Rolling On One

I’ve read three books — wait! No! four! (finished ’em! My kids don’t believe I ever do that) recently, partly thanks to being on airplanes on my way to California and home from Utah, so it’s time for some reviews.

1. Airplane reading, A Fatal Thaw by Dana Stabenow. It’s a mystery story set in Alaska. The heroine has a few too many lucky narrow escapes for plausibility, but I liked the book for having lots of believable Alaska culture in it. Probably any other of the authors Kate Shugak (that’s the detective/heroine) stories would be about as good.

2. More vacation reading, Lost Legends of New Jersey by Frederick Reiken. Arlene read it on the plane going and liked it not only because it’s really well-written but also because she grew up in New Jersey near where the story is set. There are references to lots of places we know in it. But mostly, it’s really well-written and all the characters are very believable and most are likeable. A really good book. I was totally glad I read it.

3. Something Arlene got from the library, The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. McCall Smith (the Newton library has his stuff filed under “M”, not “S”) wrote the Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series, of which there were no more that Arlene hadn’t read, so she tried something else of his. This one is really more about Edinburgh than about a mystery, the way those are really more about Botswana than about a mystery, and is also very likeable.

4. I know I said three, but I really finished four books. The last is The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute. I’ll let you google it for a review if you want. It’s a lot tougher, grittier, more violent (which is pretty strange to say — the Stabenow had lots more bodies in it, but you have to sort of ignore them in a mystery story, where you figure it’s all make-believe. This one has fewer bodies, but the violence is more motivated and believable). It’s more the kind of book you should read to learn from than something you really enjoy. It has totally credible characters and some of the least erotic sex scenes you’ve ever come across (not that that’s normally a reason for choosing a book). Another really good book but harder to deal with than the other three.

5. And now I started The DaVinci Code, which I got in the Salt Lake airport and started on the plane home. It reminds me of Tom Clancy books, which keep me engrossed even though I don’t think they’re believable nor well-written. It’s very imaginative, I have to say, but not as fast-paced as I expected. I mean the characters may be running at top speed, but the book has lots of flashbacks and explanations that make the pace of the book entirely different from the pace of the action. Which is OK, too. Also like Tom Clancy, he doesn’t have all his facts straight. Clancy had one character working all night to translate a computer program from Fortran into Ada, just so Clancy could show you that he knows all about hi-tech computer languages. I can tell you that nobody is going to get that working right in one night, and there would be no reason to do it, anyway. Dan Brown is a little over the top in his description of the importance of the golden ratio (PHI), which is an irrational number and only approximated in anything found in nature. Also I can’t believe all those big name people were members of a particular secret society, as the preface says. What else do secret societies do to attract new members than claim that big name people were their members? There’s no way to prove it one way or another — the people kept their membership secret, and the society kept the members secret, so the society can claim anyone from the past that they want. Bah, humbug. This book is not great literature, and I don’t even think the characterization is up to any of the other four. But I’m still reading it.

6. And I still haven’t finished Everything is Illuminated.

These Naked Ladies were growing right outside our motel:

See, no leaves at all, just the flower stalk. OK, so that was another slightly mean trick to play on people using search engines.

The woman running the Gualala Country Inn told us that the best place for tide pools was McKerriker state park north of Fort Bragg. I hadn’t been planning to go that far north, but Arlene wanted to see tide pools and redwoods, so we did.

I personally have never understood why the Big Sur area is more famous than the Mendocino County coastline. I think the Mendocino coast is more scenic. Rocks like these are a common sight on the little beaches down the cliff from the road.

One of the few lighthouses along the coast is this one at Point Arena

Twenty miles north of Fort Bragg the road leaves the coast and goes through the coast range of mountains. There was twenty miles of very winding road that took most of an hour. Gasoline prices had been sky high, I mean up to $3.59 for a gallon of regular, along most of the Mendocino coast, but I felt that you’d have to pay me a lot to drive a tank truck along that road.
When we came out of the hills onto a less winding road in Leggett, we saw a sign for Drive-Thru Tree Park. I was ready for a break. There was a $5 admission charge to get in to where you could drive through a redwood tree. I felt that the park should have paid these people just to have the 1954 Chevy on the premises. It felt like a mid-twentieth century tourist trap — the tunnel had been cut through the tree in the 1930s — and this car was just perfect for it.

