HARVEY (H2!) AND SMARTY'S TRAVELS!

May 2019 Colonial Williamsburg and Newport News, Virginia

2019-07-24T17:28:00.000-05:00

Smartyn & H2 resting at Newport News Park

Mary Ann with Thomas J. in Williamsburg

After an all too brief drive by in Asheville, it was time for the final push east into Virginia. We arrived a few days before our scheduled week in Williamsburg at a really nice timeshare that brother Ed had reserved, The Colonies at Williamsburg (more about that in a minute). We set ourselves up at a very cool RV park nearby in Newport News. It's simply named Newport News Park, and here is how they describe themselves.."One of the largest municipal parks (7,500+ acres) east of the Mississippi River, Newport News Park offers a wide variety of activities, including hiking, biking, mountain biking, picnicking, paddle boating, canoeing, archery and freshwater fishing. Year-round camping is available at 188 campsites." For being located right in a metropolitan area, this truly is one of the best parks we've stayed in anywhere in the country. We liked it so much, we booked ourselves back in to explore more after our week at The Colonies. So back to The Colonies at Williamsburg timeshare property. It's a really conveniently located grouping of apartments, ours was a two bedroom, two bath unit with a large fully equipped kitchen and a nice living area. The units surround a great clubhouse with two pools, indoor and outdoor, game rooms, and a nice coffee bar. It's about a short ten minute drive to historic Williamsburg and even closer to shopping and restaurants. Speaking of that, the restaurant scene here has changed a lot (for the better!) since we last visited the area back in 2004. We found some really good choices this time compared to then, when we actually gave up trying and started using the kitchen more at the timeshare apartment we were staying in at the time. This time, besides a great revisit to one restaurant, we found several new ones that were terrific. The revisit was to The Blue Heron, a French styled bistro that still has great food.

Dining at the bar at The Blue Heron

They have all the traditional menu choices of a good bistro with some of their own signature dishes too. It's still so good, we went back twice! We did manage to try a few other good places during our week with Pat and Ed, and among the most fun was Food For Thought, a unique eatery with sayings and quotes all over the menu and walls of famous and not so famous philosophers. The mostly Southern style cooking was unique too. A top choice of brother, Ed, who loved their ribs! But the best new find for us was Waypoint Seafood and Grill. This upscale lunch and dinner spot tucked back in an unassuming strip center, is a winning choice. We had a quiet lunch there, and would definitely put it on the revisit list too.

Waypoint in Colonial Williamsburg

One other place stands out during that week of exploring the area. One day we decided to take a drive north, across the York River into Gloucester and beyond. Along the route there are historic signs everywhere, the battle of...this Revolutionary War camp or that Civil War event. Near the end of our drive north and east, winding up at The Chesapeake Bay, we found a place called Hole In The Wall on Gwynns Island, a sleepy (in summer anyway) vacation home place. It's your typical waterfront dock your boat for a meal kind of looking restaurant, but this place has a stellar chef! Everything we tried was outstanding, but the piece de resistance was dessert (they don't even list their sweet choices on the menu since the desserts change daily!) This was a Lemon Marscarpone Cake that had the consistency of Tres Leches. It was out of this world, and even though Mary Ann pushed me to order it, thinking I'd like it, all four of us devoured it like ants on a sugar cube.

Lemon Marscarpone Cake at Hole In The Wall

If you think the Marscarpone sounds weird for a cake like this...think about Tiramisu. It's that popular dessert's key ingredient. Now you still don't think you'd just want to stick the whole thing in your mouth at once?! I'm trying to regain my composure at the keyboard here, just thinking about it.

Pat & Ed in Williamsburg

So, what about the historic part of Colonial Williamsburg. First, almost everyone's familiar with this place, and when we mention it, a lot of reactions are, Oh yeah, we want to go there one day, but we don't get too many, Wow, we've been there! It is so cool! Anyway, it is a place nearly anyone will enjoy. For a person even mildly interested in the history of this country, this is pretty much where it all started. Within a few miles are historic Jamestown, Yorktown, and of course, Colonial Williamsburg. It hasn't always been in the amazingly well preserved condition it's now in. In fact, in 1926 the buildings were in an advanced state of deteriorating. A local reverend named Goodwin formed a relationship with John D. Rockefeller Jr., and the restoration began. Walking the streets there is as close as you can get to feeling what life was like in this wealthy place in the late sixteen and early seventeen hundreds. Here is something lifted directly from the Williamsburg Foundation website.."In the preservation of the setting of Virginia’s 18th-century capital, Mr. Rockefeller and Dr. Goodwin saw an opportunity to ensure that the courageous ideals of the patriots who helped create the American democratic system live on for future generations". For more info, you can click here You can simply walk the streets (for free) or buy a ticket and go inside many of the buildings for live demonstrations that detail everyday life here. Of course, the place is filled with museums, shops, and more places to eat (in fact, The Blue Heron is right in the middle of this area). You could spend several days and still not see everything. One thing is sure though. When you are finished, your mind will be filled with a new sense of American history. Our week with Ed and Pat flew by, and they were on their way back to Florida. We relocated back to Newport News Park for what turned out to be over a week's additional visit, especially since Memorial Day had quickly crept up on us, and we don't like having to roll to new places on a big holiday. It was pretty interesting to be here then. The park swells up with mostly local campers (of all types!), and observing many of the weekend amateurs is fascinating..and sometimes funny. They swarm in on Friday, like flies, set up, and begin their urban camping. The tents, tiny trailers, sleeping bags, you name it, roll in, the campfires light, they try to get in line for the over taxed restrooms, trying to get as much in as possible within a limited amount of time. Then, as quickly as they arrived, Monday comes, and they all decide to leave within the same few hours! If your not an RVer and don't know, nearly everyone who has a bathroom, even in their small trailer, has to dump the tanks at the ONE dump in the park here! OMG! At about 11 am on Monday the line to use that one dump station was at least 100 trailers long! We had never seen anything like it. As we headed out of the park in the car, the scene of all those campers trying to leave at the same time is one we will not soon forget. We figured by that evening, the place would calm down..and it finally did.

Our visit now concentrated on Newport News. This is a pretty populated greater area, which is made up of it, Norfolk/Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach plus a myriad of smaller communities all around.

A Navy ship being refitted in Newport News

Of course Williamsburg's only just up the road by 15 or so miles too. Newport News and Norfolk are mostly known for ship building, the military, and all things aquatic. There is still a strong sense of what made this place..ships! The shipyards in both Newport and Norfolk are very active these days, and between them and all the military, the economy seems very vibrant.

Entrance to The Maritime Museum

The original turret of the Monitor gets a constant chemical bath

We saw from afar a lot of navy ships getting revamped. One of the most interesting things we did here was to visit The Mariners Museum. Here you'll find the remains of The USS Monitor, one of two Civil War Ironclads that changed modern navel warfare forever and a reenactment of their famous battle. We're not the types who need to visit every museum when we travel, but this one is an exception. There are really interesting neighborhoods here too. One of them is Hilton Village, Mostly built as a planned community for ship workers during World War 1, this small area of unusually designed homes and shops is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Historic Hilton Village shops and restaurants

What's there to eat you ask? Our favorite new find in Newport News is Taste. It's a fast casual walk up and order place with amazingly fresh soups, salads, and customized sandwiches, all in a very inviting upscale specialty food store environment. On your way out, you can pick up a bottle of wine, gourmet nuts, fresh baked cookies and other bakery items, gelato and more. It's in a cool lifestyle center with shops, restaurants, apartments, and a big movie complex. We revisited a couple of times,

Taste in City Center at Oyster Point

and enjoyed the food a lot!

Inside Taste

Another interesting find here is a food store called Lidl. It's another German owned chain making it's entry to the U.S., first along the East Coast. If you're already familiar with Aldi, the store is larger with even more hard goods. Good quality, mostly private label, bare bones pricing, easy in and out seem to be the theme, just like Aldi. They operate about 10,000 stores in Europe and now here, so they're probably going to spread quickly across the country too.

New Lidl store in Newport News

We spent some time while here at the local Whole Foods stores. In fact, they served as a sort of base camp for getting Amazon shipments, eating at their good local and very fresh food bars and enjoying some good local house coffee, while picking up items to take home to H2's galley. Of the two stores we visited in the area, we spent the most time at the closest, just down the road about ten minutes. If you haven't been to one lately, you might be surprised to notice their pricing seems to be getting way more competitive for comparable items than, say, a year ago, especially if you watch their sales and are a Prime member.

Well, after the extra ten or so days it's finally time to turn back around and start heading west again, but pretty slowly this time. There's lots to see in this great country, and we feel that as much as we have seen in the ten years we've been RVing, we've only just scratched the surface on the highlights. Our return trip to Arizona was slow and deliberate, and we got to visit a lot of new places we'd not yet been to and a refresher on some old favorites too. We'll share them next time...

The Road to Virginia

2019-06-12T16:45:00.000-05:00

Durans on old Route 66

We finally left Base Camp Tucson in early May, 2019 for an extended trek east to rendezvous with brother, Ed and sister in law, Pat for a week long time share visit in Williamsburg, Virginia. They'd never been, and we did visit (way before RV's came in to our travel lives) for a week back in 2004. We were so impressed with the natural beauty and American history then that we really wanted a redo someday. Well, when Ed called to say he thought it'd be a great destination and visit, we signed up. Winding through the mid section of the country, especially the part from Eastern New Mexico through the Texas Panhandle, and into Oklahoma and Arkansas, can be tricky business at this time of year. This year's weather vortex has proved to be no exception. We call it..take a deep breath and thread the needle! We managed to dodge the bad storms mostly, that is until we actually got all the way to Tennessee. Memphis, to be specific. Before we got there though, we had a couple of new experiences. The first was Duran's Central Pharmacy in Albuquerque

Hand rolled tortilllas at Durans

The Huevos Rancheros were great, if 9.0 on the incendiary Richter scale. They did say these were unusually potent that particular day. Next, we spent the night, carefully skipping across stormy

Oklahoma, in Elk City, home of the National Route 66 Museum. Here, the entire road is recreated

A good display of cars from the era of Route 66

in a really fascinating way. This is a place along I 40 well worth the stop! As we sped through Arkansas, thinking we had avoided the worst of the storms, we made it to Memphis, got settled for a couple of days (mostly eating)...and the skies commenced to open! It didn't really slow us down, and we managed to seek out a couple of noteworthy new finds. The first is some worthy Memphis Bar B Que at Commissary in Germantown.

Great Memphis BBQ

This place puts forth some righteous food! I sampled the brisket and M A had barbecued chicken. They both ranked high on our (fussier than usual) we're from Texas! scale. Then we stumbled on a new (to us anyway) regional chain called Rise. They do mostly fried chicken, sides, and biscuits, in a fast casual atmosphere. Small menu, and everything we tried was above average.

A visit to Memphis wouldn't be complete for me without the landmark Gibsons Donuts! I could eat my way through the entire glass donut case, but I limited myself to a classic glazed and one lemon filled, which was overfilled with delicious lemon custard...think Homer Simpson....Dogghhnuttttt..gllluhhh!

Gibsons, Memphis

We kept our compass pointed east by northeast, after pulling out of Memphis, and headed for a quick stop in one of our favorite towns, Asheville, NC. We had only half a day and a night to hit some familiar places, so we dead headed for Wicked Weed for lunch and one of our must do Italian restaurants..anywhere.. Vinnie's! Both hit the mark, as usual. Asheville has a disproportionate number of good bakeries too, and we managed to squeeze in two of them. The West End Bakery has great bread, and their morning buns are always stellar! Also, The Well-Bred Bakery and Cafe, near the entrance to The Biltmore Estate, makes amazing pastries, especially cakes! We took home a slice of their deep chocolate cake, and we almost had to fight over who got the last bite. Mary Ann actually let down her self imposed sugar ban to compete for it with me. It was that good!

Well-Bred Bakery, Asheville

Our next stop will be the Williamsburg/Newport News area, about 2500 miles from Tucson. Stay tuned for our visit to that interesting part of The USA.

Lake Havasu

2018-02-12T14:56:00.002-06:00

It's now late October, 2017 and after returning from Northern Minnesota, Canada, and the Lake Superior side of Wisconsin, we made a semi local (250 miles) jaunt over to the West side of Arizona, on the California border, to a place everyone's heard of, but nobody seems to know where it is, Lake Havasu. We thought we'd better get over there before the annual snowbird invasion happens. When we pulled in to the area, it was pretty quiet, and we had no trouble getting a good spot in a nice RV park. Let the exploration begin. Here are some first impressions. This is not a place where you stop on the way to somewhere else. It's not really close to anything. The landscape's very interesting...desert, mountains, and lots of water. The lake was formed when The Colorado river was dammed in the 1930's. Yes, it is the place where a fellow named Robert McCulloch, in the 1960's, spent millions to have The London Bridge moved there. It's the centerpiece of his planned communi-

McCulloch & Wood

ty, Havasu City. He, along with the city planner, a fellow named C.V. Wood Jr., are immortalized on a statue near the bridge, in a town now with a population of about 80,000. It's actually bizarre and out of place to just see it there in the desert, crossing The Colorado River instead of The Thames.
After looking around at the shops and eating places near the bridge, we headed towards the older part of town that could be called the closest thing to a downtown. It's filled with more shops, services, and restaurants, and we really didn't feel the need to try too many of them since they mostly seemed touristy. We did try one place that, at least, looked kind of interesting, called The Red Onion. But it also turned out to confirm our suspicions and was just ok at best (the poor service ruined an otherwise average meal). The only place that turned out to be a winner was called Cha Bones. It's a very nice looking venue with better than average food. We finally ventured out for a happy hour there and ordered a couple of items that were really good.

