Restless Barb has a new trip report

I finally figured out the dividing line between this blog and the travel one at restlessbarb.blogspot.com. It's still a little wiggly, but if a trip involves an overnight outside of San Diego County then it goes there. If it's a day trip or still feels like we're in our backyard, it goes here. Almost always.

We went to the Mohave and Joshua Tree National Park over Christmas, and I reported on it over at the restlessbarb.blogspot.com. Lots of pictures, some of weird things. Check it out.

 

Border Field State Park

Back in July 2011 I wrote about the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge here. Within a week or two we took another jaunt, farther down the road, to Border Field State Park. Which by its name you might imagine is on the Mexican border. Which it is.

The park was more or less closed. Lots of California state parks are closed. A locked gate blocked the vehicle access road, but we left the car and headed down the road on foot. The parking lot was full of horse trailers, and there were folks heading out horseback along trails through the native brush. We took a longish walk on a big dirt road instead of following the horses, which were kicking up dust, and found ourselves at what had been a picnic area, with restrooms. The restrooms were padlocked, and picnic tables had been hauled away, leaving behind the barbecues. Looked a bit desolate.

But there's good news -- when I went to the Border Field State Park web site today I found that this summer they completed renovations. The road is open (and entrance is $5) on weekends and holidays unless there are flood conditions. (We did see signs of high water as we walked.) Now, the website says, there are shaded group picnic areas and other individual tables, and those restrooms are available. Probably locked on weekdays though.

From the abandoned picnic area we headed on west to the beach. I think it's three miles long, north from the border to the mouth of the Tijauna Estuary. Supposedly you can hike on up to Imperial Beach, but I'm not clear on how you would get across the river -- a satellite view doesn't show a bridge. It look like quite a leap. Maybe when the tide is out? I guess we'll have to go see for ourselves. I'll let you know.

But here's the beach at the border of the US side. Empty of people. Pelicans flying over.

And to our left, up on the hill, that bull ring that we wanted to see close up. We saw it from a distance on the previous trip to the Estuary. Notice the border patrol. 

And heading down the dunes, here's the Tijuana beachfront. It's hard to see in the pictures how packed that beach is. 

Sorry for the blurry telescopic photo.

You can't help imagining how one could get across that border. Or maybe it's just my naturally nefarious mind. 

I wish I had a picture of the roadrunner I saw as we were walking back to the car. It darted into the road from one side, raced ahead of us and then off into the brush on the other side. Mike didn't even see it--they are so quick! That's my second roadrunner ever, and they just make you smile.

There are some other day trips I've neglected to put up here, so I'll be trying to catch that up. Keep an eye out.

Joining community life at 33 degrees north -- or not

Being pretty much an extravert all my life, I didn't realize it would take special effort to step out into my new community -- where I've now been living for two years or so. It feels different from the previous moves.

Perhaps I've ground down the edges of my extraversion over time. In fact I'm pretty sure if I re-took the Myers-Briggs Personal Preference Inventory I'd find I've taken a jog into introversion territory. And it's a fact that we're starting over again (in our eleventh neighborhood) more than 50 years older than when we moved into our first apartment in Long Beach.

Thinking about the energy it takes to get connected has gotten me looking back at what it's been like for us in other places. This is the tenth neighborhood we've lived in: Long Beach, Los Angeles, Alhambra, Garden Grove, south Sacramento, east Sacramento, Colorado Springs and back to Sacramento. Granite Falls and Bellingham WA. And now Escondido.

We're back home, in a way. My mother was born in this town, and Mike grew up about 40 miles north. We both have some family spread about "the Southland" and they have bridged the transition for us.
As we've gotten settled (and very settled in) we've been fed and entertained by assorted relatives, on both sides of the family. So they made it easy for us. A plethora of holiday invitations, for example. We managed to eat two Thanksgiving dinners last year, in the same afternoon. One was at 1 p.m. and the other at 3 p.m. and just ten miles apart. That's abundance!

But after a while you realize you need to establish a community life of your own. That takes stepping out a bit. It was easy when the kids were kids, and there was a school community. A couple of times the church (UU) engaged us. We belonged to a Buddhist sangha in Bellingham. But nothing has quite jelled here.

Maybe I'm asking too much. Maybe it's time to embrace that introvert. There's always the old guy to hang out with. We exchange dinners with a neighbor sometimes, and I visit with another. I have a writing group that I really like; Mike has a weekly art class. We still see family, but much less. There are old friends from older communities that we still see sometimes, or stay in touch with this way, on line, with blogs and emails. What more do I need?