People behind us asked the woman running the gift shop whether drivers ever got stuck in the tree. She said, “Very rarely. They usually come to their senses and back out.” There was a big pickup a few vehicles behind us that had to do that. Our rented Corolla was no problem.
We drove halfway along the Avenue of Giants, a 32-mile stretch of road through redwood forest. I didn’t try to take any pictures; you have to be there to believe the scale.

We drove back south to Willets, found a motel, and had too big a supper at a Chinese restaurant called the Yum Yum Tree.

The company I work for has customers who do pretty fancy mechanical engineering. One of our customers adds their products (designed with our software) to Corvettes to make extra-powerful cars. They brought a couple of them over yesterday to show off. I’m more of a basic transportation, “my other car is a bicycle” guy than a car buff, but it was worth a look.

The red one is a production Corvette with Callaway tuning that gives it something over 500 horsepower and a top speed about 197 mph. The grey one is more of a concept car of which only 30 were made, with a few fewer horsepower than the other and a top speed more like 191 mph. However, the grey one has a manual transmission as opposed to the automatic that the red one has, which gives it a three-tenths second better 0-60 time.

Say, here’s another kind of sheep festival, more than a little out of the way:

The Trailing of the Sheep in Ketchum and Hailey, Idaho.

I imagine I picked up the card about it at the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada. I think there will be less yarn and lots more sheep than at the Maine Fiber Festival. But look at that website and wish!

My knitting is on a break for several days. The back of the knuckle of my left index finger got between a sledge hammer and a wooden stake that I was driving. That description makes it sound worse than it feels, but it looks pretty bad too. I saw my doctor this afternoon and he thinks it’ll be OK, but it needs a few days of rest and lots of bacitracin ointment. I was just getting going on a wide band of Fair Isle work for Matt’s sweater, too. Maybe I’ll be able to do more by Thursday or Friday.

Arlene has always wanted to see good tide pools with things like sea annemones in ’em. We asked at the visitor center where we could find some at Point Reyes. The rangers looked at the tide tables and told us that we were probably too late that day, but that there was a chance at Sculptured Beach, which was a few miles drive and then a two mile walk down the Laguna trail. We decided to try it.

As we were starting to turn left out of the road to the visitor center I saw some birds on the road to the right. It was a group of a half-dozen California quail. We were pretty excited, because we don’t see them in the east. After that auspicious start, we continued to the trailhead. Almost as soon as we started walking I said “hold up!”. On top of a bush twenty feet away was this guy:

I walked closer and closer, trying to get the best picture I could (this was the third try) until the bird decided I was too close — and he wasn’t alone! Another dozen quail burst from cover to get away from us when that one did. We kept seeing quail along that trail, especially close to the shore, where a couple of dozen of them were having a good time around water dripping from a drinking water faucet.

We didn’t find any tide pools, but there were lots of shorebirds along the beach.

By the time we got back to the car we figured we had seen over 100 quail and put 5 miles on our shoes.

In the afternoon we drove up to the northern end of the national seashore to the tule elk refuge. Hank had warned us, “Don’t talk to the elk,” because this was elk mating season and the males were likely to be short tempered. We walked about a mile down the trail without seeing anything, rather disappointed because the rangers had indicated that the elk were pretty much a sure thing on that trail, until, in a lovely green glen on the Tomales Bay side of the trail we saw this:

The animals were pretty far away, but close enough that we had a better look at them than you may think from the picture. We didn’t mind being that far from large, possibly aggressive animals; in fact, we thought it was almost the ideal distance.

We got back to the visitor center a little before it closed. Now that I had seen the elk, I wanted to get an embroidered patch of elk to put on some future jacket. On the other side of the visitor center parking lot we walked on Earthquake trail. It’s as much right on the San Andreas fault as you’re going to get. There’s a fence there that was pulled apart when the earth opened during the 1906 earthquake. It was interesting, but by now the earth isn’t gaping open and you have to believe the signs and use your imagination.

We had made lodging reservations at the Gualala Country Inn, about a three hour drive north of Point Reyes. It didn’t look far on the map, but a lot of the road is very slow, and I mean as slow as 15 mph going around some curves where you don’t want to drop a couple of hundred feet down to the ocean.

There are no cities on the coast between San Francisco and Fort Bragg, and few towns of more than a couple of hundred people. We stopped in Tomales to look for food in a wonderful old general store, Diekmann’s:

Most of the landscape is dull green trees and dull yellow dried grass, but it’s brightened by some electric pink lilies that lots of houses have in their gardens. Arlene noticed them first in Mill Valley and asked several people about them. They’re remarkable because they have no leaves, just flower stalks. They’re huge, about the size of amaryllis. One person said they’re called Pink Ladies, and another called them Naked Ladies (take that, searchers!). I’ll put a picture in the post for Aug. 29, because I took the picture then. The other bright spot in the landscape is California poppies, growing wild all over.

