A Few Days at Cave Creek

We've spent a few nights at Cave Creek Regional Park, hiking the trails right from camp and just down the road at Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area. At the extreme North end of the Phoenix metropolitan area, we are still in the beautiful Sonoran desert, snugged up against foothills bordering Tonto National Forest.

Here's a few shots from the Cave Creek trails. The trails are easy to moderate, well marked, follow rolling hills, and have very few rocky sections.

One super unique Saguaro!

Pretty skies and views.

In the next two weeks I think the hedgehog and cholla blooms will really start opening.
We saw purple blooms in the Superstitions and now pink blooms here!

We peeked under a rock and found this...

We had an awesome eight mile loop hike at Spur Cross Ranch. (Map) We parked at the Jewel of the Creek Preserve, just outside Spur Cross, and took the Dragonfly trail to Tortuga trail, to Elephant Mountain, to Spur Cross, and back to Dragonfly.

Great variety on this loop...We enjoyed water in Cave Creek, saw cottonwoods and saguaros right next to each other! We saw evidence of the Hohokam people via petroglyphs and ruins. There were excellent vistas, some canyon walking, lots of geologic variety, and though there were some steep rocky sections, they weren't too tough.

Cottonwoods along Cave Creek in the foreground.
Elephant Mountain is the tall peak on the left.
We will be hiking to the saddle and butte on its right.

An unexpected combination of plants!

 

Thought to be a Hohokam petroglyph.

Found under a rock.

Our destination looms above us.
We'll hike up the canyon and around the back side.

That's our peak on the left!

From the saddle we could see the remnants of rock walls about 150 feet above us.
So up we went...

 

Thought to be Hohokam ruins.

A look back at the saddle we had come over and the butte we climbed to see the ruins.

Elephant Mountain is made of lava and covered with thousands of saguaros.

Beautiful and rugged terrain at Spur Cross Ranch.

We really enjoyed this loop at Spur Cross and look forward to hitting the rest of the trails here next time we're in the area. The trails are well marked and the variety of terrain can't be beat!

As we wrap up our brief stay at Cave Creek I'd like to share a simple, healthy and versatile Tangy Carrot and Cabbage Slaw. I make a batch and build lunches and side dishes around it for a few days. In addition to the simple and light snack shown below, I'll add it to a green salad or some leftover quinoa or other grain, or it's a great addition to a sandwich for a little extra crunch and tang.

Tangy Carrot and Cabbage Slaw covers homemade hummus on Wasa Crisp Bread.

Tomorrow we're heading North, here's one last shot from one of the gorgeous sunsets we've had at Cave Creek.

Wrapping Up Our Stay In Bend, OR

We like Bend, OR so much it's one of our top choices of places to settle down if we decide to buy a house again. It's got a cute and vibrant downtown and some cool older neighborhoods. No matter where you are in town you are only minutes from an incredible variety of outdoor recreation in some gorgeous natural settings.

The existing 2 year college will become a 4 year university (part of the Oregon State University system) in the next three years. The excellent medical industry is slated for expansion in the next few years too. Bend is already considered a retirement destination; we spoke to several couples who were here looking for property during our stay.

That said, Bend does have some drawbacks. It's population, and housing prices, have exploded in the last 20 years and is predicted to grow from 81,000 people to 115,000 by 2025. The city is working furiously to accommodate this growth; with the accompanying traffic and construction boom that must happen as well. City planners have already shown they are keen, and able, to provide walking/biking trails as a key part of the new infrastructure.

We'll keep Bend on the back burner, let it simmer for a while as we continue our travels (we've only been on the road for a year!), knowing we can visit any time and enjoy its many pleasures from the comfort of our home on wheels.

Here's what we've been up to during our last couple of weeks in Bend:

Fantastic metal buffalo sculpture in the Old Mill District.

There's great mountain biking on Phil's Trails, on the West edge of Bend. Hard packed dirt single track through the forest. From the main trailhead all trails head West and slightly uphill, making the return ride a fun, flowy slightly downhill joyride! The Deschutes River Trails dirt trails are prettier, but these trails are lots of fun.

Phil's Trail system.

Mountain Bike Art!

Fall colors are popping up here and there around town.

The Lava River Cave is cool...42 degrees year round! This cave was found when part of the lava tube collapsed. Today you can walk about a mile into the tube, lights are necessary and can be rented at the entrance.

You walk through the collapsed portion of the lava tube to enter the cave...

Lime green rocks at the entrance!

Once inside, the first couple hundred feet are very rocky, then the floor smooths out.