Three Chickens

$.99 a pound sounded pretty good, so I added a third chicken to my basket. I don't really know what a good price is these days. But I was actually shopping for boneless chicken breasts because my husband made noises about inventing a marinade and grilling some on our new countertop electric grill. Since whole chickens have breasts it seemed the better buy.

When I visited Petaluma last month, I had a conversation with our gourmand son about the way he makes chicken stock that will jell up as it chills in the refrigerator, so much better than the thin canned or boxed stuff. What is missing there is the collagen. He gets a little rhapsodic when he talks about it. I texted him some questions, knowing it was a zoo at work but he'd get back to me when he could. In the meantime I started the carving up process.

Six nice plump boneless half-breasts in one plastic bag. The rest of the three carcasses in a great big bag, along with chopped up carrots, onions, celery and some garlic cloves. Lucky there was room in the fridge to hold them until morning, because I didn't want to be up all night.

In the meantime I simmered the giblets from all three chickens until they were tender and put them in the mini-processor along with salt and pepper and mustard. We smooshed that on some nice whole wheat crackers to go with our 5 o'clock wine.

Bubbling merrily away

When Dennis called later he reminded me that the thigh meat was also good to separate out for another recipe -- he has a teriyaki he likes to do. So this morning I took the thighs out of the parts bag, skinned them, and put them aside as well. 

Browning three chicken carcasses on the stove top, along with the vegetables, seems way too labor intensive. I knew that Mark Bittman browns his stock ingredients in the oven, so I looked up his instructions for time and temperature. I just put everything in my big roaster in a 500 degree oven and gave it about 45 minutes. Starting to smell good!

After that cooled a bit I retrieved some of the other bits of meat, from the wings and legs, and the tender morsels that can be scooped out of the back. I managed to get almost 4 cups of cooked meat that way. The remaining bones and skin went into my extra-large stock pot with enough water to cover. And, by roasting, I had already rendered out lots of chicken fat, which I was able to discard before adding the delicious juices that had gathered in the bottom of the roaster. Less skimming later.

Then we went out to late breakfast, leaving the pot simmering. After it cools I can strain and store it. Time for Mike to work on marinating those chicken breasts! Maybe I can get him to clean up after me, too, because I made a mess.

Things to do with grandkids in Avocado-land

We had the pleasure of a visit from 14-year-old Gabriel last week, and managed to fit in a few things we like to do and thought he would enjoy. He and I took the train (and connecting Amtrak buses), from where he lives in Petaluma to Oceanside, and Grandpa (aka Mike) picked us up. The train trip is long, the bus links feel longer, but thanks to electric outlets at each seat on the trains, computer chess and the snack bar, it was fine. There's even wifi.

Gabe loves Mexican food, and we have plenty of that around here. However, here he was in Avocado-land, and he doesn't like avocados! He was philosophical about it when his two tacos arrived with guacamole spread across them. He just scraped as much away as he could. We also went out for western style barbecue (Gabe had some amazing barbecue nachos) and for Mongolian barbecue. Spicy-food-loving kid after my own heart. And very adaptable!

A couple of days we took morning walks at Kit Carson Park, where I finally got a picture of the momma duck and her remaining eight ducklings. She started with eleven. I hate to think.
Kit Carson Park is 285 acres, 100 of them developed. I looked it up. There are trails through the undeveloped parts, and a large amount of the developed acres are devoted to playing fields of all types. Lots of shady picnic areas too. Since Gabe plans on doing cross-country when he starts high school in the fall, we sent him on a trail loop while we dawdled along in our elderly fashion.

And, Kit Carson Park has one of the most imaginative and colorful features you'll find anywhere, Queen Califia's Magical Circle, designed by Niki de Saint Phalle. We always take visitors to see it. It's maybe three miles from our house. These shots were taken on a previous visit, close to sunset.

A small section of Califia's domain

The Queen herself

We went down to La Jolla to the Birch Aquarium, overlooking the Pacific on the UC San Diego campus. The original aquarium, which we visited when Gabe's dad was a kid, was part of the original UC Oceanographic Institute facility there. Now there's a full-scale aquarium (it's not Monterey Bay, but it's nice, and inexpensive in comparison.) I never saw a nautilus in real life before, and the seahorses (sea dragon) and coral reef exhibits were gorgeous.

And finally, the San Diego Safari Park, which is just up the road. We went around mid-day and most of the animals seemed to be taking their noon naps. Here's my favorite animal. He's getting tall! 

