Category Archives: Reviews

Williamsburg Thousand Trails RV park

06 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Personal

≈ 8 Comments

Out of one window, I am watching my neighbor do something mysterious with their sewer hose — ah, they were just packing up, actually. And out of the other window, I can see the dumpsters. So not much choice for a view in this campground. But that said, I think this is the nicest Thousand Trails campground I’ve stayed in.

It’s typical of the Thousand Trails places — which, in general, does mean not really for me. There’s an indoor swimming pool, a jacuzzi, a basketball court, a great mini-golf course (I think the nicest campground mini-golf course I’ve seen), a game room with arcade games and pool tables, a camp store, an “adult lounge”, even a pond. And it’s big enough that it was very easy to take Zelda on a one-mile walk this morning.

And full hook-ups! I don’t usually look for full hook-ups or take advantage of them, but my black tank has been reading as 2/3 full for a couple of months now. That probably means something has gotten stuck, dried to the sides of the tank. I don’t consider it a big deal, but I’m glad for the opportunity to run lots of water and soap through the tank to try to clean it out. What I really need is a second hose so that I can use the black tank flush outlet without risking contaminating my drinking water hose, preferably one like the zero-G hose that squashes down flat so that it takes up less room. It’s been on my list of “things to get someday real soon” for about a year, but I seem to always wind up buying the cooking things off that list instead of the outside things. But there are so many things on that list — a grill that folds flat, a compact table, the Sumo Springs that everyone raves about… but realistically, the next time I buy something for the van, it’ll probably be a smaller induction frying pan. Ha.

Back to the campground: it’s so nice that this morning when walking the dog, I thought, “Hmm, maybe when I take M camping next year, I’ll bring her here.” And then I remembered my horrendous drive yesterday and thought, “Nope, not gonna happen.”

I have now driven Serenity in 44 states. Yep, 44 of them. (The missing: Delaware, Rhode Island, Michigan, North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii.) And if there is a single place that I would really like to never drive through again, it’s Washington, DC.

It’s not that other places don’t have bad traffic: I used to commute through the Caldecott Tunnel before they opened the 4th bore, where multiple lanes of traffic merge and the lanes changed directions on a regular basis. Driving that route was always interesting. And Boston — well, yeah, Boston is just crazy. But Washington has some reasonably significant proportion of really bad drivers, people who don’t care that their recklessness messes everyone else up, and it makes driving there so unpleasant.

Here’s the difference between San Francisco Bay and DC drivers: once upon a time, I was on 24 approaching the Caldecott and cars were stopping, for no obvious reason. So I stopped, too, of course. I’m not sure how many lanes there are, maybe eight at the spot where I was? And all eight lanes of traffic stopped because there was a dog on the road. A couple people got out of their cars and corralled the dog and traffic resumed again and probably several hundred people who didn’t know what had happened sighed in relief that the delay had only lasted a few minutes. If that had happened in DC, some people would have slowed, others wouldn’t, there would have been an accident and the traffic congestion would have lasted an hour, minimum. And the dog would have died.

Anyway, I will stop whining about traffic now, but I’m taking a day off to do useful things like try to get the black tank cleaned out, write a blog post, work on Grace, answer my email, back up some files… hmm, I guess that’s all I really wanted to do. But tomorrow I start driving again. I’ll spend the night on the road and make it to Florida on Wednesday. I had such a nice week in PA that it was really hard to leave, but I’m looking forward to some time in Florida, too.

I’m already anticipating seeing all my writing friends who are doing NaNoWriMo, and spending lots and lots and lots of time writing with them. It is so past time to finish Grace, but this version has gone off in some interesting directions and honestly, I now have no idea where it’s going. sigh But it will get somewhere, I’m sure.

There’s a scene that I wrote last week that I suspect means more to me than it will to anyone else, but I reread it this morning and it literally made me tear up and then laugh. I obviously would consider that profoundly successful if it did the same for any other reader, but even if I’m the only person who gets it that way, I’m pretty sure I can count it as successful. And since I could be working on it now, time to get to it!

But to everyone working on NaNo — write, write, write! You can do it!

yellow raspberries

Raspberries bear fruit until the first frost so this morning’s breakfast included fresh raspberries, honey from P’s bees, and granola made by my SIL. I felt very, very lucky while I ate it.