We enjoyed Smith Rock so much a couple weeks ago, we returned to hike around the mountain. This hike was about 7.5 miles, with a climb on the back side of the range. We searched for otters in the river, having heard about them on our previous visit, but did not see any, perhaps the drastic change in weather had something to do with that. The views on this hike were incredible. The recent weather system had left the local mountains enveloped in white.

Mt Bachelor, the local ski destination, shines in its cloak of white.

In my previous post on Smith Rocks I was enamored with this rock formation.
Turns out it is named Monkey Face!

From left to right: Broken Top, South, Middle and North Sisters, all dominate the Western horizon.

Mt Jefferson bathed in sun and clouds.

The uphill part of the hike was a series of gentle switchbacks...with views!

From the top we looked down on the Crooked River canyon walled in by Smith Rocks.
The snowy peaks of the Cascade Range in the distance.

The weather was quite cold during our last week in Bend (40's - 50's during the day) and the last couple of days have been rainy and that kind of weather always gets me in cooking mode. I made a new batch of Harissa, a delicious Mediterranean condiment that goes on anything you want to spice up: meats, vegetables, eggs, grains, beans, breads...the uses are many. Here's my version of Harissa, I made it pretty spicy, using dried chiles we bought in New Mexico, but milder chiles will make a less piquant sauce.

I made a neat version of biscotti as well using this delicious recipe from The Way The Cookie Crumbles. I used only whole wheat flour, only brown sugar and omitted the lavender (because I didn't have any). This recipe is a little less fussy than traditional biscotti by making them into bite size pieces instead of long wedges. Yummy!

Today is our last full day in Bend and it's supposed to be a rainy one. We'll try to sneak in one last walk along the beautiful Deschutes River and perhaps hang out in the library for a while, which happens to be in charming downtown Bend...a nice place for a stroll.

Tomorrow we cross the Cascades for a visit with my daughter and son in law, Chantal and James, in Myrtle Creek, OR. So looking forward to seeing them!

A Little Morning Treat

We eat a good breakfast every day to get us ready for whatever physical activities are on the agenda...but cereal and oatmeal and the occasional scramble gets repetitive so the routine needs a little stirring up now and then.

Enter Peanut Butter Banana Breakfast Bread Pudding, found on The Kitchn. It didn't photograph all that well, but it tasted delicious! I threw together a half batch last night using a very sad looking banana, baked it this morning, and (because I thought it might be a tad sweet) served it with plain yogurt topped with fresh fruit. A wonderful new way to start our day!

Peanut Butter Banana Bread Pudding

Obligatory cactus pics from yesterday's hike in Tucson Mountain Park...

Everything you see is mine, all mine!

Cacti love

Tasty Bits

Since we're back in our former home town, San Diego, for the first time since we became full time RVers, we've been doing a LOT of entertaining. Gotta show friends and family our cozy new home, you know!

All that entertaining means I get to do a lot of one of my favorite things: cooking! Here are a couple of recipes we've enjoyed recently:

First off is a wonderful Cranberry Orange Chipotle Compote. This thick and chunky sauce is not too sweet and has just a tiny little kick from the chipotle. You could certainly kick it up a notch with an additional chipotle pepper. So far we have loved this sauce at room temperature on grilled pork tenderloin and on ice cream and even on Norwegian lefse with gjetost...talk about a multi-purpose sauce! I am positive it would be just as delicious on poultry or a mild white fish.

And here is a spicy Potato Cauliflower Curry. This vegetarian (or vegan if you leave off the yogurt topping) curry is hearty and warming on a cold winter evening, served over rice along side a good red wine.

The curry is especially nice made with fresh cooked chickpeas which are worlds better than canned. Dried chickpeas just need to be soaked overnight, then thrown in a crock pot the next day with fresh water on low setting. At the end of the day they'll be done and ready to use in curries or hummus immediately. Plus, they are easy to freeze for future use at a moments notice, just remove from the freezer and add a couple of rinses of cold water to the container and they are ready to go.

Rosie is Home! And we are settled for the holidays...

We've arrived in San Diego, our former home town. We're staying here for two months to visit family and friends over the holidays, so posting will probably be light for a while. Our exact location is noted to the right.

The best part about returning to San Diego is: we got Rosie back! We feel like a complete family again!

Rosie enjoying her window seat. The table in front is a cabinet that holds her litter box. This cat is styling!

We were really concerned about the stress on her with our transition to Oregon and not knowing what would be involved in starting our nomadic life, especially since we didn't have set plans and we knew we'd be staying with people with dogs and other cats some of the time. My parents had recently lost their last beloved pet and were happy to take her temporarily, problem solved!