We got to Gualala around 8:15 and hustled off to dinner — the innkeeper told us that everything would close at 9. We had a chunk of smoked salmon and a bucket of ribs at the Bones roadhouse, a Texas-style barbecue place that’s decorated with license plates from almost all 50 states. The waitress was pretty busy and kept saying “thanks for waiting”, but we felt we had to thank her for waiting for us to get into town.

Two great place names in one post title! Woo hoo! I’ll put them up with any place names anywhere. Add Ogalalla (Nebraska) and Canajoharie and Tonawanda and Cheektowaga (NY) and you’re well on your way to a top ten.

It reminds me of a song by a Canadian folk group, Stringband, “Mail Sortin’ Man”, in which John Henry meets the Canadian postal codes and stakes his life in a contest against the steam sorter. The steam sorter goes W1A 7Z5, and John Henry goes Honey Harbor, Ectobicoke, Parry Sound, and with his last gasp, Moose Jaw!

I’ve never found a lot to see along I-80 in Nevada between Reno and Elko. This trip wasn’t an exception. We set the cruise control to 75 and kept the car in our lane, and that was about it until Elko.

Two years ago we drove from Tahoe to Pocatello in one day, with a stop in Elko to see the Western Folk Life Center. We looked for it again today, without any directions. I was very proud of myself for taking the most direct route to it.

The Western Folk Life Center in Elko was having its gallery renovated so all we saw there was the gift shop. We got three CDs and played them in the car — why not take advantage of the CD player in a rental car? — on the way through Jackpot up to Twin Falls. One is all songs, Wylie and the Wild West. I’ve heard of the song “Strawberry Roan”, about a bronco-busting cowboy who finally meets a horse he can’t ride, but I never heard the song itself before that CD. The other CD has highlights of the cowboy poetry gathering at the folk life center from a couple of years ago. The gathering has made Elko something of a cultural center in the intermountain West ranching community, way out of proportion to anything you would expect of a city of 16000 people.

The Northeastern Nevada Museum was open, though. It had interesting displays about the Basque culture of the area, native american basketry and culture, and the history of the area. Most impressive was a collection of and stuffed animals, an incredible collection donated by a man who had hunted all over the world. It may be an exaggeration to say that if a big game hunter has hunted an animal, there’s an example in that museum; but it’s not much of an exaggeration. The display would be impressive at the American Museum of Natural History or the Field Museum; it’s mind-boggling in Elko.
Lunch, two big omelets with potatoes plus coffee, at a diner with a Basque name cost barely more than two small soups and two coffees had in Yuba City the day before. There was no non-smoking section in the restaurant, but there was a real local feel. It seemed to be the kind of place that had a lot of regular customers, ranchers who came in once every two weeks when they came into town for supplies and stopped there for lunch, with waitresses who knew who was going to want a pitcher of iced tea.

We got off I-80 in Wells and went north on US 93 through Jackpot NV to Twin Falls ID. We looked for a snack in Jackpot, less a town than a development of three casinos built just over the state line to attract business from Idaho, but didn’t find anything we wanted. In Twin Falls we got dishes of ice cream at Shake and Go, a take-out milkshake joint that was really just what we wanted. We phoned my mom from there. She was delighted to hear that we were already in Twin Falls. Next stop, Pocatello.

Arlene’s Aunt Lee visited us in Maine this weekend (Sept 9-10). Arlene’s brother Ira and his wife Greta, and Greta’s dog, were also with us.

That’s a dog under that blanket, a little carefully groomed Shi-Tzu named Shanie Tikva. I sort of thought that pet photos are obligatory on blogs and since we don’t have a pet, Greta’s would have to do. Here’s Shanie (that’s the same Yiddish word as in “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”, bei the way) in a more alert moment. How about those eyelashes! Well, they don’t show up so well in that photo; you’ll have to take my word for them.

Lee went to work cooking blintzes for Sunday breakfast and apple crisp for dessert for afternoon tea (beccause it was almost noon by the time we all finished the blintzes, so we had an afternoon meal around 4:30).