Inside Cha Bones

Oh well, sometimes it's great to have a good galley in the coach and practice our RV cooking skills.
Another interesting point to the area is the mix of homes. There's anything from little track houses to pretty upscale RV homes (this place is seriously an RV centrist area), to multi million dollar estate type realty with mountain and lake views. We took one side trip down to Parker, where the dam is. It's a pretty ride along The Colorado, but there's not much in the town except for a nice casino and some cool houses right on the water. To sum up Lake Havasu, would be that it's understandable why the area has grown. It has a lot of physical beauty, it's not really on the map so therefore a good place to insulate oneself from much of the outside world, and there is enough infrastructure around to keep you from getting bored. All in all, some good reasons for why McCulluch must have had the foresight to say, "If I build it, they'll come."

Another bridge view with walking paths

Fall 2017 Lake Superior Loop

2018-01-02T16:14:00.002-06:00

Lake Superior sunset/Herbster Wi.

It's the beginning of September, and we're both ready to hit the road after spending most of the summer in Tucson. In July, we did take a run up to Show Low, east of Flagstaff, in the very pretty White Mountains. Until you start to dig in, the famous travel destinations in Arizona, like Sedona or The Grand Canyon, are just the tip of the iceberg. The state is filled with more hidden gems than one could imagine. Show Low, after trekking less than two hundred miles north from Tucson, through the amazing Salt River Canyon and Apache Indian territory, is a more off the map, year round outdoor venue for those who know.
In summer it's a cool place to beat the heat of Southern Arizona, and in winter it's a fun ski destination. There are plenty of good local eating places and lots to see and do. One surprise is the number of upper-end and gated neighborhoods of second homes belonging to people from Phoenix and Tucson.

Salt River Canyon, north of Globe, Az.

Anyway, after that summer break, in September we headed to Santa Fe for a week of checking out what's new. Our home away from home had a couple of surprise changes. The best one is that Clafoutis, the bakery restaurant, moved to a larger, much cooler location.

Clafoutis

The very French baked goods and the food are still the same great quality, but the new place is much nicer with great indoor/outdoor seating spaces. We were happy that nothing much changed at our favorite kitchen away from home in Santa Fe, Counter Culture. In a weeks time, we must have gone back three or four times! Boring!...but the food's sooo good!

Counter Culture's homemade cakes

From Santa Fe, we traveled a familiar route up to far Northern Iowa to the Winnebago mother ship in Forest City, for a little routine maintenance. After that short stop, we rolled up to Northern Minnesota, to Duluth, for the beginning of Fall color. Duluth's an interesting place. Located at the far western end of Lake Superior, it has a long history as the hub for ships transporting ore from the nearby mines through The Great Lakes. One of those nearby mining towns is Hibbing, Mn., where Bob Dylan grew up. He was born and spent his first few years in Duluth though, and there are lots of references to him around town.

A local hotel's Dylan display

Because of the very short warm season around here, decent RV parks are pretty scarce, so as we've done lots of times before in these climes, we parked the coach on the edge of town at a pretty nice casino and spent almost a week in the area. One day we headed farther up The North Shore (as the locals call it) all the way through The Canadian border and spent the night in Thunder Bay, Ontario, also on the big lake.

Downtown Duluth

Historic retractable bridge for long ore ships, Duluth

From Duluth we headed east along the south shore of Superior into Wisconsin. A couple of nights in a tiny village area called Herbster gave us an overview of this part of Far Northern Wisconsin. The highlight was the apple growing region, centered in Bayfield. This little port town is all things...Apple. We drove around through the orchards nearby and sampled everything from apple donuts to pies and ciders. I've been working on a jar of apple butter from there that is very applishious!

South shore of turbulent Lake Superior/ Herbster Wi.

Our return leg took us down to Omaha for a little extended stop since the heavy rain that hit us on the way in to Nebraska didn't want to quit. We hunkered down at Cabelas and made the best of it by exploring some parts of town we weren't as familiar with. We have been to The Old Town part of downtown several times, but this time we headed for a new place we'd heard about. The Jun Kaneko Studio (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-giant-fanciful-art-of-jun-kaneko/) is his base of operations, and this world renowned artist lives and works in Omaha of all places. Unfortunately, the studio was closed for a private exhibition the day we went, but we did manage to see some of his art around town.

Kaneko's 80' glass sculpture, Buffett Cancer Center

The rains finally moved off after three days, and we resumed on the road back through Wichita and down to Amarillo for the final leg through New Mexico to Base Camp Tucson. In all, about a 3800 mile loop to parts of the U.S. we hadn't yet explored. Our next trip is to another Arizona place we'd heard of but knew little about...

A New Base Camp...and How We Spent Our Summer!

2017-08-10T20:33:00.002-05:00

View from our patio.

We moved our party in May to our new place in Arizona. Now that we've spent almost all summer here, we're not quite sure what the big deal about the HEAT 😈 is! Sure it's gotten pretty toasty here a few times, but when it's really hot it's also really dry. The only time it feels a bit uncomfortable is when you're out in the direct sun. Tucson is also not usually as warm as a hundred miles up the road in Phoenix. It's on average five or ten degrees different. In fact, as I'm writing this the monsoon has kicked in again, and it's raining and 88 degrees. Well, anyway, now we're looking forward to the fall this year and the mild, resorty winter weather that this place is famous for. We've spent the better part of the past three months reestablishing ourselves with new doctors, hair cutters ( M A is very happy since she found a great solon for herself right out of the box!), trying new eating places (this town is a hidden gem for foodies!), and just getting more familiar with the surroundings. The coach is stored almost right across the street from our new apartment so I have been enjoying having a great spot to keep it maintained. Speaking of it, we have had some time to get more familiar with certain areas of this beautiful state that we knew little or nothing of before. In July, we headed north from here, through the amazing Salt River Canyon. Imagine driving a 38 foot RV down one side and up the other (almost) of The Grand Canyon! It was quite an experience.

The Salt River Canyon

We headed up to Show Low, a summer and winter getaway for those who know and want a change of weather in both seasons. It's much higher elevation so much cooler in summer and good sking in winter.

The original Fort Apache, near Show Low

We took the coach from there further up to I 40 and back over to Flagstaff for a quick drive by, then back down I 17 through Phoenix and back to Tucson. In the beginning of August we headed a different direction to Southeast Arizona and the Sierra Vista area. This includes some pretty well known places like Tombstone and the quaint little mountain mining town, Bisbee. We've been to those locales on previous trips, so this time we headed to the pretty Three Canyons area near Sierra Vista for a little cool and shady hiking. Ramsey Canyon gave us just what we were seeking, a long winding hike along a hard running stream.

Ramsey Canyon waterfall

We both almost thought we'd gotten lost and ended up somewhere in North Carolina, near The Blue Ridge Parkway! Now that we're back home until our next big trip in the fall, we'll have to settle for hiking on our bike/walking trail right behind our place or at The Catalina State Park, right across the street. Food! I could write volumes already about the food scene here (and I probably will), but so far, a few places in a couple of catagories are really high on the list. The first has got to be my new number ONE burger...anywhere! Truland (and it's fast casual sibling, Graze). These guys know burgers. From the bun to the grass fed (or slightly less expensive, basic organic) beef, to the whole perfect salty, cheesy, and organic condiment topped conglomeration, this is my new burger to hold to all burger standards! Even their fries and sweet potato tots are amazing. A photo just wouldn't do it justice.

Truland in Oro Valley

Two other faves are Prep and Pastry and Welcome Diner, another way better than average local kitchen. We'll be updating lots more Tucson eating places here as time goes on, but since we do like to cook and eat in, it may take a while longer because there is...Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Natural Grocers, and Frys (Kroger), all within about five or six minutes from our door! The next update will most likely be the fall roll out from here...West!

A Quick Catch Up for April, 2017

2017-04-04T12:01:00.001-05:00

For those who follow us around, I have to go back to my comment from last year and say, "We've been so busy living the vagabond life, we don't have time to write about it!"
A lot of followers request that we at least catch them up on our travels and lifestyle, so here goes...Our last post is from Albuquerque last fall. From there, we started out east towards Central Florida for a visit with brother Ed and sister in law Pat. But that trip was ill fated. As we were heading on Interstate 40 and crossing in to Arkansas, Mary Ann, thankfully a very experienced motor coach driver, noticed debris flying behind our coach and announced she was quickly pulling off to the shoulder. We both jumped out and couldn't believe what we saw next. The front passenger side of our Smart Car had blown off from a tire blow out! Within less than an hour, and an emergency call to Mercedes Benz roadside assistance, the car was loaded onto a flat bed tow truck for a trip backwards to Oklahoma City, the nearest Mercedes Smart Car Dealer. We followed it back in the coach and ended up making lemonade out of lemons and spent about three weeks there, getting reacquainted with what is a very interesting, growing mid sized city. Of course we got around all over town, and we hit on a couple of memorable eating places. One that sticks in the mind is Waffle Champion.

We visited this place repeatedly! Fresh waffles, made to order, are the headliner here, and are they fun!! OKC is burger central too. Oklahoma City differentiates itself from the rest, claiming that Onion Burgers were invented there (a practical result of The Great Depression, when onions were used as filler for more expensive beef ). Tuckers has been around since then and claims to be one of the originals. You have to try one. They are tasty!

We also made several trips there during our unplanned stay in town. When the little car had been repaired we changed course and headed back to our apartment base camp (New Braunfels, Tx) to get some medical and dental attention (and finally a decent haircut for me!). Hair cuts for me and Mary Ann (especially M A!!) could be the subject of an entire blog someday. So after spending a month or two in base camp, we headed for Palm Springs to catch up with our planned schedule. We stopped in Tucson for a week or so and continued west for the rest of winter. The Palms Springs International Film Festival in January has been a tradition for us since first discovering it's diverse programming in 2004. Most of the films are foreign (yes....subtitles! for those of you who cringe at the thought!). We spend most of our indoor entertainment time watching those movies! It's a passion. Watching stories from other cultures is more interesting to us than most of the current fare coming from our own domestic film makers (although sometimes there is an exception). This year's festival did disappoint us though, and we think the Europeans, in particular, may be running out of steam too. The unusually windy, rainy, and cool weather was a factor for us leaving the area early this year and beginning our trek back east, towards Texas, where the weather all winter had actually been much nicer. So by the end of January we crossed back into Arizona to spend a little time in Quartzite, the winter gathering spot for thousands of RV'ers who want to immerse themselves in everything RV! From there we homed back in to Tucson, where we had a revelation. We asked ourselves if it was time to move our base camp there from New Braunfels. After all, we seemed to keep being drawn there for all the outdoor activities and the way better than average food scene. We still love New Braunfels, it's small town charm and location between Austin and San Antonio, but we've been here and done this, and it's just time to move on to somewhere new. So in May we're relocating base camp to Encantada at Steam Pump, a beautiful new place in Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson. I guess we'll report back in once we've gotten settled there and head out for summer Out West somwhere...

Albuquerque...A Quick Revisit Driveby

2016-08-17T16:01:00.002-05:00

Since we're spending the summer in Santa Fe, one of America's small town food capitals, and since our anniversary was coming up, we decided to head down the hill, as we say, and drive the 60 miles or so to Albuquerque for a revisit of a couple of favorite places, Zinc Wine Bar and Bistro http://zincabq.com/about-us/ and The Grove http://www.thegrovecafemarket.com/philosophy/ . Go back to October, 2011 (in the right hand column...over there...to the right...see it?) to get more details about these two stellar Albuquerque mainstays. The good news is that nothing much has changed in five years (actually, we have been back to both in-between times...just haven't written about it), and, in fact, they both might even be better! Let me just interject here that Albuquerque continues to spiral upward as another way better than average food town too, just like it's smaller cousin to the north, Santa Fe. We are threatening to just hit it for a week or so sometime to dig deeper, like we've been doing again in Santa Fe (stay tuned for that). At The Grove we sat at one of our favorite indoor tables (they do have a great patio too!), I proceeded to dig in to my plate of perfect thin pancakes that are topped with a little honey, creme fraiche, and about half a cup of fresh berries and apples...heaven. I had picked up the latest copy of Edible Magazine, and there they were on page 12, with a great story on them and their successful operation, owners Lauren and Jason Greene. The story features a large picture of the couple, and as my eyes looked away from the magazine I noticed someone walking by the table with her little boy in tow.

Lauren's little guy, Bryce, keeping an eye on mom!

I looked at the magazine picture again. I looked up again, and there she was...Lauren, asking how everything was. Well, the conversation that ensued was fun, and we could both tell that she was one big reason why The Grove are two big buzz words in town and have been since they opened the doors in 2006...and why we keep coming back when there are so many other great restaurants nearby. Lauren's in charge of the hospitality and concept pieces. We meet owners and managers of places all the time and a few leave lasting impressions. Lauren is one of them. "So what's so special," you ask. First, the space The Grove occupies is very cool. Then, they serve Intellegencia Coffee from Chicago. We are coffee nuts. Intellegencia's are high end beans for coffee nuts. If you've ever had it, you get it. The coffee is expressive of the rest of the food offerings at The Grove. Jason (who we haven't met yet) handles the chef part of the team. The locally sourced ingredients are high end and the results taste like it.

Pancakes smothered in fruit...eggs on their amazing muffins

The Grove is open every day for breakfast and lunch, and it really ramps up at peak times. There are two lines that move pretty quickly, and nobody really seems to mind the wait since it's a fun people watching scene at all times.

The line forms at the rear!

The place and The Greenes deserve all the praise that people (us included) heap on them. It's always one of our first stops when we hit town and it will continue to be!

Zinc Wine Bar and Bistro was our anniversary dinner destination, and, as always, it didn't disappoint either.

Zinc's located on Central Avenue which is old Route 66

We usually look for Kevin or Keith, the two brothers who, along with their invested chefs, own the place. Turns out that they were at their two other terrific restaurants that night, so we were in the hands of Chef Chris Pope.