Arriving in town yesterday we'd made arrangements for my parents to join us for dinner so they could drop her off and see our new home (my parents are long time RVers, that's where I grew to love the lifestyle).

We were so happy to see Rosie settle in quickly. It was obvious she was still comfortable around us and simply needed to explore her new surroundings. We're glad we are spending a month at this park so she will get really comfortable before we start the nomadic wandering again.

We're gearing up for a big Thanksgiving feast at Hans' brothers and lots of socializing in the near future. I've got food on my mind so I'd like to share a few recipe adaptations and recommendations...

Heidi Swanson, who blogs at 101 Cookbooks, has a wealth of amazing vegetarian recipes with beautiful pictures to boot. This recipe: Spicy Green Beans and Tofu was adapted from her recipe here. My adaptations included streamlining the procedure by sauteing the green beans in the same skillet (instead of boiling them) and I substituted smoked paprika for a lovely smokey flavor that really enhanced the dish. The leftovers were good heated up with some leftover spicy sausages.

Here is a recipe for Cheesey Cauliflower and Bacon, adapted from Kalyn's Kitchen Twice Baked Cauliflower. (My family will recognize this as being "Cindy Potatoes" made with cauliflower.) My adaptations included not mashing up the cauliflower very much, no lowfat cheese, and substituting greek yogurt for the sour cream because that's what I had on hand. I put the dish together in the morning, stowed it in the fridge all day, then baked it for dinner. It was delicious freshly cooked and the leftovers were just as tasty the next day.

Many thanks to my sister for turning me on to this recipe for Chunky Chicken Chili, we have a new favorite, quick and easy, yet really tasty chicken chili. That recipe is delicious as written. My adaptations (because there are always adaptations!) are to use way less butter, substitute half and half for the heavy cream, use ancho chili powder, and substitute greek yogurt for the sour cream.

And last but not least a little sweet/tart treat: Cranberry Orange Muffins, adapted from Food.com. My adaptations were to use half whole wheat flour and replace the white sugar with brown. I didn't have enough orange juice from the one orange I zested and squeezed to equal 3/4 cup, so I added fresh squeezed lemon juice and one single serving container of apple sauce to make up the 3/4 cup required. I also did not sprinkle sugar on top, figuring it had plenty of sugar already. We loved the explosion of tart cranberry with each bite (I think I added more than 1 cup of cranberries to the batter because they are just so good!).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Page, AZ

Short travel days are wonderful! With a mere 75 miles from Kanab to our RV park in Page, AZ we were able to get laundry done and relax a bit before we hit the road, and we still got to Page about noon, leaving a good chunk of the day to get some needed shopping done.

Page calls itself the "Hub of the Grand Circle". It is smack dab in the middle of an area that includes the Grand Canyon, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, Arches National Monument, Monument Valley, Capitol Reef and even more!

Personally, we would not want to drive the distances required to make this place our hub for visiting most of those sites. We try to keep our driving distance for day trips from any RV park well within 50 miles, then just move on to the next stop over.

Besides visiting Glen Canyon Dam, we've taken in a number of other beautiful sites. Here's a few pictures for your viewing pleasure. Also a recipe at the bottom of the post...

We hiked Bucktank Draw to Birthday Arch. The directions were slightly inaccurate, as we did not spy the arch until over 2 miles in, then you must head West at least a quarter mile cross country. The entire hike is through rather sandy terrain (the "draw" is actually a wash) and you are exposed for most of the hike so this would be pretty uncomfortable on a very hot day. Bring plenty of water as this is very dry country and you can get really parched!

First sight of the arch high on the cliff, we were actually quite a bit farther away from the arch than this pic suggests.

This is the terrain we scrambled over just below the arch wall.

Birthday Arch! 

We're in hoodoo land!

We decided to bushwack it back to the truck,
staying above the draw/wash so we could check out the cool rock formations.

We stopped by the lake at Lone Rock for lunch and got a sexy truck pic right on the beach! This fee area allows dispersed camping right on the waters edge.

Our awesome truck and my wonderful hubby at Lone Rock beach, Lake Powell.

We took a short hike to the lovely Hanging Garden:

A hidden oasis in a little alcove, only possible due to seepage from the sandstone.

It's a wall of maidenhair fern...

The Rimview Trail encircles the mesa that Page, AZ sits upon; affording beautiful views into Lake Powelll and the distant rock formations. It is about 11 miles of excellent single track for walking or mountain biking...though there are some spots where the trail would be pretty hairy on a bike.

Hiking the Rimview Trail in Page, AZ

And of course we couldn't visit Page without seeing the iconic Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River.

