Spring Trip - Cemeteries, railroads, and reservations.

(Updated May 27 thanks to some corrections from my Uncle Jake).

Part of our trip was bittersweet; we visited a couple of gravesites. My Aunt Lucinda and my cousin Rebecca Laughman both passed away this past fall. My Uncle Jake and Aunt Sally had taken care of both of them the past few years and had to do most of the work in settling their estates. My sisters and I went down to Arizona when my Aunt passed away; Diana was able to be there and make her comfortable in her last days. Laura and I came a bit later and helped clean out her house and prepare it for sale.

My Aunt was buried in Sedona where she lived since the 1970's. Her husband, my Uncle Will was buried there years before. I didn't get a picture of their graves, but the Sedona cemetery is beautiful with a gorgeous view of the red rocks. While there we saw a pair of headstones that I understand have been made famous (or infamous) on the internet.

(NOT MY RELATIVES)

Click on the image below to blow it up so you can read them.

Different feelings for someone's mom and dad.

I almost laughed but then thought about the hurt and anger that went into the effort to put that on a headstone. And I can't help but think the mother's treatment of the kids went into why Mike was unable to express his feelings to his father in his lifetime.

Our family's drama amounts to nothing compared to that.

My cousin Rebecca wanted to be buried with her (and my) grandparents in Winslow, AZ. I remember all three of these people so warmly. My grandma died when I was 11 but I remember her as smiling, quiet, and most of all loving. My mom took us kids over when she helped her sisters and brother care of her when she died. My grandpa died when I was 15; My uncle was there for him.

Rebecca was 10 years older than me and I remember her introducing me to American Band Stand when we'd visit Arizona. We spent one Fall afternoon betting which leaves would crunch when stepped on them. She also taught me drive her car at her mom and step dad's farm (Aunt June and Uncle Tony) outside of Sedona.

My maternal grandparents and cousin's resting place in Winslow. My first name comes from my grandpa.The "H" stands for Howard.

My absolute favorite memory of my childhood was grandpa taking me to the Santa Fe railroad station in Winslow to watch the El Capitan and Super Chief passenger trains come into town. They stopped in town for about half and hour as they switched crews and gassed up. This was the beginning of my life-long love of trains.

So no trip to northern Arizona is complete without a stop at La Posada, the refurbished train hotel.

Inside La Posada hotel with Uncle Jake, Aunt Sally and Carla

We stayed two nights so I got plenty of train watching in.

Eastbound

Westbound high priority container train.

The hotel is a favorite of rail fans with a large grassy area with comfortable chairs. Our hotel room was on the upper floor with a balcony looking down on the tracks. This isn't for everyone; but is perfect for me. I think Carla enjoys it.

Interestingly enough, it isn't that loud. There isn't a grade crossing for cars within 50 miles so there are no horns unless you give the sign to the engineer. They glide into town from the east decelerating for their stop on the west side of town for a crew change and refueling. Trains heading east will be a bit noiser as they notch up the throttle.

The San Francisco peaks 60 miles to the west. Flagstaff is on the southerly slope

Another part of the trip was to understand my mother's family heritage. My mom's family moved out west from a small farming town - Atlanta, Illinois - when she was very young. Both grandma and grandpa had TB and were in a hospital for a time. My mom and her 3 sisters (Lucinda, June, and Barbara) were in various locations being cared by members of the Methodist church.  My Uncle Jake was born after the family moved.

When grandpa was well enough to travel, my grandpa's brothers pooled their money to give him so they could move to a drier climate. He had enough money to get to Las Vegas, New Mexico. He got a job working in a gas station. A man in the wool business had his offices in a building  across the street from where he worked. He noticed by grandpa was always busy and always made the extra effort to help his customers. He came over one day to talk with him and offered him a job. After my grandpa explained the circumstances, the man loaned grandpa his car and told him to get his family and he'd have a house lined up for them when they got back from Illinois.

His job was to travel the reservations going to the various trading posts and grade the wool and hides for purchase and organize for them to be transported to the train hub in Winslow. I read  a story about him in a magazine years ago describing how trustworthy he was. Most of his business was settled by a handshake. Later he also worked for the Babbitt company selling things at the trading post. He'd carry samples of things for the trading posts to select from. Like I said; the man was always busy: selling and buying; two jobs in one. Over the years the family moved west to Arizona: Holbrook, Flagstaff, and finally Winslow because it was a major rail center in the day.