Chef Chris Pope of Zinc

It had been awhile since we'd been in and chef was busy with his line people, working lots of orders, when we bellied up to the high chairs that line two sides of the open kitchen...dinner and a show for us. Even though we both love to cook, it's fun almost being in the busy restaurant kitchen, listening to "order in...." and watching the organized chaos. Six or eight plates at a time, lined up, waiting for each ingredient on a three to four item plate to fill with over the top food. Mary Ann ordered, and I quote..."WILD MUSHROOM CHINESE BROCCOLI POTSTICKERS – Hand made dumplings with yuzu – tamari glaze,then served alongside a warm salad of napa cabbage, tatsoi, slivered vegetables & toasted cashews, all tossed in yellow curry – miso vinaigrette."

Look at the plates waiting to get finished in the kitchen!

An unusual and creative dish, to be sure. I ordered one of Chef Pope's off the menu specials, the Branzino or European Sea Bass. It was served on a bed of creamed leeks and purple potatoes...delicioso! We ended with one of several unique desserts. Zinc's offerings in this category always match the rest of the menu, over the top wonderful. No run of the mill choices are anywhere in sight. A blueberry tart, maybe four inches deep, with a layered, buttery crust, and topped with a scoop of buttermilk gelato. All made in-house. All wonderful. Two great choices for anniversary eating (no chances were taken here!).

We did manage to check out one other new venue before we headed back up the mountain to Santa Fe. The Green Jeans Farmery http://www.greenjeansfarmery.com/ is an example of a concept we've been watching for a little while now. It's sort of a coop of small store fronts, mostly occupied by restaurants, breweries, bakeries, and the like, where rents are lower, and food choices can be interesting. So far this one has what looks like eight or nine dining and drinking places. You could call it a free standing food court of local places, not attached to a mall. Or it could be described as a startup food location, anchored by a few well known places to draw people in. Here's how they describe it on their website:

Green Jeans Farmery* is a community-oriented commercial plaza constructed entirely with repurposed shipping containers as modular, architectural building blocks. The Farmery functions as an indoor/outdoor gathering place that builds on ingenuity, fun and localist choices with the message of healthy living and neighborhood. We've seen smaller versions in East Orlando and a larger one in Dallas. It's always fun to see something new, and it'll be interesting to see if the idea , in one form or another, takes off in more places...

Green Jeans Farmery in Albuquerque

Colorado Springs...In The Garden of the Food Gods!

2016-08-01T18:50:00.001-05:00

On Friday, July 29th, Mary Ann decided she needed a visit with her friend, Ann, so we headed up I-25 for a little 300 mile jaunt in Smartyn...to Colorado Springs. We last visited, or should I say..did a quick one night drive by, in 2009. Then, we vowed to come back to dig a little deeper because we could tell it was a place that had a lot of potential for us. Our hunch proved right based on this revisit. We pretty much hit the ground running Friday. Right after checking in to our hotel we were hungry, and after doing some quick online research, we found a place on Open Table that intrigued both of us, Till Kitchen http://tillkitchen.com/.

Here's what an 18,000 sq. feet, $13,000.000 restaurant looks like.

Turns out it was lucky to find it since it only opened about a month ago, and there's not much info on it yet. Judging from the crowd already there at 5:30 pm, and the fact there were no reservations available, the place doesn't need much in the way of PR help. It's an 18,000 square foot bustling market/restaurant that serves, as they call it, hyper local food, mostly sourced from within 50 miles. This is healthy food for people like us or those who could care less about eating healthy. The point is that it's all very well prepared...and delicious. A couple of examples off their menu, "Colorado Sourdough Pizza" (four to choose from), " Oak grilled trout with freshly dug potatoes, pole beans and herb butter," " Buttermilk shrimp with remoulade, cocktail sauce, potato, and cole slaw," "BLTA with our pullman bread, bacon, heirloom tomato, avocado, sharp cheddar, roasted pepper and local bibb." Many of the menu items and much more to take away are available in the adjoining Mercantile, where you also find fresh breads and bakery items, a coffee bar, a cheese counter, and gourmet items. As I mentioned, 18,000 square feet. That's a big space!

We sat at the long counter so we could have a good view of the open kitchen and all the activity. Dinner and a show for us! Our food was way above normal, service was efficient, and when we left our stools at the counter, we went over and picked out a small round piece of brown sugar pound cake to take back to the room. It was off the chart wonderful. Plain, yet very rich. I'm sure all of their other items are equally yummy. I know, Till Kitchen will be added to our must stop list of stellar places around the country!

On Saturday, after M A caught up with her friend, we went exploring around town, and we hit some of the must see places around, like The Garden of the Gods.

The Garden of the Gods

Well, touring around builds the appetite, right? Right! So of course we already had our dinner destination planned. A far cry from a place like Till Kitchen, the night before, but not really any less interesting, is The Skirted Heifer http://www.skirtedheifer.com/#story in downtown. Colorado Springs has one of the more active ones we've come across lately. The streets are lined with eating places, shops, and bustling sidewalks, filled with mostly happy young, old, and in-between aged faces. Reminds me of old movies where you'd see similar scenes in downtowns (only people were dressed very differently then). A lot of downtown Colorado Springs has very well preserved buildings, some going back 100 years or so, and just outside it, going mostly north, well preserved old, stately homes. That Turner Classic Movie vibe is definitely there. Okay, back to our food! This place might be familiar since it's been featured a lot, especially on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. We don't always agree with Guy Fieri but respect his ability to hunt down cool places in a given town and give them exposure. His assessment of this place was "rightous," and he did "knock it out of the park" this time! So a little burger joint owned by a couple who also own a well known Italian place in town. What's the big deal? What makes their burger different from any good, totally grass fed and finished burger? All you have to do is LOOK at this one. You will not be able to resist if you're a hamburger specialist, like me. From their website, When making burgers at home, they would melt a mound of cheddar cheese around the beef and grill it until it resembled a “skirt”. They always called the burger the “Skirted Heifer”!

Another way to describe it would be to marry a chewy grilled cheese with an incredible hamburger. The cheese is grilled to form a kind of crust. It is too fun. Couple it with great skinny fries or fatter sweet potato wedges...hamburger nirvana! Mary Ann, the semi vegetarian, even broke rules and gave it an A+!! They even make all of their sauces, including Ketchup, from scratch. This place rocks hard!

We tried the frozen custard, with not quite as stellar results. The line was so long at The Skited Heifer, we went around the corner to their Bambino's Pizza http://www.bambinosurbanpizzeria.com/#!restaurant/crrl to see if they served it too. They do, so we ordered a cup of vanilla and chocolate together. The chocolate was great and rich, but the vanilla tasted flat. We're thinking it must have been an off batch, and we'll want to go back to try it again. We're betting that with the quality of everything else, it'll be better next time. By the way, at Bambino's, you go through a line and pick out your pizza toppings before they bake it. It's kind of like a pizza version of Chipotle! A clever and inventive way to do pizza!

There were several other places we wanted to try, but we chugged back to Santa Fe the next morning, our bellies very satisfied by finding not one, but two terrific eating places and catching some cool mountain sights too. Since there's nothing to eat in Santa Fe (TOTAL sarcasm!), it was a welcomed relief. Guess I'll have to do a refresher on our summer home here in Santa Fe soon...stay tuned.

How We Eat Well And Healthy On The Road Pt.1

2016-07-26T16:16:00.000-05:00

This is a new sub heading, written by Mary Ann...

Ok, we admit it! We are food nuts!

We got into RVing because of traveling to small towns and not being able to find good sources for our organic eating lifestyle. After fantasizing about going "full time," a term we had never heard of until our maiden voyage outside of Dallas in 2009, we stored our six thousand pounds of downsizing and our BMW's and motorcycle (which are now part of someone else's families) and hit the open roads.

Our first challenge was giving up our Gaggia espresso machine and Jura Capresso coffee maker. (Not enough room in our then 32 foot motor home). None of the small coffee makers met our standards of giving up as much plastic as possible. Our generation's bodies are tanked up on plastics from the water we drink to the foods we eat, without even trying.

We landed on making coffee the old fashioned way, in a Melitta drip maker. You know, a white porcelain coffee pot with a porcelain cone which you put the coffee in and drip with hot water. You know, there are some fancy coffee places that call this a pour over. The coffee is so "pure" tasting, we are not sure what took us so long. We have a bonnet which fits over it and use a candle warmer to keep it hot. It works like a charm.

Melitta Pour Over drip system..good even if you don't live in an RV!

Ok, we do cheat a bit sometimes...with Nespresso Coffee. The rich flavor just can't be duplicated, so we give some valuable counter space up for our two (little) machines. One is for the smaller OriginaLine capsules that brew anywhere from a shot sized serving to a little more, like a small cup. The other is a VirtuoLine brewer that makes a full mug sized cup of very rich coffee. We're addicted and consider them necessary luxuries! (By the way, we learned that the capsules are coated with a food grade lining to prevent much of the metal, which the capsules are made of, from coming into direct contact with the liquid brew).

Nespresso Pixie machine (left) and newer VirtuoLine machine.

Induction cook tops for RV’s. Our coffee projects lead us to another need. I do not care for the smell of propane, and even with windows open and exhaust fans, I’m sure we are inhaling way too much. So Marty, my shopping maven husband, started researching for alternatives for stove top cooking. Induction is the newest technology and is now available in a lot of the highest end homes, and stores like Williams Sonoma have started really promoting it too. Induction cooking is the wave of the future, and I predict it will replace propane in the RV world too. Induction heating uses magnetic energy and heats the pure stainless steel cookware or cast iron which is magnetized metal. So far I have not found any bad press about the cooking mechanism changing the molecular structure of the food, like microwaves do. Another benefit is speed. You can put a tea kettle on the induction cook top and have a full pot of hot water in way less than three minutes! The amount of heat is also much easier to control than regular electric cooktops, more like using natural gas.

Our two induction cooktops we use instead of propane.

So, now we have fast, hot water for our morning coffee pour over "machine" and are not ingesting plastics because of the pure brewing process. Oh yes, as I mentioned, the coffee simply tastes great too!

Next time, How We Source Healthy Food On The Road...

JULY,2016? Where Have We Been?!

2016-07-21T14:13:00.000-05:00

The stunning Oregon Coast

Smarty and Smartyn before Smarty got adopted

Wow! Guess you thought we'd given up the gypsy life and headed to Equador or somewhere! Well, nothing of the sort. In fact, other than a new "Smarty" (this one wants to be called "Smartyn"...pretty snooty little attitude for a Smart Car!), and another 20,000 or so miles, not much has changed since our last post. The truth is, we've just been too busy living the LIFE and not enough time to write about it. This will act as a crude attempt, at least, to catch things up. Some of the locales we've added to our been there, done that list are the upper California Coast and The Oregon Coast and Portland, more places in Central Florida, and The Big Bend of Texas. In fact, after we did that part of Texas, we came over to the cool little town of New Braunfels, at the most Eastern edge of The Hill Country, between Austin and San Antonio, and found the base we've been after for almost six years on the road. We're now full time motor homers (with an apartment). Now we can come back and spend a little time running to doctors, getting hair cuts (from someone familiar! Mary Ann can write an entire separate blog about HAIRCUTS ON THE ROAD!!), and just taking a little breather from the rolling lifestyle.

Watching movies in the apartment

The Portland Rose Garden

To catch up to the right now, we're spending the summer of 2016 in our western home away from home, Santa Fe. Good food, cooler weather (although, so far, it's been windy and warmer than normal), lots of hiking choices, and a chance to stay out of the way of the we've got two weeks to see four states crowd! Here are few more pics from the last couple years...

Mary Ann, the Tree Hugger, Redwood
National Park!

Hiking The Big Bend

Destination: Outer Banks

2014-07-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

Pier on The Bogue Sound at Waters Edge RV Park, Newport NC

From Wilmington, along the North Carolina Coast, we rolled toward our next destination, a little blip on the map called Newport. It's actually a town along the Bogue Sound, which seems to be more like three places in one. There's Newport, then Morehead City, and finally Beaufort. These towns are and were based on fishing (and boating), now mostly of the sport variety, and then mostly of the food variety. Our headquarters is the Waters Edge RV park in Newport. The place sits along the main road, Highway 24, and from the road, at the entrance, you can't tell that it extends all the way to the sound, ending in a nice dock that juts out a long way over the water. From the dock, you're looking across at Atlantic Beach, lined with beautiful homes, vacation condos, and hotels. Not knowing what really to expect around this area, we reserved a spot for a week. Our stay ended up at just shy of a month! Why? Well, it's a place filled with cool towns all around, and we saw that we could indeed tour the entire Outer Banks (OBX to the locals) region using this as our base. At first we thought we might have to move up north to cover it all, but it's really easier to do it this way (and besides, we loved the folks at Waters Edge RV Park... fellow RV'ers, make a note-if in the area THIS is the place to stay awhile. Joanie, Linda, and Mr. Tom made us feel right at home! Highly recommended!).

Iconic Hatteras Lighthouse

Ferry landing in "downtown" Okracoke

Our tour of the Outer Banks started with us driving Smarty a little over forty miles to the ferry terminal at

Cedar Island. From there we drove onto the ferry for a two hour ride to Okracoke, our first actual landfall in the slip of movable earth called The Outer Banks. Okracoke used to, of course, be a fishing village. Now it's a sleepy little summer resort town, full of inns and restaurants. We spent the night at The Edwards Inn, after walking the quaint streets and having a good local fish dinner. The next day, we drove up to the next ferry terminal on the north side of the island and took the ride to Hatteras Island, past the famous diagonally striped black and white lighthouse and on through the upscale area of Nags Head, and finally to our night's stay, this time in Kill Devil Hills. This is the Kitty Hawk area, and we were both anxious the next morning to head over

Actual spot where first plane flew

Wright's monument

to the Wright Brothers National Memorial and Museum. We spent the whole morning there and stood at the place where their planes took off for the first time. It's quite unique and contemplative, and it made us think about how far aviation has come in such a short time, as a big jet airliner casually flew overhead. On the third day, we started heading to home base and drove off the islands and on to the mainland. By early evening we were back in Newport.
Our favorite new town that gets put in a special category for us, is New Bern, North

Pepsi's birthplace..downtown New Bern

Carolina. Ever hear of it? Maybe it sounds vaguely familiar? Well, aside from being the birthplace of Pepsi Cola, it is one of the prettiest small towns we've come across anywhere. From the waterfront to the downtown, the place oozes charm. There's some serious history here too. Many buildings and homes date back to the mid 1700's and the Tryon Palace, which goes back to 1770, and was the home of the first provincial governor of North Carolina. It's a mostly upscale little town, with a vibrant and walkable downtown, filled with neat stores and restaurants. A couple of our favorites, out of a bunch to choose from there, were The Chelsea in downtown and Persimmon on the water. In fact, we visited Persimmon twice during our month in the area, something we almost never do. Oriental is down the road from new Bern, and on the advice of a local, we drove over there one day. It's known around here as the sailboat capital, and there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of them everywhere. Oriental reminded me of the same laid back feel that Okracoke has. A place where it would be easy to spend a week...or a whole summer, just chillin'.

