Monthly Archives: June 2015

Back in Fredericksburg.

We are back in Fredericksburg after our road trip doing all that stuff we hadn’t done for a week like going to the gym, jolking, golf, etc.  Took the Pathfinder in for a real clean as the front was a total mess of bug splatter from the Texas/New Mexico/Arizona deserts.  Some were obviously big bugs!  The car detailer was a chap called Billy Duncan who originally hailed from Glasgow and has a London double-decker bus outside his shop – good landmark!  It was a week for meeting Brits as I met a lady here in the apartment complex who was trying to walk her rescue dog which preferred sitting in the shade to actual walking. On commenting on her sensible dog, we identified mutual accents which turned into quite a chat.  Small world syndrome – Pauline originally came from Great Yarmouth and ended up in Texas after marrying one of their oilmen.

Tropical storm Bill slowly churned through the gulf and made landfall south of Houston and then moved up through San Antonio and Austin dumping a bunch of rain on the eastern side of Austin – anywhere from 6-10″.  Missed us, but then a different storm came barreling out of Mexico and gave us a couple of inches water!  Jim & Jerrie are scheduled to move to the new house in New Braunfels at the end of the month, so we had planned to pop down to San Antonio to see them and go out to dinner.  Actually the trip was driven by Ann getting her hair done – true! That was put off for a day as parts of SA were badly flooded by Bill.  J&J say the move is on schedule, but it looks like everything will go into their garage, while they go into the local Days Inn!  Contractor issues and the bad weather have pushed things back so it now looks as if they will be settled in about the middle of July.  It will be an awesome house – only to be expected – especially by anyone who had seen the remodelling of their Arlington pad.

Anyway, the weather allowed us make our dinner reservation at Cured, one of J&Js’ favourite restaurants. It is part of the old Pearl brewery in downtown SA, situated in what was once the admin building and president’s office.  A meat lover’s paradise, though the menu has enough seafood and vegetable dishes to keep those culinary wimps happy.  We started with a big charcuterie plate  – 9 items, plus pickles that was seriously good – pushing Craig Diehl that’s for sure.  Only item we all thought was a miss was the Whipped Pork Butter – basically whipped lard and rather tasteless.  However, picking a main course was tough as there were 7 items on the menu that I really wanted such as Roasted Bone Marrow, Chicken Fried Chicken Livers, Cured Foie Gras, Blood Sausage, and Lamb Liver Toast!  In the end I went for the Pork Cheeks Poutine – I mean pork cheeks are a rarity, but pork cheeks poutine – how often are you going to get a chance to eat that?!  It came in a mini cast iron dutch oven and was an enormous portion – at a rough guess enough for 3-4 people!!  Ann had the Wagyu Beef Tartare, which she said was the best she has had since Beijing, while J&J both went with Smoked Lamb Ribs; declared seriously good.  Jim was in charge of wine so we had a couple of good bottles with our dinner.  We need to return so I can knock a couple more items off the menu before we head to Arizona. A little shopping at Costco and Trader Joe’s the next day, lunch at Taarka, our favourite Indian spot, before heading home. Good trip. We’ll be back to help J&J with the actual move as the Pathfinder will be used to move paintings and treasures that nobody wants movers to get their paws on.  Maybe another Cured visit?!

A few weeks ago I found that when standing on the patio I would suddenly have a humming-bird in my face, who’d hover and whir gently before zooming off.  This happened on more than one occasion so we figured that a previous tenant probably had a feeder for them.  Found a made in Texas humming-bird feed at HEB, filled with instructed strength of sugar-water, and hung it out  – instant humming birds!  There are birds feeding constantly during the day and even have 2 birds feeding at once.  Other times it is aerial tag – great entertainment.

Hit the driving range only to have my back go out hitting wedge shots – must be getting old!  Ice and some pool exercise to try and get back to normal.

Went down to San Antonio on the 27th to help J&J move treasures to the new house.  Put everything in the garage with all the other stuff, and then did a house tour.  Contractors still touching up and cleaning out, but looks really good, such a livable house.  All on one floor with fabulous guest quarters – 2 bedrooms each with their own bathroom – so we intend to do a guest test for them as soon as we can!  J&J then took out to lunch at 188 South in downtown New Braunfels.  It’s a very nice Italian restaurant which makes all their own pasta, which is excellent.  So it was 3 pastas while I had the Clams & Mussels – the best I’ve had for a while, with a lovely light spicy broth.  Their bread is toasted in the pizza oven, so ate far too much with my clams and mussels.  NB was packed with the great unwashed heading to Schlitterbahn – a huge water park – and lugging tubes to float the Comal River, the only one open at present, as the others are still in flood status.  Then it was back home via Blanco, a small town on the river of the same name that was hit by the Memorial Day floods.  On the back road from Blanco to F/burg you could see all he damage, and at one low spot about 50 yards of guard rails was completely flattened, with trees and debris!