It's great to have enough things to do within striking distance of home when we have company. So get in touch if you're coming our way. 

Zydeco for Mom's Day

Today is Mother's Day. Coincidentally, we celebrated, because it happens that this weekend is the annual Gator by the Bay Zydeco Blues and Crawfish Festival in San Diego. Today is the last day. We drove down way early so we could get a free parking spot at a free festival shuttle stop, and then get breakfast in Little Italy before the gate opened. Gigantic breakfast. Must change eating pattern tomorrow. 

Then we wandered along the water by the Maritime Museum until it was time to catch the shuttle. Must make that a trip of its own. 

The festival was great. Five stages strung along Spanish Landing Park across from the airport, interspersed with vendor booths and the extensive food court. I wish I'd taken a picture of the boiled crayfish servings I saw people eating -- a huge huge pile. The Louisiana sausage sandwich and the barbecue tri-tip steak sandwich were plenty. Must change eating pattern tomorrow.  

We watched all or part of performances by five different bands, and we didn't even stay to the end. Each stage also had a big dance floor, and boy, do people dance! Folks dress up, sometimes in goofy outfits, and ham it up. Zydeco dancing has it's own tricky steps, and if you've ever tried to waltz to Cajun music (and have two left feet) you know how challenging that is. We know because we tried it at a previous festival without taking the free lessons that were offered. "Oh, we don't need lessons," he said. Must take lessons next time. There was a parade led by a brass band, and also a great blues band with some very funky dancing happening on their dance floor. Today we were observers, just walked around, sat in the shade on the handy hay bales and watched, cameras ready. A few pictures. 

Must learn to dance Cajun before next year.

PS I'm double-posting this because my Restless Barb travel blog has been so neglected lately. You could go there if you want. It's at http://restlessbarb.blogspot.com/

Consumer Supported Agriculture

Ever since I heard of this, I've wanted to do it, except that it didn't make any sense because we had a garden. I should say Mike had a garden; he was the hard worker. And he loves gardening, he's a dirt mystic, and it would be silly to make him stop so we could buy stuff instead.

So, we already had produce. I had enough to cook! Have you ever had a man walk into the kitchen and plunk down a five pound zucchini? And wondered why you weren't excited? Wondered, in fact, why you screamed?

Note: I never cooked one of those giant zucchinis. You have to draw the line somewhere. There was also the year with all the pak choy. I say, this is why you have a compost pit.

Well, this year he's taking a break from garden responsibility. The garden is at my brother's place, and required a trip every couple of days, interrupting his painting. My sister-in-law is picking up the slack.

So, this week we picked up the first box from the CSA we joined. It's called Be Wise Ranch, and they have a location less than five miles from us. If you don't know how this works, here's the deal. You join the CSA and pay up front for three months at a time, which gives the farmer operating capital. Then you go get your produce on your assigned day. We signed up for the big box, $30 a time, every other week. There's a smaller box for $25, but since we already ran out and it's 4 days to go for our next box, I think this will work out. We'll see if my cooking enthusiasm dwindles -- maybe we'll even increase the order.

Here's what we got this time: cauliflower, asparagus, mustard greens, red Russian kale, celery, carrots, golden beets, Romaine leaf lettuce, cabbage, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, lemons, tangerines, tangelos. There are a few Valencia oranges left in the fridge, but I have plans for those, and there are some carrots left. I tried a couple of new recipes (mustard greens with balsamic glazed garbanzos, and cream of celery soup with no cream) that turned out great.

The farm is organic, which is nice, and I plan to research the prices at my usual produce departments to compare. As of yet I have no idea how that calculation will come out.

I am excited to see what's in the surprise box on Thursday. And we are eating so healthy!

Modern commerce

I'm getting fed up with it. I don't remember how many contacts we've had from the Toyota dealership since we bought the Camry hybrid last year, but stuff comes in the mail, we get emails, we get phone calls, we get voicemail. Mike had some routine service done on the car, plus a warranty-covered repair, and I've answered one followup call already and told them everything was fine. Then today, weeks later, another call with a message to call back if we had any concerns, just wanting to make sure we were happy. We've had opportunities to fill out questionnaires about our experience, and I think we even did one because actually Mike was quite pleased with them. I just opted out of an email newsletter that we never signed up for -- good grief, who wants a newsletter from their auto dealership! We're being stalked!

By the way, they did find a rodent nest in our vent system -- it's a good idea to leave the air conditioner recirculating option on if you're going away for a month and leaving your car in your garage.