I wanted to travel this land that he worked for so many years. We headed out through the Navajo and Hopi reservations to find the Hubbel Trading Post which is now part of the National Park Service. My uncle and aunt were real sports and took the 5 hour drive in stride.

Heading north east of Winslow toward the Hubbel Trading Post

As we drove out there I couldn't help but think how hard a life it must have been back before there were paved roads everywhere. He would be gone in the vast desert for a couple of weeks at a time. My uncle told us a story of how grandpa's car got stuck. He walked a while until he found a hogan; a Navajo home. The resident lent my grandpa a horse and he headed out to the nearest trading post 50 miles away. The mare was nursing and wasn't interested in getting too far from its colt. So my grandpa let her go and he walked the final 20 or so miles and arranged for his car to get towed out. Meanwhile, this is in the years preceding cell phones (by about 60 or more years) so the family had no idea what had happened.

The Hopi cliff homes are out in the distance.

Finally we came to the trading post. Carla and I had thoughts of buying a Navajo rug but changed our minds when we saw the prices. They were gorgeous but we just couldn't afford it. Uncle Jake and Aunt Sally told us they had some old rugs we could have if we wanted. OH MY. They are gorgeous. We picked two beautiful rugs that are at least 50 years old and may even pre-date World War II

One of the buildings at the trading post.

Jake and Sally at the trading post.

Memorial Day Weekend Grilling

After some marvelous weather earlier in the month, we've had a couple of very cool, wet weeks. Nevertheless, it's Memorial Day weekend which is the traditional start of summer. Since the weather report showed we'd have a little bit of sunshine in the afternoon, we decided to grill. I've used this Cook's Illustrated recipe a few times with good results.

While the grill is heating up, mix the thyme, salt, and pepper with the onions, cover with plastic wrap and microwave 6 minutes on high.

Easy-peazie. 6 ingredients

 After microwaving the onions put them on the bottom of a disposable pan then cover with the peppers and sausages.

Ready to be wrapped and put on the grill

 Wrap with foil and put on the grill for about 15 minutes. I had to do 30 minutes on the smoker because it just doesn't get as hot as the Weber.

Add caption

 After the sausages have cooked up pretty well and the onions have reduced, finish off the peppers and sausages on the grill.

Finish on the grill

Remove the sausages and peppers to a platter and tent loosely with foil. Let the onions cook down a few more minutes.

A few years ago when I was just beginning to discover the joy of cooking, one of my regular TV shows was How To Boil Water on The Food Network. The show host was Jack Hourigan (female) who either doesn't know how to cook or faked it pretty well. There were two chefs over the seasons (Tyler Florence was the last chef) who would show up in her kitchen and haver her help cook a meal. It sounds hoky, but it worked. In addition to easy and tasty recipes I learned a lot of everyday prep skills like chopping onions. This American-Style potato salad was one of my early favorites.

Carla made American Style potato salad

Dinner is served

Spring Road Trip: Route 66 Roadside Attractions

When we last left our intrepid travelers on their spring road trip they had spent a couple of nights in Las Vegas and were headed to Arizona for baseball, relatives, and warm temperatures. To paraphrase Jeff Willis, a friend at work, Carla and I love us some Route 66 and not just a little bit. We headed south from Las Vegas until we hit Kingman Arizona; from there we headed east and spent the day driving the 150 miles to Flagstaff.

Kingman, to Hackberry General Store, Grand Canyon Caverns, Seligman and Flagstaff

Kingman means the BNSF. After grabbing lunch at In & Out we headed for Andy Devine Blvd which is main street. Andy Devine was a bit actor in westerns of the 50's and 60's. He was born in Flagstaff in 1905 and grew up in Kingman. In the  movies I've seen he was often a kind of comic relief. I recently saw "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Lee Coburn as the bad guy. Andy Devine played the town marshall who wanted nothing to do with the tough Liberty Valance; but he was always ready to have a steak at the local cafe.

Usually when we are in Kingman we don't have too much time  to explore; but we were determined to dawdle today. In one of our Route 66 tour books we saw there was an old stretch southwest of town that went between the two tracks of the BNSF Transcon. It wasn't long before we saw our first freight.

BNSF on the Transcon southwest of Kingman

We found ourselves in a little canyon with the tracks about 30 or 40 feet above us. As we headed back into town we caught another freight.

