Rain, rain go away... to Texas (but skip the Mississippi River area)!

We've been in New Hampshire for barely over a week now. The weather when we drove in last Thursday wasn't terrible - thin clouds with an occasional light drizzle and a bit of sun here and there. Nice, mild temperatures in the 70's; cooling off at night, but not getting too cold - an extra blanket while you slept would suffice without really having to turn on the heat.

It was a welcome change for us, coming up from Texas where we've been in drought conditions for a few months already and days were creeping into the 90's with high humidity, the air conditioner becoming a sad necessity and open windows becoming a thing of the past. It was downright beautiful here!

Friday was even more lovely, a bit more sun early in the day, with the clouds getting thicker and darker later on, and actual rain falling instead of just the light mist the clouds had been producing. The trees were barely past the "just budded" phase, and few leaves had actually uncurled. Some trees weren't even sporting a touch of the new-leaf green yet. Spring flowers bloomed everywhere or were getting ready to.

Daffodils and tuplis

White-flowering tree

Forsythia bush

The weekend brought more rain, enough for there to be flood warnings for the area we are in. The weather got not only wetter but also colder and it became necessary for us to turn on the furnace in the RV. You can see some of the changes the rain has brought - these pictures were taken 1 week apart.

Leaves unfurling

The brook behind Ed's parent's house

To become more familiar with packing and unpacking and setting up the RV, we actually left Ed's parent's yard in Glen for a few days to stay at a campground. We've had a lot of luck with KOAs so we decided to stay over at the Chocorua KOA, aka the Chocorua Camping Village.

The site we were given overlooked Moore's Pond. We had electricity, water, sewage and cable, which wasn't totally necessary since we could even receive tv signals via the antenna (a step up from the yard, where the antenna picked up zero channels). The KOA had superb recreation ammenities, too - a fenced-in dog park area with an agility course, canoes and kayaks to rent, fairly extensive nature trails, and was close-by to one of my favorite mountains in the area, Mt. Chocorua.

Moore's Pond, as seen from our RV

While we would have been pleased with a few days of nice rain... we're over it (as I'm sure the rest of New England is, too). The front stalled and the weather stuck around. We didn't get to really enjoy any of the recreational activities at the campground. It poured - really poured - almost the entire weekend and into Tuesday. It's another Friday and still no sun. Not particularly any forecasted anytime soon, either.

We did try out the dog park (in the rain when it wasn't quite pouring) and watched as Lu did her best to please us and slip-slided up and down the majority of the agility course (we skipped the see-saw, she is terrified of it). The rest of the time, we spent hunkered down in the chilly RV.

Yes, chilly RV. I mentioned above that we turned on the furnace... Which is all well and fine until the thermostat becomes tempermental. This is what we had to do to get the heat to come on:

Despite our troubles and the weather, I quite enjoyed our stay at the campground for one primary reason... Loons. I would fall asleep at night listening to their haunting wails and wake up in the morning to the same. I caught sight of a pair close to the shoreline at Chocorua Lake, too.

I have always been a birder, but never had much experience with loons until a boyfriend in college indicated he liked them. A loon center had just opened in a nearby town, and I excitedly made him take us there during a visit, only for it to result in much disappointment as we saw and heard no loons. It wasn't until after I graduated college that I actually heard loons for the first time, while working for a small computer company out of the boss's house in Center Harbor. The house overlooked a pond and we worked the night shift, so we frequently heard loons yodel throughout the summer.

The sounds birds make at night captivate and haunt me and hold a dear place in my heart. Play me the hoots of the great horned owls that live behind our house or the echoes of a loon wailing across the water, and I'll fall asleep happy. No matter how much it's been raining.

C is for...

Today was a day full of Cs. C is for...Crochet, Chef's Market, Cookie, and Chinese! In the morning, I spent some time working on a crochet project... More on that later as it will likely be more of a focus in a later post.

For lunch, we went for something a little more artisan and decided to go to the Chef's Market in North Conway. We've been here before and were glad to notice they were still open when we were in town yesterday. Supporting local chefs is very important to us, so we'll likely stop here again while we're in the area. Their food is seriously good.

Today's soup special was a lemon chicken soup. Ed jumped on it because he loves the Greek chicken soup we get at Zorba's back in Texas. He was hoping for something similar. While it wasn't nearly as lemony as Zorba's soup, it had a slight lemony zing - it just wasn't the focus of the dish. But the soup was excellent. Big chunks of chicken, a slightly thick broth full of herbs, celery, and onion, and overall very flavorful.

