food – Page 3 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Tour Day in Vienna ends with a Police Escort October 9

The sunrise this morning was gorgeous. More so because of all the clouds, I am sure, and it was clear that our day ahead might be a bit dreary. After a long night of being pretty darn sick, even with the medicine, and the frustration of trying repeatedly to get the WiFi to work, I wasn’t feeling very happy. Our breakfast buffet downstairs in the dining room was huge and very crowded, but the breakfast was good. I still found some good yogurt and muesli and there were lots of fruits and pastries available. I tried one, but it wasn’t that exciting, not like the croissants in the much less fancy hotel in Budapest.

Stuff I learned on this trip: If you have two people traveling with 2 SLR’s, 2 iPhones, and one iPad to process it all, the photos will become very close to unmanageable. If I ever go to Europe again, the SLR will stay home and I will use a nifty point and shoot. Even with the SLR, my photos this time are still more about content than the kind of quality I can get with the SLR over a point and shoot. The weight isn’t worth it to me unless I am going to someplace that is incredibly scenic and I actually have the time to take some serious photos. But back to the day at hand.

It is dreary, overcast, and the temperature feels a bit chilly today. I decided to wear a jacket and my warm sweater, and carry just one stick instead of two, but then thought better of that idea. I also am wearing my Cotton Carrier for the camera, but by the end of the long days, I feel like I am in a straight jacket! Still, I couldn’t manage it any other way, since it gets incredibly heavy around the neck and over the shoulder doesn’t work at all. I love my Cotton Carrier.

After breakfast we met downstairs for our morning bus tour with another new local guide, a snarky and completely entertaining man named Gearhart. He has a bit of an “attitude” I would say about the socialist government of Austria, and told some really funny stories. He had an interesting perspective on the local culture and I loved his humor. Some of the women on the trip later made the comment that he was more focused on being “cute” than on imparting information, but I didn’t agree at all. I learned so much from him about the history of Vienna in relation to the rest of Eastern Europe. He stated specifically that Vienna is what it is today because the United States made the decision to save Vienna from the Soviets. Vienna was on the very edge of the Iron Curtain, and according to Gearhart, the rest of Europe didn’t care much about the little city out there in the east. Even though Vienna had to be rebuilt after the war, there was a huge difference in what happened to Vienna compared to what happened in Budapest and Prague, and he attributed that directly to the United States and its intervention.

As we rode across the Danube toward the city, we could see the spire of St Stephen’s dominating the skyline. The central part of Vienna is a large circle with the church at the center and surrounded by the Ringstrasse, a large beautiful boulevard that circles the city. He encouraged us to use the Metro, and to walk the city because it was almost impossible to get lost. Look for the church, walk the opposite direction to the Ringstrasse, and you know where you are. Our bus did quite a tour of the city, impaired now and then by one of the hundreds of horse drawn carriages filled with tourists, and gave us the opportunity to see where we might want to go later in the afternoon in our free time.

First on the tour was the Hundred Waters House. We emerged from the bus to a long wall of tourist shops filled with inexpensive goods that Gearhart dissed with one of his snarky remarks. We all laughed, but I did notice that on the way back to the bus, many of us were buying some of those inexpensive goods, including a truly lovely scarf that Melody found. Cheap is not always a bad thing! Hundertwasser House is down a pedestrian mall and is hard to even describe. If you are interested in environmental buildings and a true greenie and creative artist, read about Hundertwasser. Quoting from Wiki:

“Hundertwasser’s original and unruly artistic vision expressed itself in pictorial art, environmentalism, philosophy, and design of facades, postage stamps, flags, and clothing (among other areas). The common themes in his work utilised bright colours, organic forms, a reconciliation of humans with nature, and a strong individualism, rejecting straight lines”.

Our next stop on the tour was the summer residence of Maria Theresa (Theresia in some texts), the Schonbrunn Palace. Schonbrunn is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is supposedly the most visited site in Austria. Owned by the Habsburgs for centuries, following the downfall of the monarchy in 1918 it became the property of the Austrian government. A bit of trivia ~ John F Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev met here in 1961.