I'm not picking on Toyota. Notice all the opportunities to give feedback to every single place you go, every single thing you buy? The chance to sign up for deals from your favorite restaurant and they just clog up your mailbox, no coupons? Invariably you are given an opportunity to "like" a company on Facebook! What's that about? From now on I say no, and every morning I look for unsubscribe links if any extra email sneaks through.

Enough of these faux relationships! Before long the only mail I get will be from people I wrote to, on purpose. Which means, I'll get hardly any mail because I've been lax in writing to people. Don't have time -- have to keep reading messages from companies I have a "relationship" with. They must think we're starved for meaningful encounters. Well, I sort of am. Write me -- I promise I'll write back.

Wineries

During all those years in Sacramento (25 of them) we thought of wine country as the traditional Napa Sonoma counties. Of course we knew there were grapes in the San Joaquin valley, but thought of them as  table grapes. I even seem to remember boycotting them for the farmworkers! But now there are some toity toity wineries in Lodi, and we did get up to Amador County while we were still in Sacramento and had some yummy zinfandel. There are west side of the San Joaquin Valley wineries, notably Paso Robles, which have some of my favorites, and then on down through SLO and Santa Barbara, of "Sideways" fame. When we were in Washington we discovered there are well-thought-of wineries there, and also in Oregon, but I have to say for the most part they aren't hunky wines.

Surprise surprise, there are wineries galore in San Diego County. Escondido itself has an old winery called Ferrara, been around since 1932. We had mixed results from buying wine there, but the port was yummy. Then there's Temecula, the town near where Mike grew up in Elsinore. They have a wine trail there, with 35 or so wineries with tasting rooms, and probably restaurants at most of them. Food is good -- we just took our second jaunt up there for lunch. Apparently 1984 was a significant year in the development of the area as wine country. And then there are wineries in Fallbrook and down the road to Rancho Bernardo and beyond. These turn out to be the drives we want to take. The heck with walking trails -- those are usually so hilly, have so much elevation!

The Bernardo Winery claims to have been founded in 1889! But I read that Napa had it's first official winery in 1859.

Just some random info before I pour my second glass.

Kitchen as home

It's taken me a long time to absorb that one of my major pleasures is cooking. Not cooking as in coming up with a meal two or three times a day -- I still wouldn't really like that. But I like putting together meals now that we have evolved (or devolved?) into people who will just as easily go out for a bite than to eat at home. And especially since I no longer live under the pressure to provide meat at every meal! Gosh it takes a long time to un-train a man from the eating assumptions he grew up with.

So now that it's not an expectation, as in "When are we going to have dinner," which has turned into the more recent "Do you have anything in mind for dinner," I find it enjoyable to make up a meal. The reason it's enjoyable is that I've done the work beforehand, either by shopping for the quick-to-fix, or by noodling around in the kitchen and cooking in bulk -- soup, roasted vegetables, stuff like that -- so that there are things on hand. It's the noodling around, or the puttering, that I've just now recognized as parallel to my spouse's puttering in the garden. It's meditative.

And I have a nice kitchen here in Avocado Land. Plenty of counter space, almost enough cupboard space (is there ever enough?) and the freaking big refrigerator of my dreams with a large freezer drawer on the bottom. For the last couple of years we've also had food from our own garden, which Mike produced with his own puttering (which often looked like hard work). But this year he's taking a break. The garden is two miles away, and always needs water (we are in Southern California, remember?), and takes too much of his time away from his other love, painting. He'll do herbs in pots here at the condo instead.

So we're going to try something new to us -- CSA, or Consumer Supported Agriculture. I know a lot of people do this -- it's very cool -- but I couldn't make use of it when we had a garden. So, we'll pay for a quarter of a year at a time, and get a box of whatever is in season, weekly or bi-weekly. We'll start with bi-weekly and see how it goes. I like the idea of planning meals depending on what shows up in our box.

Just another part of the food game.

The road to everywhere

We've returned from a month on a Caribbean island that became our usual place to escape the ice, snow, and the frequent cold wind and rain of Western Washington. Sometimes we barely made it out ahead of weather that would have trapped us. One year the Bellingham airport closed and they sent us on a bus to Seattle. Once we came back to that sort of weather, again took a bus that took seven hours to get us the 100 or so miles home.

This year when we left for Bequia it was 80 degrees in Escondido. Bequia was pretty humid, besides being in the 80s temperature-wise. (Hot flashes didn't help.) Still gorgeous, still culturally entertaining, still friends there we've met before and enjoyed, still that crisp and cold Hairoun beer that tastes so good after a walk to lunch, sitting on a patio overlooking the harbor.

