travels – Page 17 – today's worry

The Birthdays. 12/8-9/2017

Wow, the first time George and I celebrated our birthdays together I was 29 and here it is 40 years later. We are not so spry now but we always manage to have a good time. This year’s Birthdays celebration takes us to Little River, CA. We are staying at the Little River Inn and will also dine there.

On the way up we stop at Healdsburg for lunch at the Healdsburg Bar and Grill. It has food that everyone should like. They are especially known for their burgers. Karen and George opt for a cheese burger while John and I try the veggie burger. I am still trying to stay on my vegan before six diet. The veggie burger comes with a load of feta cheese so I dutifully scrape it off.

Veggie burger at Healdsburg Bar and Grill

The drive out to Little River is beautiful and we pass through redwood forests with their deep shade and ferns abounding. Along the way we stop at Goldeneye Winery for a little tasting. For $15 we get a seated tasting with some nibbles and seven different wines. This is so much better than Napa where you have to pay $50 just to walk through the door!

John, Karen, and George at Goldeneye Winery

We reach our hotel and our rooms are pretty far apart. George needs a disability room and our room is on the second floor of a building on the other side of the complex. The room itself is pretty spartan for the price but has a nice porch and view. We are greeted by a seagull sitting on the railing who does not seem to be afraid of people.

We meet for dinner to celebrate my birthday. The food is pretty mediocre but we have a great time nonetheless.

After breakfast at the hotel the next morning we are off to celebrate George’s birthday. We decide to go to a few wineries for tastings and find lunch somewhere.

A beautiful clear day in the 60’s awaits us

One of the wineries we stop at is Greenwood Ridge Vineyards

While John and George peruse the menu of wines WE CAN TASTE FOR FREE I spin the wheel and hit the jackpot – 45% off a case of wine! We decide to split a case. My birthday celebration is going along great!

After visiting three places we find a place for lunch. Stone and Embers is a great choice with a wood fired pizza oven. The oven is so hot that it cooks the pizza really fast and the crust comes out wonderfully cooked with a little char. We sit at the counter and George has fun schmoozing with the owner/chef.

Yum! Supposedly the sausage is from a turducken

Since the food in the restaurant is only meh we decide to have dinner in the bar. We have a lot of fun. George has found someone who is also celebrating his birthday and we get a rousing chorus of happy birthday with our dessert course.

The next day we ride down the coast towards home stopping in Point Arena for breakfast. I love our Birthday celebrations and this has been a great one.

Quick trip to St. George – November 5-17, 2017

Since the weather looks pretty fabulous in St. George and we will not be able to sneak in a trip in December, John and I decide on the spur of the moment to make our way to St. George.

I think the biggest difference in this trip is that I am trying Mark Bittman’s Vegan Before Six, a new way of thinking about how you eat and the impact you can have on the environment. So most of this post will be about new dishes I am trying out. In addition to shopping and eating John and I manage to get in some tennis every other day until my back just says, Enough!

First, finding decent vegan food on the road is not an easy task. Using YELP! We stop at Hummus Express in Bakersfield. The food is pretty oily but tasty.

Looking out at the golden hills and aqueduct along I-5. We are eager for rain.

Stopping at Hummus Express in Bakersfield, I order hummus with pita and tabbouleh

Mostly my days in St. George are vegan for breakfast and lunch and whatever for dinner but occasionally I manage to construct an entire vegan day. Some dishes I made –

Lunch – Root vegetable soup with tofu cubes dusted with flaxseed

Dinner – chickpea stew with ditalini and greens

The unattractive parsley soup that I tried to make more palatable with the addition of carrots

The days pass by quickly and we need to get home for Thanksgiving so face the challenge of finding better food on the road. Eureka! We find an excellent Mediterrean restaurant, Mr. Kabob, in Barstow. It is kind of a hole in the wall but has some excellent dishes.

At Mr. Kabob’s in Barstow I have excellent eggplant with peppers and onions, roasted tomato, and green rice.

October in Utah and Jon’s visit – October 7-20, 2017

In October we embark upon a lengthy stay in St. George. We were in Utah in September, now this month, and we hope to go again in November. As the holidays approach it becomes more difficult to get away for more than a few days so December is definitely out. We are enjoying our time in Utah and as the weather improves it will be even better. Highlighting this stay is a visit from Jon for a long weekend. His work obligations have given him less time than usual to come and relax and play tennis and golf.