Another freight headed east into Kingman

We left town and headed east on old Route 66. This is one of the best preserved parts of the old Mother Road in the country. It was only 30 miles to the Hackberry General Store. Although it's just a small store with nary a town around it, it is a big stop for tours. It was still early spring so there was only a couple from Germany going through the treasures. Later in the summer large tour busses will be parked on the dirt parking lot. I picked up a coffee cup and a 2014 calendar.

Perfect parking spot for our Route 66 cruiser.

We made a lot of short hops this day; it's only another 25 miles to a classic roadside attraction: Grand Canyon Caverns.  We've driven by before but never took the tour. This is one of the several "giants"on Route 66.

T-Rex guards the caverns (where there are no dinosaurs).

Apparently many years ago, a local was late for a card game and when he cut through the desert he stumbled in a hole in the ground that opened up to a large cavern and saw lots of sparkling rocks. He thought he found a gold or silver mine. The next day he put in a claim on a large surrounding area and set about exploring. Turns out there was nothing valuable so he named it Dinosaur Caverns and opened an attraction where for a nickel he would lower tourists down in the hole on a long rope. There are no dinosaur bones so it was renamed Grand Canyon caverns, even though the Grand Canyon is a long way away.

It's a little nicer  now with an elevator to the main cavern and long stairways and well lit paths. It is a dry cavern, meaning no stalactites or stalagmites. The humidity is incredibly low. In the 50's it was a Civil Defense shelter and there are still pallets of K-rations and 55 gallon barrels of water. They say the food and water is still fit for consumption because of the absence of bacteria and what-not. Our tour guide was a bit of a survivalist nut and told us he was glad he worked for the Caverns so he'd have a place to escape to when the end times come.

You can get married there for $10,000 and even spend your honeymood in a kingsized bed set in the middle of a large, dark canyon.

We've been wanting to take the tour for years and now we can say we have.

One of our favorite little towns is Seligman and the Snow Cap cafe run by the brothers Juan and Angel Degadillo. Before I-40 bypassed Seligman, it was a bustling little burg. I remember driving through it on our family trips from southern California to my grandparents' house in Winslow.

Delgadillo's Snow Cap

The town almost dried up when the interstate came to be. Angel Delgadillo was a driving force in turning Seligman and Arizona Route 66 into a tourist destination. The Snow Cap is still run by the Delgadillo family and is a fun place to stop; the doorknobs are on the wrong side of the doors; when you ask for a small ice cream cone you get something the size of your pinky.  It was early evening and we had a while before we'd hit Flagstaff so we had banana splits. This is definitely a roadside attraction you don't want to miss.

As we sat on the back deck eating our ice cream,  noticed a classic Route 66 neon hotel sign.

An old Route 66 hotel sign.

We hopped back in the car and drove the last 80 miles into Flagstaff enjoying the view of Bill Williams Mountain and perhaps a glimpse of the Grand Canyon to the north.

Puttanesca-style marinara sauce

Our go-to cook book around the house is Good Food Great Medicine: A Homemade Cookbook. Recipes and ruminations from a medical practice. The author is Miles Hassell, MD; he was Carla's dad's physician when they moved up here to Portland from the Bay Area. We've attended some of his local lectures where he provides evidence-based support for the Mediterranean diet. We've prepared many recipes from this book and it certainly doesn't taste like "dieting". Olive oil plays a major role in his recipes.

Our favorites include Granola, which Carla makes every couple of weeks; garlic and mustard vinaigrette, which we put on practically everything, Mexican brown rice with black beans, meat loaf, creamy Thai tomato soup; and Tom Kah Gai, a Thai Chicken soup with coconut milk. Other than granola, the dish we make most often is his tomato sauce.  It has a couple of options and we usually go with the puttanesca style which includes anchovies and kalamata olives. Don't let the anchovies scare you away from this recipe; there only a few and they give a nice depth to the sauce. It's nothing like having anchovies on your pizza. You can find my recipe for it here; I made it this week with the capers which are optional; they can be left out and you'll still have a great sauce. I also made it with 1 14 ounce can of crushed tomatoes and 1 diced. I was going for a nice chunky sauce.

Finally, this is no hours-long simmering recipe. I made it from start to end in about 90 minutes and that includes a ridiculous amount of time posing the elements for my pictures, and getting all my mis-en-place organized before starting to cook so I could get comprehensive pictures

The entire line up.

By the way; I didn't drop the onions in the dirt in this picture. The crushed red pepper flakes cook with the onions so I tossed them in instead of giving them their little bowl like I should have.