Persimmon restaurant in the moonlight

Our month went by like a flash, and before we knew it we were turning our attention towards The West, at least The Western side of North Carolina. We'd decided to go back to Asheville for the entire summer. Our reasoning was simple. First, we've gotten to the point where we like to leave summers traveling...to the tourist travelers and families. We have all year to explore, so why not let them have one less rig to contend with during the busy months. Next, we had entertained going out West to Santa Fe, but the water is scarce there now, and it's very dry. Third, we love Asheville. It has the hippie charm of Santa Fe. It has cool weather in summer, lots of outdoor venues, and the food! A special place indeed. So the summer of 2014 is WNC time for us. We plan to explore places in the area that we haven't had a chance to see yet, work, and enjoy the mountains. H2's big engine is revving now as I'm finishing up here, Mary Ann's at the wheel, and off we go from the wonderful North Carolina Coast to the beautiful mountains!

M A kicking back in Oriental

Going North, Up The Coastal Highway

2014-05-07T18:31:00.001-05:00

Wilmington homes exploding with color

By the end of April, the Spring foliage is in full bloom here in The South. Heading north from Charleston, we wind up US 17, on track for our destination for this segment of the adventure, The Outer Banks. Once leaving Mount Pleasant, there is a lot of wide open road along the seacoast until you reach the quaint little seaport of Georgetown, North Carolina. More beautiful tree lined and flower lined streets fill this historic place. As we have found, there was a lot of 18th and 19th century activity in the area. Our main reason for pulling off the road here, as you might guess, was to visit the original location of an area bakery (maybe we should think about renaming this blog..."Harvey and Smarty's Bakery Stops!") that we grew to love in Mount Pleasant, Kudzu http://www.kudzubakery.com/.

Kudzu Bakery in Georgetown

As usual, we just stumbled on it while shopping in the area. From the minute we walked in we knew it was the real deal. Their baked goods and breads are totally scratch, and one's more amazing than the next. We loaded up with goodies and kept heading up the road, past Pawley's Island (Yep! There really is a place named after the famous hammocks...or is it the other way around?), and then to the southern part of the Myrtle Beach area, Murrells Inlet and then Surfside Beach. Myrtle Beach surprised us a little. We expected an old, worn looking area with lots of t-shirt shops. There is that, up the road from the main, newer area of the beach, but this newer area is what we saw first. There are high rise hotels and condos, nice stores and restaurants, and pretty parks and beach areas. It's easy to see why people, especially from the Eastern half of the country flock here. The older, t-shirt and surf shop part didn't show itself until the next morning as we started heading towards North Myrtle Beach. If you go for that kind of place, there is about a five mile strip of it there. Have fun! We keep rolling up Highway 17 and land in Leland, NC, just a few miles from downtown Wilmington. It's raining, so we pull in to a new, nice looking Wal Mart lot in this newer area, and unhook Smarty to see what it's like here. We stayed seven nights right in the Wal Mart lot, using our fresh water tanks and all the solar electricity we could absorb to keep the house running. All systems worked perfectly, and we could have even stretched it if we needed. How is it to live in a Wal Mart lot for a week? Interesting!

H2 and friend at Wally World

There's a Carolina chain of good coffee places in the area called Port City Java http://www.portcityjava.com/ We packed up our briefcases in the morning and used their neat little shop, located a couple of blocks from our (Wal Mart) home and worked during the day and explored at night.
The magnificent Magnolias and Crepe Myrtles are coming alive and especially the Azaleas. Almost every town in The Carolinas has an Azalea Festival, but the Granddaddy of them all is the one in Wilmington http://www.ncazaleafestival.org/. No kidding, this is to Wilmington what Mardi Gras is to New Orleans or Mobile! And it's no wonder. This town literally explodes with color at this time each year. It is the quintessential South, and everyone should be lucky enough to experience it at least once. Wilmington is an understated city. It's population is a little over 100,000, but the greater area is about 250,000. Ever heard of Cape Fear? This is the center for the area known as Cape Fear (named after the river). In other words, this is not really a "cape" like Hatteras, it's an entire region. The movie(s) made the name famous, but this place has lots more to offer than a Hollywood story. First, the city is a living museum, much like Savannah and Charleston. It has deep roots in ship building, and the marine history is everywhere you look. Many of the buildings date back to the early 1700's!

Wilmington River Walk Downtown

Another interesting tidbit about Wilmington is that it's a relatively large movie and tv production town. In fact, the last blockbuster Iron Man 3 movie was done here. We explored the surrounding areas too, like Southport, another historic sea town a few miles drive...to the south of Wilmington. More historic homes with plaques dating them all the way back to Pre Revolutionary War times, more quaint shops, and a very pretty waterfront park and pier. The beaches nearby are cities in their own right, especially Wrightsville and Carolina Beach. Mary Ann had a fun surprise too. Her friend and boss when she was in the apparel business, Joe, surfaced! She had been trying to reach him, knowing that he must still live in the Myrtle Beach area, where he's originally from, and she had no luck...until a phone call reunited them finally. He was indeed still in Myrtle Beach and agreed to drive up, since we were already in Wilmington. We had a great dinner together in downtown, and the two old friends got to do some catching up! We did finally leave our Wal Mart home, and continued to dead head it towards The Outer Banks. Our landing spot, next, takes us to the Beaufort, Moorhead City, Newport area (go to your map to pinpoint us). From there as base camp, by ferry and Smarty, to legendary ports off the coast, like Ocracoke, Cape Hatteras, and finally Kitty Hawk.

The pier at the waterfront in Southport

Route 17!

2014-05-01T16:05:00.001-05:00

After an amazing week at The Marriott Monarch Resort in Hilton Head, we continue to track up US Highway 17, also known as The Coastal Highway. Highway 17 runs pretty much parallel with I95 from Florida to Virginia. In some areas it runs closer to the Atlantic though, and that's why we're on it. Destination now: Charleston, South Carolina, for a revisit. The first time there, as was true for Savannah, we just touched on the area. This time we intend to dig in. Our specific landing spot, from info we gathered last time, is James Island, an area about 10 minutes Southwest of downtown. The James Island County Park http://www.ccprc.com/index.aspx?NID=1434 has a full service rv park and is a regional destination for all things outdoors for the area. There are festivals of every imaginable variety going on just about every week there. During our visit, a Cajun Festival and The East Coast Paddle Sports and Outdoor Festival happened. There are venues for cycling, boating, running, camping, swimming, just about anything you could do outside, including just sitting among the beautiful trees and foliage and watching shrimp boats in the rivers, gliding along, sometimes magically appearing like they're skimming on top of the saw grass fields.

James Island County Park near Charleston

This time we stayed long enough to get a real feel for the area. We walked almost every street downtown, looked at the amazing homes (many dating back to the 1700's), visited other neighborhoods nearby, like Johns Island, Kiawa, and Mount Pleasant. All of those places have their own special vibe and charm. In fact, Johns Island is home to one of our favorite eating places...anywhere in this entire country (at least the small part of it we've seen so far). We went to The Fat Hen www.thefathen.com a few years ago, on our first visit, and were impressed with it right away. Low Country French is how they describe themselves, but I had one of the most stellar burgers there...and the fries! Oh my! I'm sure the other choices are incredible, but I just can't get past that hamburger. In fact, I had it twice. I even asked the chef to whip up some of the tomato jam (instead of good old Heinz, which does a disservice to this burger!) they serve with the fried green tomatoes that M A ordered, and that totally threw it over the top of the left field wall! Mary Ann is a bit more adventurous and also tried a chicken dish and some veggies and grits and the report was also many starred. It's a good drive from the downtown tourist area, but well worth the time to get there, and a beautiful one too.

Walking along the waterfront in Charleston

Aside from about a hundred long and short drives in to downtown, we explored other areas too. West Ashley, a gentrified neighborhood just west of downtown, full of bars and cool eateries, is close to where we were stationed in James Island. It's just a bridge or two away! We drove over to Sea Island and Kiawa, a newer posh development with an already very famous golf course. In fact, it's soo posh, the new Marriott Courtyard Hotel doesn't even have any visible signage, only "Boutique Hotel" can be seen from the outside. Mount Pleasant is east of downtown, over the Ravenel Bridge. It's home to lots of local seafood places, marinas, and most of the really important shopping for the Charleston area (like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods for us). After a couple of weeks in the area, and the revisit to Savannah, we think we might even qualify for the test to be local tour guides! Well, ya never know!!

Ravenel Bridge connecting Charleston & Mt. Pleasant

As a side note, while in Charleston, Smarty decided to have a heart attack! His fuel pump (get it?) went out and that lead to another failure with his complicated and computerized innards. The crankshaft sensor also failed. So Mary Ann picked me up in the Best Buy parking lot with H2 , where I was stuck. Who ever knew we'd be using our roving house as a tow truck one day! We hooked up Smart, moved to a Walmart lot for the night, and early the next morning reported in at Baker Motors, the Charleston Mercedes/Smart Dealer. They gave us a Mercedes SUV to drive while Smart was being operated on (4 days!), and even let us stay the first night in H2 in their back lot before relocating back to James Island, while we waited for the news of Smart's condition. By the end of the week, he was returned...ALIVE! After almost 58,000 flawless miles, we figured that we were due for some maintenance issues. Hopefully, after this repair and a thorough 60,000 mile preventive maintenance check up, maybe we'll get some more good service from the little guy...so far, so good! One thing we've learned, full time rv'ing for almost four years, is that stuff can and will happen and break while we're on the road. Our philosophy is to try and keep it as simple if possible, and having the Smart as a tow car does just that. It has proven to be safe, reliable transportation, backed by the nationwide Mercedes Benz network. Is it the cheapest way to go? No, but it is a practical way for us.
After a day or two checking to make sure Smarty's repairs had taken, we left Charleston behind and headed up US 17 for the next stop on our route to The Outer Banks, one of the most famous tourist towns on the East Coast, Myrtle Beach, and the beautiful and historic city of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Early Spring 2014 Update

2014-03-25T15:34:00.000-05:00

Mary Ann at her desk..Hilton Head

It's the end of March, 2014, and we've landed back in Savannah for a more in depth visit. I must say we have been looking forward to this revisit since we were first here back in 2010. Savannah, so far, is our favorite big city in this part of The South. It's full of southern charm. The kind you read about or hear of when people talk about The South. The genuine warmth and kindness that many think has been lost in our society still generally exists here, even four years later than my first story about it. (If you want a quick reference to what I'm adding in this post, start back in June of 2010 over in the right hand column, and then come back here.) We had to revisit a favorite stop in Savannah, Leopold's Ice Cream http://www.leopoldsicecream.com/ . A hundred years of tradition, and one of the most iconic ice cream parlors in the USA! Where else to eat in this foodie town? Well, there are tons of upscale to down home choices, but two places got our attention this time. The first is an out of downtown place called The Crystal Beer Parlor http://www.crystalbeerparlor.com/. Billed as the second oldest eating place in this very old town, the good, basic pub food and amazing selection of beers from all over are well worth a stop. It's a place so good that the locals come in droves, not minding the mix-in with the tourists. The Green Truck Pub http://greentruckpub.com/about/, which you really have to hunt for outside the downtown area, is another mostly local place but we found it filled with curious and adventurous tourists too. It's a neighborhood bar with terrific food choices, mostly on the healthy side. If you get there after about 5pm...prepare to wait a long time to get seated. It's small but worth the wait! Again, a terrific selection of craft beers, and Mary Ann ordered a reddish IPA, but I ordered a wonderful glass of Camenere Wine from their diminutive but interestingly eclectic list. It went well with my grass fed burger.

Leopold's Ice Cream, Savannah

I digress though. We actually started this segment in Miami, where we spent most of the winter with brother Ed and sister-in-law, Pat. We'll miss the drive to the Keys, bike rides, and discovering new eating places with them, and our 5:30 pm walks with friends, Dee and Jimmy, near their home, where H2 was residing in their yard. We headed up to Central Florida in the beginning of March and stayed in the Mount Dora area for a couple of weeks.

Mount Dora, FL.

Never heard of Mount Dora? Good! They'd probably like it that way! It's a small town, about 40 miles northwest of Orlando...but a world away. Cuddled up next to a large lake, one of hundreds in the area, the charming downtown is full of shops and restaurants and pretty little parks. It's another in our growing list of very livable places that harken back in time.

We left there and drove right back up the East Coast highway (I-95), past St. Augustine and Jacksonville, and stopped in Jekyll Island again, but this time we opted to stay right on Jekyll Island so we could spend more time in the old historic village. Again, see my posts from June of 2010. The entire St. Simon's Island, Jekyll Island, Brunswick, Georgia area is so filled with beauty and American history, that we still don't think we've absorbed it enough. The highlight of this stay was a Saturday night dress up dinner at the original Jekyll Island Club Hotel, built by the likes of Goodyear and Rockefeller. The pastry chef there caught my attention too, especially with the very delicious danishes they sold at the little coffee and pastry shop in the hotel. The little lemon/cheese and cherry/cheese ones in particular! MMM,,.definitely another visit will be needed in the future.