Even though we were arriving early in the day, the tour groups were already gathering in the courtyard in front of the palace for their entry times. Our guides were all paranoid about being at the gate at exactly the right minute for our entrance. I guess it is another time when it was OK to have guides to deal with all this.

Styled to imitate Versailles, the house is imposing and somewhat sterile from the front entrance. Once inside, however, it was breathtaking. Of course, we were not allowed to take ANY photos at all, not a single one of the interior, since of course they want to sell their expensive picture books in the gift shop. We didn’t buy any. The tour was accompanied by reams of information about the Habsburgs and about the Empress Maria Theresa, who was an incredible ruler who had great armies and knew how to use them to control a very large part of the world. She did all this while having 16, yes 16 babies! It was important to these royal families to reproduce, since they had unhealthy children that often died and passing on the monarchy was of utmost importance.

Another little tidbit. If someone was called “The Good”, instead of “The Great” or “The Strong”, it probably meant that they were sickly and would die fairly young. These families repeatedly married first cousins to keep the royal blood pure. Epilepsy was a severe problem in the family and grew worse over the centuries.

Once we finished the tour of the interior of the house, we were given just half an hour to find our way back outside to the gardens. There was a lot to see here, and once again, our timing was much too short. Melody walked as fast as she could all the way to the sculpture at the far end of the garden while I tried to have enough time to appreciate the perfectly symmetrical hedges and trees and take some photos. Even in the overcast light, the gardens were beautiful.

Our guide again mentioned that all these sites are actually owned by the Austrian government, including the famous Opera House, and there are more than 60 different operas performed there in a year. You can come for a week and see a different opera every single night. Of course, this is all paid for by the state, meaning the people’s taxes, and Gearhart made another snarky comment about thinking that maybe the government could make do with 40 different operas per year instead of 60. He told us that children aren’t very popular in Vienna, and people also hate to pay taxes, and the cost of living is very high. Somehow the equation doesn’t add up and he wonders just how long Austria can continue the way it is going with no children coming up to pay the taxes to support all this government supported “stuff”. It was interesting to hear.

Our tour part of the day ended in the center of town at the great cathedral of St Stephens. As we toured these cathedrals, it became more and more clear that a Cathedral here is most often a very large cemetery, with chapels filled with crypts and graves beneath the stones in the floors.The group returned to the hotel for the afternoon, but we chose to stay downtown, and Ellen and Roger decided to stay with us. Melody wanted to see the catacombs beneath the great St Stephen’s Cathedral, and we found the group tour was beginning within the hour. It gave us just enough time to walk around the square a bit and marvel at the architecture.

A soft spoken young man gathered the tour group and began speaking in German. UhOh. Is this tour going to be all in German? German has always seemed to me to be a somewhat harsh language, but his voice was musical, lyrical and soothing. I didn’t care if it was German, or if I understood a word. Then, he started speaking in lovely English, explaining to us softly that the beautiful copper pots surrounding us were filled with the entrails of the Habsburgs and some had the very special donation of a Habsburg heart which I guess all the cathedrals coveted. The room was quite tight and small.

As we moved deeper into the depths below the church, we heard stories of all the royalty entombed there, and then the stories of the plague and we found the bone rooms, where hundreds of dead plague victims were thrown because there was no time for burial. Later the bones were stacked like firewood and as we looked into the room, it took a minute to realize that the walls were made of human bones. To me it was interesting, to Melody it was devastating. She burst into tears and as we emerged from the church she said that all she could think of was that those people had lives and families and they were nothing more than bones in a wall. Even with the photos and the exhibits at the House of Terror, I don’t think Melody has any idea of what she would see in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. She might have to get a bit older and a bit more jaded before she visits that place.