Carter Caves State Resort Park, Kentucky

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground

≈ 2 Comments

My plan was to stay in Kentucky until Wednesday, but when the guy behind the counter at Carter Caves asked me how long I was staying, my mouth opened up and “Just one night,” came out. By 1PM, therefore, I will be moving on, probably to West Virginia, because it’s not that far away.

I think I should have guessed that this park wouldn’t be for me, based on the size and the long list of things to do and maybe even the word “resort” in the name (although it feels like all the Kentucky state parks call themselves resorts.) But it’s crowded with trailers, campsites set close together… the kind of park where people come to let the kids play on the playground and do the events like the haunted trail and the best pumpkin display competition. If you’ve got three kids and are wanting a fun kid vacation, it’s probably terrific. But it’s not remotely what I had in mind as a place to write. Even now, at about 9AM on a rainy Monday morning, I can hear kids yelling and doors slamming and engines running above the noise of the rain and the faint chirping of what I think might be crickets.

In other words, this picture doesn’t represent this park at all.

two Travatos

The Travato area

But soon after I picked a spot — tiny, narrow, steep, not very convenient, but at least not in the congested part of the campground that felt like a parking lot — I got a neighbor. Another Travato. In this park of giant trailers with slide-outs and multiple vehicles, it amuses me that the Travatos are sticking together in the woodsy quiet section.

Yesterday I broke my current 17-day streak of working on Grace every day. Drat. I guess I should be referring to that as my last streak. My current one starts today, right? But I wanted to get on the road early. Between rainy driving, two stops for gas, one stop for groceries and lunch, one stop for walking dogs, a time change, and then setting up, feeding dogs, cooking dinner, talking to my neighbors… I looked at the computer around 9:30PM and thought, yep, not today.

The good news is, I think I’m in Chapter 11 now. Or maybe 12. I’m not 100% sure that everything in the first 10 chapters works the way I want it to, but I am reasonably sure that I am finally set up to move into a fun romance. It was really delightful to realize that Grace (the character, not the book) could respond in an entirely new direction to the current situation because I’d finally gotten rid of all the things in the first ten chapters that were limiting her response. And that probably doesn’t make any sense, but it’s good news. It makes me cheerful about where I’m going next. Well, going next in Grace. Where I’m going next in my travels is something I should probably figure out … well, now. Since time’s a-passin’ and I’ve got to get moving.

Lost in Illinois

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

Serenity surrounded by trees

I’m losing track of states and places and park names. Fortunately, my photo app had no such problem. It told me that I was currently in Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park in Barren, Illinois. I didn’t believe it: who names a town ‘Barren’? Doesn’t that seem like it’s just asking for people to be depressed about living there? So I double-checked with my phone and my phone thinks that I’m in Benton, Illinois.

So, yes, not only am I losing track of where I am, my phone and my photos app are equally confused. To make matters even more perplexing, if you search for Barren, Illinois in Apple Maps, it shows you Benton, Illinois.

I finally went to wikipedia, which let me know that Benton and Barren are neighboring townships. Barren has a population of 496 and Benton has a population of 8972. I seriously think that Barren should consider changing their name: it just doesn’t sell the place. On the other hand, maybe it’s an accurate description? But I would guess not, because whether I’m currently located in Benton or Barren (and it’s anyone’s guess, really), this is a very pretty area. And at least I’ve figured out that I’m in Illinois.

The reason that I wasn’t so sure is because when I left Missouri, I intended to do laundry, go grocery shopping, and then drive across Illinois and across Indiana and into Kentucky, which was where I wanted to stop for a few days. But I got off to a late start and then everything took longer than I wanted it to and then, most critically, the rest stop on the highway was closed, and B really needed to go. My choice was to drive another hour to the next rest stop with a whimpering dog at my feet, get off the highway and find a reasonable parking lot with a nice verge of grass, or just say the hell with it and find the nearest campground. I went with the latter.

Seriously, though, the campgrounds are beginning to all blend together. One after another, a different day, a different set of trees. Sometimes water, sometimes not. Sometimes starry skies, sometimes cloudy mornings. I’m going to have to start coming up with some distinctive event for each campground or they’re all just going to be a blur in my memory. In this campground, the distinctive event would definitely be Zelda, bolting through the screen door to chase away an entire herd of deer. She stopped before she went into the woods with them, but I scolded her anyway. I’m trying to convince the dogs to pretend that my screen is actually a door, but they’re just not buying it.