Next, Ed had the mushroom pie with a red pepper sauce, and I had a risotto cake and the quiche du jour. The mushroom pie was very thick, so I was a bit dubious of it. My fears were completely unfounded and the sauce served with it had an excellent flavor and left a slight burn on the tongue. Ed put it on everything. The risotto cake was good - and is how risotto should be served, I have decided. Having had green garlic risotto at the Noble Pig dinner recently enough to be able to compare, I find I do prefer the drier cake with a slight crunch to it. Finally, the quiche ended up having basil and thin tomato slices in it. The basil domniated largely because it could be tasted before even making it in the mouth, so it was extremely fresh. The red pepper sauce was nice on this and added to the flavor.

After lunch, we ran a few errands to pick some items we've needed or felt would make things easier on us in the RV... different coat hangers so my dresses don't end up on the floor, screws to put the license place on the front of the rv, etc. And a small food shopping trip for milk, hamburger, and cookie-making supplies.

As anyone close to me (or that is a coworker) knows full well, baking cookies is one of my favorite past times. My close family and friends receive boxes of cookies at Christmastime, when I make about 15 different types of cookies where a simgle batch will make anywhere from a mere 3 dozen cookies (these recipes get doubled) to a whopping 20 dozen cookies. During the year, I'm not quite so crazy, but before I shifted to working from home part of the week, my coworkers would often find themselves putting on a few extra pounds every few weeks.

So of course I was bound to try baking in the RV. It came equipped with a microwave/convection oven/2x oven combination, so there were lots of options to try out. One thing we didn't realize is that even when on either of the oven settings, it would rotate the dish. That doesn't work so well with a quarter sheet pan, so the first couple of batches, there was lots of clanking as the pan bumped against the sides of the oven without rotating. It didn't seem to impact the baking much, just might take a little more time.

Since the oven is so small, I could only bake 5 cookies at a time. I used a pretty standard recipe for me, nothing too fancy - basic chocolate chip cookies. Taking roughly 10 minutes to bake per sheet, 5 at a time takes FOR-EVER! I had the patience to make it through 6 bake cycles, and still had enough dough left for 4 more. I put the rest in the freezer for another day.

Here is a picure of the results, from left to right:
1. Cake pan, convection setting, 11 minutes
2. Cake pan, 2x setting,  8 minutes actual
3. Quarter sheet pan, 2x setting, 6 minutes actual
4. Quarter sheet pan, convection setting, 9 minutes actual

Overall, I think I liked the first batch best, which was actually #4 from above. They spread nicely and took a reasonable amount of time to bake, and came out with the nicest texture combination of crunchy/chewy. For my first time using either style of oven, I think I did pretty good. I'll be getting a round pizza pan to bake on instead of the quarter sheet pans, though. The cake pan sides were just too tall and wouldn't let the cookies spread.

One thing I did learn from this is the more runs through, the hotter the oven runs. The later batches (batches 5 and 6 were both convection and came after #1 above), came out very dark and very crunchy (moreso than #1), even though I had reduced the bake time.

Finally, after we finished nomming on cookie experiements, we decided to get some real food. Any time we're in the north east, we make it a point to get a few kinds of food that you can really only get here. This includes fast food Chinese.

The pork fried rice is very different - it gets rinsed and fried nice and dark, and has bean sprouts, onions, and egg... none of those nasty peas and carrots they feel the need to add in Texas! And chicken fingers - tender pieces of chicken in a fluffy batter that only has crunch on the outside. Not the same as what we get in Texas. And lastly, duck sauce. Lovely, just the right amount of sweet and slightly thick. I smother my chicken fingers and rice in it. Yum!

I go to bed tonight with a very pleased tummy.

Omy Nommy Stuff

Let me make one thing clear... Ed and I are foodies. We both love food, and can adjust our expectations according to where we are eating. We aren't overly picky - McDonald's burgers certainly aren't as good as, say, the green chili topped Bulldog Burger from The Standard Diner in Albuquerque, but we know better than to make that sort of comparison. McDonald's burgers tend to be fairly consistent, with the exception of one in Grants, NM, so they are often what we settle for while on the road.

When we've made the drive to New England in the past, our foodie nature devolved significantly, and our diet typically looked something like this:
[unless otherwise specified, "soda" means either Dr Pepper or Mountain Dew]

Day 1: Water, stuff from the cooler in the car (hard boiled eggs, cheddar cheese, crackers, celery and carrot sticks with ranch dressing, bologna, soda), dried papaya and pineapple
Day 2-4: cereal bar, gas station coffee, Munchos, Snickers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, McDonald's, beef jerky or stick, sweedish fish, gummy bears, Cracker Barrel

You can see how quickly we deteriorate to scavenging from the gas station and making frequent McD's stops. We aren't getting salads, either - it's burgers, fries and chicken nuggets. Even if the food in the cooler is still cold and good by day 2, it doesn't tend to get eaten. Day 1 is also an improvement over what it originally was, and we added in the Cracker Barrel visits when we discovered some very close to the highways we frequent.