By the time we came out of the church, it was late afternoon, and we decided that Lorena’s suggestion of “a cawfee” in Vienna was a great idea. The four of us found an outdoor cafe on the pedestrian mall, with nice big patio heaters going strong in the canopy above us. I ordered an Irish Coffee and I must say I have never had one quite so strong! And I am not talking about the coffee part! Roger had a Pilsner, and Melody a Viennese Cappucinno and Ellen had some kind of tall fruity thing that looked wonderful but cold! We all tasted each other’s goodies, and Melody and I switched!

We are all tired, and this evening is a special extra tour (an extra fee of course) to the Prater Ferris Wheel and the hills west of Vienna for a special local dinner in the area where there are a lot of vineyards. It was time to find the Metro, which was just a few feet away beneath us, figure out the tickets and the stamps, and be sure that we got off at the right stop on the other side of the Danube. It was simple and fast, and within fifteen minutes we at the Metro exit just a couple of blocks from the hotel.

I knew that the Prater Ferris Wheel would be a delight and it was. The Prater has a wonderful history, beginning in 1766, when Emperor Joseph II donated the area to the Viennese as a public center for leisure. We arrived at the magical evening hour when the light is just beginning to wane and you can see the lights of the wheel and the carousel even though it isn’t dark yet. The Prater Ferris Wheel was destroyed at the end of the war in 1945 but the city knew how important it was to the people and it was rebuilt in 1947. The ride only lasted 15 minutes, with the special dining car just below us and the view of the city in the distance. I loved it.

One of my favorite moments of all of Vienna was here when we were back on the ground at the base of the wheel. There were people eating cotton candy, there was a “hammer” and people screaming, and the ferris wheel was turning above me. Behind me were the bumper cars with kids yelling and all this was accompanied by music across the loudspeakers from the Vienna Waltzes. Somehow bumper cars and symphony music just seemed so incredibly wonderful there in the park.

Back on the bus for our tour to another part of Vienna, up a bit in the hills, to our restaurant for the evening. It was still cool and rainy, and the tourists that usually fill this small street were much fewer than during the summer months. The restaurant was warm and friendly and there were local musicians singing and playing folk music. Another large group of tourists were in the back room singing and dancing along with the band and having a great time. I wondered how many local people actually frequented this restaurant, famous for its winery.

The dinner was family style with a couple of glasses of their wine and included salads of cucumbers and tomatoes and pickles, and then huge platters of roasted pork, ham, and roasted potatoes along with some amazing tasting sauerkraut with finely minced vegetables. The glasses of wine were big pints, like beer, and by the end of the evening we were all feeling pretty warm and fuzzy. The life stories started coming out again, and the jokes and laughter were raucous and fun.

On our way home, our great bus driver Paul, somehow hit the wrong exit and ended up trapped with the big bus right at the entrance of a big parking garage. UhOh! Within a minute there was a car of mean looking policemen trying to figure out what he thought he was doing. Lorena came to the rescue, leaned over Paul, and batted her big brown eyes at the policemen while she explained our predicament. Those guys just melted, and gave us a police escort while Paul backed the big bus out to the freeway again. Lorena laughed later, and in her imitable Argentinean accent said, “I know how to play blond when I need to!”

I’ll close my story of this day with a little note I got from Jeanne after she read my last blog post about the Weiner Schnitzel.

hey sue—i am with melody about the schnitzel! i grew up on the stuff– mom made it a lot, since she grew up with an austrian father. of course we loved saying WEENER! i have never really liked it. what is so special about flattened meat coated with bread and fried??? personally i think austrian food is terrible. ha ha ha. have eaten plenty of it and i have spent some time there too, visiting relatives and skiing. i do still love spaeztle though. and my grandpa used to make some really good things my mom called “peasant food”. i think it was stuff dirt poor people would eat. one was called “ribble” and was basically old hot cereal fried in butter with sugar on top. the other was “kaiser shmaren” which means kings mess. we would save old bread ends in the freezer, then you tear it into bits, soak it in egg and fry it in butter and put sugar on top. kinda like french toast nuggets. and finally, “gruba” (no idea how to spell these things) which was a big chunk of fat, cut into bits, salted and broiled to make mini fat crispies. yum!