Everything chopped and measured.

Sauté the onions in 1/4 cup olive oil for about 10 minutes, then add the garlic, oregano, and thyme for a minute until they become fragrant.

Sauté the onions, then add the oregano, thyme, and garlic.

Toss in the remaining ingredients and let simmer for 30 minutes

Simmer the ingredients for 30 minutes

 This is great on top of meat loaf. We had it this week with spaghetti. I boiled the noodles for about 8 minutes, then drained and returned to the pot. I added a cup of the sauce to the pot to mix with the noodles. Then put in a pasta bowl and top with more sauce and some nice parmesan cheese.

Dinner is served

All mixed up and ready to eat. 

 Try the recipe sometime when you have a hankering for spaghetti; if you like it buy the book and I bet you'll find a couple of other recipes you love.

Pressure Cooker Pinto Beans

Pinto beans are easy whether in a dutch oven or pressure cooker. They are a good place to start for a beginning cook.

Most of my cooking is based on recipes I've discovered either from searching the interweb or my cooking magazines. My pinto beans are the exception; I've worked over the years to develop my very own recipe taking notes and making adjustments. Last year I settled on my go-to recipe using Big Blue, my dutch oven. You can find my original recipe here.

I got a pressure cooker last Christmas and have been amazed at how good things are and how quickly one can cook beans. So, I started re-working the recipe. Mike Vrobel of Dad Cooks Dinner fame is my go to when I start cooking with the pressure cooker. One of the problems I've had adjusting recipes for the pressure cooker is figuring the amount of water to use. Mike's Vrobel likes his beans a bit wetter than I do. I've made a couple of attempts but my early results were no more than 2-star efforts.

Then I had great success with Cuban black beans and rice a week or so earlier based on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated. So, I adapted what I learned there to my pinto bean recipe. The big change was replacing the pork hock with salt pork.  I also cut the liquid in half, from 2 quarts to 1 with equal amounts chicken stock and water. These were much better; maybe a tad dry; next time I'll use 2 cups stock and 3 cups water (or vice versa depending on how I feel at the moment).  One thing to be aware of with this recipe; don't use a lot of salt, the salt pork has plenty. I added some to the simmering stage and they were on the edge of too salty.

One great thing about cooking the beans in the pressure cooker is you don't have to sit around for 2 or 3 hours waiting for the beans to finish on the stove. This recipe goes from start start to finish in just a little over an hour (of course you need to soak the beans overnight). My current recipe can be found here; I'll update it as I improve the recipe.

A small number of ingredients. The spices are cumin and chili powder

 Sauté the salt pork on medium for about 10 minutes. Don't cook at a higher temp or you might burn the tasty bits.

Sauté the salt pork

Pour off and reserve all but 2 Tablespoons of the pork fat. Sauté the onions for 8-10 minutes until softened and translucent. At the end add the crushed garlic and spices for about a minute, until they become fragrant.

Sauté the onions.

 Add the beans, stock, water, whole garlic cloves, 1/2 an onion. If you wish, add the reserved pork fat (I do).
Bring to high pressure and cook for 15 minutes. Quickly release the pressure and fish out the onion, whole garlic cloves and bay leaves.

Ready for serving

I took this batch over next store for a picnic dinner party. I received lots of compliments and quite a few folks went back for seconds.

Book Reports: Mid May 2013

My annual goal for a few years now has been to read a minimum of 8 books in a year; that averages out to one book every 6 weeks. I was getting concerned that I wouldn't come close to meeting that goal this year. It took me months to finish 1 book: The Passage of Power.

When I semi-retired in March I exchanged driving to work every day for the bus. I hoped it would be a good way to rekindle my reading for the year. It did indeed: I've read 5 books in 5 weeks.


One limitation I've found with blogger is the difficulty of adding tables to posts. Now I've found Tableizer. Here is a test of it showing the books I've read so far this year.

