Back in the promised land, aka California

Hello again from California. We've been here about a week now and keeping looking around expecting everything to be the same.  Somehow however, things kept on moving without us (imagine that)and there are some new sights to see.

After leaving Louisiana we decided to drift our way back out west rather than making another mad dash across many miles.  The trip into Texas heading toward Dallas was a bit surreal in places.  That was the time of the massive wildfires west of Fort Worth/Dallas and the air was filled with smoke until we got west of the area.  Then further on we ran across an oil well fire that left a smoke trail for 30+ miles.

Smoke along the highway heading to Dallas

Oil well fire

Our first stop was Abilene, TX at the local KOA.  It was a small park, but friendly people and a low key atmosphere.  This was only an overnight stop, so we didn't try to do any sight-seeing.  Heinz remembered a great little steak place from his days of traveling to Dyess AFB on TDYs, so off we went for dinner.  Guess we should have read the reviews on Trip Advisor and Yelp first.  Joe Allen's was definitely not the restaurant Heinz remembered.  The steaks were bad, the service mediocre, and the price was WAY too high for the experience.  I read the reviews afterward and most seemed to agree that when the owner and his wife divorced, the wife took the good parts from the restaurant (recipes, cooks, etc.) and opened her own place.  It had rave reviews.  Oh well, lesson learned!

The next day we headed off to Las Cruces, NM.  We stayed in a nice little RV park in the middle of town, Sunny Acres RV Park.  This was a great little park with wide spots, lots of shade, and even a covered parking spot for your car - a nice touch in the desert sun!  This was our second time in Las Cruces and we checked out La Posta for dinner again - still some of the best Mexican food we've had.  While there we took a little side trip to Hatch, NM since it's pepper season there - we picked up a 35 lb. bag of chiles.  That night I roasted and cleaned a few and made a nice batch of chile rellenos.  If you've never had Hatch chiles you gotta try them.  Fresh is best of course, but you can buy roasted ones in a can in most grocery stores these days, just look in the Mexican food section.  They come in medium and hot in the cans.  Be warned, when they say hot, they mean it!

Riastra of fresh chiles

Roasting fresh chiles in Hatch

Riastras

Leaving out of Las Cruces, we headed up to Silver City, NM by the Gila Mountains.  This is a town that keeps cropping up on the "best places to retire" lists.  It's a quirky little artist's community, full of free spirits, okay restaurants, and beautiful scenery.  But as Heinz put it, after a month of exploring the area, what do you do for entertainment?  This is the town that Billy the Kid was raised in, so a lot of the tourism is geared in that direction.  We did drive the Trail of Mountain Spirits National Scenic Byway.  This 93 mile loop runs from Silver City through the Gila National Forest, across the Continental Divide, and into the Mimbres River Valley and past the world's largest open pit copper mine.  It also travels through Pinos Altos, a tiny town established in 1859 that's famous for having Judge Roy Bean live there for a time.

Drummers in the local park in Silver City

Open pit copper mine

Morning Glory

Old adobe walls around a house in Pinos Altos

Oldest continously running hotel in New Mexico, opened in 1882

Just a cool pic!

Next stop was Tucson for a couple of nights.  We stayed at Davis Monthan AFB's FamCamp again.  It certainly looked different than when we were there in February, when there wasn't a spot in the joint except for overflow.  This time we had our pick of places to park and stay.  We didn't do much except laze around and check out a couple of restaurants again.  Oh yes, we did finally go see the last Harry Potter movie.

Then it was off to Phoenix (I did mention slowly "drifting" across the country didn't I?).  We stayed in our first "RV resort".  This was a planned community where a lot of snowbirds and fulltime RV'ers spend the winter.  Apparently the Phoenix area alone has 120+ of these RV parks.  There were great facilities: 2 pools, 2 jacuzzis, game rooms, tennis courts, horseshoe courts, shuffleboard courts, card rooms, wood shop, jewelry making studio, etc.  But wow, there were 1,126 (RV and Mobile Home) parking spaces in this park alone, and mobile homes were tucked in with not even 4 feet between them.  In all, 1126 spaces for this park AND anther 119+ parks in the immediate area - not our cup of tea at all!

At this time of the year, residents of the resort were mostly 70-80 year old women, so Heinz made quite the impression on the local ladies...face it, he was the youngest man for 20 miles!  He had a few stop and ask if he was a new neighbor.  The man could have made a fortune if he wanted to try the gigolo business :)

Retirement at it's finest??

Then it was off to Los Angeles.  We stayed at the FamCam on the Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach on the south side of LA.  First experience at a Navy Camp, very nice place.  While there we met up with Jess and Pete (daughter and son-in-law) for a couple of meals and a day at the Santa Monica Good Food Festival.  This was the first year for the festival and while small, had some great food and demonstrations.  For those foodies and Food Channel addicts out there, we got to see demonstrations by Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken of the Border Grill and Nancy Silverton of Osteria Mozza.  On Saturday I did a little cooking demo of my own and roasted about 15 lbs of the Hatch chiles to put in our freezer (the remaining 20 lbs went to Jess) and fixed Pork Stuffed Hatch Chiles with Walnut Cream Sauce (recipe at the end of today's blog).  

Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken demo

Jess sniffin' out the smoked Chipotle chiles

Tray of peppers from Susan Feniger...what?  No Hatch chiles??

Some of the peppers waiting for the grill back at the trailer

Roasting chiles - you should smell these puppies... oh yeah!

Pork Stuffed Chiles with Walnut Cream Sauce

We're now up in Fairfield, CA checking in on old friends, having our annual doctor visits, and just kicking back and relaxing.  Friday night we were off to Crustaceans in San Francisco for dinner to celebrate our one year anniversary of not working.  We both indulged in their famous roasted crabs. Yum!!