Before he arrives we have a little quiet time with just John and me. It is hard not to spend some time every day looking out the window.

A great white heron on the rock outside the window

We meet Jon at the St. George Airport on October 12th. Before you know it he is ensconced in one of his favorite spots.

But he needs to cram a lot into 4 days so the next morning we are all out on the tennis court. We manage to squeeze in three sessions while he is here.

He tries to do all his favorite things – go shopping, eat at our favorite restaurants, play golf and still have time for reading and arranging music. He manages to do them all!

But all too quickly his time here is over and after many hugs we drop him off at the airport.

We spend another four days in St. George and after an overnight in Bakersfield we arrive back in Pleasanton on October 20.

September 20, 2017 – Exploring Gold Butte National Monument

Jonathan has sent us an email asking if we have heard of Little Finland which is located somewhere near Mesquite, NV. No, we have not but we are going to find out about it. As it turns out Little Finland, a formation full of rock fins, is in Gold Butte National Monument, just southeast of Bunkerville, NV and about an hour away.

Gold Butte National Monument was set aside by President Obama in 2016. It is, of course, now under attack from the Trump administration who wants to negate all the good things that President Obama did. Interior Secretary Zinke has put it on the list of National Monuments that he thinks should be shrunk in size. It probably is not good for Gold Butte being right next door to the Bundy family farm.

Anyway John and I stop at the BLM office in St. George and try to get as much information as we can about the Monument. There is not much. Loading up the car with sweatshirts, water, and food plus telling Jonathan to call out the rescue squad if we don’t return by nightfall, we head out.

There are a lot of things to see in Gold Butte but there are very few signs telling you where they are. Our first stop is at Whitney Pocket which is relatively well-marked.

Rock formation with a window at Whitney Pocket

Now we are on our own with no information in Gold Butte as to where the things we want to see are. Our plan is to see fabulous petroglyphs, an unusual big hole called the Devil’s Throat, and Little Finland. How hard can this be? Very hard as it turns out.

I say I have seen pictures of the petroglyphs and they are on red rocks. Our map indicates that the petroglyphs are just south of Whitney Pocket. There are several masses of red rock. Is it this one? Is it that one? How do we get there? What roads there are are very rough. We choose a red blob and try to get there. Part way there we decide if we go any further we will get stuck and abandon the car to walk the rest of the way on foot. We look and look at this red rock outcropping but cannot find petroglyphs while all the time we are both concerned as to whether we will be able to get the car out of the wash we stopped in.

We have learned the mantra of not getting stuck in the desert, “Do not try to turn around. Back up!” John removes some big rocks from our path and manages to get the car out of the wash. Phew! Abandoning the petroglyphs for the meantime we head toward the Devil’s Throat which is sort of on the way, we think, to Little Finland. Amazingly we find it.

This is a large hole in the ground that nobody knows why it is there. It has a ramshackle fence around it.

Now we will try to find Little Finland. It turns out the road is not really a road. It is a wide wash. It is up to the driver to find a route through it. On the way to where we think Little Finland is we make several wrong choices and have to back out and start again. The scenery is amazing. But we are a little concerned that we won’t recognize where the turnoff to the main dirt road is. We probably should have left a marker.

Finally we get to where we think it should be. We get out of the car and start to hike along a sort of path. I fall down and decide I have had enough. John continues on to see what he can find. He finds nothing. As it turns out when we got out of the car we hiked to the right and we should have gone left. We give up on Little Finland and go back to try to find the petroglyphs again.

After two more attempts at trying to find the petroglyphs we give up. We have decided that we need GPS coordinates if we are going to find this stuff. We console ourselves with a chocolate shake at McDonald’s and decide to try again another day armed with more information.

September doings in St. George

John and I take a vacation for a couple of weeks in St. George. We are greeted by our guard lizard.

It seems like the guard lizard has done a good job because the house is in good shape and the flowers out front are blooming.

While we are in St. George we want to make our new non-bathroom look more like a wet bar so we add some bar-type decorations and wine racks.

We have also discovered an awesome way to keep the stovetop clean. It is by not using it! Our induction burner has taken over any splatter-y task.

Using the induction burner on the countertop means…

During our time in St. George we cook, clean, shop, and play tennis. The best thing of all is sitting looking out the window at the beautiful view. As the weather starts to turn more Fall-like the sky looks like a water painting.