Photos from our first day in Vienna are posted online here

Six Covered Bridges, Corvallis and Points West

Are you getting tired of this paragraph yet? Ha! I still have two more groups of bridges to write about!

Clicking on the linked bridge names will take you to Bridgehunter.com with historical information about each bridge, location maps and photos. Hovering with your mouse over the photos will give you the name of the bridge as well. Again, the google map and link to our tour is here. My picasaweb/google photo albums have many additional photos of the bridges and our trip.

What a wonderful night we spent at River Bend! Everything was incredibly quiet until the storm came and the skies clouded up. We took our time getting on the road since it was a bit of a gloomy morning and the MoHo was all cozy and comfy. Traveling west on US20 toward Lebanon was uneventful and we continued on US34 across the interstate toward Corvallis. We chose the Benton Oaks RV Park at the Benton County Fairgrounds as our resting place for another two days of bridge hunting. When we arrived, the park manager was off site, but quickly answered his phone with instructions for choosing a site. We managed to get settled in just before the heavy rains started up again.

Benton Oaks is an adequate park, but for a county fairgrounds park, certainly not cheap at $34 per night. That included full hookups, WiFi which was surprisingly good when it worked, and cable tv which had about 20 channels. I gave up on the WiFi and hooked up my Verizon MiFi instead and we watched local news to catch up on what had been going on in the world during our several days without TV. Not much! Somehow, with the storms and pouring rain, I completely forgot to take any photos of this park.

Harris Covered Bridge near Wren With a long afternoon ahead, we decided to travel west to the little town of Wren and the Harris Covered Bridge (above). We drove west along US20 through the little town of Philomath and down a back roadway to the bridge. Once again we were very happy to be in the Tracker, since the road was narrow and the bridge small, even with its 27 ton load limit. As we have discovered, often there is some kind of home or dwelling near the bridges, and this time it was the Harris Bridge Winery. I have learned to watch for dogs and people when I get out of the car to check out the bridges!

Returning to Corvallis, I discovered to my delight that the Irish Bend Covered Bridge (above) was just half a mile from our campground on the Oregon State University Campus. With the winds blowing and huge black storm clouds threatening, we decided to walk the campus trail before the weather turned any worse. It was so beautiful, and the sun came and went at perfect moments and the rain once again held off until we were back home.

I tend to get a bit low when it is gloomy, but somehow the rainy skies that greeted us on our second morning in Corvallis didn’t trouble me at all. The nice thing about these spring rains is that there are shifts and changes in the light, the sun comes and goes, the rains dump for awhile and then everything is brilliantly green and backlit. Still, when I woke up to another rainy day, I was really happy that we had the bridge hunt to keep us occupied. If we had planned a lot of hiking, biking, and kayaking on this trip as we usually do, we might have been disappointed!

We traveled west along US34 toward Alcea to see the Hayden Covered Bridge. As usual, there was a farmhouse nearby and a beautiful old barn silhouetted against the dark skies. We were even treated to a large herd of elk grazing near the river.

Hayden Bridge at Alcea We then found the forest road that led to the Fisher School Bridge, several miles along a narrow but paved route that let to one of the sweetest little bridges around. The fresh red paint and the obvious love that went into the restoration of the remote little bridge was endearing.

Leaving the Fisher Bridge, we thought perhaps we could find our way to the coast over the mountains to the North Fork Yachats Bridge, but after several unfruitful attempts to find the road (even with the GPS) we gave up and drove back north to Highway 34. It was only another 20 miles or so to Waldport and then just another few miles to Yachats, so once more we decided we could cheat a little bit and go back to our beloved Oregon Coast. Even on this rainy day, after being away for a few days, the ocean looked incredible.