Jekyll Island Club Hotel

We keep rolling up the coast after the stay in Jekyll and then Savannah, We thought that Charleston was on our route map as the next stay, but ace time share exchanger, Mary Ann, scored a prime time share trade in Hilton Head Island. So on Saturday, after a night's boondocking, we stored H2 for a week away from "the house", and drove about five miles to the Marriott Monarch Resort on a wonderful stretch of beach on The Atlantic. It turns out this is the original property with which Marriott started it's amazing collection of world wide resorts thirty years ago. Our two bedroom, two bath condo is on a high floor, with a great view of the beach (see pic at the top of this story). A near perfect location for a week off the road. It's a luxurious four star property that would have cost over $3000 for the week had we not had that week of time to trade. Mary Ann mined a big one!! Since we have a four star kitchen here, and even though there are some very appetizing looking eateries all around, we are choosing to cook in mostly while we're here. Fresh shrimp and seafood, good grocery stores, and that kitchen, are keeping us mostly home for food this week.

Our plan is to keep driving up the eastern edge of the country, and another stay in Charleston, until we get to the most Northeastern part of North Carolina and The Outer Banks, and then head west, right back to Asheville for the summer of 2014.

Wintering in Florida (again)

2014-02-06T15:49:00.000-06:00

This post finds me writing from the lower level of brother, Ed, and sister-in-law, Pat's home, just South of Miami. It's already February 2014, and the harsh winter up north is very much in fifth gear while we are living in unusually warm and humid conditions. Just proves the full-time RV'er credo that there's no such thing as perfect weather...anywhere, but we can try to move towards it and maybe get close! Anyway, we're not complaining since we get to have an extended visit and the weather surely could be much worse! Meantime, H2 may as well be a bear because he's hibernating, pulled up about a mile from us at friends Jim and Dee's house. They installed a 30 amp power outlet just for us, and H2's sitting inside the fenced area of their yard. This is giving me time to do some modifications and adjustments that are not easily done while we're rolling, like replacing the original flat screen tv with a larger, more upscale model (and a totally new sound system too!).

Mazzaro's Coffee Bar/St. Petersburg

To catch up to the present, we have to go back to just before we rolled in to Miami in mid December of 2013. We did actually hit a cool, new foodie place in St. Petersburg that everybody should make a trip to, Mazzaro's Italian Market http://www.mazzarosmarket.com/ . This is no ordinary little operation. It takes roughly a city block, comprised of various scattered buildings. There's the main market which houses the bakery, meat and seafood, grocery section, coffee bar, and wine area. There are prepared foods and delicacies and just a wonderful selection of stuff to munch on. In another building, there's a new gourmet cooking store. There are lots of good eating choices in Tampa and St. Pete, and we've added this one to the list.
Next we rolled down to Ft. Myers and Naples and boondocked at Camping World. They even provided us with 30 amp power and a cozy space for the night, while we checked things out in town. Our find here is a chain!! OMG! Marty and Mary Ann eating at a chain restaurant? Yep, it can and does occasionally happen when all signs are aligned properly. This time they were, and we're glad we sought the place out. Name? Pizza Fusion http://pizzafusion.com/company, and they have locations in Florida, N. Carolina, Ohio, New Jersey, Colorado, and oh right...Saudi Arabia (guess the Saudis like eating healthy too!). Healthy? Pizza? You ask, "How can that be?" They use mostly organic ingredients, serve beautiful pies on big, rectangular white china (at least the one in Ft. Myers does), and have a short, but great wine list too. We had a terrific meal there and now are looking forward to visiting the next one in Miami Beach. Hope it's as good as the one in Ft. Myers. If you see one of these in your travels, this one comes highly recommended.

Midway Campground in The Everglades

Ok, we're dead heading now for Miami, except for a last night on the road for awhile. This last stop is very nearby, right in The Everglades. We stayed along the Tamiami Trail, which, when you're in Miami turns into SW 8th Street (or more familiar to locals, Calle Ocho). This street has for years been known as the heart of Miami's large Cuban community. Before you get to that hustling part though, you couldn't be in a more different environment if you tried...The Everglades! We spent the night at Midway Campground, just about 35 miles west of the Miccosukee Resort & Gaming Casino and the very Western edge of the City of Miami. One night of listening to nothing but chirping frogs, night birds calls, and maybe even an alligator grunt (hopefully off in the distance?) before we gear up for big city life once again. We slept well, and the next morning we spent some time emptying all tanks and finalizing our planned short hop to Dee and Jimmy's, where H2 remains in "dry dock" for a good part of the winter. And here we remain until we pull out and begin the long trek back up the Florida Peninsula as the weather starts warming up a bit, and we look for new places to explore.

Doin' "The Looparound"!

2013-11-15T17:34:00.002-06:00

What's a Looperaround , you might ask? Well that's when Marty and Mary Ann leave their "home" for the past summer in Asheville and head to Florida for the winter...by way of Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and (whew!) Alabama, and Florida. That is a LOOPAROUND! So it's mid September, and we're spending three weeks at Camp Winnebago in Northern Iowa, getting our final new coach punch list done (which included a longer than expected stay to work out a very pesky slide-out problem). We then headed down to Dallas, with a few fun stops in Kansas City and Wichita, to visit friends and family. Ten days or so back home in Big D gave us time to do some personal and business business, and a chance to catch up with Mary Ann's cousin Dee Dee and Aunt Willie Mae and good friends like Chuck and Jan, Gary and Marilia, and Bunny and Ivan. One evening while M A was at a business meeting, Ivan, who loves to keep me up on the ever changing burger scene in Dallas, drove me to Good Friend Beer Garden and Burger House http://goodfrienddallas.com/. This is one of the newer HOT tickets on the plate at the moment. The place was packed for a weeknight, we sat down, ordered beers and burgers, and as usual, Ivan waited for my comment. "Whoa...this is an awesome hamburger," I garbled between bites. The Wagyu beef was off the chart delicious, and the micro beer was good too. So good I brought M A back a few days later for her to try. Her score was unusually high too! Ivan had introduced us to a real winner, and for that a big Thnkuvrymch! Other than a few other bites with friends, we didn't eat out much there. Not because there aren't a hundred new places since we last visited, but just due to the hectic schedule.
This brings us time wise to around the end of October, when we rolled into Tyler for around a ten day stay, which included a visit to the wonderful Rose Garden and a drive over to Canton, Tx. for First Monday. This one would have to be experienced first hand to be fully understood. It, basically, is an entire town turned into a monthly market where you can find anything from clothes to tools, electronics, decorative items, pets, food, etc etc etc! Here's more if you're curious http://www.cantontxfirstmonday.com/?clid=CIPptfWA7boCFU1gMgod1xQAUw Tyler, as much as we love the town, can't be seriously considered for the dining scene. We did hit a couple of favorites though, the first being Andys Custard http://eatandys.com/. This is not ordinary stuff! If you're ever in the area (they're from Springfield, Mo., and there are others in Illinois, Arkansas, and Missouri ), don't miss it. The other is Stanley's Famous BBQ (the Famous is part of their name..for good reason). Simply outstanding Texas Brisket! http://stanleysfamous.com/. Since we were close to the pretty town of Mineola, M A took the time to connect with Junior High friend, Julie and her husband, Gregg. Next, on to Shreveport, where we were hosted by the Diamond Jack Casino parking lot for a couple of days. The only problem was we had left Texas and were now entering LOUISIANA...home of all kinds of FATTENING FOOD and non stop PARTYING. Give up the healthy eating for awhile.,..maybe so! Next, down to the thriving metropolis of Marksville, Louisiana, home of The Paragon Casino RV Resort http://paragonresortcasino.com.

Slip 127 at Paragon Casino Resort

Ahh...finally! An RV park that calls itself a resort...and it really IS one!! They have about 200 slips, all with full hookups, cable, and very fast internet. The price per night ranges from about $17 all the way up to $22 on weekends. We've finally discovered what other full time motor homers know, that many of the casinos around the country have good facilities for travelers like us, and many of them are very happy to have us stay with them. They range from just a safe place to park the rig for a night or two to places like this, that have beautiful clubhouses, pools, health clubs, and other high end amenities. In fact, on the way down to Dallas, we also stopped at the Winstar Casino http://winstarworldcasino.com/casino on the Texas/Oklahoma border. This place bills itself as the Second Largest Casino in the World, and even if it's only the third largest...it's huge! They have it all there, and the RV park attached to the property is first class all the way. Not a bad way to roll! A side trip from Marksville takes us back on Sunday afternoon to Lafayette. Why drive 83 miles each way for lunch?! Three words...Poor Boys Riverside! We are so close (by full time RV'er miles are our life miles anyway) that we can't pass up the chance to savor the fine cuisine of this area at a place that, for us, typifies it. We sit down, order fresh grilled Redfish with a baked sweet potato, Seafood Gumbo, Italian Salads, mini loaves of yeasty bread and butter, and Sweet Potato Beignets for dessert. This stuff needs no additional sauces or flavorings. Everything is so fresh and well prepared, it's like Foodie Heaven! Well worth the miles.
So to continue catching up, it's now mid November, and with over stuffed bellies, we start to head due East from Louisiana to another favorite, Fairhope, Alabama. This time, we only stop for two weeks to soak up the Southern charm of this amazing part of the state. Besides visits to old favorites like Lulu's in Gulf Shores (Jimmy Buffett's sister's sprawling and fun eatery) and Pinzone's (some of the best hand made Italian food anywhere!), we only tried one new place, Locals. It's a little start up in downtown that serves locally sourced and pretty organic food for breakfast and lunch. It's very casual, and reasonably priced for the quality. We just stopped in for a quick breakfast where everything's ala carte so you can get one or more eggs, for example, and just toast with nothing else...and they don't overcharge you as if you'd ordered everything else (a bit unusual!). From Fairhope we headed farther East along I-10 into Florida for short stops in Tallahassee and Ocala, where we did manage a revisit to The Villages area (no Foodie finds there still...well, with the single exception of a German bakery we discovered, called Yahala http://www.yalahabakery.com/. Now that doesn't ring very German to my ears, but no matter, the place has great breads and pastries...very authentic and delicious). We also revisited Artisanal Dish in Ocala, which caters to the horse crowd there (and there is a large horse crowd!). They're in the process of a name change to Blue Wagyu http://www.bluewagyu.com/comingsoon/ to take advantage of the Wagyu beef craze which is starting to take hold. If you see a place serving this for a burger for instance, order it! It's like American Kobe beef...healthier and delicious too. Anyway, this place is the one we'll go out of our way for in the area. It's real casual too, but all of the things we've tried there are over the top good! From Ocala down I-75 through St. Petersburg, to our current residence on the way to Miami, Fort Desoto Park (see picture below..we're just to the left with our feet in the sand....(grounding!). Ranked as the Number Four Best Beach in the U.S., this is a great place to spend a few days off the road. Since we've been here we have not left our secluded slip where H2 and Smarty are stationed. All of the cool places in St. Pete and Tampa beckon, but, so far, we're not biting.

H2 & Smart revisit North Carolina

2013-09-22T14:52:00.000-05:00

View from The Grove Park Inn patio..Asheville

After close to a month covering Michigan, it's time to head up to the cool Blue Ridge Mountains for the rest of Summer 2013. We headed due south from Metro Detroit on I-75 through Toledo, then down to Lima, Ohio for an overnight stop and a detour to the local Skyline Chili Shop for a splurge dinner. Knowing we were going to blow through Cincinnati the next day, and that this town had one of the iconic Cincinnati chain's eateries, we decided to give it a try. Wow, seriously simple but delicious stuff. You can have your chili three, four, five, or even more Ways. Look at their website for more http://www.skylinechili.com/signature.php . If our friend Gary Clark, Mr. All Things Cincinnati!, is reading this, his mouth's probably watering just from the mere mention! We kept our compass due south the next day and ended up in the beautiful little town of London, Kentucky. Watch this for a little travelogue http://londonkydowntown.com/ . Next, for the last leg, right into our home for summer...and the temperature did keep falling as we now headed east from Knoxville and began the climb into Asheville. We got lucky and settled in to a spot at Bear Creek RV Park, about 5 minutes west of downtown and 5 minutes south of funky and quickly gentrifying (and fun!) West Asheville. We made a deal with the owner, Ricky Coates, to stay in a separate space next to his combination contracting, and wife, Heidi's, real estate offices. This space is away from the rest of the park and gives us lots of privacy...darn near perfect for a long spell!
So what's different here this time? Well, the first thing we noticed is that the foodie status of this place has risen even higher than when we last visited exactly three years ago (go back and visit that post if you like, dated July 6, 2010). There are even more dining choices, food stores, and where there were almost no decent bakeries, there are now many. Here's a sampling of restaurants we hit this time around that met our standards: Limones, Vinny's, Corner Kitchen, Fig, Plant, and Chai Pani. You can go to Tripadvisor.com or a similar site to get a brief description of any of them. Asheville is a center for the Farm to Table, local, and organic food movements. You can barely find even a small diner here that doesn't offer at least one, if not all three types of these foods. Groceries? Well, besides the big regional chain, Ingles, and lots of smaller organic stores, there is a new Harris Teeter (Kroger), Earth Fare, Fresh Market, Greenlife (Whole Foods), and a brand new Trader Joes. Asheville's the 11th largest city in North Carolina, but it acts like it's bigger than Charlotte! Bakeries! Where to begin? First, there's Dough

Homer Simpson would love their filled DOUGHnuts!