Horseshoe Bend

I am intrigued by how flat the land surrounding the river is...and then WOW, it drops into a chasm!

We've also met fellow Montana owners Dennis and Sheryl who are from Montana at our RV park.

That's it for us in Page this time around. We're heading South to Camp Verde for a few days.

Last but not least here's a recipe we enjoyed this week. This is my version of Chana Masala, an Indian spicy chickpea and spinach dish. This version is vegan and serves four good sized portions over rice. You can tell we are continuing our healthy eating on the road (not always vegan though, we eat just about anything)! Enjoy!

It's Windy Outside!

Besides getting out in nature, reading and cooking make me a happy girl! Thought I'd share a few things that have brightened our days recently as we sit snug in our cozy little home on wheels this morning and the wind blows mightily outside. As a lifelong resident of mild San Diego, CA I am really enjoying the variety of weather we are experiencing on the road!

We like to browse used book stores while we travel and Hans has picked up a couple of really interesting titles recently:

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe is the autobiography of a female neurosurgeon. It details her experiences leading up to and during medical school, describes in layman's terms how the brain functions and the differences between different brain-focused specialties, anecdotes about various cases she and others have experienced and her view of the possible future of neurosurgery. I found it easy to read and engrossing.

Escape is the autobiography of a woman who escaped the fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (fLDS). fLDS broke off from the original Mormon church primarily in order to maintain plural marriage. It is a fascinating and horrifying look at polygamy from the inside and the direction the fLDS took under Warren Jeffs. It was especially interesting to read this book while traveling a part of the country where Mormonism is most prevalent.

I mentioned how good this Cheesey Quinoa dish was a couple of weeks ago. I made it again with broccoli and have decided to share my adaptation of the recipe. It has been cut down to a more manageable size for two people with a little RV oven. Here is the recipe for Cheesey Quinoa and Broccoli. You could probably make this vegetarian by using a "flax egg", though I have not tried this method.

Thanks for reading!

Touristy Boise, Scenic Boise and a Recipe

We're nearing the end of our stay in Boise. It's been the perfect place to start our life on wheels: a friendly, well situated RV park, great neighborhoods to explore via the awesome Greenbelt Trail system, every kind of shopping we could possibly want to outfit the rig, plus some beautiful scenic byways for exploration of the surrounding area.

The only thing that has marred our stay here has been the smoke from nearby forest fires. We are in the Treasure Valley and it has held smoke from various fires across Idaho for the past couple of months. Some days, the temperature was 10 degrees cooler than forecasted due to the smoke keeping the sun from beating down upon us. We happen to prefer cooler temps, but the smoke was not the best trade-off! On a couple of days we could actually smell smoke, but usually it was just a heavy haze across the valley.

Since my last post we've seen a variety  of interesting sites...

We did our own personal walking tour of downtown which included a visit to the state capitol building. Originally started in 1905, the building underwent major restoration for 2.5 years and reopened in 2010. It is full of marble from all over the world. A beautiful building, with a good display of state historical information.

Interior of the Capitol dome

Floor of the Capitol dome room

Capitol of Idaho

We visited Zoo Boise on Thursday, discount day. It's a small zoo but it had some pretty good displays including an excellent bat enclosure and the red panda's were adorable.

We walked a good portion of the North End neighborhood, which boasts some lovely old houses on tree-lined streets.

A cute house in Boise's North End

We've been eating healthier than ever in our new home. One of our lighter meals turned out to be quite tasty; a Quinoa-Chickpea Pilaf with grilled veggies. The combination of smoked paprika, fresh garlic and citrus juices in the pilaf made for a delicious vegan meal!

Quinoa-Chickpea Pilaf

We took a drive that was a combination of three Scenic Byways: the Payette River, Ponderosa Pine and Wildlife Canyon. At about 160 miles, it was a long days outing, taking us up into the mountains through canyons cut by several rivers. Since we drove on Saturday, we happened upon the local farmers market in the cute little town of Crouch, and we were able to check out a few state campgrounds along the way.

We've been told Idaho is full of natural geothermal hot springs. We checked out the one at Pine Flats campground during our Scenic Byway tour. It was a perfect setting for a soak and a picnic on the South fork of the Payette River.

Soaking in Pine Flats Hot Springs

South fork of the Payette River at Pine Flats Hot Springs

During this drive we saw little pockets of the leaves turning; fall is here!

We also took a dirt Nordic ski trail and tried out 4-wheel drive on our truck; it worked like a champ!

Early next week we'll head a little South and East, closer to the mountains for a little more nature and a little less big city.