And if I ever come back here, I’m definitely going to try to get campsite #79. It’s spectacularly positioned, set off at the end of a cul-de-sac, with no neighbors, and an amazing lake view. The campground has lots of nice spots, though. I picked mine because there was no one else on this cul-de-sac, but before the night was over, every other spot filled up. But there’s tons of space around the sites, so even though it is definitely technically crowded — almost every site is full, at least in the portion of the campground where I have wandered — it doesn’t feel too crowded.

I suspect during the week it will empty out, too. When I wandered around with Z this afternoon, I could see that almost everyone was leaving on the 22nd. It’s probably going to be really nice and very peaceful here on the 23rd. But I won’t be here to see it, because I’m moving on, too, aiming for Kentucky and then West Virginia and then, within the week, PA. It feels like going home, and I’m looking forward to getting there!

Oatmeal in Missouri

19 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground, Food, Personal, Randomness, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

Babler Memorial State Park trail view

I made oatmeal yesterday morning in the Instant Pot. I was out of granola, didn’t feel like eggs, the morning was chilly… it seemed like a worthy experiment. It was. Oh, it was! Three minutes on high pressure (but the IP takes a while to heat up, of course, so it’s actually longer than that) and the oatmeal was… I want to say fluffy, but that sounds wrong. Not fluffy like pancakes can be fluffy, but somehow light. And yet oatmeal, so still entirely filling. I guess I can’t explain it, but it reminded me of oatmeal that I ate in England, decades ago, that no other oatmeal has ever quite matched. It might have been helped by the fact that I couldn’t find coconut milk so bought half-and-half, and I put some of that in the oatmeal. Maybe that was the secret, not the IP. Or maybe it was the combination. Either way, oatmeal, delicious.

And I needed a delicious breakfast. I’ve had a weird few days. Two weeks ago, I wrote about avoiding the news because what’s going on out in the world is so horrifying. Who would have thought it could get worse? I should figure out some way to break myself of the news habit. On the other hand… well, psychobabble ahead: the Harvey Weinstein story and the #metoo movement has been incredibly triggering to me. I think it’s possible, though, that the processing I’ve been doing is (or in the long run, will be) healthy. At the moment, however, I am filled with rage and anger and hatred. And grief, too, I think. And I really don’t like those feelings. They are not pleasant to try to sit with.

And that appears to be all I want to say about that, so moving on: I’m at Babler Memorial State Park in Missouri. I haven’t been doing a very good job of appreciating it, even though the weather is lovely. Two nights ago I got my grill out and proceeded to almost ruin my dinner. So annoying! Every once in a while, I still do something while cooking that I can look back on and say, duh, that was obviously wrong, and that was one of those moments. But the dogs appreciated the burned sweet potatoes and the steak was delicious despite not looking very appealing.

But I mention it because this is the kind of park that inspires grilling. Lots of lawn, but nothing except lawn to separate the sites, so it feels sort of like a small suburban neighborhood rather than a state park. Picnic tables and fire pits and lots of neighbors with dogs. Combined with sunshine and 70 degree weather, it just feels like the right moment to grill.

I’ve also been working on Grace, of course. I wish I could say I was making progress, but somehow I seem to be back in Chapter Two again. I also wish I could say I was making it better, but I suspect I’m just spinning my wheels. I think I probably need to find myself a couple readers who are willing to look at one chapter at a time, and tell me whether individual chapters work. But I suspect that criticism would stall me completely and lack of criticism would feel unfulfilling, so I’m not actually sure that would help.

NaNoWriMo is coming up, and I’m definitely feeling the temptation to just dump Grace for a month and try to actually commit to a NaNo project. I started Grace four years ago, during NaNo. Four years! I can pretty much guarantee that it’s never going to be worth the amount of effort I’ve put into it. But I should get back to it. Today is going to be a laundry day and a movement day and a grocery day, and I would like to get at least a few words of writing done before I get on the road.

Wallace State Park, Missouri

16 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Randomness

≈ 2 Comments

When I left Iowa, I knew where I was headed: an Army Corps of Engineers park two-thirds of the way across Missouri. I started thinking that was a stupid plan within about twenty minutes of starting to drive. It was raining. Like, skies opening up, buckets of water flooding down, raining. I kept thinking, “Why am I driving in this?” Eventually I stopped, ate lunch, and started looking up alternatives that didn’t have me on the road for another three hours. I settled on Wallace State Park, because it was about forty minutes away from where I was.