Title	Author	Copyright	Pages	Finished	Rating
The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson)	Caro, Robert A	2012	604	4/12/13	****
Angle of Repose	Stegner, Wallace	1971	569	4/25/13	*****
Zorro	Allende, Isabel	2005	390	4/28/13	***
Home	Morrison, Toni	2012	147	5/2/13	*****
The Mating Season	Wodehouse, P.G.	1949	222	5/5/13	****
The Big Rock Candy Mountain	Stegner, Wallace	1938	561	5/16/13	*****

The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson)

• Author: Robert A. Caro
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Copyright: 2012
• Pages: 604
• Date Finished: April 12, 2013
• Rating: ****
• Thoughts

My full review can be found here in my blog

Angle of Repose

• Author: Wallace Stegner
• Publisher: Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics
• Copyright: 1971
• Pages: 569
• Date Finished: April 25, 2013
• Rating: *****
• Thoughts

When I first started this book, I wondered how could a story about a retired, handicapped historian writing about his grandmother from the late 19th century be at all interesting. But I enjoyed Crossing to Safety so I started reading and was completely overawed with the intense story of a well-bred Eastern Quaker woman who heads to the wild west with her husband whom she barely knows.

"Angle of Repose" is the angle on a bank of dirt at which dirt and pebbles stop rolling. In this novel we see Susan Ward and her husband Oliver start on a high slope and continue to slide until they reached their angle of repose. As the narrator says on page 211:

"What interestes me ... is not Susan Burling Ward the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West they spend their lives in. What really interests me is how two such unlik particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them."

There are so many layers to this story. We see Susan Ward struggling with a continued decline in fortune as the husband, Oliver, trusts people he shouldn't. We see her relationship with her best evolve through a series of letters. Augusta's fortunes rise and Susan's do not. We see the stress in a marriage as the years go by and both husband and wife have struggles.

This story is based on the life of Mary Hallock Foote. Stegner came across the letters and got permission from the Foote family to fictionalize the account. The foundation from the canyon house in Boise still exists. I wish I had read this before my recent trip to Boise; next trip, I'l head up toward Lucky Peak damn to see the remains.

Jackson J Benson wrote an introduction for the 2000 release of this work; he calls it Stegner's "masterpiece". I know it's moved Wallace Stegner up to my favorite authors alongside Larry McMurtry, Richard Russo, and P.G. Wodehouse.

Zorro

• Author: Isabel Allende
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Copyright: 2005
• Pages: 390
• Date Finished: April 28, 2013
• Rating: ***
• Thoughts

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.

A fun Romantic novel. That's capital "R" romantic; it's not a bodice ripper. Rather it's a telling of Diego de la Vega's youth; recounting his birth in California, his trip to Spain for education and return to California. He learns sword fighting from a master; helps Gypsies, falls in love, becomes Zorro, all the while fighting the villain Rafael Moncada. He also has a run in with the famous pirate Jean LaFitte.

A fun summer book.

Home

• Author: Toni Morrison
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Copyright: 2012
• Pages: 147
• Date Finished: May 2, 2013
• Rating: *****
• Thoughts

Wow. A story of a black Korean war veteran and his sister. It starts when they are children and witness some white men throwing a black man in a makeshift grave in a field. They had a hard, hard life and become separated when Frank leaves town to go to Korea. He sees his best friends killed in war and is stumbling through life when he returns. Although he has sworn to never return to Lotus, his home town, he does when he hears his sister, Cee, is close to death.

We see Frank grow as he processes all he has dealt with in his life.

The reading guide says this is as a hero journey story, where the hero travels far away, meets many trials and comes home a changed person. I think there is a little of that here, but not the major part of the story.

This is the first Toni Morrison book I've read but not the last.

The Mating Season

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• Author: P.G. Wodehouse
• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Copyright: 1949
• Pages: 222
• Date Finished: May 5, 2013
• Rating: ***
• Thoughts

The next in the Jeeves and Wooster series that I'm reading in order. 

A classic Jeeves and Wooster story - one I haven't read regularly. There are many couples whose loves are torn asunder and can only be repaired with the help of Jeeves. Of course they travel to a big country house to work their magic and of course there are deceits and cross-purposes galore. Bertie's future is in peril, for if Gussie Finknottle is allowed to continue his star-crossed ways, Bertie will have to marry Madeline Basset.
This is interesting in that Aunt Agatha is part of the story but never actually shows up in the pages until the very end; even then we don't see she and Bertie together. It's also interesting in that it has some actual bad words (bitch, hell, damn) which I don't think I've read in other Wodehouse stories.

If you are looking for a place to start with Jeeves and Wooster this is as good as many and better than the early short stories  

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

• Author: Wallace Stegner
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Copyright: 1938
• Pages: 561
• Date Finished:
• Rating: *****
• Thoughts

The best book I've read since Lonesome Dove.