This place is a bakery, Italian eatery and gourmet foods shop, and a cooking classroom all in one. Their breads and pastries are heavenly. Next, and a local favorite, is Karen Donatelli, right in downtown. Their fancy French pastries would rival anything in the largest cities. You can sit down in the upscale dining area and also enjoy breakfast and lunch items. The West End Bakery supplies lots of restaurants with bread, but you can just walk in for one of their huge cinnamon rolls or other goodies, all made with organic ingredients. Oh, if you need a reason to look for more, there are several other relatively new ones around, most notably, The Well Bred Bakery in Weaverville, a few minutes north of town. Their selection is pricey but everything we've tried there, especially the fudgy chocolate cake, is terrific. What a change from three years ago when most of the places weren't here!There weren't many disappointments eating out, but one does stand out, The White Duck Taco Shop in the also fast gentrifying River Arts District. This place is 4 to 5 star rated on every websight. Being Texans and always homesick for a real taco, we had to try it. We shouldn't have. While the tacos weren't bad, they were nothing special...certainly, in both our opinions, not worthy of all the accolades. The fillings were okay, the sauces were (barely) okay, the tortillas were not even okay. Okay, you get it? Taco Bell anyone?

This is a two month stay, so what to do in our spare time, while not working? Side trips! We took a really fast slide down the mountain, to Charlotte. This is a booming big Southern city...full of energy. The downtown is loaded with walking areas, restaurants, and shops and is very vibrant. The most fun eating there was The Cowfish!

Sushi or Burger...you can't miss!

Yep, not a typo. It's half sushi bar, half burger bar, and all bar(scene). When we stopped in, late in the afternoon, it was packed! We drove down to Greenville, about sixty miles. Again, a pretty Southern town with an amazing park that runs through downtown and is a magnet for runners, walkers, bikers, bench sitters, tourists, and locals. We took a long two day tour to Raleigh Durham, by way of Winston Salem (light 'em if you got 'em!). The American Tobacco (LSMFT, anyone?) plant in Durham is now the focal point of an entertainment area, not far from the ballpark where the Durham Bulls (interesting stuff! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_Bulls ) play. The most interesting food find was a burger chain called BurgerFi http://www.burgerfi.com/. Some of you may already be aware, but if not, unless you live somewhere north of The Badlands, you soon will, because they're expanding rapidly out of Ft. Lauderdale. Quickly, a description? Take The Shake Shak burger, then try to improve it! Can't be done? You be the judge...that's all I'm going to say.

M A in Greenville's city park

We had a few memorable visits while living here for the summer. We met friends Curly and Eric in The Highlands, about half way between here and Atlanta, where they live. The Highlands area could easily warrant it's own post...most beautiful area! Also, we had an entire one weeker with brother and sis (in law) Ed and Pat, and friends, Jim and Dee, who all drove here from South Florida to hang out with us....and to celebrate Eddie's milestone birthday and our anniversary. We all moved in to a rent house outside town, and we had a blast showing them around! Our first cousins, Lenny and Judy even drove up from their home in Charlotte to run with us. It was a memorable week,

From left: Dee, Pat, Ed, Jim

and it went by in a flash. Our running buddies went back to Florida, so we had to find other diversions. Usually, if the topography and weather cooperate, that means hiking. We headed to Dupont State park, around 35 miles southeast, to hike to some wonderful waterfalls, three to be exact.

...at one our diversions

We hiked a couple of times along The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. The most eye catching was Craggy Gardens, around 35 miles northeast of town. From an elevation of nearly 5,000 feet the views and weather are great. We did lots of urban hiking too at many locations around Asheville proper, like both Arboretums and lots of other parks around the city and sometimes just walking the beautiful, old, tree lined neighborhoods. The cool weather makes me feel like being outdoors, and good hiking is everywhere in these mountains.

It's now the middle of September, and the days are getting shorter, the leaves here are just starting to turn their Fall shades of red, orange, and yellow, and we're thinking about our next set of journeys back to Northern Iowa for an in-warranty H2 check, back to home, Dallas, to get rid of some stuff, and then on to Florida for winter. First though, a parting shot of something homemade (one version of a MartyBurger), and a reason to actually stay home to eat. Later...

Michigan Is a State of Mind, Pt. 3, Detroit/Ann Arbor

2013-09-03T22:26:00.000-05:00

The Henry Ford Museum

What more can be written about the (in)famous city in Michigan that began the last century as one of the bastions of American innovations, "can do" attitude, and wealth, and started this century as an example of almost everything that can go wrong?! Well, quite a bit actually. We pulled in to the Wayne County Fair Grounds RV parking area on Sunday, the 30th of June. Again, the RV park situation is limited in this part of the country, and this place is located about mid way between Detroit and Ann Arbor ( More in depth on Detroit here ). Our main reasons for stopping here were The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, curiosity about the food scene, what one of the biggest college towns in the country's like, and Grosse Pointe (because the movie Grosse Pointe Blank http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ7AXKWmWOg is on our top 10 quirky films list, and we wanted to see GP up close). After we settled in, we headed over there. We drove through Downtown Detroit, and except for a few blighted areas which we find in most big cities, it looked fairly normal from a distance. We hit Lake St. Clair, which, with The Detroit River, separates The U.S. and Canada (Windsor's over there) and made a left, taking us way up along Lake Shore Road. The beautiful homes along the way mostly look like America's post WW2 affluence. (Oh, by the way, as I'm writing this chapter, I have WCSX/ 94.7 Detroit's...Classic Rock, tuned in on tunein on my Roku Box in H2. Why? More on that later!). You can ROCK while you're reading this! Click this. We stopped in downtown GP to pick some items up at the neighborhood TJ's (Gotta love all those abbrevs!!). While we were there, we stopped a couple of the locals working in the store and told them we were from out of town. What happened next was fascinating to us and an insight to the area. The two fellows stood there scratching their heads when we asked where we should head next to see the sights. After downtown, they both ran out of places! "What are you doing in Grosse Pointe?" one of them asked. Most any other place we've been, we can't get the locals to stop telling about all the places they want us to see. Here? Not so. They did manage to eek out a couple of ideas, but this was the start of what we now call the stuck culture we found all during our visit here. We began to notice that this place is where most of the Michigan clichés (and even though they are stereotypes, they're usually based on some reality) come from. Here are a few we noticed: Hair cuts/styling for men and women? Nay! (think Ted Nugent). From May until September...shirts are optional for guys just about anywhere. Rock and Roll means..The 70's! We actually liked this! The stations here are stuck there, and that's not a bad thing. Tune in WCSX, and you'll hear what we mean. Here's the best...fires! Picture folks with long, shaggy hair, guys with their shirts off, listening to Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, Mitch Ryder, and Grand Funk Railroad, all while sitting around a campfire...and it's 85 degrees out! Oh, here's one more, July 4th fireworks last at least until July 10th. They go crazy with elaborate backyard displays, and they keep it up until way after the holiday's finished. Must have something to do with...FIRE!

The quintessential Ted Nugent

We had heard about The Henry Ford Museum, and spent an entire day there. It's a world class collection of motorcar, transportation, and other technology. The grounds, museum, and Greenfield Village, a separate "town" with a collection of interesting and very old buildings, are well worth the time. Their website's even worth an online trip. http://www.thehenryford.org/
We spun (sometimes pretty quickly!) through Detroit neighborhoods like Southfield and Oakpark. We did a driveby of the Motown HITSVILLE studio, and on a Saturday, visited The Eastern Market. Now this place is worth a few words. The Eastern Market is one of America's oldest farmers markets and also one of the largest. It takes up a large area near Downtown Detroit, and is open six days a week. You can buy just about any type of food item you can imagine there. On the Saturday we visited we immediately saw, on entering one of the huge open air buildings, a couple of fellows handing out newsletters. They were saying things like, "don't you feel that our government needs to be changed?" Then we noticed more of them. They were all over the place. What were they handing out? The newsletter from the Communist Party. Made sense! Take your Communist views to places where the economic situation is worst. Try to grow it from there, and sow the seeds of revolution. It surely worked in Russia (right?)! In fact, that's exactly where I suggested to one of them he should go. Mary Ann had to pull me away from getting into a deeper discussion with him. The point is that we saw conditions in the city that looked like a bomb had gone off. There were people on corners all over, just sitting around with nothing much to do (just after we left Detroit, the city declared bankruptcy). It is really depressing. Some of what is going on there, in our opinion, has to do with the people there. Mary Ann had a conversation with a lady from the area who gave us the term "stuck." She used it as a way to define the culture there and some of her own children. Is it a reason why The American Automobile Industry tanked? The people seem to have a stubborn attitude..."This is how we've always done it. It worked before, it'll work now!" New ideas are not readily accepted, so the result is very evident in Detroit. It's going to take a lot of new, can do type thinking to get this part of our great country back in business.

Detroit past..Henry & Clara Ford's home in Dearborn

Detroit today..need a reservation?

A taste of Ann Arbor/Summer Music Fest

We headed west a few days later and toured around in Ann Arbor. It's a pretty nice middle-sized town with cozy looking neighborhoods. Most of the main U. of Michigan campus adjoins the downtown area so there's lots of good walking. Now we know some folks who'd disagree, but this place is no Madison, Asheville, or comparable Foodie town. Arguably, the most famous eatery in Ann Arbor is Zingerman's Deli http://www.zingermansdeli.com/?utm_source=mailorder&utm_medium=zinglink&utm_campaign=zcobbar. It's been written about on every food outlet you can think of. Our quick comment is: Go during off hours since the lines can be long, and don't split things because even though prices are pretty high, portions are not Jewish deli huge. Stick to those rules, and you may not be disappointed. On the bright side, their baked goods are good and their other restaurant, Zingermans Roadhouse http://www.zingermansroadhouse.com/?utm_source=deli&utm_medium=zinglink&utm_campaign=zcobbar, is really good (and worth the premium prices). They'll give you samples of their delicious bbq or other specialties, and every dish we tried was very high quality, farm to table wonderful!

Zingerman's Roadhouse

The Independence Day rush has long since passed , and we've chosen to head to the North Carolina mountains to spend the rest of the summer. Detroit's thermometer was tipping well into the 90's now, so we knew we'd overstayed our welcome. Our route was set to follow I-75 into Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and then straight for a revisit to Asheville, where the current high temperature in July is 73 degrees! We're on the way...

Michigan Is a State of Mind Pt. 2, Northern

2013-08-26T10:48:00.000-05:00

A Mushroom House in Charlevoix

I must say, we were really looking forward to our first visit to Traverse City. I must also say, we were pretty disappointed overall. We'd been hearing the hype from "celebrity" chefs and the like about all the great food and cool places to visit. Don't misunderstand, it's not a complete wash out, but this is not another Santa Fe or some other food centric place like it! We did the usual hard nosed studying of places to hit and tried quite a few...only to keep striking out to the point that our favorite regular stop was the local natural food grocery for cooking at home. Another interesting point, mostly for you fellow RV'ers is that RV parks are few, expensive, and many do not offer full hookups. We figured this out quickly as we began our trek up the Lake Michigan Coast. It's a very short tourist season. The parks have to make it on their open months, so they charge accordingly. We ended up staying the first five days in T.C. (Traverse City, as nick named by locals) in the RV and big rig lot at the new and beautiful Turtle Creek Casino/Grand Traverse Resort complex just outside of town. It was a cool way to test how long we can stay off the grid completely too. In other words, we were simply parked in the lot with no external power, water, or sewer...off the grid. Our amazing solar panel on the roof, which is the newest black quartz, high amperage output type, kept us with TV, lights, and other essentials the entire five days, without any effort. Our large capacity fresh and waste water tanks were not even close to being spent after our stay. We had a safe, attractive, and fun place to begin our visit, and the cost? Zero! (Although we did manage to spend a few fun hours in the gaming area). We moved over to a little RV park next, called Everflowing Waters. It's on the outskirts of Traverse City, and it gave us a chance to explore the whole Grand Traverse Bay area, which is really pretty large and diverse. We travelled up all the peninsulas to places like Suttons Bay, Leelanau, Glen Arbor, and then all way up the Western Lake Michigan Shoreline to Charlevoix and then Petoskey.

Sunset view from our RV park in Petoskey

The highly publicized Traverse City Cherry Festival was fast approaching at the end of June (by the way, there are NO cherries ready for picking in the entire area this early in the season...just another strange idiosyncrasy here. A cherry festival..without cherries!), so we had an extra reason to say of the area, "been here, done this." Besides, we quickly fell for the natural beauty and charm of the Petoskey area, and knew right away it's more our kind of place. It is the week before Independence Day, 2013, and we thought finding a good landing spot for H2 there was not going to be easy. There's an amazing little city owned RV park right on the lake, right in town, and as luck is often on our side, there was a space for us (and our buddies Craig and Linda for one last Michigan visit!). This place is sitting, as I said, right on Lake Michigan, and about three blocks from the center of downtown. Petoskey has to be experienced first hand. It's not enough to say "charming" or "historic" anymore. This town is still a summer playground for those lucky enough to have been left one of the homes that were built in the late 1800's to early 1900's, or just lucky to know this is one of the gems of the entire area and make it an annual summerstop. We saw cars from Texas, Arizona, Montana, Florida, Georgia, and other places..

Downtown Petoskey

lots of them. Not normal for the rest of Michigan. Until we got here our Texas plates got a lot of stares! We definitely felt like foreigners but not in Petoskey! It turns out that Earnest Hemingway spent quite a bit of time around here as a young man. His parents had one of those summer houses. Craig and Linda made another trip up from their home in Three Rivers to join us. We hit another couple of local microbreweries (they're EVERYWHERE, all over Michigan), and one has better brews than the next. Michigan's the fifth largest beer producer in the country, and the industry employs around 6,000 people in the state! We also dined at a few local eateries like Palette Bistro and The Twisted Olive, with their great lakeside views. We found a little bakery called Suzys Pies http://www.suziespies.com/, which is a small storefront in a strip center. Two ladies were there working, making scratch pastries and fresh fruit pies. What we tried, especially the Canadian Butter Tarts, were totally excellent! We took a day trip and a ferry ride up farther north to Mackinac Island. This one's on most peoples' hit list, including us, and the journey is quite worth the time. The iconic Grand Hotel there, made more famous from the movie "Somewhere in Time" actually charges an admission fee just to get close. I guess they figure it keeps the riff raff out. Fortunately, the rest of the island is free to explore. There are more ancient (for this country at least) homes and mansions and a very Disney like downtown area (it came before Disney though!), which must contain half a dozen fudge shops. We drove over the 5 mile long (still the fourth longest expansion bridge in the world) Mackinac Bridge to the little Upper Peninsula town of St. Ignace. That is the farthest north in Michigan we've travelled so far. Another trip, this time down, to another charming water town took us to Charlevoix. We specifically drove there to lunch at Roquette Burger Bistro, where everything, even their soda! is homemade. We also drove around in Boulder Manor, a unique neighborhood made up of whimsical stone homes (see the pic at the top of the story), mostly built during the 1930's. One of the more notable people who lived there was a fellow named Norman Panama, who wrote such famous screenplays as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and White Christmas. These homes are amazing, and the entire area is filled with them! They look like something that The 7 Dwarfs might have contacted their real estate agent about purchasing! (Snow White might have already been living in the neighborhood).