I knew nothing else about it. I was completely complacent about availability — I didn’t even bother to check. After all, it’s October. And it was pouring rain, with severe thunderstorms predicted for the evening. Who goes camping in the pouring rain in October? Answer: enough Missourians that the campground was almost completely full.

After I drove through and failed to find an open site, I parked at the restrooms and began the search for a new campground. I was debating whether I wanted to just find someplace for the night — in which case, why pay for camping, why not stay in a parking lot? — and whether it was important to me to stay on the eastward path I’d already mapped out or whether I was willing to swing farther south, when a pleasant woman in a campground t-shirt came over to my window and asked if I needed help. I explained that I was looking for another campground and she told me that there was one site left, #46. Yay for friendly campground volunteers.

As might be obvious from the fact that the park was almost full — in October, in the rain! — this is a really nice state park. There’s an easy one mile trail through the forest that starts literally right next to my site, plus some other longer trails. The sites are sheltered by trees, so even though there are a lot of people here, it feels pretty private. And, joy of joys, the shower has normal hot and cold water faucets.

I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay, whether I’m leaving tomorrow or going to try to stay another few days. I got all tangled up in Grace again, realizing that maybe it would be better if I did something different at the beginning, and then making changes that ricocheted around it like those bullets that leave trails of destruction in their wake. Hollow points, that’s what they’re called. Yes, I shot my manuscript with a hollow-point bullet. Maybe I’ve killed it. Fortunately, it’s a zombie book and will rise from the dead, every time. Also fortunately, I can always revert to a previous non-dead version. I’m just stumped at the moment, while I try to sort through the wreckage and ponder how the pieces fit together.

Anyway, part of me thinks that I should sit still for a couple days and concentrate on Grace. Another part of me thinks that I’m going to be out of coconut milk for my coffee tomorrow and out of dog food on Wednesday, plus I need to refill the water tank and dump the other tanks, so I might as well just start driving again.

Traveling really does take a lot of mental energy, though. Somehow, it requires so much attention. It’s like I need to/want to be living in my imagination in order to write well and instead, I’m… well, living in Missouri. Which is very cool, I like Missouri. It reminds me of Arkansas, which was one of my favorite places from last winter. They are adjacent states, so maybe that’s not so surprising, but it might just be the quantity of small kids running around, too. Either way, though, I feel like I’m paying too much attention to Missouri and not enough attention to the worlds I’m trying to create.

Walking is a great example, too. As a writer, my best walks are the ones where I come back and I was totally in my head, the exercise was just shaking the story loose and drawing out the words. But as a constant traveler, my walks are unfamiliar so I’m always paying attention to them instead. The trails here are gorgeous — wooded, paths heavy with fallen leaves, squirrels and birds and interesting sounds — but I took three walks yesterday, trying to resolve my Grace puzzle and none of them got me anywhere closer to an answer. Sigh. But it’s a great place to wander, that’s for sure!

my dog on a bridge

Zelda checking out the lake

Lake of Three Fires

14 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground

≈ 7 Comments

On Wednesday, when I was trying to decide where to head next, my priority was, sadly, a shower. Yep, some people look for famous landmarks, beautiful drives, incredible natural wonders, even good restaurants, but me, I just wanted to feel clean again.

Serenity actually does have a perfectly reasonable shower. Reasonable, of course, being defined as tiny, hand-held, with limited water and drainage, but tolerable. But my mirror broke back in August and I haven’t replaced it and the door of the medicine cabinet is just bare wood. I’m reluctant to let it get wet. Bad enough that I need to replace the mirror; I don’t want to wind up needing to replace the entire cabinet. So ever since August, I’ve only showered when visiting people or in campground showers.

And campground showers are kind of a mixed bag. Some are fine, perfectly reasonable. Some are great. I still remember the one in Texas with the incredible water pressure and unlimited hot water — it was amazing, despite a few dead bugs in the corners, but that’s common to all of them, I think.

The ones I’ve visited lately, though, including the one here at Lake of Three Fires, don’t let you control the temperature or the water flow. You push the — what should it be called, a spigot? A handle? It’s a little more than a button, a lot less than a faucet. But you push the metal thing and water comes out of the shower head at whatever temperature the park feels like letting you have water, for some undetermined period of time.

It’s not a fun shower. It’s not a fun shower when it’s 75 degrees and being wet is perfectly comfortable; it is a decidedly un-fun shower when temperatures are in the 50s. Campground shower houses don’t tend to be heated, after all, which is perfectly sensible — people who are camping in cold weather should dress appropriately. But it’s hard to shower wearing cold weather gear.