Cloudy but not raining as we go to press!

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Road Trip

We had decided to make a trip to Sedona to check out the flats we had selected as possibles for our 3 month stay.  As we are retired and nothing is a rush any more we decided a road trip was in order as it would be more fun, not to mention cheaper.
We hit the road on Monday, June 1, at sparrow fart with our route north-west through Texas, New Mexico, and into Arizona west of Albuquerque, along 1-40 to Flagstaff and then down to Sedona.  Planned to spend the night at the Hampton Inn in Albuquerque, as that was a 650 mile, 91/2 hour jaunt. The Texas road system is superb and state roads are well maintained with 70 or 75 mph speed limits and literally no traffic.  Of course the bloody New Mexicans and Arizonans have worse roads and slower speed limits – I mean come on!  Northwest Texas and northern New Mexico are desolation personified. The parts that were not rocky desert and had crops, were an expanded version of The Fens where I grew up – even the houses looked that same – red brick bungalows in the middle of nowhere with no trees. Texas has the biggest proliferation of winds turbines we have ever seen.  Hundreds and hundreds of the things along the hill lines stretching for literally hundreds of miles.  Then, of course as this is Texas, there were nodding donkeys and collection tanks/gas processing stations every few miles.  Not surprising that Texas has its own power grid completely separate from the rest of the US of A. Texas truly is a great country!
When doing my Hilton hotel research I found there was an Indian restaurant near the Hampton Inn in Albuquerque that had really good reviews, so dinner was at the Taj Mahal.  Boy, what food and service!  From the samosas and pakoras through our lamb Jalfrezie and Aloo Gobi Mutter with garlic naan – everything was fabulous – old school Indian but extremely well done – the best we’ve had since DC.  The manageress who helped on the lamb selection, said we should have half portions as it was a lot of food and combined the Aloo Gobi and Aloo Mutter into one dish as I said we love them both.  No wonder the place was doing a roaring trade.
Next day it was it was I-40 with all its road works, and a 70 mph speed limit!  Every few miles there was an Indian casino resort stuck in some rocky desert, but the countryside improved as we got further into Arizona.  Parts of the old Route 66 parallels 1-40 in places, so we pulled off for lunch at Winslow, AZ.  Yep – “Are you standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona?” from “Take it Easy” sung by The Eagles.  Living history y’all!  We ate in a local diner which was part of a motel that must have been there since the place was built in the 60s and needed a serious upgrade.  Mind you the food was great diner stuff, with big portions at low prices.  We had sandwiches with sweet potato fries to go with our iced tea, and did some serious people watching/listening. Everyone was on first name basis. The sheriff was eating with a large lady who appeared to be the owner, and handed over a Deputy Sheriff’s certificate to the chap who sat at their table.  Behind us a young attractive black girl was telling her companion, who appeared somewhat older, how much money she could make stripping! I mean you couldn’t make this stuff up!  Then on to Sedona.  Off 1-40 at Flagstaff and down the hairpin bends of Route 89A, and of course we got behind the two grey haired ladies from NY in their old Buick. The car actually went off the road a couple of times as the driver was busy waving her hands, and we assume talking. Another Hampton Inn in W Sedona – a very nice two-story adobe looking building right on the main drag of 89A, with a slew of good restaurants in walking distance.  In trying to sort out the local time, as we were now a time zone west of Fredericksburg, we found out that Arizona does not change to daylight savings time so we (Sedona) were actually two hours behind Fredericksburg, confusing or what?!  It was dinner somewhere, so headed over to Hiro’s Sushi Bar where we had some excellent Japanese food – Sushi, Tempura, Unagi – and sake.