On Rosh Hashanah John and I have a small celebration. We will have another with Sarah when we get back to Pleasanton.

Before leaving for home we do have a big adventure but that deserves its own separate post.

August 20, 2017 – Traffic and bad food

Headed part way home today. The traffic was pretty bad. I guess because of the eclipse tomorrow. It takes over an hour to cross the border and after that we average about 40 mikes an hour. It will probably be much worse tomorrow we will just be patient. We have a lot of podcasts to listen to.

Finally reaching Chehalis, WA we check-in around 3PM and take a rest and look through our mail and catch up on news. We find a place, Jeremy’s Farm to Table Restaurant, with fairly good ratings so we decide to give it a try. It is terrible. It starts out with a basket of bread you have to buy for $6! I figure it will be pretty special but it arrives and appears to be several slices of commercially cut bread. They serve a slicing knife with it. I have no idea what for.

We both order the Arctic char which comes with seasonal vegetables and the Chef’s “surprise” starch. The vegetables are cold, not even room temperature. The surprise starch is a surprise indeed. It is mashed potatoes with brown gravy. The potatoes and some kind of packet mystery gravy are not reasonable accompaniments to fish. The skin on my fish is flabby and I swallow a bone. What a terrible dinner!

Arctic char with flabby skin and the odd bone, mashed potatoes with brown gravy, and cold vegetables

August 19, 2017 – Impressionism

First, a very happy birthday to my sister, Peggy, who is a year older today!

On our last sightseeing day of our vacation we visit the Vancouver Art Gallery and revisit Maenam, our favorite Thai restaurant. Pretty nice way to wrap things up! I am not a big fan of the Impressionists although I do confess to a schoolgirl’s crush on Seurat’s Pointellism when I saw his paintings at the National Gallery on my eighth grade trip. Now I prefer the somewhat cartoonish 14th and 15th century saints carrying their attributes. But here in Vancouver there is a Monet exhibition and I am interested in seeing it.

I find that I like his earlier works that they have here. Such as Snow Effect: Sunset, 1875 and Train in the Snow, 1875. Some of the later pieces are less appealing.

To me his later paintings exhibited here from around 1918 seem wild and unfinished but maybe it is because the colors are so garish next to the earlier gauzy paintings. Monet was always trying to catch the effect of fleeting light so maybe this is what it looked like to him in the height of summer when his eyesight was failing. Or maybe he was trying to push the envelope of art a little further.

Some of the water lily paintings and earlier garden pictures are on display as well. We attend a short movie of an art critic discussing Monet’s works at different points in his life. It is very interesting.

So I come away with a better appreciation of Monet’s development and obsession with light.

We return to the hotel to get organized for our start home tomorrow and to spruce up for our dinner at Maenam which is at 6 PM tonight.

Our dinner is great, better than Thursday’s. We get a free glass of champagne to have with our amuse bouche because John tells them we are celebrating our anniversary which is only a sort of half truth. The guys sitting next to us give us their unfinished bottle of wine for our “celebration” and what with the wine that comes with the meal we are well supplied!

Amuse Boucher tonight is tamarind/shrimp/peanuts on pineapple and salmon/roe/chilis on cucumber

We have the delicious mussels again tonight served with East Generation Dry Riesling

Also with the Dry Riesling is a much better rendition of the octopus salad

Delicious sable hot and sour soup, spicy!

The next two dishes are served with a Tantalus Juveniles Pinot Noir. First is a green beef curry

The other is a really yummy eggplant and pork belly stir fry

Chocolate ganache served with an Italian Moscato is for dessert

This is a wonderful ending to a really super summer road trip!

August 18, 2017 – Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, Vancouver, BC

We spend a lovely afternoon at the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens. We were last here in 2008. Although things do not change too much in the plant world, this place is always beautiful to see.

We are greeted by a pond, fountain, and water lilies

We head off to the rose garden. Even though it is late in the season, there are still quite a few roses. I even like the spent blooms, dropping their petals listlessly.

Departing the rose garden, there are beautiful plant landscapes everywhere.

I love how these bright yellow daisies are highlighted by both their own foliage and the large barberry behind them

There are all sorts of gardens here from all over the world. I am having trouble with my back and cannot see as much as I would have liked. Here are a few more special ones.