Blintzes are folded-up, refried pancakes, mostly with cheese or sometimes fruit filling. Here’s the recipe:

Cheese Blintzes

Batter:
3/4 C sifted flour
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 C milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten

Filling:
1/2 lb thick curd cottage cheese or Farmer cheese or ricotta
1/2 tsp salt
small amount beaten egg
(suggestion: add little cinnamon & sugar also)

Mix flour, sugar, and 1/2 tsp salt in small bowl. Add milk & eggs, saving a little egg to be mixed into cheese.
Mix well to make thin batter. Combine filling ingredients in a separate bowl.

Fry batter on one side in small buttered frying pan to make blettlach (“leaves”), basically like somewhat undercooked crepes. You get just one blettle at a time in a pan. They should be about six or seven inches in diameter.

When all batter is used, fold blintzes individually: with uncooked side down, put a tablespoon or two of filling in the middle of each, fold opposite sides over, then fold ends over. Fry, overlapping side down first and then on other side, in buttered saucepan. You can fry as many blintzes at a time as will fit in the pan. I don’t seem to have a picture of the folded-up blintzes; this is still the blettlach cooking phase.

Serve hot, with cut strawberries or sour cream for topping.

And the apple crisp recipe. Nicole is Lee’s granddaughter. She learned this recipe in home ec class in high school:

Nicole’s Apple Crisp

Preheat oven to 375. Grease 8 x 8 inch pan

4 medium apples (about 4 cups sliced)
2/3 C packed brown sugar
1/2 C flour
1/2 C rolled oats
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg
1/3 C margarine, softened

Put sliced apples into baking pan. Combine remaining ingredients. Mix until dry & crumbly. Sprinkle over sliced apples. Bake 25-30 minutes. Serve warm. Good with ice cream.

Optional: 1/2 C chopped nuts and/or 1/4 C raisins may be added.

We used Cortland apples, fresh off the tree. It was very satisfactory!

We drove out to visit the house I lived in when I graduated from high school.

From there, we went out to Point Reyes National Seashore. I had been there once when I lived in California. I don’t think my family did anything that time except drive out there as a day trip.

This time we first walked down a little trail near the visitor center to a reconstructed native village of the Coast Miwok culture. There wasn’t much at the village except a couple of dwellings (made of redwood bark in a teepee shape and similar storage structures, but there were lots of acorn woodpeckers flying all around the area.

Next we drove out to Point Reyes proper. It was a good ways (20 miles of winding roads?) from the visitor center. The main idea was to see the lighthouse there:

Of course, you’re entitled to a picture of the coast looking north from the parking lot for the lighthouse. If you look at the picture on the NPS web site linked above, you’ll be able to figure out just where I was when I took this picture.

You have to walk a few hundred yards from the parking lot to see the lighthouse, even if you have a really nice car.

What I didn’t tell you yet is that there are 308 steps leading down to the lighthouse from the end of the road. Yes, we went all the way to the lighthouse and had a nice chat with the ranger on duty there. When we ran into her the next day at the visitor center, she was telling a colleague that earlier that morning she had handled some leaves that a tourist asked her to identify before realizing that they were poison oak.

Most often, lighthouses are built as high above sea level as practical (with towers, of course, silly) so they can be seen as far away over the earth’s curvature as possible. Point Reyes has a high fog so much of the time that the light was built low to be visible below the fog.

There are places to rest on the way back from the lighthouse. The lighthouse keepers had to make this trip several times a day, and this is one of the windiest places on the coast.

Hank and Ernie had recommended that we stay at the Olema Inn, very close to the visitor center. It’s pretty small, only six guest rooms, but has one of the best restaurants in the San Francisco area (and, dudes, that’s saying a lot!)

It’s probably not fair to say that you can see a quarter of downtown Olema in that picture. More like ten percent of it. Off to the left at the intersection is a nice little boutique called The Epicenter. Olema was the epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Tomales Point, at the northern end of the national seashore, is the northernmost land point of the tectonic plate to the west of the San Andreas fault.

We saw several guys dressed similarly at breakfast in the lobby of our motel in Winnemucca, Nevada, wearing T-shirts with a skull-and-crossbones logo with tommy guns for the crossbones, and the words “Panaca Jane”. When we got home I tracked down Adventures of Panaca Jane
with Google and found that the polite young man who offered Arlene his place on the lobby couch (so she could sit down to eat breakfast) was probably an elite forest fire fighter. The link I gave you will get you to several pictures of fire-fighting aircraft, including this one which I copied from that site so you could see the logo:

Panaca is a town in Nevada, maybe 100 miles north of Las Vegas, on US highway 93 but not anywhere near any interstate highway.