I've taken up smoking!

Hello again, everyone! Fear not, I am not talking about tobacco use, but rather smoking as a means of cooking. Many of you know (as we never stop talking about it) that we have taken up camping at Kenisee Grand River Campground, the most wonderful campground ever, and a couple weeks back we bought a nice big charcoal grill with offset smoker from Wal-Mart. It was the best $168 I have ever spent and I am gaining a bit of a reputation at the campground for my cooking!
The first week after I setup the smoker I bought a 13 lb. brisket from the same chain of Walton family stores where I purchased the grill/smoker. That Saturday I happened to wake up at 4 a.m. and it dawned on me that I needed to get the brisket going because you need to smoke it roughly an hour to 90 minutes per pound, and we planned to eat around dinner time. What we wound up with in spite of the flaws in my preparation was the best brisket I have ever eaten. I do not think I ever need to order it at a restaurant ever again. Here is how it all played out. Friday night I applied a dry rub to the meat and wrapped it tightly in foil. The dry rub consisted of brown sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, ground mustard, onion salt, and garlic salt. I had intended to use Chili powder, but I simply forgot it. I pressed the rub into the meat and covered the entire surface of the brisket. Incidentally, some people suggest trimming the fat on the brisket. Well our knives out at camp are very sub par and I tried briefly to trim it then gave up. So the meat was coated and wrapped before bed. When I woke up, I very quietly, so as not to wake the people next to us, loaded up the firebox with lump charcoal and made a ring inside the firebox. I have a charcoal chimney for fast lighting and I filled it as well to light the charcoal without using lighter fluid (it makes a difference I promise). Once the charcoal in the chimney was nice and white I dumped them into the middle of the ring of unlit charcoal. This allows the charcoal to burn from the inside out, slowly.
At this point I realized I had not soaked my apple wood chunks. Oops. So I threw some chunks into a bowl of water and allowed them to sit as the grill came up to temp. Once it was where I wanted it, I threw a handful of wood chunks in the firebox and put the meat on the grill and went back to bed.
That was my next mistake. When I woke up two hours later and came out, the grill was still at a good temp, but there was no smoke. My wood chunks had burned off completely. When smoking the first few hours are the most important because it is only in the first 4 hours that smoke flavor will really permeate the meat.
I quickly added some of the soaked wood chunks and then worried all day about whether I had ruined it. Well we also chose to use a bottled mopping sauce (Guy Fieri's Carolina #9 Mopping sauce) since we have not made our own yet. At about 1:00pm on Saturday I began mopping the brisket once an hour and tending the fire. Once the charcoal had been burned I began adding wood to the firebox instead of charcoal as well. Wood is cheaper.
At 6:00 pm the brisket came off the smoker and was sliced (thinly against the grain) and it was absolutely amazing.