We meandered into Yachats and then up the river to the North Yachats River Covered Bridge. I may start to sound a bit repetitive because again, THIS was one of my favorites. Another one!. The neighborhood seemed a bit “iffy” with all sorts of creative looking dwellings tucked in along the river, but it was another piece of Oregon I have never seen, as many times as we have passed through Yachats. The other really wonderful part about this remote little bridge was the old growth huge Douglas-fir growing on the slope just south of the bridge. Truly a magical little setting. From Bridgehunter:

“Located just seven miles from the salt water of the Pacific Ocean, this trim little bridge is one of the few to escape the “graffiti artists” so common in many other covered bridges. Since the covered span is the only access for families in the area, the bridge roof was removed to allow a mobile home to cross in the early 1980s. In 1987, a loaded fuel truck crashed through a weakened approach on the bridge and the accident ruptured a fuel tank. Luckily, no fuel reached the river, and county crews soon repaired damage to the bridge. The bridge was rehabilitated in 1989 when work crews replaced the trusses and approaches. A new roof and siding were also added.”

I t was getting a bit toward mid-afternoon, and the leftover quesadillas were a bit cold though adequate for a traveling lunch. Then again, we WERE on the coast, and what is best on the coast? Clam chowder of course. As we crossed the bridge into Newport we decided that a bit of chowder at the original Mo’s would be a perfect afternoon treat. Now I heard someone, a blogger or two, recently unhappy with Mo’s chowder, maybe Laurie? Of course, Laurie is a true foodie, with exquisite taste, but I still love Mo’s and on this cold rainy day, it didn’t disappoint in the least. The chowder was potato-ey, and creamy but not too much so, perfectly seasoned, and loaded with lots of tender juicy pink clams. For dessert I succumbed to the famous Mo’s marionberry cobbler. Ahhhh. Not gooey or sticky, just perfectly sweet fat huge marionberries and tender cobbler crust. Topped off with a great cup of coffee, we were ready for the last bridge of the day.

Back on the road, we traveled the familiar route along 101 from Yachats to Newport and again headed east toward Corvallis on US20. The Chitwood Covered Bridge is just off the highway spanning the Yaquina River about 20 miles east of the coast. It is one of those bridges that actually has a street view on google. It was a pretty red bridge, but with its accessible location and utter visibility there wasn’t a great deal of excitement when we found it. Do you suppose it was because it was the end of a long rainy day? We were happy to roll into the fairgrounds in time for a bit of relaxation with our 20 meager channels of television before getting ready to roll to a new campground the next morning.

Next post: Six bridges east of Salem

We found the cheese and the sunshine

The Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Oregon, has been making cheese since the early days of the Depression. At that time, “artisan” wasn’t a common word associated with food, but the Vella family decided the only way to keep their business viable was to create a new image. That commitment to creating artisan cheeses changed everything, and the Rogue Creamery has become world renown, with award winning blue cheese, among others.

I read about the creamery in Sunset magazine, read about it again in some food magazines, and then again in a newspaper article touting this amazing cheese resource right under our noses. They host the annual cheese festival, and it seems that this little corner of Central Point is home to several artisan food makers that participate.

Often, Mo and I would drive through Central Point near Medford on our way to somewhere else and see the big banner “Oregon Cheese Festival” and say to each other, “Gee, we have to do that sometime”. Isn’t is amazing how often something so close to home can be overlooked while we wander the country searching for new adventures?

Yesterday, the adventure was all about cheese, and wine, and chocolate, and more wine, and more cheese, and some great breads, and oh yes…pesto….and salsa….and lavender jam….and habanero chili lime cilantro sauce…..and …..and….more wine.

Just an hour from home, with a dusting of snow on the pass, we found the big white tent with hundreds of cars parked on all the side streets and friendly bike cops patrolling the crosswalks. There were a LOT of people there, and a LOT of people sharing their passion for artisan everything.

We really had no idea what to expect, thinking perhaps there would be a small gathering of folks, a few booths maybe. Instead, the huge tent was filled to the brim and it seems that there was a lot more wine than cheese! For five bucks we got a bracelet with ten spots to check off for wine tasting.