John walks over to the vegetable gardens while I sit a while on a bench and commune with nature. The tomatoes here are way behind Sarah’s. She reports that we are overrun with tomatoes at home. I guess the almost thousand mile difference in location makes a big difference in the lives of these plants.

The restaurant, Shaughnessy, here at the gardens is open for lunch until 3 PM so we decide to have a late lunch and let it count for both lunch and dinner. We split an appetizer and an entree.

Calamari with olives, onions, fried capers and yogurt/mint sauce

Steelhead trout with a shrimp and rice cake, grilled tomatoes, asparagus and carrot/ginger sauce.

We have had a lovely day and it makes us happy!

August 17, 2017 – Zoo news

Today we took the spectacular ride from Whistler to Vancouver. What scenery!! Here are a couple of pictures I took out the window of the car.

Canada 99, the Sea to Sky Highway, closely parallels the Strait of Georgia

The Strait of Georgia empties into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and then into the Pacific Ocean

It is too early to check in so we decide to head down to the zoo in Langley about a half and hour or so southeast of Vancouver. George has been saying that Jonathan has the best wildlife siting (a moose) on our respective vacations and we are ready to prove him wrong! After a quick lunch at Mc Donald’s we are off to the zoo.

This is not the world’s best zoo. There are a lot of attractions that are empty. Others have aninmals that are hiding somewhere. Unfortunately we never see a moose which was our main goal. However, John gets to participate in the raptor show by catching a hawk on his wrist and that makes the pretty steep fee all worth it.

John’s big moment and other moose related pictures –

We win!

We have a late dinner at Maenam which we have been looking forward to for a year. Once again we get the Chef’s Tasting Menu.

Amuse bouche – tamarind shrimp on pineapple and coconut custard and shrimp (yum) served with Wild Goose Pinot Blanc

Hot and sour shrimp soup with oyster mushrooms (still drinking Pinot blanc)

Braised octopus salad served with Kitsch Pinot noir rose

Steamed mussels with chilis, lemon grass, Thai basil, and kafir lime leaves plus nam jim sauce (Yum) Pinot noir rose also goes with this dish

Penang braised beef curry served with Tantalus Juveniles Pinot noir

Stir fry hanger steak with baby corn, Szechuan green long pepper, green beans, and bell pepper (Tantalus Juveniles Pinot noir)

Coconut ice cream with frozen raspberries (Yum)

I have noted three things with a special “yum” as being particularly outstanding. However, this year the food is not quite as wonderful as last year’s. I think maybe it is because there is too much beef. Maybe people were complaining that it was too seafood centric. We are going again on Saturday and we will have the Chef’s Tasting Menu again as it changes day to day. They also have a vegetarian tasting menu that we might try.

August 16, 2917 – Gondola time

We have a lazy morning and head out to the gondolas around 11:30 in the morning. It is a pretty 20 minute walk to the gondolas.

Hanging flowers in a shopping area. The farmers’ market will be here later in the day

When we get to the gondola area it is packed full with mountain bikers of all ages and tents selling all sorts of bike paraphernalia. There are many signs which say, walk your bike!, but not many are paying attention. We run the gauntlet to the gondola.

There’s a bit of a wait for the gondola as some gondola cars are for bikers only. They and their bikes have to get up the mountain too!

The views out the windows are incredible. I take a lot of pictures. It takes quite a while to get to the top of the mountain. Then we will take another gondola from Whistler Mountain to Blackcomb Mountain.

We pass by part of the mountain biking route as we go up

We get out and walk around for a bit. It is quite barren up here.

Now we get into the intimidating peak to peak gondola.

Our plan is to take a look around, take some pictures, and have some lunch at the restaurant here at the top of the mountain.

John on Blackcomb Mountain with Whistler far below

The restaurant includes a cafeteria style restaurant and one with table service. We choose Christine’s at Blackcomb Mountain and we are glad we did. We decide to share one appetizer and one entree. Both are great!

We start with hamachi with pickled grapes, olives, almonds, and grill shishito peppers

This burger is definitely big enough for two. It’s a Vietnamese pork burger with pickled vegetables. The bowl of root vegetable chips is really yummy.

After lunch we spot some wildlife – a hairy marmot

Then it’s back across and then down the Whistler Mountain again. After are walk back to the hotel we need some rest time. We decide against dinner and just have some snacks and wine and call it a night.