But not a relief from home. When we got home it was around 75 degrees. It's arid here, and my hair quits frizzing like it does in the tropics. And I have no complaints.

What this seems to mean is that traveling is now for its own sake, not to escape something. We still want to go back to Bequia, and other Caribbean spots, perhaps next winter. Bequia is a wonderful place, and feels like a second home now that we've stayed there five times. And there are other islands to revisit, and new ones to see for the first time. But Restless Barb is looking for other parts of the world and our own country to explore, any time of year. And then to come home, any time of year.

And here's the deal. If I want I can catch a bus on the street outside my home and link to connections anywhere in the world. So I will never feel trapped here, at home, in Southern California.

Where is home?

[Just discovered that I never posted these first two entries. They were written shortly after we moved back to Southern California, almost two years ago.]

They say you can't go home again, but I seem to have done just that. Technically I've landed two counties south of where I began life, but Escondido is more the place of my childhood than Altadena, the neighborhood I grew up in. It is in fact the place of my mother's childhood, and when I was young we often drove the two and a half hours south for holiday gatherings and weeks in the summer to the property here that had been farmed by my grandfather. When we visited, the place was divided between two of my mother's sisters, and populated by my older cousins, whom I idolized. My parents acquired a smaller piece in the middle, where we camped, and I still have access to that piece because my brother is there. It's probably true that I wouldn't find home in Altadena, unless I could take back the actual house that my father built when I was a baby, and where I stayed until it was time for college, and where my wedding took place.

Sacramento didn't seem so far, and it was home in its way, with family life and working life, for twenty-five years. Too dreary in the winter, with fog clamping a chill lid on us for weeks at a time, so that we had to drive forty miles up the Sierras to get a glimpse of the sun.

What made us think we would be satisfied moving north instead of south when retirement arrived? We told ourselves that Southern California, 400 miles down that lonesome stretch of I-5 through the San Joaquin Valley, had changed too much was too crowded now, too many people and too much traffic and too much sprawl. Instead we moved 800 miles north.

In Washington we lived on an acre in the country for a time. I remember for the first six months or so, driving through exquisite countryside between distinct towns -- towns that had actual edges to them -- I would say to myself, "Oh, I wish I could live in a place like this." And then I would remember, "I do!"

Eventually we were snugged up in a place with a view of a bay, almost to the Canadian border.

Beautiful, green, never hot and rarely warm enough. And wet. Living in rainy country is the price you pay for all that sumptuous verdant landscape.

I never guessed that there would be an actual kinesthetic sense to confirm that this place now is home. At first I only noticed I'm satisfied somehow, in a way that I haven't been for a long time. Then I identified the contrasting sense, the one I realize I've had while living so far north, of being perched, ready to fly at any time. We did fly in the winter, to escape the cold. Now that's not necessary. Now we fly away to see other places, but the weather at home is at least as inviting.

Home at last

[Just discovered that I never posted these first two entries. They were written shortly after we moved back to Southern California, almost two years ago.]

It's been a total surprise that this sort of change has happened in my life. Our lives. Over 44 years ago we left Southern California, where we both grew up. First there was a long work-related stay in Sacramento, and then we headed way north to eighteen years of retirement in "The Fourth Corner," snugged up against the Canadian border in Western Washington. Why we did not communicate to each other that this latitude is where we wanted to be again, I'm not sure. Probably because we hadn't articulated it to ourselves. I should have known. There were times when I wondered what I would do if I found myself alone. I always ended up here in my mind.

There was another reason, I suppose, and this is what makes me question the trajectory of our human lives. Sometimes we think too much, but we don't think again about what we thought in the first place. When retirement came, we told ourselves that Southern California was too crowded and too expensive. We made up our minds too fast.

I'm second generation California both sides of the family. In Washington I announced that with a fist in the air and the challenge to "live with it." Washingtonians are suspicious of Californians. They don't understand that most Californians are from somewhere else. Mike was born in Washington, but grew up a ways up old Highway 395 in Lake Elsinore from where we are now.

Now I live in the town where my mother grew up. Grand Avenue is still Grand Avenue, although the hardware store is gone, the one where I used to go when I tagged along with Uncle Paul in his Escondido Water Company truck. The one where every other person we encountered greeted him and asked to be introduced to me. It's harder to get connected without Uncle Paul, but I'm happy to be here.