Next day we did the site visits of the six flats we had selected as possible places for our Sedona stay.  3 in W Sedona, of which 2 were immediately discounted because of location/facilities, and 3 in The Villages of Oak Creek, which is basically a new town about 8 miles south of  Sedona on Route 179.  I suppose if we had seen something really great we would have been more disposed to it than we were – it was that “it’s OK but….” – sort of place.  We saw one nice unit in Canyon Mesa Country Club, right on the 3rd t-box of a very nice 9 hole golf course, but it was small and bit too expensive for what it was. Had lunch at PJ’s Pub in Oak Creek while we were there and sampled a couple of really good Arizona beers, which went very well with the Jalapeno Chili Cheese Fries – hey, we are retired and having fun!!  Back to the hotel and calls to the agent of the town house that we selected about putting a deposit down and starting paper work.  Nathan sent us on-line agreements so we spent the afternoon completing a mass of forms and sending them back to him for processing and approval. Having worked up an appetite, we ambled down the road to the Heartline Cafe where we had reservations for dinner.  We sat out in the walled garden at the back which was absolutely delightful, and got in a conversation with a couple on the next table about whether the Jasmine along the walls was Carolina or Star. They then asked us to join them so we had a great dinner with excellent company.  Howie is a retired school teacher who now guides rafting tours through the Grand Canyon, and Amy is a history professor at a local university.  Super couple and details were exchanged so we can get together when we are back in Sedona. Food at the Heartline was excellent – we shared a starter of lobster on potato blinis, then both had fresh local trout, finishing up with coffee and whiskey/bourbon. We like Sedona!  The next day we completed and signed the lease on-line, and that it was it, we had our Sedona pad!  We were quite proud of ourselves in that we had done all this electronically with zero human interface – we never did meet Nathan, who seemed really nice on the phone.  Rounded off our stay with dinner at Picazzo’s, a pizza place with a difference, one of those vegan, gluten-free places, just across the road from the hotel.  Ate in the courtyard, which was rammed, but we had a very lively, very tattooed waitress who was pretty efficient in handling our drinks, wine and pizzas!  There were 20 pizzas on the menu, plus 40 odd toppings and sauces to build your own, plus over 20 pasta dishes.  Ann went for the Pulled Pork Pizza and I had the Spicy Thai Peanut Chicken – both seriously good and way too much food – but hey, we had a cool bag with us so not a problem!
After the barren territory of the northern route we decided we return south via I-17 to Phoenix and then 1-10 through Tucson, El Paso, and back to Fredericksburg.  Certainly a nicer route, and about the same distance and time as the northern run.  Stopped in Willcox, AZ for lunch at the Coronado Vineyard where we had glasses of wine and tapas under a grape-vine covered arbour overlooking the vineyard.  Good wines at reasonable prices, so we bought half a case.  We could have spent the whole afternoon getting sloshed, but it was on-on to Van Horn, TX where we were booked in to the Hampton Inn – good ole HH Points!  Before Las Cruces we had 2 cars blast past – 1 a black BMW 7M Series with gold rims and heavily tinted windows, and number 2, a 350 Merc I Series, both with just the driver. They would slow down then speed up so we played tag with our drug dealer buddies until they shot off south on Route 11 into Mexico!  Wonder if Border Patrol got them before they got home?  We then hit El Paso at rush hour, and that coupled with an accident on I-10 at the eastern side of town made it a slow, horrible, section of our journey, only relieved by our phones pinging with messages from AT&T welcoming us abroad!  Ciudad Juarez is literally part of El Paso and one wrong turn and you are mixing it with the drug cartels.  Saw a double rainbow on our way into Van Horn, TX – very pretty.  Arrived at 8.00pm local time – bloody time zones – with a real gale blowing and dark clouds covering the distant mountains.  Talk about wide open spaces – the hotel was in a rocky desert on the outskirts of town with nothing around except a petrol station about a quarter of a mile away. I then spent 15 minutes with the dosiest receptionist I have ever come across in my life!  After she got off her mobile and I gave my name and room number – I had checked in online just in case we got in late – “as thick as a brick” said I did not have a reservation and that room was occupied!  We went round again and then a stupid grin appeared on her face as she gave me my room card with my name and room number in red across the case!  It had been sitting in front of her the whole bloody time!!  (She got an F on TripAdvisor)  We had just dragged our bags into the room when the storm hit – lots of lightning and rain – so we opened a bottle of Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel and had that with Picazzo’s left over pizza for dinner. Road trip!! The next day was an easy 51/2 hours into Fredericksburg especially as we were back in the state with 80 mph speed limits.  So a 6 day trip covering about 2200 miles – America really is a big country – and the next leg of the Hendey/Holland “see America” adventure was complete.
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