Now, as you know, a tasting isn’t really all that much, but after ten of them, I was as giddy and bubbly as a kid out of school. And I couldn’t figure out how I could be so FULL from eating all those little bites of wonderful tasty things. After all, they were just little bites, and little sips, right?

My favorite thing of all was the Clear Creek artisan distillery using beautiful Oregon pears to make pear brandy and pear liqueur. That was truly amazing stuff, and they even have bottles with a perfect pear INSIDE floating in the crystalline 80 proof tasty brandy. The liqueur was to die for. Maybe that was why all the cheese tasted so good and I felt so giddy.

We topped off the afternoon with a trip to Chico’s for me (ahhh yes…have I mentioned I am a Chico’s addict?) and a Costco run for the best chicken breasts around, cashews that are bigger and fatter than any others, and pecans at half the price of the grocery store. No toilet paper. How many Costco baskets can you count leaving the store that don’t have huge packs of toilet paper in them? Not many!

We woke again this morning to a dusting of snow, and once again loaded up the Tracker with dog, cat, food, (including of course, our artisan purchases of cheese, salsa, hot pepper jam, and other goodies), clothes, cameras, computers and ourselves, for the four hour trip to Brookings where the MoHo safely awaits our return. This time the pass had a lot more than a simple dusting of snow, with the plows running heavy and a near blizzard at the top. Once again I was grateful that we weren’t driving the MoHo over that pass to get out of the basin!

Once in Medford, things settled down, but we again had snow on Highway 199 along the Smith River. I have never seen the Smith running so high and frothy, and all along the canyon, water cascaded down the rocks at every turn. We stopped for one of the biggest ones, along with several other cars taking advantage of the deluge.

Once we reached the “Banana Belt of Oregon”, however, the sun was shining and the skies were clear and gorgeous. Not a speck of fog or rain, but huge white cumulus clouds in the sky made the blue seem even brighter. Harris Beach yielded up the prettiest site we have had so far, and we have had some nice ones. A24, down toward the far end of the front row, has a wide view of the ocean, with just enough trees to keep us a bit hidden from incoming cars on the road below. Lots of empty spaces on the front row this afternoon, and we took the very best\

Just a couple more little things to share that I keep forgetting about. Geez. We finally made it onto the HitchItch.com website. Of course, we are still in the process of being accepted or not, but hopefully they won’t dump us in the near future. Al was right, people seem to really use that site a lot to find out where the RV bloggers are.

Then, I just wanted to share the really gorgeous poster that we bought from our last trip up to the northern part of the coast. The whole Lewis and Clark history was so wonderful, and the poster so gorgeous, we couldn’t resist. It is a good thing Mo’s ceilings are ten footers and that there is still room in the office up high for one more wall thingy. (You know, of course, that you can click on these photos if you care to see them bigger)

Actually, speaking of wall thingy’s. I just have to share this incredible gift from my daughter Deanna. When she visited last month, she said her whole reason was to bring something to me that she just didn’t want to ship in the mail. Needlepoint is something Deanna has done for some time now, and she whiles away her non-driving time with needle in hand. I am the lucky recipient of this amazing stitchery, framed perfectly, and ready to hang. I think of her every time I pass the low wall in the kitchen where it now hangs. Just tickles me no end.

With all the rain predicted for our trip south, it’s hard not to want to just sit here overlooking the amazing ocean, but the road calls, new sights await. Besides, if we sat here it would probably just rain anyway.

Cruising New England with Princess

We are comfortably settled in to our room at the Ramada Inn in Reno, great view of town, comfy bed, fat pillows, inexpensive breakfast downstairs, and screaming fast free WiFi on the tenth floor. One of the disadvantages of living in the west is the dearth of cruise ports, meaning if we are to cruise anywhere but Alaska or Mexico, we have to fly east to board a ship. Yesterday was a very long day, awake at 5 or so as we sailed into New York Harbor, then the long process of disembarkation, airport shuttles, airport security and time changes. We definitely needed a good night’s sleep before getting on the road today and traveling back to Klamath Falls.