Anyway, I set off from Nebraska hoping to find a good shower. I did not succeed. But oh, in every other way, I really love this campground. It’s peaceful and quiet and inexpensive and beautiful, with good walks and reliable electricity and mediocre internet. I’m going to post pictures, because words don’t do it justice.

My campsite. Sort of ridiculously huge for Serenity, but since there were only two other campers here, I didn’t feel bad about taking a bus-size site.

The lake, within very easy walking distance. I sat out on the dock, appreciating the sunshine. Such a beautiful day.

Not an English countryside. A foggy Iowa morning and the beginnings of an equestrian trail around the lake. I think we’re allowed to walk on it because there haven’t been any horses here, but Zelda, for some unknown reason, refuses to go more than a few hundred steps down it. Then she plants herself, exerting her passive resistance to get me to turn around. I always do, because I feel like maybe she knows something I don’t. Bears? Tigers? Coyotes? Somehow I doubt all of the above, but she doesn’t like that trail nearly as much as I do.

If it weren’t for the showers, I could easily see staying here for the entire two weeks that one is allowed to stay. Well, if it weren’t for the showers and for the inevitability of the fast approaching seasonal change. Yep, winter is coming and not just in Game of Thrones. And while so far I’m finding autumn very pleasant, I’m not sure I’d be saying the same two weeks from now. So tomorrow I’m moving on. But I would come back to Lake of Three Fires, and to Iowa, too. I expected flat open fields, but it is green and serene and beautiful here.

The Anova Sous Vide Cooker

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Food, Reviews

≈ 6 Comments

I promise I am not turning my blog into a sales blog! But I started a conversation in Facebook comments that required a little more space, so I’m moving it here so that I can rave about my love of the Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker. (And yes, that’s an affiliate link, but feel free to use Amazon Smile or some other affiliate site instead — or, you know, if you feel strongly that Amazon should get all the profits of its sales, use Amazon directly. Or buy somewhere else entirely. :))

Ahem, onward.

I bought my Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker during Amazon Prime Day this summer because I thought it would be a convenient way to cook fish in the van without making the van smell like fish. I used to eat a lot of fish, but when I moved into Serenity, I stopped, because when your kitchen and bedroom are basically the same place, you wake up to leftover food smells and fish… eh. Not the nicest leftover food smell. Granola is much more pleasant.

cod and green beans

My very first sous-vide meal: cod, that totally fell apart. It tasted great, but was obviously going to need some practice.

A sous vide cooker works by heating up water to a precise temperature. The one I use, the Anova, is a wand-style immersion circulator. You attach it to the side of a container — I’ve been using the Instant Pot insert, but would like to get a plastic container eventually as they’re supposed to be more efficient. But it circulates the water and heats it up to whatever temperature you’ve set. You vacuum seal your food in plastic, either using the water displacement method or with a vacuum sealer, then put the food in the water, and let it cook slowly for a long period of time. It’s incredibly forgiving. Seriously, the cooking ranges offered on recipes are often things like “1-4 hours.”

The combination of the slow cooking and the vacuum sealing makes your food both tender and infused with flavor. One of the Serious Eats recipes describes itself as the most carrot-y carrots ever. Yep. Cook corn-on-the-cob with a little butter and it will be the most corn-on-the-cobby corn ever — every bite juicy and sweet and buttery.

And vacuum packing is a terrific way to make food last. I buy root vegetables (sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots), chop them up, individually vacuum pack them in appropriately-sized serving amounts. Then I pre-cook them using the Anova at 183 for an hour or longer. When I want to eat them, I open the bag, dump the contents into a frying pan (or the sauté setting on the Instant Pot or a baking dish in the oven), and cook them for a few minutes longer. Since they’re pre-cooked, it only takes 5-10 minutes more to have hot, delicious, fully-cooked, soft root vegetables. And if I put herbs or spices into the bag before sealing, they’re also richly flavored with whatever I’ve used.

Meat is the most well-known use for a sous vide cooker. Most of the raves about sous video cooking are about how well they cook steak and they’re true. But chicken breast also comes out delicious every time — moist and juicy and so intensely chicken-flavored. I’ve never been a huge fan of cooking chicken breast, because it’s just too easy to get wrong. By the time the middle is cooked, the outside can be dry and tough. Not with sous vide. When you cook sous vide, every bite is exactly the same amount of cooked. I assume you could overcook chicken and make every bite dry, but so far, not in my experience. I think you’d probably have to cook it for hours and hours.