Some Lilac Festival revelers in Mackinac Island

We had mixed feelings about not climbing farther north into the U.P. of Michigan, but sometimes you have to set a limit, and this was it. The U.P. is a pretty vast geographical area, and we would have had to circle back around to head ourselves eventually into the eastern part of the U.S., so we made the decision to visit there sometime in the future, maybe when we head into Northern Wisconsin some time, coming over from the west.

Roquette does serious burgers!

Our week in Petoskey went by faster than even usual. We said goodbye to Craig and Linda again and headed H2 and Smarty south for our final stop in Michigan, Detroit and it's educated neighbor, Ann Arbor.

Michigan is a State of Mind, Part 1, South & West Michigan

2013-08-01T16:22:00.000-05:00

During our extended stay in Forest City for H2's punch list to be completed, it turned from late winter to full blown spring. The place literally exploded with colorful blooms overnight. Spring in Iowa is something to write songs about. The front porches of the old Victorian homes were lined with flowers of every imaginable color. In the yards, trees and shrubs in all shades of green, purples, white, reds and oranges, yellows, and even blues showed their brightest looks of the year.

Spring in Iowa

Since H2 was polished up, tightened, and reworked inside and out, it was time to head east towards Three Rivers, Michigan, and the home of our RVin' buddies, Craig and Linda. The drive from North to Southeastern Iowa and in to North Central Illinois was pretty uneventful. We were mostly paying attention to all the systems on board that had been tweaked, to make sure all was well. So far, it was. With Mary Ann captaining the rig now, I navigated us through the south extremities of the giant Chicagoland area and around Lake Michigan, through a small piece of Indiana, and then into Southern Michigan. We really had no idea what to expect. Mary Ann has never been here, and the only experience I have with this place is a couple of family visits to South Haven from St. Louis when I was around five or six. (Lots of Midwest families headed to the cool waters of the Great Lakes back in those days). Craig and Linda are in the rv business...they own a rep company that sells to many of the rv manufacturers, so they are well equipped to host H2 and us. We pulled in behind their lovely home in Three Rivers, about 40 miles south of Kalamazoo, to what they call The Barn.

H2 & Smart at The Barn

Actually, it's a very large metal structure that houses their motorhome, G2, an exact matching model of H2 except for the exterior and interior colors and a few minor variations of equipment. There is an additional 50 amp electrical hookup there for us, so we could stay with our friends, behind the house, which is actually about two or three acres and a wooded area away from them. We visited a little in their guest room and split it up by sleeping in our own bed in H2. Michigan boasts an abundance of micro breweries, but there's a small one in Northern Indiana that is actually our hosts' favorite. It's Iechyd Da (pronounced simply..Yacky Da). We tried some great Porters, IPA's, and Stouts here! Cheers!!

H2 with Cousin G2

A trip up to Kalamazoo took all of us one evening to a locavore restaurant called Food Dance. Most everything they serve is from farms in the area, and we were to find that Michigan is indeed a local farm to table kind of place. They've been doing it that way forever and don't make too big a deal of it. We also got to visit the Elkart, Indiana area, with probably the most concentration of rv suppliers and manufacturers in the country (and the reason our buddies live nearby!). The RV Hall of Fame Museum and complex is there and a special stop of interest to us, of course.

A Flight of beers from Iechyd Da

After several days of visiting, we left Craig and Linda temporarily, and headed over to the shore of Lake Michigan. Our plan was to see as much of the western side of the state as we could, since that would take us up to the UP (Upper Peninsula). South Haven, where some of my oldest vacation memories are from, is typical of many towns that line the western side of Lake Michigan. These small summer holiday places, with brick streets and small shops and restaurants, and a sizable marina with lots of sizable (some ocean going!) boats, have been entertaining people on holidays since the 1800's. In fact, a lot of the second homes there belong to Chicagoans, Detroiters, and other Midwest folks. One exception is a fireman we met from Dallas, whose family has had a lake house near Traverse City for years. He said the small house was probably worth $80,000 and it's small lot right on the shoreline...maybe another $1,000,000! We found a nice little off the radar rv park right in South Haven and spent a week there, enjoying the beach and using it as a launch area for a few trips south towards more lake towns; St. Joseph, Benton Harbor, and as far down as New Buffalo (which is almost a Chicago suburb). For one of these trips, we'd heard of a legendary bakery in Stevensville, Bit of Swiss (http://www.bitofswiss.com/) . Naturally, if there's a Danish or other goodie within reach...I'm there. Well, it turns out the legend is true. The chef has won awards here and in France for excellence, and this is probably the culinary highlight of our entire Michigan visit! The array of pastries there is mind boggling. Everything is made from scratch in the European tradition. I was like a kid in a pastry shop! Not since Chocolate Maven in Santa Fe have we seen the likes of this place. Our only regret is that we didn't take more for our freezer. Craig and Linda

Linda, Craig, and M A in South Haven

drove over to South Haven from Three Rivers on one of their inaugural cruises in their new coach. All systems tested well for them, and when we'd all seen all there was to be seen of South Haven, we headed in a caravan up to another cool lake town, Pentwater.

Bit of Swiss Bakery in Stevensville..mmmm!

Pentwater and other towns along the western side of the lake are idyllic places that reminded me of New England. Of all the places in this area, the little water town of Saugatuck has the most charm, but the others are close runners up, with B and B's, little bistros and bars, great walking venues along the water, and quaint little shops lining the perfect streets. As usual though, we wondered what these towns look like in the dead of winter! Again, Craig and Linda headed home, and we headed inland to Gerald Ford land, Grand Rapids. This place surprised us because it has a whole healthy and serious food thing going on. We ate at Trillium Haven (upscale, casual, total farm to table) and Marie Catrib's (http://www.mariecatribs.com/), a really eclectic mix. We shopped at a small but very well stocked store called Nourish, and we found some bread and buns from a bakery named Little Rooster (http://www.lubbersfarm.com/), which is a part of a farm that does healthy meats and eggs as well. Grand Rapids is a nice sized town, old but mostly well kept, and has a good feel. The east side is especially inviting, with neighborhoods that look like the picture book of The Quintessential Midwest.The people were warm and mostly very friendly. Again, think favorite son, Gerald Ford.

Trillium Haven

From Grand Rapids, we travelled back over towards the lake and drove through places like Ludington and Manistee. Our next major stop, towards the northern part, and our next posting, is Traverse City and beyond.

Heading To the Mothership

2013-06-28T10:32:00.000-05:00

It's the middle of April in Yuma, and most all of the Snowbirds have headed North. Like the geese, the Canadians and Yankees from places like Nebraska, Michigan, and Ohio, are settling in to their summer routines already. We, on the other hand, are hanging back, knowing from experience that Spring weather can be fickle, and we don't really want to get surprised by something unexpected, left over from Old Man Winter. The town of Yuma is shrinking down like a balloon losing air, so I finally decided that the right course for us would be to just head up I-17 to Flagstaff and hang a left over to The Grand Canyon, one of Mary Ann's favorite places, for her birthday! It's not too far north for bad weather, but just far north enough to get out of the heat that's already revving up it's summer engine in South Arizona. So like late leaving geese, we're on our way. We spent just three nights at The Canyon, long enough for some beautiful sunsets and long walks along the rim. It made M A's day a memorable one.

M A relaxin' on The Rim

The next stop along our intended route for a punch list visit at Winnebago World Headquarters in Forest City, Iowa, where H2 came off the line a few months earlier, is Gallup, New Mexico. We stopped off there for a quick visit to Perry Null Trading and our friend there, Barry, for a birthday gift. Nothing strikes Mary Ann's fancy more than a piece of fine American Indian jewelry. She walked out this time with a new bracelet and matching earrings (which she'd be happy to show you since she usually has them on!). The route, now along I-40 East takes us to very familiar territory, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Our stop in Albuquerque is where that fickle spring weather caught up with us. For the few days we were there, the winds peaked to gusts well over 50 miles an hour. We blew up to Santa Fe for about a ten day visit, just long enough for Mary Ann to work on her Yoga practice with her instructors, Tias and Surya Little, and for me to keep up my practice of searching for the best Danishes and Cinnamon Rolls in the country, which in Santa Fe are, in my opinion, at The Chocolate Maven. We did manage to pull me away from those long enough to hit a few of our favorite eating places there like Counter Culture, Joe's Diner, The Tune Up, and one new one for the list in this great Foodie town, Jambo Café. It's a really eclectic place that features African/Caribbean dishes with wonderful spices and very bright flavors. One of their drink offerings is a whole Coconut with the top sliced off, served only with a straw for the milk and a spoon for scraping the sweet coconut meat.

Chocolate Maven's Danish

.
Our trajectory next is to head right along the old Santa Fe Trail, to Dodge City, Kansas. As we got closer to Dodge City it became clear that some things don't change much with time. In the old days, it was the cattle drives along this ancient route that brought millions of head from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas into Dodge City for transport East by train. Now, the eighteen wheel drivers are the Cowboys, bringing the cattle along the same road to the feed lots and holding areas in the same places as a hundred and fifty years ago. Dodge City is still a major connecting point for the beef, pork, chicken, and other meat industries, and you see it the closer you get to town. You'd think, as we did, that such an iconic place...Dodge City, why the name itself wreaks of the Old West, would have it's past on display proudly. We figure that somewhere along the line, the city government lost it's way, and there is very little evidence of the old Dodge City we expected to find there. We had to dig around to see what was left of the original part of town and even then discovered that they had actually moved the iconic Boot Hill cemetery to another location! Not much here for the tourist or history buff in you.
After that disappointing stop, we headed to Wichita, where we caught up with cousins Wayne and Marilyn. They showed us around a town we had very little info on, and we were really very surprised. First, the place has some really good eating places. We weren't around long enough to sample a lot, but Tanya's Soup Kitchen stands out in the memory. Wichita also has a good array of grocery stores, where we were able to reload the rolling stock we like to have on hand. We hit Fresh Market and Natural Grocers, to name a few. Ok, back to that pesky weather situation mentioned earlier. Now we had to hang back for a while longer than expected in Wichita due to heavy SNOW falling in Northern Iowa (we're into the beginning of May!).
Once the storm finally cleared, we started the last leg of a fifteen hundred mile trek, now through Kansas City and Northwest Missouri and in to Northern Iowa. H2, Smarty, and we reached Forest City the evening before our May 6th appointment. We pulled into the Mothership at the Winnebago headquarters, headed for an empty parking space, hooked up, and waited for the next morning when we walked into the customer service department. What happened next is still astonishing to us. When you take your motorhome back to the manufacturer for service, you hope that the experience will be a positive one. After all, it is a major expenditure and in this case..our home. From the moment we

walked in the doors, the customer service exceeded our expectations! Just think, if you could actually take a new car back to the manufacturer for service...instead of a dealer. This is what we were doing. A really unique idea for most consumer items to begin with (no auto manufacturer allows such a thing, for example). We spent about ten days all together with the service people (at one point, even left and drove up to nearby Minneapolis to visit friends Sol, Sue, and family), and they did everything they could to totally complete our punch list of items and make us feel that all was perfect with our coach...Amazing! What a great experience, and now we were ready to head to Michigan in our upgraded, 100% good to go H2...Winnebago Really Rocks.

The 3:10 to Yuma

2013-06-03T18:47:00.000-05:00

When we finally headed east from I-15 in san Diego to I-8, out of the Southern California in mid March 2013, we set our clocks in H2 to arrive in Yuma, Arizona, at about 3:10. We were off by an hour or two, but after all..we weren't coming by train anyway! The drive along I-8 is an up the mountain, down the mountain affair that winds right along the U.S. Mexico border. The most interesting part is that almost the whole way, you see fields of produce like lettuces, asparagus, artichokes, and citrus fruits. I thought Yuma was a sandy border town, and it is once you get away from the agri areas that are visible from both sides of the highway, about as far as you can see! Once you get into town, there are refrigeration warehouses everywhere along the roads, with convoys of 18 wheelers waiting to pick up their loads at all hours of the day and night. It's a major industrial farming hub. We never realized the California produce machine extended this far into Arizona. Yuma is also a major snowbird area and is one of the most RV centric places we've been to. In winter the town swells to two or three times it's usual size. There are dozens of huge motorhome parks all over town which cater to the snowbird crowd, a large percentage from the Western half of Canada. Food wise, Yuma's a blank on our rating scale. The few times we actually tried to get something local were pretty much a disaster. One Saturday night we ventured in to a local pub that we noticed always had a big crowd. We stayed after looking inside at the crowd, even though our instincts told us to run. Lots of overweight, pasty looking folks who usually frequent places like this. Anyway...we stayed! I ordered a Kobe Beef burger. Yep, that's what it said right on the menu, and they wanted about ten bucks for it, so I fell for the marketing. When it arrived, it looked ok, until I bit into it...FE! It tasted like a cow patty burger! Mary Ann was smarter and stuck to a plain salad. She must have been hoping I'd say "Let's beat it out of here," but when I didn't, she hit her auto pilot and opted for something safe. The salad was a bunch of iceberg lettuce with a few wilted tomatoes and some bottled dressing...FE again. Well, we were hungry again the next day...and stayed close to our own kitchen! Even the local Mexican places were pretty dismal, at least by our standards. Their "Salsa" would best be described as tomato flavored water..yechh again.

