We have a rafter of turkeys in our neighborhood. Rafter is the official term for a flock of turkeys. Every morning they come down from the ridge, cross Foothill Road, walk while grazing through our neighborhood, and end up at the arroyo. Around 3 PM they make the return trip. They started out with two adults and fourteen babies but now the babies are almost as big as the adults. They have lost only two members during the last couple of months. I think it was probably due to a predator when they were little. I have not seen any turkey carcasses in Foothill Road and the people in our neighborhood are pretty careful about not hitting them. Cars do not seem to frighten them at all as you practically have to nudge them out of the way. Dogs, however, can make them squawk and fly which is quite exciting.
Our rafter of turkeys, fourteen strongThe chicks are now as big as the adults
What do I mean a Rosh Hashanah Seder? Isn’t a Seder just for Passover? That’s what I thought too until I ran across an article about these Seders which are part of the Persian (and others) celebration.
It is mostly a celebration highlighting various foods which have pun-ish meanings in Hebrew and Aramaic. So the idea is to say a bunch of blessings over a variety of food while at the same time using the food names in puns. Sounds like it is right up our alley.
The traditional foods on the Seder plate are carrots, black-eyed peas, beets, dates, apples, squash, pomegranate seeds, leeks, and a ram’s head. Since Raley’s is not carrying ram’s head we substituted heads of garlic. It is easy to make puns about beets, dates, squash, and leek!
Seder plate full of pun-ish foodsA challah I made. We all tried blowing the shofar (ram’s horn) after dinner to much hilarity.John lighting candlesOur dinner of Autumn Soup and black-eyed peas with squash and pomegranate seeds
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.
Beware all ye who enter here
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 PocketVista from Whitney PocketRock climber JohnIntrepid trail girlRock fins but not Little Finland
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.
Do you think its that one?Or this one?
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.
Devil’s ThroatBig holeYay to WUF, our old faithful SUV
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.
The wrong trail to Little Finland
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.
John and I take a vacation for a couple of weeks in St. George. We are greeted by our guard lizard.
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.
Front yard flowersMore flowers
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.
Non-bathroom decor
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…A clean and shiny stove!!!
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.
View of the pond
On Rosh Hashanah John and I have a small celebration. We will have another with Sarah when we get back to Pleasanton.
Small Rosh Hashanah celebration
Before leaving for home we do have a big adventure but that deserves its own separate post.
Today we get together for the annual eating of Labor Day hamburgers and discussing of why workers need a day to celebrate. It seems like the labor movement in the U.S. Is receiving more vilification than usual from the current administration so it is good to take a few moments to talk about all the good things that organized labor has done for workers with Nathan and Sam. Tney have recently seen in play, Newsies, and have some idea about unions, workers, and management.
I feel like it is not so much fun to go to Beeba and Zayde’s house anymore. Nathan and Sam are more interested in interacting with their friends and doing computer stuff. Ryan brings along some of their drawing and fantasy story writing stuff and works on it with them while they are here. Sarah continues to have some cache since she is like a big kid herself.
Some pictures from the day –
Sarah and Nathan discuss video gamesJonathan and Sam sticking out his tongueNathan likes to be with RyanNathan is so long!Sam drawing on Auntie Leigh’s lapSam knows I am taking a picture
When I was planning this vacation I went day by day figuring out what we would be doing and where we would stay. I got to the next to last day and decided that somewhere mid-Oregon along I-5 would be best. Only when I could not find a single hotel that had vacancy did I wonder why Oregon was all booked up. John and I pondered about this. Was there some big event happening? Were all the colleges going back to school on the same day? Finally John had an aha moment, the eclipse!
So I had planned the perfect vacation with its climax at the moment of total eclipse somewhere near Salem, Oregon. We were offered eclipse glasses early on at the Museum of Eastern Idaho so we were prepared.
We leave our hotel in Chehalis, Washington early hoping to avoid the Portland, Oregon rush hour travel. Strangely there is no traffic at all around 8 AM. Maybe all the Intel people have the day off to watch the eclipse. About twenty miles north of Salem we start running into some traffic and decide to take some back roads and camp out on the side of a country road to watch the eclipse. Our plan is working perfectly. The eclipse starts and I am ready with my iPhone to snap some pictures but the sun is too bright. So I take to putting my eclipse glasses over the lens. Here are the results –
About 1/4 eclipsed (the little mark to the left is just a reflection)1/2 eclipsedNearly fully eclipsedTotal eclipse
So obviously I am not very successful with the picture taking. I guess you would need a much more sophisticated camera than an iPhone. Shucks. Here is a picture from NASA showing what it actually looks like from Madras, Oregon.
NASA photo of the total eclipse as seen from Oregon.
We do take some pictures of John and I looking comical in our cool eclipse glasses called “The Eclipsers.”
Here I am staring at the sunHere’s John staring at the sun
Here are some of my impressions about seeing a total solar eclipse. First, it happens really slowly. It tkes a long time for the moon to move into position. As it approaches, the sky begins to get a twilight kind of appearance. Then you notice the wind pick up a little and it starts to feel cooler. Finally when the sun it is totally eclipsed, it is dark but not totally pitch dark. There is still enough light coming from the edge bits to make things seeable. It only last for a minute or two before the moon and sun begin to part and the light comes back really quickly.
This is an awesome experience and the perfect end to our vacation. And because it is so worthwhile and special I am not going to complain about the monumental traffic where it takes us 4 hours to go 60 miles!
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.
Welcome home!Picture of a faint Mt. Rainier
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.
$6 bread
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
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.
Snow Effect: Sunset, 1875Train in the Snow, 1875
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.
Japanese Bridge, 1918
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.
Water liliesA series of pictures of wisteriaTaking a Walk in Argenteuil, 1875
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 cucumberWe have the delicious mussels again tonight served with East Generation Dry RieslingAlso with the Dry Riesling is a much better rendition of the octopus saladDelicious sable hot and sour soup, spicy!The next two dishes are served with a Tantalus Juveniles Pinot Noir. First is a green beef curryThe other is a really yummy eggplant and pork belly stir fryChocolate ganache served with an Italian Moscato is for dessert
This is a wonderful ending to a really super summer road trip!
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.
Best rose picture I tookMy favorite – yellow rosesDid I mention that I love yellow roses?
Departing the rose garden, there are beautiful plant landscapes everywhere.
Some plants and flowersI 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.
Artichoke thistleTansy
John walks over to the vegetable gardens while I sit a while on a bench and commune with nature. Â 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.
Still green tomatoes in BC
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 sauceSteelhead trout with a shrimp and rice cake, grilled tomatoes, asparagus and carrot/ginger sauce.
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 GeorgiaThe 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 –
John catching the hawkJohn petting the hawkMoose-ter and henCollared moose-aryNadal and family (capybaras)Night-flying hooting mooseThe flightless moose-trichAfrican striped mooseA rare Australian moose
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 BlancHot and sour shrimp soup with oyster mushrooms (still drinking Pinot blanc)Braised octopus salad served with Kitsch Pinot noir roseSteamed mussels with chilis, lemon grass, Thai basil, and kafir lime leaves plus nam jim sauce (Yum) Pinot noir rose also goes with this dishPenang braised beef curry served with Tantalus Juveniles Pinot noirStir 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.