One day recently, I ate white sweet potatoes sous-vide cooked with a spicy herb mix then finished in a frying pan; corn-on-the-cob sous-vide cooked with butter; and steak sous-vide cooked. When I finished, I looked at my empty plate and thought, “That wasn’t just one of the best meals I’ve ever cooked, it was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.” For some perspective on that, in a previous life, I worked at a magazine in San Francisco and ate meals in San Francisco restaurants on a business expense account. I’ve eaten at some incredible restaurants in my life. And the food I cooked in my van was absolutely competitive with the food that I paid serious money for which was cooked by professional chefs.

I actually felt sort of annoyed. Yes, it was delicious, but I’ve spent years teaching myself to cook and the best meal I’ve ever made for myself had nothing to do with my skills. It wasn’t even complicated! It was just a product of having purchased the right device and spent the time learning to use it. But there are some foods — steak, chicken breast — that I can’t imagine ever cooking another way again. I might have to, of course, if I’m camping in a place where I don’t have electricity, but I’m more likely to pre-cook my food while I have electricity and then finish it off on the grill or propane stove when I’m disconnected.

And there’s an interesting effect that I’ve noticed, too — I think that I eat less with sous vide cooked food. Doesn’t that sound weird? But every bite is perfect, so 1/3 of a steak feels like sufficient food. It’s as if with normal steak, I keep eating, wanting to have the perfect bite, and with sous vide steak, I have a perfect bite again and again and again and then… I’m willing to save the rest for later.

It does take some time and practice to figure out how to use it, though. Getting the food properly vacuum-sealed makes a big difference and I struggled with the water displacement method before buying a vacuum sealer that I’ve also struggled with. There’s a definite learning curve! It’s also important to get the food fully immersed in water and that’s sometimes been hard to figure out, too. Sometimes the bags float and setting a cup of water on top of the bag does not always work. Serious Eats suggests using a binder clip and a spoon, which I need to try once I have a binder clip available.

And, as always, the ingredients that you start with matter. Sirloin tips needed another hour or two, I think; the eye of round roast I made needed several more hours. Tougher cuts of meat are slower to get tender. Fresh fish is always going to be better than fish that’s been sitting in the freezer for a few weeks. And the corn has been delicious but I really can’t wait to try fresh new corn, the first of the season, because I think it’s likely to be mind-blowing. Plus, figuring out the right proportions of herbs and salt and oil to cook with the food is definitely a process — flavors are stronger than with standard cooking, so it’s easy to go overboard.

All that said, if I had to choose between my Instant Pot and my Anova, it wouldn’t even be hard. I’d keep the Anova. And if I had to choose between my immersion blender and my Anova… yeah, I’d go with the Anova. Ha, and if I had to choose between my micro-grater or my garlic press or both and the Anova, again, no contest. The only kitchen items I would keep over my Anova are my knives, because it’s impossible to cook without good knives.

So, yes, Instant Pot, lovely and useful and I’m glad I own it for things like making quick soup and stew. But the Sous Vide cooker is for food that makes you think, “Wow, I can’t believe I cooked this.”

Brrr…

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Boring, Campground, Food, Soup, Vanlife

≈ 2 Comments

Zelda and I had the shortest morning walk we’ve had on this trip (except maybe for times when I’ve been sick), because it was seriously cold. The degrees didn’t look bad — 46, I think — but the wind had a chill to it that cut straight through my coat and my scarf. And it was a moving day, so I had to disconnect the water. The hose was stiff and unyielding, and the metal of the connector was so cold that it felt like it was burning my hand when I was unscrewing it. It was nowhere close to freezing, but felt like a definite warning/reminder that my van life is not compatible with a northern winter.

I’ve sort of been figuring that out anyway. It’s been a while since I whined about dirt here, but it’s still my least favorite part of van life. And the combination of cold weather, limited water, and abysmal campground showers means that I’ve spent a lot of time recently feeling Not Clean. I used to fantasize about baths, but now the combination of a hot shower and clean sheets has almost as much appeal. I’m again thinking seriously about joining Planet Fitness and planning my travels around their locations, at least once a week or so. Real showers, plenty of hot water, and (at least sometimes) the ability to overnight park in their lot is probably worth $22/month. Plus exercise! That would be nice, too.