What passes for Salsa..Tomato Water!

When we did finally venture eating out again, it was the local In N Out or Chipotle. If it hadn't been for a decent Frys Grocery and our imported stash from Whole Foods and TJ's, we would have needed to move out faster. As it was, we stayed in Yuma about a month until it began to get hot in April. We visited the old army fort, which was there for settlers moving west toward California in the mid 1800's. The Colorado is at it's narrowest there, so it was an easier place to cross to head west. There is also still a key Navy Air station in Yuma, and it is one active military base! Los Algodones

When not visiting the dentist in Los Algodones

is the little Mexican town on the other side of the border. It's famous because there are hundreds of dentists and pharmacies within a few square blocks in this little town. People come from all over the country, mostly for dental work at very discounted prices. No one we spoke with who had been there complained of shoddy medical care. In fact, most everyone said they'd been coming for years and they all had a "favorite dentist" to recommend. The best part of staying there were the amazing citrus fruits we ate almost every day. They claim that about 98 percent of our winter lettuces and a great percentage of citrus also come from this area to all parts of the country. We're still in the habit of slicing oranges or grapefruits every day, even though we've been gone from there for months. For you Date lovers, this is also the major source of almost all of the Medjool and other varieties available. A really fascinating place in this amazing country of ours!

M A among the Artichokes

Phoenix/Scottsdale

2013-05-20T11:41:00.000-05:00

The month spent in Scottsdale was interesting, to say the least. Mary Ann's glad she got time to spend time with her two best friends from high school, Rika and Ty. They were her cheerleading and best running buddies.

M A,and friends Rika and Ty

We had a great visit with my cousins, Wayne and Marilyn, while they were in town for The Fiesta Bowl from their home in Wichita, and we got to visit some other friends as well and an occasional dinner or movie with Don and Greta. As it turned out, we spent the better part of our visit to Scottsdale exploring the area on our own. So here are our thoughts.

Hiking right in town! (Phoenix)

Being mostly attracted to eateries that steer away from the norm, we found that we had to travel mostly away from the more touristy areas to get what we wanted. Almost all of the Phoenix area can be considered touristy...After all, it is a major winter destination. But it seems like the places we liked best weren't right in the middle of the ritzy/chi chi parts of town. That's ok by us! We found La Grande Orange Grocery and ended up going back several times, mostly for breakfast. It takes up the better part of an entire strip center. Based in Santa Monica, California, this Arizona outpost of the chain also includes the pizza place next door, a party space across the street, and the bakery inside the grocery part, which really isn't a grocery at all. It's more a take out/sit down, inside/outside bustling eatery that has to be visited in-person to be understood fully. The coffee and bakery goods are really above average. The negative is that lots of the salads and sushi are premade and looked to be sitting around a bit too long. The place has lots of character (that word again!). The next winner we found is Rusconi's American Kitchen. This place perfectly exemplifies what we mean by "weren't in the middle of the ritzy/chi chi parts of town." If choosing restaurants by outside appearance only or address is important to you, Rusconi's could be skipped. If you are adventurous enough to step inside, the interior is beautiful...and most important, so is the food. This chef run place produces dishes on par with any we've tried anywhere, and was the best meal we had in Phoenix, period. Table 56, Becketts Table, and Ncounter in Tempe were all pretty notable too. We did a little hiking, some shopping, and had a good time checking out some areas of Phoenix we hadn't seen before. We stayed at the Fort McDowell RV Park in East Scottsdale until January 2, 2013, and headed to Palm Springs for two weeks off the road, using some of our timeshare time and attending the Palm Springs International Film Festival for almost two weeks of new foreign movies....heaven for us (in fact, the photo used on our header is Mary Ann and H2 in front of one of our timeshares, The Palm Springs Tennis Club)! We saw movies from Germany, Ireland, France, Holland, Norway, and Sweden, and managed to get in a few games of tennis in between screenings too! We always try to connect with cousins Marilyn and Steve, who split their time between PS and their boat at Newport Beach. We had a good catch up visit at our Shadow Ridge timeshare clubhouse, again in between screenings. As far as food goes in Palm Springs, we've been so many times now we seldom eat out, but we did hit a couple of favorites. We always manage a meal at Tylers in downtown PS. 5 star burgers! (You'll probably see somebody famous there.)

Tylers Burger..mmmm!

Spencers, the restaurant connected to our timeshare, The Tennis Club, is always reliable for a wonderful high end meal, and we had a great lunch there. After two weeks in Palm Springs we moved down to Escondido, California, for a third bonus week at the Welk Resort,

...with aLawrence aWelka

which Mary Ann found at the last minute. While there, we mostly recuperated from the pace at the film festival by soaking in the hot tubs, sweating in the saunas, and walking the beautiful grounds. In case you're wondering, yes it's the same Welk as in Lawrence Welk !..."and a one, and a two!" He was a savvy investor and owned lots of good real estate..this being one of those locations, a real 4 star property. From Escondido, it was time to get back home to H2 (we were really ready to be in our rolling house!), and we headed to a town in California that many natives have never even heard of, Aguanga. It sits high in the mountains, northeast

Jojoba Hills pool

of San Diego, and we spent a month at an
Escapees park called Jojoba Hills. They have a nice clubhouse with a big pool, hot tubs, tennis courts, and shuffleboard courts. The closest town is about a 15 mile drive to Temecula. There's a Trader Joes, Sprouts, and a good Ralphs (Kroger) for food supplies, and it's big enough to have about one of any type store you need, so it was fun to be a bit off the grid in a nice location, but close enough to civilization. Anyone who tells you about perfect California weather though, must not be referring to Aguanga. We had some bitter cold nights, heavy rain, and strong winds during our month, most of February...punctuated by an occasional nice day. Aguanga is located at the high point of a triangle between L.A. and San Diego, so we took the opportunity to drive into L.A. a couple of times. We spent the night one time in Beverly Hills and ate at a couple of favorites there too, The Farm on Beverly Drive and Kate Mantilini on Wilshire.

Kate Mantilini..Beverly Hills

At the end of February, we headed east, toward a place we'd heard of, were curious about, and, as it turned out, had lots of misconceptions of. Stay tuned for our impressions of the western town of Yuma!

Rollin' On the Shakedown Cruise...Deming,NM & Scottsdale,AZ

2013-04-11T13:27:00.000-05:00

After staying in Dallas for over a month and finally getting to see some of our close friends, Ivan and Bunny, Chuck and Jan, and others, we even spent Thanksgiving with Mary Ann's Aunt Willie Mae at cousin Dee Dee's house and met up with lots of other long lost relatives.

They line up at Hard Eight..no wonder!

Since we were parked out in the "boonies," we really didn't get much time to catch up on the eating out food scene in Big D. I guess the news would be....BURGERS! There are new burger places opening as fast as you can blink. We managed to try a few of them, Hopdoddys (lots of similarities to Shake Shak in Miami and NY..except for one small thing, flavor!), Liberty Burger, Beck's Prime, and they were mostly all ok, but for the most part underwhelming. It seems the harder they try, the less interesting they get..to us anyway. We did get over to Hard Eight in Coppell. We'd heard about this Llano Texas style BBQ place but were skeptical from the start. We were wrong! This place does Hill Country smoker style BBQ as well as any down there we've been to..and do they line up for it!! If you're a true barbeque fan, this is not to be missed. Brother Eddie would go wild for it! We are still amazed at the myriad of food stores in Dallas. It rivals anything, anywhere we've been so far. We do really still miss having the incredible selection...there's Central Market, giant sized Whole Foods, Sprouts, Natural Grocers, Eatzi's (here's a scoop that almost never gets mentioned in Dallas foodie blogs...their grill has an "A" list burger!), and now TJ's (Trader Joes). Even some of the local Krogers are gourmet oriented stores due to the heavy competition. It's as if the grocery store gods all got together and chose DFW as their center of the universe! We kept our dueling convection cooktops going, and whipped up lots of serious dishes with all those great available foods. HEADLINE: "H2's New Galley Exceeds Expectations!"

There is a whole list of new restaurants we missed, and other than a quick bite at old favorites, R&D and La Duni in Highland Park, we'll have to wait for our next trip to check out more of them. We wanted to start working in the new galley in H2, so we did do lots of grocerying.
We took H2 to our dealer a couple of times to work out some "baby bugs," and finally on November 30th, 2012, we pulled out of the urban trailer park like place we'd been having to call home ( there are no really nice rv parks right in Dallas or many large cities, for that matter ), and headed out I-20 for West Texas.

M A captaining H2 on his inaugural run

The shakedown rollout was finally underway! Now, H2 is truly a rolling home on wheels. He not only sports the luxury amenities mentioned earlier, but has capabilities which allow us to stay off the grid for extended periods. We wanted to test this new capability on our first night out, so we cruised to just before where I-20 and I-10 converge and landed in Mary Ann's birthplace, Pecos, Texas. We found a more isolated spot in the local WAL-MART lot, asked the manager if it was ok to stay, and set up house. We turned on our powerful generator, cooked a nice dinner, watched a French movie on our new big screen tv( HEADLINE: H2's New Home Theater Lounge Exceeds Expectations"), took showers, and settled in for a good nights sleep....in the parking lot......at the WAL-MART! What a great country!
The next morning, we rolled out towards Deming, New Mexico. This time, we actually stopped at one of our Escapees Parks ( the folks based in Livingston, Texas, who are our full timer support for our snail mail, etc.) and hooked our shorelines up to the grid. Deming has a really neat combo movie theater/bowling alley called Starmax, and it was Saturday night after all, so after the movie we went and rolled a few games, all the while quoting quotes from one of our favorite movies, The Big Lebowski.
You see, it's a movie that has a lot of bowling....well if I have to explain, you probably won't get it anyway ( I'd suggest you watch it, if you haven't seen it*). By the way, Mary Ann's a natural bowler! The girl can roll! I, on the other hand, only know how to rock. A fun Saturday night in Deming....when in Rome. On December 2nd, H2, smoothly as silk, continued across New Mexico and into Arizona, until we reached our destination, The Eagle View RV Resort, at the eastern edge of Scottsdale. While we were setting up H2, our friends, Don and Greta, who live in Scottsdale, drove over to surprise us. We'd spend the next month there until just after New Years 2013.

H2 relaxing after his long run to Scottsdale

HEADLINE: "Three full days of hard driving, and H2's Ride Exceeds Expectations!" We'd hoped that it would be a significant tradeoff for our venture into the rv life. After more than three years (two full-timing), trading Harvey, a 32 foot C class coach sailboat, for the much larger and way more complicated H2, a big A class land yacht. The tradeoff, at least in this beginning, is a really good one.

"The Dude Abides!"

*DISCLAIMER...The Big Lebowski is NOT a family movie! But...The Dude really does Abide.

Finally! Smarty's new BIG Brother!

2013-03-20T15:46:00.000-05:00

Monty's (Healthy!!) Diner,Madison

It's March, 2013. It's been months since the last post, and there's BIG news...Smarty's new, BIG brother, H2! We were at Moose Creek Lodge in Victor, Idaho last summer, when we decided that it was time for a larger "house." We'd been kicking the idea around with our RV'n buddies, Craig and Linda, and after lots of discussions and weighing in on the pros and cons with them, while we were all sitting together at Moose Creek, we pushed the button. The new coach, a 2013 Itasca Suncruiser 37f, would give us two bathrooms, a much larger galley (with a dishwasher and washer/dryer), a true home theater set up in the lounge area, and lots of other amenities that would make full-time traveling and working on the road more comfortable. In fact, the idea was so compelling that Craig and Linda left us for home in Michigan and ended up placing their order for a Suncruiser soon after us!!

Biking The Mississippi!

It was going to take about four months to build, so we changed course, headed out of Idaho for Western Montana, Eastern Washington State, then back across Wyoming, and South Dakota. We made it to Forest City, Iowa, where Winnebagos are built, and stayed there until we had absorbed enough info to adjust our ordered rig one last time before it went on the assembly line. Then, we headed across Southern Minnesota and had a chance to visit with long time friend, Sol and his wife, Sue, from Minneapolis. We trekked into Southern Wisconsin and stayed in the Madison area long enough to find a bunch of total foodie places to eat, then turned South through Illinois, following the Mississippi, and ending up in Hannibal, Missouri. It was really educational and fun to hang out in Mark Twain Land for a few days, as we kept a steady course right into my home town, St. Louis. The place has really changed alot over the years...for the better! Downtown St. Louis is buzzing with activity. There are tons of cool restaurants, the two new sports fields, people hanging out in clubs at night, and the food! Italian delicacies on The Hill, Mavrakos Chocolates, fresh pretzles, healthy gourmand delights at Winslows Home on Delmar...too many others to mention. We rode our bikes along a path that heads from the iconic Gateway Arch, north along the river..for miles! We also got a chance to visit with our good friends, Denny and Karen. What a great revisit. Who says, "You can never go home again?"

Winlows Home, St.Louis

Next, since we were just killing some time waiting for H2 to arrive at our dealer in Dallas, we kept our southerly track and headed for Tulsa, where Mary Ann got to see her cousin, Jennifer and her husband Doron for a nice visit. Then it was right back to Dallas. We ended up waiting for well over a month, but finally the big day arrived, and we took Harvey up to our dealer, said goodbye and thanked him for almost three years of near perfect sailing! What a great RV! Hope he finds a good home with folks who appreciate him as much as we have. Moving from one rig to another is about as mind boggling as moving into a brick and mortar house. It took almost two full days, but we were finally ready to head out. Next stop..our maiden cruise toward Scottsdale, Arizona in H2!

The new galley