The luxury of not just a refrigerator, but a stove and convection oven/microwave and constant access to water has significantly improved our road trip menu. While we still made some gas station food purchases, we made only one real McD's stop (second was coffee only), and we still ate at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast one morning. Our menu diversified significantly and was more healthy in general, but still doesn't show that we really are foodies. This is a close approximation of when we ate what:

Day 1: water, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese hot dogs with Lipton herb noodles, mandarin oranges, Starburst, chocolate wafer pieces, beef stick
Day 2: water, soda, orange juice, cheese hot dogs and garlic mashed potatoes, Munchos, beef stick, banana, mandarin oranges, bologna and cheese sandwiches, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, nachos with salsa verde
Day 3: breakfast tacos, orange juice, water, soda, cheese hot dogs and broccoli alfredo noodles, iced tea, likely something else I can't recall because I was too tired

Day 4: Cracker Barrel, yogurt with granola and blueberries, banana, McDonald's and Sandella's, Dryer's Kona Coffee ice cream cone, soda, McD's coffee, mandarin oranges
Day 5: Dunkin' Donuts donuts and coffee, mandarin oranges, banana (we stopped by lunch, but I still had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich)

We used the stove while on the road but not the oven/microwave. Probably a good thing we weren't relying on it, since when we tried to make some queso today, it wouldn't work.

For miles upon miles, we suffered through listening to the oven squeaking incessantly with every little bump. It was not installed very well and thus had rattled itself loose from its brackets and even came unplugged. Neither of us can recall exactly when the racket started, or when the lights on the display went out, so we're not sure quite where we were when it came free. It absolutely was loose the entire way across Indiana, though.

Ed performed a bit of surgery, brandished a screwdriver and yanked it out of its home. He doesn't think he can fully fix the seating it lives in, but it has been plugged back in and put in its place. It appears to work, but we have yet to actually use it, so we'll have to try it out for cookies later in the week or something! I expect as we become used to cooking in our new kitchen, that we'll become more ambitious with our meals. But for now, I'm enjoying my chips and queso and salsa whil sipping a birch beer from Zeb's.

Fun with Maps

So this is not our first time to make the drive from Austin, TX to Boston, MA/Conway, NH. Probably more like our... fifth time now. Enough times at any rate that we're familiar enough with the roads to not need the maps much anymore other than for finding alternate routes or verifying the road we'll be on next. Here's the route we typically follow:

We both have iPhones and have come accustomed to navigating via the maps on the phone. As such, we neglected to pack a map book this time, whereas we normally would grab our books from HOG or KOA, or the ReallyBigBookofStateMaps we have. As great as the phone is, we both wished we had hard copies of maps - even if you can't zoom in for more detail and local town street names.

If it had been just another trip, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But here's why it was:
 
You see, we were fervently hoping for rain in the Austin area. All those folks praying and praying for rain in central Texas sure created a lot - it just bypassed us and dumped on the states around the Mississippi and Ohio rivers instead. I guess we need to be a little more specific when we pray for rain. Lots of good people in the midwest are in a rough way now, unfortunately.

Anyhow, as a result of all this record rainfall in the area, our normal route through Arkansas into Tennessee was thwarted. Somewhere between Little Rock and Memphis, there was flooding on I-40. We planned ahead accordingly, and determined we'd take a short detour up towards St. Louis, MO up 67. We went through St. Louis on our drive back once and knew it wasn't a terribly bad route:

Driving across Arkansas, we got lots of confirmation that I-40 was still closed to us. But our other route remained open... until about an hour before we got to Little Rock. There was flooding on 67 a bit south of the Missouri/Arkansas border. Out came the iPhones to determine where to go. And lots of frustration due to the small size/lots of scrolling, having to wait for new sections of the map to load, and the occasional lack of 3G or Edge coverage. Add to that, county names and borders aren't so easy to find or aren't present at all, and many notes indicating where roads were closed at were by which county it was in. Ah, the joys of technology. Both of us were wishing for a paper map - and we stopped at a rest area to get one, but the center was closed.

Eventually we determined there weren't many options. Back to Dallas and north from there. South to Shreveport, where traffic had been getting directed the whole way to Little Rock. Or zig zag the other way across Arkansas almost to Oklahoma.

If we went back to Dallas, we probably would have just given up and gone back to Austin and tried again some other time. Not something we particularly wanted to do since we'd done so much planning already.