Meanwhile, though, I’m in Nebraska, at Blue Valley Camping Area. It’s basically a parking lot with electric hookups. When I drove in, along a curving dirt road, I thought I might be the only person here, but actually there are three other campers in a fifteen or sixteen site lot. The campground is truly a parking lot — one site lined up next to the next, minimal space between them — but there appears to be a pretty nice park around it. I’ve been sitting in the van, watching the leaves fall from the trees, and considering exploring, but… well, brr… I know it’s cold out there and I’m finding the cold very un-motivating.

Plus, it was one of those long days, in the way that travel days can be. I didn’t make it very far, but I wanted to find a Target, because Target reliably has gluten-free shampoo and I a) left my shampoo behind somewhere, probably Albuquerque and b) had to buy non gluten-free shampoo the last time I bought shampoo, which is generally not the best option for me. So! Target. As best I could tell, the closet Target to my Kansas location was about two hours away, in Kearney, Nebraska. Nebraska hadn’t been on my travel plans, but why not, right?

Then I needed gas. Then the dogs needed to be walked. Then I needed some minimal groceries — fresh salad greens and fruit, basically. Then I needed to find a place to camp. And suddenly, the day is essentially over and I’ve really only traveled a couple hundred miles away from my starting place. It doesn’t feel like an impressive set of achievements.

On the other hand, I’ve got an acorn squash in the instant pot, which I’m planning to turn into soup before the end of the day. I ate scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms, green onions, sweet potato and avocado for breakfast. I’ve washed all the dishes, the van is mostly clean, I tweaked a few lines from a previous chapter of Grace this morning, I wrote morning words, and here I am, writing a blog post.

camper van under a tree

My campsite

And while I dread the moment the dogs need to go out again — it’s cold and dark out there! — my campsite is really quite pretty. It’ll be a nice place to try to write tomorrow.

PS Made the soup, ate the soup, shared the soup with the dogs. And somehow it pleased me greatly that Zelda chose to first lick up all the squash soup before eating the bites of chicken I’d dropped in her bowl. It’s always nice when the audience is appreciative! I liked it, too — for future reference for myself, I used turmeric, ginger, cinnamon and paprika, plus onion, acorn squash, and an apple; chicken broth and the water from pre-cooking the squash; finishing it off with sour cream, honey, and a sprinkle of salt.

Prairie Dog State Park, Norton, Kansas

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Personal, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

I have not yet seen a prairie dog.

I did see some wild turkeys this morning, plus a cute bunny, and a great many birds. I guess turkeys count as birds, too, but yesterday I drove by an enormous flock of blackbirds, at least some of them red wing blackbirds, and that experience was very different from spotting some wandering turkeys. Very, very cool, however. I wish I could have taken pictures or, better yet, videos. Seeing hundreds of blackbirds all lift off the ground in unison, some of them flashing their red wing tips, then come back to land is pretty spectacular.

Yesterday was not my favorite day ever, though. I left Trinidad Lake and drove to Colorado Springs, where I did laundry, and then I just drove and drove and drove. Ever since the Grand Canyon, I’ve felt super wary about exercising too much at altitude. I had a lovely one mile hike at Trinidad Lake — seriously beautiful and it felt great to be outside and doing — but then my stomach started getting unsure of itself again. Grr… Since I’m headed east anyway, I decided that rather than spending a few more days at altitude, I would just find myself some lower ground. But I really did not enjoy my long driving day with an uneasy stomach.

Fortunately, I like Prairie Dog State Park quite a lot. It’s close to empty and beautifully peaceful. The day is gray and rainy, but reasonably warm, in the 60s, so I am making lamb stew in my instant pot, watching the lake, and considering cups of tea. It’s that kind of day, that kind of place. Cozy and peaceful. Pretty, with trees and plains and fields, but not in a dramatic way at all. Even the trees are very gently changing color — the leaves are yellowing, but not dramatically.

view from the van window with Zelda curled up underneath

Lake view on a gray day, with a dog quite happy to curl up and nap.

My big ambition for the day, now that I have written a blog post and made stew, is to get through my current chapter of Grace.

Favorite line of the day (so far): Grace set the pen down and gave him a Look. Her brothers and sister would have winced and apologized immediately, but her father didn’t even have the decency to look abashed.

Votes on keeping the capital L in Look? Editor-me hates it, but writer-me thinks it is essential as is.

Trinidad Lake State Park, Colorado

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground, Food, Randomness, Sous Vide

≈ 6 Comments

lake view

The view from Serenity’s window and the reason why this small site was the best site available. Unfortunately, it’s reserved as of tomorrow, so I can’t stay, even if I wanted to pay $31/night.