I plan to write about each day of the cruise in the next few days. For those who do follow along using the various blog rolls, those posts will not show up because I plan to set the post date for the actual cruise day. A heads up in case you are interested in reading about this particular cruise. Just pop over to the archives and there you will find titles based on the date and the port. Eventually.

This morning I tried to count cruises, and I think this was the 8th one for me, and the 3rd cruise on Princess. To say it was disappointing might be an exaggeration, but to call it memorable would be a serious stretch. We have discussed a bit just what we missed on this cruise, and came to the conclusion that it was that sense of luxury that makes a cruise so enticing that we missed most.

In fairness, the Caribbean Princess was a beautiful ship, one of the biggest in the Princess fleet with 3200 passengers on board. The common areas were lovely, the ship spotlessly clean, the staff friendly and accomplished. Our stateroom was roomy and the balcony a nice amenity, our steward unobtrusive in the background, but everything was done well.

What I missed most was truly great food. The Palms dining room was basically adequate, but not spectacular. In fact, it was so nondescript that I felt no need to take food photos or even document the menu for the day. The one night that we passed on the dining room and chose to eat at the Horizon Court Buffet was a huge mistake. If we thought the dining room was bland, that was before we had the truly awful supper at the buffet. Another time when Mo decided to try the Calypso deck pizza for a late lunch was a huge bust, with crust that competed directly with thin cardboard and toppings thin enough to match. Ugh.

In addition to the bland and boring food, there were no great artistic presentations, beautiful ice sculptures, carved fruit, not a single special deck food event, not a midnight buffet or dessert extravaganza. Breakfast was tolerable, but the pastries were dry and nondescript as well, the bacon greasy and flavorless and the fruit not very sweet. ah well. It isn’t just about the food, but it should be at least more fun than a local cheap buffet restaurant. After paying big bucks for a cruise it just irritates me that to get a good meal we are expected to pay 25 per person extra for a meal in the steak house or the Italian restaurant.

We chose this cruise to see New England in the fall, minus the traffic. New England wasn’t in much of a mood for color, however, and we only saw a little bit of color here and there. That certainly has nothing to do with the cruise line, of course, but was still disappointing. We also discovered that when booking a cruise, we need to be sure that there are sea days spaced in between ports. Day after day of walking and exploring new places left us fairly well exhausted without much time to actually enjoy that relaxing thing that can happen on a longer cruise. Next time it will be a longer trip, with more sea days, probably somewhere WARM, and probably with a different cruise line.

I will save my leaf peeping for a time when we are willing to drive to the east coast and visit with the friends I have there. Yes, the traffic will be awful, the roads narrow, the campgrounds expensive. Hopefully when we do it we can take our time and follow the leaves on their terms. I do so much love hardwood forests and want to see them in their full glory of color.

There were definitely high points in some of the ports. I loved seeing Newport, Rhode Island, a place I barely heard of before we spent the day walking the town and the Cliff Walk. The weather was gorgeous, the town lovely. Boston was a treat, and we walked all day and enjoyed a wonderful bowl of truly good clam chowder at Cheers. The beautiful surprise of the trip was Bar Harbor, (or as I am told Bah Hahbah) Maine, on Mt Desert Island, home to Acadia National Park. We WILL return to Bar Harbor and the park someday with the motorhome and take our time exploring the breathtaking Maine coast.

Saint John in New Brunswick was an interesting city, with very old stone buildings and nice shopping. We don’t do cruises for the shopping, however, but we did enjoy seeing the Bay of Fundy in spite of the overcast day and dingy buildings. Halifax Nova Scotia was a complete bust, with our ship’s captain making the decision that 50 knot winds and 14 foot seas would not make for a comfortable ride. Instead we were routed into Portland, Maine. Docking in the rain, we looked out over the gloomy city with apprehension. Once walking around, however, we enjoyed the town and even found some great Mexican food to offset all that bland stuff we had been eating on the ship. Hot salsa and more jalapenos please in my lobster quesadilla!

