the oysters. Virginia oysters are fat, sweet, sweet and slightly briny. And in Urbanna, they don't cost $2 a piece. What's not to love?

There was also barbecue. God, I love barbecue. Honestly, the Carolina pork barbecue needed sugar, but it was pretty damn good. The farther away from Carolina I get, the harder it is to find true Carolina barbecue. Beach Bully's barbecue wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad.

Our day (not the festival) wrapped up watching the Oyster Festival Parade, replete with high school marching bands and an army of Shriners. If you've ever lived in or grew up in a small town, these parades are great. Old men in strange hats and tiny cars, celebrities you've never heard of and badly made floats ridden by local beauty queens. Urbanna also had an oyster mascot waving to the crowd (it worked, somehow).

It was a long drive for cheap oysters, fast shucking and Americana, but it was worth every mile.

Every fall, my wife and I get together with a group of friends and drive out to Markham, Virginia, for an afternoon of apple picking and wine tasting.  We've settled on Markham because it's less than an hour's drive from Washington, it offers two orchards to choose from, and there are at least three wineries in the nearby area.

This year, we started our day at Stribling Orchard, where we spent a couple of hours wandering through the trees and picking some beautiful looking apples - mostly York and Rome.  We've learned from past experience that it's far too easy to pick more apples than you can ever reasonably hope to use, so we were careful not to pick too many too quickly.  But we readily filled three grocery bags with the help of our friends (a good amount when divided among 8 or 9 people) and then moved on to the second part of our trip - the vineyard.

In the past, we've visited Naked Mountain Winery, a Markham winery which offers indoor and   outdoor tasting areas that boast a massive fireplace and a breathtaking valley view, respectively, but this year we opted to visit Three Fox Vineyards in nearby Delaplane, Virginia.  Three Fox is a labor of love for John and Holli Todhunter, who have worked to give their small vineyard a Mediterranean feel.  Guests can sit at tables right near the vines, or they can picnic on the bank of Crooked Run.  We set up camp at one of the tables near the tasting room, where we proceeded to unpack a spread of meats and cheeses, chips and dips.

While in the tasting room buying a bottle of Viognier (a varietal that most Virginia wineries seem to do really well with), I noticed that they carried cheeses from Oak Spring Dairy, a producer from Upperville, Virginia.  I'd love to be able to provide you with a link, but Oak Spring does not have a website - in fact, the only way you'll be able to enjoy their cheeses is if you sample them at one of several northern Virginia wineries, purchase them from farm stores like the one at Stribling Orchard, or visit the dairy itself.

I purchased a wedge of Oak Spring's Bay Derby, a cheese that immediately reminded me of the Crab Spice Cheddar I sampled from Chapel's Country Creamery.  No surprise: the 'bay' in Bay Derby refers to a spice blend that is very similar to that of Old Bay seasoning, and Derby is a semi-firm cheese whose taste and texture are close to those of cheddar.  At $6.63 for a .39 lb piece, this cheese would run $17/lb if you could purchase it by weight.

The label identified this as a fresh raw cows milk cheese that is "aged naturally on the farm" for 16 months.  The bay seasoning gave the derby a slightly sharp, almost peppery flavor, though the natural butteriness was not overwhelmed by the spice.  As the cheese warmed over the course of the afternoon, it even started to give off a faint aroma reminscent of steamed crabs.  And it paired wonderfully with the Viognier I bought - the creaminess and the spice both complemented the dry fruitiness of the wine and made for a great combination of flavors.

I'm going to be looking for other Oak Spring Dairy offerings at wineries throughout the area next year, and I'll keep you posted about my findings.  For now, this one experience will have to suffice as my introduction to a local producer that definitely warrants further exploration. 

I have decided that I'm going to start posting about the food I eat while I'm traveling. A couple weekends ago, Amy and I went to VT to go skiing. YES skiing. For those of you who a dumbfounded that I was skiing in April, well, there is a reason they call it spring skiing. My brother has a condo at Killington, VT and they have skiing sometimes till June 1st. Anyhoo, we went to a few interesting places to eat up there that I wanted to write about here.

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