Wallace Stegner paints the portait of the Mason family to illustrate his theme of the tension between making a home and a living in one place the best you can and the restless drive to always be moving and changing to try to get beyond the now to a hoped for better future.

A second theme is that of how much easier it is to see the line of a life looking back than trying to predict the future. This theme is central to Stegner's "Angle of Repose"

The story starts with Elsa Nogaard's trip from Minnesota to Hardanger, North Dakota in the winter of 1905. She is only 14 and basically runs away from home to live with her uncle. She meets Harry "Bo" Mason and they end up marrying and raising a couple of boys (Chet and Bruce) while moving around the in search of Bo's dreams of making it rich. The novel shows struggle after struggle where Bo is constantly on the lookout for the next opportunity to make it big. It may be running a hotel, a cafe, a homestead farm in Canada, or running whisky. Elsa would rather settle in one place and make a home, however humble. But after a major scene of anger and battle, she makes peace with being married to Bo and follows along.

The novel is told is ten sections detailing with various periods of their lives told from varying points of view. Stegner's style is so realistic; I often found myself thinking "this is reporting real lives, not make believe". The opening pages describing Elsa's journey on the train had me hooked as surely as the description of Gus rooting out the pigs in the opening pages of Lonesome Dove.

The theme of restlessness v. settling has resonated with me recently. In my early career I moved from job to job in Information Technology to improve our stake. It worked well for me. But I never had the long term sense of accomplishment and building something of continued value until I stayed at OHSU for 13+ years.

Cuban Style Black Beans and Rice

May 5, 2013

I went to the Farmers' Market in the south Park Blocks on Wednesday May 1 to get a tamale for lunch. As I wondered through, I saw a stall selling beautiful dried beans. I picked up about a pound of the black beans and figured I'd find something to do with them. Carla has a friend at work who is Cuban and I guess Cuban food was on my mind. I searched the internet for a Cuban black bean recipe and found one that looked tasty on Cook's Illustrated (you'll need an account to see the full story). My version of the recipe can be found here.

The first step is to brine some beans overnight and boil them in a combination of chicken broth and water along with 1/2 an onion, 1/2 a green pepper, 1/2 a head garlic, a couple of bay leaves and a bit of salt. I'm using home made chicken stock that has very little salt. If you use canned, skip the salt

Bean cooking ingredients

Simmer the beans for 30 minutes

After simmering the beans for 30 minutes toss the onion, bell pepper, garlic and bay leaves; drain and reserve the bean broth (which tastes delicious on its own). Chop the remaining 1/2 onion and 1 1/2 bell peppers to make a sofrito. Push another bunch of garlic through a press.

Step 2 sauté aromatics.

 Start with the salt pork

Sauté 6 ounces of chopped salt pork.

After cooking the salt pork for about 10 minutes on medium (so as to not let it burn), pull out the salt pork with a slotted spoon but leave the fat. Add the sofrito and cook for another 10 or so minutes. Then sauté the garlic and some additional herbs until they become fragrant. Add the the rice and stir to coat. Add the beans, reserved broth, reserved salt pork bits, and a bit of red wine vinegar for brightness. Put in the oven at cook for 30 minutes

Ready for the oven

Ready to serve

This was flat out delicious. I use a 5 star rating system and I don't give 5 stars out very easily. This dish earned all five.

Spring 2013 Road Trip - Part 1: Portland to Las Vegas. March 22-25, 2013

I semi-retired this spring. My last day of full time was Friday March 15; I took a month off then returned in mid-April to work half time. We headed out on Friday March 22 during Carla's spring break on a road trip to Arizona. She flew back from Arizona while I took a second week to drive up to Boise, Idaho to visit my old college friends.

Our stops were

• A: Home
• B: Bend, OR
• C: Fallon, NV
• D: Las Vegas, NV
• E: Phoenix AZ
• F: Cottonwood, AZ (Side trip to Winslow, AZ and Hubble Trading Post)
• G: Kanab, UT
• H: Twin Falls, NV
• I: Boise, ID
• J: Home

We didn't take the quickest route; we've driven from Portland south to California and Arizona many times so wanted to do something different. I grew up in Palmdale, California (Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles)  and went to college in Caldwell, ID just outside of Boise. I drove the highway through the Western Nevada and Eastern Oregon desert a couple of times a year. It's a lonely stretch of road that can either be borne or enjoyed.

It's been over 30 years since I last drove the route and wanted to see if it had changed. My group of friends would leave the College of Idaho after the last final in the afternoon and head south for our homes. I've been thinking of that drive for years and wanted to see how it matched up to my memory.