Here in Reno the sun is shining and the skies are clear with temperatures predicted to be in the 70’s. Our route home via 395 will be beautiful, and we are both really looking forward to picking up the dog and the cat at the Double C and getting back home to our cozy house in the forest. We miss the MoHo as well, and the expense of this trip, the uncomfortable hard bed with a lumpy foam topper surely reminded us that RV travel is the true luxury, even if I do have to cook my very own fabulous food. At least it is fabulous and tasty!

I hear that the aspens are turning in Klamath, and am looking forward to seeing how our trees are doing and if the green tomatoes I put on the counter before we left have turned red. I look forward to writing about our port visits and having the time to review the photos as I think about what we enjoyed most about this cruise.

My blogging mentor comes to Rocky Point!

I am reasonably certain that just about anyone dropping in to read my blog already reads Laurie and Odel’s blog, Semi-True Tales of our Life on the Road. I read Laurie’s blog long before I knew there was such a thing as an RV blogging community, and when we met in person in 2010, Laurie gave me a ton of pointers on how to do a blog, and where to find some of the other bloggers I might like to read. My “stretch” format for this blog was stolen almost directly from Laurie, with her permission and help of course.

Our paths have crossed a few times, and it was with great delight that I discovered they planned to be here on Saturday before leaving Oregon for the season on their way back to California. I spoke to the weather gods, who teased me with early morning freezing fog before bringing on a gorgeous, wind free, sunny day in the mid-60’s. Perfect kayaking weather! Especially for someone not familiar with that unsteady feeling when you get in a kayak for the first time.

“Just like a bicycle”, I told Odel. Watching that first wiggle as Odel got used to the boat reminded me of my first time after we bought the kayaks. I remember thinking, “OMIGOSH, I will never be able to do this”. Within minutes, Odel was racing along like a pro, although the exceedingly calm waters without a lick of current were probably a bit helpful. I was so busy worrying about Odel in that first few moments that I have no clue how Laurie did as Mo helped her first launch. I am pretty sure it was flawless, though, because I heard no splashes or exclamations in the background and when I finally looked up, Laurie was racing along even faster than Odel.

We spent a couple of hours meandering down to Harriman Springs, laughing and talking and enjoying every minute of the gorgeous sunshine and bluebird skies. Turns out it was opening day for duck hunting season and we were entertained by men in camouflage and boats that looked like some sort of grass hut plying the waters out to the main part of Klamath Lake where they could shoot. Lucky for us, there was no shooting in Pelican Bay or down Harriman Creek, and the white pelicans just meandered around as if everything was just fine. Surprisingly, we didn’t see many ducks, and from what they said, neither did the hunters!

After our kayak, we walked the short distance to the Rocky Point restaurant, still quiet enough in the early afternoon that we snagged the perfect windowside table for our refreshments. The laughing and conversation continued until we all realized that our late lunch/early supper plans were turning into much later than originally thought. We drove back to the house with hungry bellies. Before long Mo had the baby BBQ going and I had a Copper River salmon filet on a plank with a new homemade citrus rub I decided to try. Our guests brought some great Chardonnay to flesh out the meal. Dessert was a big adventure, since I decided to try the new “thing” that seems to be going around food circles recently. Fresh strawberries with a good 18 year old balsamic vinegar over vanilla ice cream. The real kicker to this recipe is the call for fresh black pepper. Yes, that is pepper! I was chicken to put it on, but in a flash Odel had that pepper shaker out and was peppering the ice cream with abandon.

His bravery inspired the rest of us, and amazingly, it was really good! Mo, who is the least adventurous eater among us, opted for chocolate on her vanilla. I offered my little bit of leftovers in my bowl (yeah I am still dieting and only ate a tiny bit!) to Mo, who smiled and said, “I’ll bet Abby will like this.” Abby of course, thought it was great, pepper and all.

Here is a map of where we kayaked today.

A few more photos of our visit are linked here.

Happy October Everyone!