Settling in at Santee Lakes

It's nice to have a month in one place. Santee Lakes has a beautiful RV park, one of the best in San Diego, and we are here at the right time of year...Santee can be very hot in the summer.

Lots of visits happening with family and friends. Plenty of time to relax as well as hiking well known local trails and exploring Santee which we were not too familiar with. Meeting some great people in the park.

We've picked up some things we left in storage because we didn't have room in our old truck to haul it to Oregon for the transition. Hans has spent some time organizing his CD collection while I cooked up some banana bread and biscotti.

Consolidating the CD collection into binders while listening to an amazing variety of music.

Spending the morning creating deliciousness...I love my little kitchen!

Rosie didn't have any projects to tackle...

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!

Campground Review: Quail Run RV Park, Quartzsite, AZ

We wanted to scope out Quartzsite when it was quiet because we'll have an opportunity to camp here when we travel from San Diego to Tucson in late January. That's when Quartzsite is really going nuts with RV-related madness. We figure we'll dry camp in January, but for now we wanted hookups and laundry.

We stayed at Quail Run RV Park, the "newest" RV park in town. It has 168 full hookup sites, paved roads, gravel sites with a concrete pad and our site had a tree. Restrooms, showers, laundry, clubhouse...all were neat and tidy. Daily rate is $34, less Good Sam discount.

The park was only about 10% full and doesn't really fill up until after the holidays. The month of January is 110% booked! We were pleased to see the managers assign sites well separated from other campers when the park has low occupancy. We haven't seen that same courtesy at other parks.

We started out with excellent 4G (4MB/sec) internet through our Millenicom service but it deteriorated for some reason and we switched to the parks 3G wifi and it worked reasonably well.

We still don't know if we will return in January, but I can recommend this park as a nice, clean place to stay if you want hookups in Quartzsite. Most RV park options in Quartzsite are pretty much parking lots, this one  was clean and friendly.

Our site #63

Looking down the row behind our rig.
During low occupancy this park is good about giving its customers some space.

Campground Review: Usery Mountain Regional Park

We moved just 30 miles SE from McDowell Mountain Regional Park to the lovely Usery Mountain Regional Park. You can read our experiences at McDowell here and here. McDowell is a mountain bikers mecca and Usery is a hikers heaven! Just the kind of places we like best.

Usery is less than 5 miles to the closest grocery store and gas station in Mesa, AZ. At night you can see the lights of Phoenix in the distance and hear the white noise of the city faintly as well. The access road to the park, while pretty busy during the day, is very quiet at night. Being so close to the city, this park can be very busy on the weekends and holidays.

Usery campground has paved roads, gravel sites, water and electric only, with dump station on site. Clean and convenient restrooms and showers. All sites seem to be pretty level and the perimeter sites are the most private. Sites have a table, fire pit and BBQ. We had fast 4G internet service here!

The park includes 30 miles of multi-use trails, an archery range, picnic areas and playgrounds and a nature center with many scheduled programs. We attended a talk about the venomous reptiles in the Sonoran desert.

There is also a shooting range about half a mile away from the park which you can hear during the day. When we arrived on Friday the shooting was sporadic, but on Saturday it was continuous all day long. Luckily it did not continue long after dark.

This was a beautiful park, close to services, with excellent 4G internet signal. We might stay here again, though we really liked the more peaceful feeling at McDowell.

Our site #12, a back in opening to the desert with a big, private sitting area.

Our view from our door. No campers in sight, and the road to the park is a good third
of a mile away and out of sight due to lush desert plants in this park..

Usery Mountain Regional Park

Usery Mountain Regional Park sits at the North edge of Mesa, AZ. It has 30 miles of hiking trails, a huge archery range, picnic sites and camping. This is lush desert landscape right at the edge of a big city so it gets a lot of use, especially on a cool Saturday which was our one full day here.

Here are a few pics from our stay at this very pretty desert park.

We were greeted with lush desert plants under brilliant blue sky just steps
from our camp site upon our arrival.

Hiking the Wind Cave trail on a cloudy Saturday morning.
The cave is the slim black horizontal slit near the top right of the hill.

The trail makes its way up the boulder strewn hillside to the yellow volcanic tuff layer,
highlighted with  bright green lichen.

A small portion of the wind cave...the remainder was full of other people! Being so close to a major city,
this park gets major use on the weekends.

This beautiful hawk was watching the crazy people hiking to the cave.

Even under cloudy skies the cholla seem to glow.

Sunsets have been spectacular here!

After glow

Campground Review: McDowell Mountain Regional Park

We chose to stay at McDowell Mountain Regional Park based on the glowing review by Wheeling It, and we agree with their assessment.

Roads are paved, sites are gravel with water and electric hookups. There is an onsite dump station. Restrooms and showers are clean and convenient.

Sites in the South loop are more level and better for big rigs than those in the North loop. In either loop, we prefer the perimeter sites as they are the most private.

There are 50 miles of hiking and mountain biking trails, including a competitive mountain bike track.

We stayed in site #62, a pull off site that has your RV door facing wide open desert; no roads, no RV's, no buildings, nothing but beautiful, spacious, open desert. The nearest neighbors are at least 100 feet away and out of view. Completely quiet and peaceful at night.

Site #60 may be my favorite site; it's another perimeter site and is a back in site and like the rest of the back in sites, it is wide enough for your truck or towed to park next to your rig. Site 60 has lots of privacy and beautiful saguaro views.

And to top it all off we met a lot of great folks here, including Harlan and Donna, owners of Bicycle Garage just down the road in Fountain Hills where Hans had his bike fixed; if you need bike repairs while in the area do check them out for quality work. We also had a very nice happy hour with Cliff and Sharon from Alberta and their sweet dog Toby.

We would definitely stay here again, but there are other nice parks in the area that would give us a new area to base out of that we might try (Usery Mountain Regional Park, Lost Dutchman State Park).

Pull out site #62 on the perimeter of the South loop. The only difficulty in setting up was positioning
 the rig next to that curb so our steps would fold out properly.

Nothing but desert in front of us. Big sitting area with table, BBQ and metal fire pit.

McDowell Mountain Regional Park, a Mountain Bikers Paradise

We've relocated to McDowell Mountain Regional Park in the NE corner of Scottsdale, AZ. We've got a campsite that opens onto nothing but desert and miles and miles of trails that are mostly used by mountain bikers.

We've joked with the other campers here that it seems to be a mecca for senior mountain bikers! At this time of year there are mostly seniors camped here and they are a healthy, physically active bunch.

The trails are awesome! Mostly hard packed desert dirt, meandering through cactus gardens, some lightly rocky sections, uphills are gentle, some swoopy sections through giant boulders, expansive views. Besides the 50 miles of general trails, there is a competitive track where you can test your skills.

The park was ravaged by fire in 1996 and you can see the scars on cactus throughout the park, but in the last 16 years the plants have come back nicely, making for a wonderful place to stay and enjoy the desert.

We've seen a coyote walk near our camp in the afternoon, then moments later call to his pack and listen for the answering responses. LOVE being in a campground with natural space around you, instead of neighbors all lined up in a row.

Sunrise from our camp site

Our camp site...nothing but desert outside our door.

This beautiful, old saguaro has burn damage but managed to survive the 1996 fire.

Mushroom granite rocks!

One of the swoopy sections