Shreveport didn't seem like an overly smart option, considering we'd have to cross the Mississippi River further south - which is where the water was headed. Encountering more flooded roads was rather likely in that direction.

So that left us heading towards the northwest corner of Arkansas. Out I-? towards Fort Smith, then through the Ozarks on I-? into Missouri and then east to St. Louis.

The Ozarks are really quite pretty. The people that settled there after the French were largely German, English, Irish, and Scottish. So between the landscape and the architecture, it almost felt like we were already in New England. We slept for a few hours on the way, and actually got to see some of the mountains in the daylight, starting just about sunrise.

And the deep valleys were covered in mist, too...

Ultimately, the detour for the detour added an entire extra day of driving to our trip. Here's the full route:

Next trip, I'm certainly making sure to pack one of my books of maps. That will guarantee it won't be necessary to utilize. Technology is great until it fails you, and sometimes the old fashioned way of doing things is just easier.

More Bar Towels, Please!

Since this is my first posting, this will probably be rather long. If you don't know me well, you'll see frequent

references to the following:

• Ed - my husband, a very large man
• Lu - our female dog, 45 pound shepherd/husky/something-for-floppy ear mutt
• Gideon - our male dog, 50 pounds, probably Australian shepherd/doberman/chicken mix

We will be spending 4-5 weeks back home visiting family and really didn't want to impose on people for that amount of time (again). In looking at the various options - including renting a place by the lake or woods while there, KOAs, and renting a travel trailer or RV - we settled on the purchase of an RV as being the confluence of near-perfection. Our own living space, a moveable house, payments we could actually afford, and it could tow the car. Compared to any of the other options, it isn't the cheapest in the long-term by any means, but made the most sense long-term.

We left Sunday morning, and it is now Tuesday morning... I can't say we learned much beyond basic packing and usage of the RV prior to leaving, but we've learned a few things on our drive thus far.

First: You can NEVER have enough dish towels. I mean it. Never enough.

We stopped at IKEA in the weeks before we took delivery of the RV to purchase cheap stuff for it, including those thin little white/red bar towels. They're 50 cents a piece or something extremely reasonable like that. Plus, they were on sale, too, so we bought about 15, to split between the RV and the house.

When I was packing on Saturday, I squeezed 8 of them into a kitchen drawer and it would barely close, so I downsized to 6. Limited space and all...

Now, I think of myself as a pretty competent packer. Years of backpacking taught me lots of valuable lessons on packing things in things, techniques for maximizing space, etc. I'm the designated packer when we go on trips, because I can fit about 25% more stuff into the suitcases, if not more. It's a fun real-life game of tetris and Friday/Saturday was no exception.

Since we will be renting the RV out, we can't pack it with many RV-designated items. We have to empty it completely, so the house was raided. Ed and I brought armful after armful of stuff and for the most part, I packed all the things. And in some cases, re-packed them. I went to bed Saturday night feeling pretty accomplished and satisfied.

Honestly, I did do a pretty good job, we haven't had to do a serious re-arranging of stuff yet. But all 6 of my
bar towels have been used, plus the one pot holder and the dish drying mat. And most of the spare blankets. And at least one canvas shopping bag. And one of my shirts.

Some of the roads we travel on aren't so smooth. Like in Arkansas. The east-bound route we normally take isn't too bad, but since I40 between Little Rock and Memphis, TN was closed due to flooding, we had to take another route. Through the Ozark mountains. Not the worst roads we've been on, but not quite as smooth as I40E.

Things rattle. Things clank. Things ding and ping and tinkle. They bang, too. The spaetzle maker alone does all of this.

Ed doesn't like this. I don't like this. Gideon - is oblivious after the first hour. Lu HATES this.

Lu is our alpha dog. The declared herself the queen of the RV within seconds of getting into it. But she turns into an utter wimp when things go bang - thunder, gunshots, fireworks. And now the spaetzle maker and its companions in the RV.

So for everyone's sanity, I started hunting down all the noisy things while we were going down the road. There aren't seat belts everywhere, so it takes a bit of balancing and jouncing about and bumped elbows. The towels came out and were folded around and about pots and silverware to cut down on the pinging and dinging. The thick dish mat went under pot lids and beneath the spaetzle maker. Blankets are keeping the movies and books in place.

There is somewhat less constant bang-y noises, but I don't have enough dish towels. We have plates in a box that will migrate out and have to be jangle-proofed. There is an annoying squeak on the table now (though I think that will take rubber). But when it comes down to it, I need more bar towels at the very least. We need something to dry the dishes with, afterall, that can hang out to dry and not be shoved between dishes while wet!