Garlic Roasted Crab with a side order of Garlic Infused Noodles

Well, here's the recipe for the stuffed chiles I promised you.  The recipe calls for Poblano chiles which I use when I don't have fresh Hatch chiles to use.

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Pork Stuffed Poblanos with Walnut Cream Sauce

Makes 8 peppers

8 large poblano peppers

1 lb ground pork

1 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 tsp ground cumin

¾ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp ground red pepper

2 large tomatoes, chopped

1 small apple, cored and chopped

1/3 cup raisins

1/3 cup diced almonds, toasted

1 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tsp salt

1 cup tomato sauce

1 tsp sugar

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp crushed red pepper

Walnut cream sauce

Broil peppers on grill until blistered.  Place in bag and seal x 10 min.  Peel peppers, split open lengthwise and remove seeds and veins.  Set aside.

Cook pork in hot oil in skillet over medium-high heat until it crumbles and is no longer pink; drain. Add onion through ground red pepper; cook, stirring often, 7 minutes or until onion is soft.

Stir in tomatoes through vinegar.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes.  Stir in salt.  Set aside.

Combine tomato sauce through crushed red pepper in small saucepan over low heat x 5 minutes.

Spoon about ½ cup pork mixture into each pepper and place in a slightly greased 13 x 9 pan. Pour tomato sauce mixture over peppers.

Bake, covered, at 350 deg. x 30 minutes.  Top with cream sauce. 

Walnut Cream Sauce:

Makes 1 ½ cups

1 (3 oz) pkg. cream cheese, softened

½ cup sour cream

¼ cup milk

½ cup walnuts, toasted

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground red pepper

½ tsp sugar

¼ tsp salt

Process all ingredients in food processor until smooth.

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Here's our friends of the day, although they're a little tinier than usual:

When did September get here??

Deep breath everyone.  September 23 will be one year since Heinz and I retired.  Where did all that time go?  Mostly into having a great time!

We're currently down in Louisiana.  If I had to describe the state in one word it would be HOT!  I don't envy the folks who had to spend the summer down here.  The daytime temps have been 100-103 since we got here with 45-75% humidity and they've been having this kind of weather for around 60+ days.  It finally dropped to double digit weather over the weekend, double digit being 98-99 of course.

We left Kansas City on the 17th of August and drove all night to get to Estes Park, CO by sunrise.  Once there we met up with Heinz's sister, brother-in-law, and aunt who also traveled up from Kansas.  We spent some time trying to get the trailer into the drive of the cabin Suzi, Carl and Annelee were staying at to no avail.  The roadbed was too soft (dirt and gravel) to get good traction to make the turn in reverse.  So off we went to the Elk Meadows RV Park instead.  As usual, we ended up with a "lousy" view from the trailer.

Sunset from the trailer

We spent the next few days hanging out with relatives, laughing, eating, swapping tall tales and family stories.  Suzi, et al, stayed at a cabin that was built by another aunt's father back in the 50's that was a great little place.  

Relaxing in the Rockies

Cabin fireplace

We went out at sunset to Rocky Mountain National Park in an attempt to see some wildlife, but seems like the animal union was on strike, so no luck.  Actually, a park ranger told us that the late snowfall and wet summer was keeping too much grazing on the upper slopes, so the wildlife was not having to venture down to the lower meadows.  Of course, as soon as we pulled back into Estes Park there were elk wandering the parking lots.

We also wandered into the park before sunrise the next morning (yawn, up at 0400!) to check out the wildlife possibilities.  We saw a wonderful sunrise, a mirror smooth lake, some beautiful wildflower patches, a roaring stream, and, you guessed it...NO wildlife!  

Sunrise in Rocky Mountain National Park

Bear Lake

Wildflower patch

Snowmelt makes for great running water

After dragging ourselves out of bed before sunrise, driving around for 2 hours, and doing a little sightseeing of the area we gave up and headed back home, with a brief stop for some doughnuts, arriving back at the RV park around 0800 only to find, you guessed it, a herd of 16 or so elk hanging out by the front parking lot.  Wow, could've slept in, made a leisurely cup of coffee and wandered over in our slippers to watch the wildlife!  Sigh...

Elk at the park

Since the family was gathered in Estes Park, we decided to have an early Thanksgiving feast on Sunday.  The menu was planned, all family members had their assignments and all preparations were well in hand, except Heinz woke up not feeling well.  By the end of the day he had decided to try immersing himself fully into the local culture and got himself admitted to the Estes Park Medical Center for pain management...passing a kidney stone.  I have to admit, while encountering a strange hospital is NOT what we wanted to do, this is one nice little hospital.  The staff was friendly and efficient, the room was large and comfortable (right down to radiant heating in the bathroom), the food very tasty and ordered via room service by the patient anytime between 0600 and 1900, and Heinz highly recommends the morphine IV drip. Needless to say, we missed the family meal.  

Heinz is doing fine now, but our departure from Colorado was delayed by a day.  But, leave we did and headed for Louisiana, arriving in time for my dad's 90th birthday.  We took him out for dinner at Jan's River Restaurant and some of the best fried catfish in the south.  That Saturday my brother, sister, and I threw him one big birthday bash...150 people for a catfish/shrimp/chicken buffet luncheon.  He's still talking about how much fun he had.

Prepping for the festivities

We've spent most of our time here just chilling out and spending time with my relatives.  Wednesday we head back out west on the next leg of our adventure.

Here's our friends of the day.

Marmot on the mountaintop

Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel

Clark's Nutcracker