After I left Cochita Lake, instead of driving north, I went south, and spent a single night in Albuquerque. I can’t believe I didn’t take any pictures, because it was my first internet-friend driveway, and I mostly braved the uncertainty to see her baby. Her adorable, adorable baby. He’s two months old, just thinking about smiling and only occasionally finding his thumb to chew on. His hands were still clenched into fists a lot of the time. So cute!

When I emailed her about coming to stay in her driveway, I wrote a whole paragraph about food and then edited it down to something like, “May I cook you dinner?” She said yes, so we ate spicy chicken breast, corn-on-the-cob, and salad of mixed greens, avocado, pea pods, goat cheese, beets, and toasted hazelnuts, with a balsamic vinaigrette made from my “trying to save the frozen herbs” chimichurri sauce.

Two thoughts on that: one, I’m never going to want to cook corn-on-the-cob any other way than sous vide. It’s delicious, even when the corn is questionable. Two, chopping up herbs and covering them with olive oil is an excellent way to keep fresh herbs useful long past the time when you would have thrown the leftovers away. I used my (modified) chimichurri sauce for basically everything for ten days — salad dressing, flavoring quinoa, topping on fish & steak, marinade… The herbs wouldn’t have lasted that long, even if they hadn’t been accidentally frozen, but they still tasted like fresh herbs down to the very last bit used on yesterday’s salmon. And it was so efficient to just whisk a teaspoon of them into some olive oil and vinegar, or add a tablespoon to some meat. I would obviously not call myself a lazy cook — I’m willing to do some work in the kitchen. But the simplicity of an multi-herbed vinaigrette in a minute definitely appeals.

When I left Albuquerque, I headed north. I was torn about whether or not I wanted to make my drive scenic and whether I wanted to spend more time in New Mexico. I loved New Mexico, it was beautiful, the sky is stunning… but I also really just want to find a place to sit and write for a while. Moving all the time takes a lot of energy and my head is in Grace, not in the real world right now. Which is nice, except that I keep being pulled back to the real world by things like needing to find a place to spend the night, needing to find electricity to run my computer, needing to do laundry, needing to buy dog food.

Not to mention how much real reality is just horrifying. I’m trying to avoid the news, because I cannot do anything about all the pain that is out there in the universe right now, but I did donate $50 to Worldbuilders for Puerto Rico yesterday when I was making sure that the dogs were getting clean water and feeling so sad for the parents in Puerto Rico struggling to do the same thing for their kids. I trust Patrick Rothfuss (the founder of Worldbuilders) to have put thought into the appropriate charity and so it felt like a right thing to do, even though it also feels like nothing. In the grand scheme of things, does my $50 do any more than make me feel better? But if everyone who could donate $50 did, things might be a lot better, so it felt worth doing.

At any rate, I did not take the most scenic route north, but stuck to a fairly direct route, which was still pretty scenic. I was surprised to get to this park and find it reasonably crowded, though. And reasonably expensive, too, at $31/night. Why are people camping in Colorado in October? But I found a spot, one small enough that I actually had a terrible time backing in. I was laughing at myself after my third or fourth try when fortunately my nice neighbors came over and helped me out. In my defense, B was whimpering because he wanted to go out and I was backing straight into the sun so the rear view camera was useless, and also the site is pretty small… but mostly it was just klutzy. Somehow once I screw it up once, though (in this case, by getting too close to a tree and scraping the branches), it gets harder and harder to get it right. Hmm, that feels like a metaphor for Grace, but I’m not going to let it be.

I wasn’t sure I’d stay longer than one night — it’s the kind of campground where I am literally listening to my neighbors’ conversations at the moment and this blog post has taken me about two hours to write, rather than the kind where I settle in and get lots of work done. But I really didn’t feel like driving this morning, so I’ll be here for another night. And then tomorrow… I don’t know. More time in Colorado? Moving on to Kansas? I am seriously tempted to go for a fast drive across the country and get back to PA, so I can sit still and write for a while. On the other hand, the month that I spent in PA this summer where I was determined to finish Grace actually ended with me starting over yet again, so I don’t think PA gets credit for being a good writing destination.

But it’s noon already and I have yet to even make the bed, so I think I’ll at least stop writing this and see if I can accomplish anything today. At the very least, I need to take my electricity opportunity to try to bake some more granola.