We had tickets for a comedy show in Las Vegas on Sunday and had a lot of road between us and there. On the afternoon of  Friday March 22 I drove over to the school where Carla works and we headed to Bend to get a start on the trip. The Cascade mountain range looms east of the Williamette Valley where we live. It had been a cold couple of weeks and there was snow on the road at Santiam Pass in the Cascades.

Pulling into Bend Evidence of the snowy road

Being retired we are more conscious of our spending. Seeing as we were just stopping for sleeping we didn't need a fancy hotel; we found the Holiday Motel on US Highway 97. There are many hotels like this on the old US Highways; many have fallen on harder times now that the interstate system has been built. We figured we'd try some

Our stop for the night in Bend

 This is definitely not a cookie cutter hotel where the rooms in one city look identical to those in another state. We had some real flair.

Not many hotel rooms have lamps like this.

Comfortable beds with flair

 We were facing a drive of 500 miles, so after a quick breakfast at a local diner we hit the road. The Cascades do a great job of blocking the clouds and rain; we were met with cold, clear skies on our drive.

Eastern Oregon; the Cascade mountains we had passed through (Adobe Photoshop Elements)

Eastern Oregon; the Cascade mountains we had passed through. (Lightroom 5).

I remember Winnemucca as an oasis with a nice green park along a stream as you enter town from the north.  Well, the road has been reworked in the past 30+ years and entering town wasn't as I remembered it. Southwest Idaho and northern Nevada is Basque country and we hoped to have enjoy some Basque food at the Martin Hotel in downtown. Unfortunately our timing wasn't right; we arrived  about 3 hours before they opened for dinner. We found a so-so barbecue joint on the highway.

Martin Hotel, Winnemucca, Nevada

We finished the day in Fallon, Nevada where we spent the night in a Comfort Inn. Fallon seems to be bigger than Winnemucca which is not the way I remember it. We went into the downtown area to walk a bit. We dropped into the movie house to watch the movie Oz, The Great and Powerful I'm a fan of the Oz story and its hero epic theme. In addition to the original story, I liked the novel Wicked, by Gregory Maguire (though it is too long by half) which tells the story from the view of the wicked witch of the west. The movie picks up the beginning of the story showing how the wizard came to Oz and how the witches became wicked.

As I mentioned, we had tickets for a comedy show in Las Vegas Sunday evening March 24 so we got up early and started our 400 mile trip south. As we travelled, we could see the back side of the Sierra-Nevada mountain range come into view.

Back (Eastern) side of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains

South of Fallon, near Hawthorne is an army weapons depot. As we drove the stretch from Hawthorne to Tonopah we got in amidst an army convoy of jeeps, HumVees, busses, and big trucks. A little over halfway we bid goodbye to the stretch of road I drove so many times in the 70's. Highway 6 branches southwest to Southern California while we headed east to Tonopah and later Las Vegas. 

Route from Hawthorne to Tonopah showing the cutoff we took when going from
the College of Idaho to Southern California

In the picture below there is a bend to the left in the road up where the dust devil is blowing; then we turned back right (south) where the mountain comes down to the valley floor to reach Tonopah. Most of this trip was at elevations over a mile high; oven above 6,000 feet.

The west features lots of straight highway with no traffic

We spent two nights at the Treasure Island in Las Vegas. We don't gamble so once you've walked the strip a couple of times, there isn't much to do during the day. I've always wanted to see a comedy show and a magic act in Vegas. Sunday night we went to The Laugh Factory at The Tropicana. It was fun and we laughed. We debated about what magic show to see and finally decided since we aren't likely to hit Vegas again we'd go all out and catch Penn & Teller at The Rio. The Rio is a gorgeous casino off the strip. Penn & Teller have their own auditorium which must seat at least a thousand. They are amazing. They tell you over and over it isn't magic; it's slight of hand. They even show part of what they do. But when they finish the trick, you just exclaim "that's magic".  When the show was over, I turned to Carla and said "what a gyp" the show was so short. Well, then I looked at my watch and realized they had been performing over an hour and a half. The time just flew by.

Tuesday morning March 26 we headed south toward Arizona. A few miles out of Las Vegas you cross the Colorado River just south of Hoover Dam and descend toward Kingman and Route 66. We stopped at a view point to get a glimpse of the Colorado River

The Colorado River below Hoover Dam