Allyson Johnson

Pieces of my Mind

Archive for the tag “vacation”

14 May 2024

Freeway Free in Texas: Canoeing on Caddo

I wake up to the same utter stillness that lulled me to sleep. I walk through lovely wet green woods under maybe-clearing skies to the loo. 

Breakfast at 9ish of yogurt, fruit, nuts, and tea,then down to the Park HQ to confirm our arrival, get a parking sticker, pick up post cards, and rent a canoe for the PM.

A note of reality: Caddo Lake State Park is not, strictly speaking, on Caddo Lake. The boat ramp and canoe launch area actually border a small side reach of the lake, Saw Mill Pond. The good news: this sequestered area has no speed boats, no water skiers, and very few really deep areas – a perfect place for a couple of senior ladies, or for families with small swimmers, to try their paddling skills. for a reasonable $7 for a half day’s use, the friendly ranger at the Visitors’ Center gave us directions to the canoe launch area, keys which opened the storage shed full of life jackets and oars as well as our designated canoe. A few false starts (we forgot our hats, went to the wrong boat ramp) and then we found our canoe, donned life jackets, grabbed oars, and launched.

Well, we nearly launched, but ran aground on a cypress knee immediately.  Happily, a couple of guys came along, laughed that they had done the same the day before, and pushed us off.   I was feeling very unsteady balancing in the canoe in the far front end, and we had to fend ourselves off a number of cypress trees as the wind kept pushing us around.  We ran aground again on a buried log in a backwater and were on the point of thinking one of us would have to get out and push, but a hefty shove against a tree got us afloat again.  After that we were quite careful about staying in more open water.  We were almost alone in the Pond – maybe one family with a couple of children maneuvering at the far end. We admired the shimmering water, and its reflections in the hollows of the trees. We listened to the stillness. We stayed out about an hour, long enough for our backs to feel the effort of paddling, and then ran ourselves into the canoe harbor perfectly.

Next, return the key, find out where to buy an extra propane canister, visit Johnston’s Caddo Grocery and Bait Shop 5 miles down the road, and then it is time for naps, reading, catching up with the expense sheet, and maybe writing a few post cards if we feel ambitious. Quiet is a wonderful sedative.

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I didn’t feel ambitious so contented myself with puttering around, until we decided that as we had skipped lunch making dinner early would be appropriate.  So I got out the materials for basic glop, crossing my fingers that it could be cooked as well in a saucepan as in a skillet, and with me chopping onions and W browning the meat we had it together and cooking nicely on the Coleman’s stove in a half hour or so.   I puttered around interfering with Wnifred’s building of a charcoal-based fire, until we began to smell a scorching at about the time the casserole  should have been done.  Hmmm.  Although I had added some extra liquid to rinse out the tomato can, I did not allow enough extra to account for 1 the noodles being rotini instead of flat egg noodles and thus required Ng more time and 2 the Coleman stove, even at low heat, with only a thin aluminum saucepan to deal with, cooked HOT.  so we had a layer of scorched substance on the bottom of the pan, and rather chewy rotini on the top.  Still, hunger is the best pickle, and we managed to eat more than half, leaving enough for a second meal if we have appetizers before hand.

After dinner I kept fooling with the fire, as the termperature was dropping and the wind picking up.  Although plenty of smoke was generated by the wood we had taken from the firewood rack at the boat dock, the only real flame camer from kindling sticks and pine cones I scrounged from the environment.  We brewed some herbal tea and sat and chatted and i kept  getting colder, adding a thin but oozy yoga jacket, my warm hat , my Biffy , my longjohn sottoms and my sweatshirt to my costume.  By the time we gave up on the fire (a couple of logs had smoldered through, but no real heat generated) and climbed into our cots, i had decided to keep my sweatshirt on, with hood.  I should have also kept the long John’s, as my summer pj’s tended to ride up and were no contest for the dropping thermometer (which hit 43 degrees per the Weather app the next day).

[I have had arthritis in my right hip enough to keep me awake both nights – both nights I got up and took an ibuprofen which cut in enough to help me sleep eventually. tomorrow I will be sure to take a famotidine in the AM hoping my “miracle cure” works again.  It took a week to wear off from the Omoxxxxxx – or was it the Kathy Smith Aerobic workout?  Or is it the hard cot? Or the cold?)

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30 Apr 2024

Flying Down the Freeway in Texas

From Love Field in Dallas to Caddo Lake on the Louisiana Border – W and I first met in East Texas, so the afternoon is a trip through the mists of nostalgia as we flash past familiar landmarks on the ubiquitous interstates.

From DFW we pass familiar streets on the exit signs: Mockingbird Lane, Inwood Ave, Turtle Creek, Preston Road and University Park. The frontage road skirts neighborhoods full of the lovely brick and white-trimmed ranch-style houses of East Texas prosperity, set well back on impossibly wide and deep and green lawns. 

After several mis-directions we make it onto the freeway, past fields of bluebonnets, paintbrush, godetia, and crimson clover. There are more familiar names on the exit signs: Athens, Terrell, Gladewater, Tyler, Kilgore, and finally Marshall, our turnoff.  We stop at a Kroger’s, where W reveals that she had not glanced at her checklist before loading the car.  Just in case, we pick up things we turn out not to need (tea, salt and pepper, bowls) and things we will be glad to have (fruit, crackers, tinned fish, yogurt, fixings for a one-dish skillet dinner, and most importantly, a cooler).

Fifteen miles later we are at the CCC stone-piled entrance to Caddo Lake State Park.  We arrive at 4:45 at the check-in stand to discover that the office closes at 4:30. W’s computer pulls up Shelter 16 on the reservation.

It is dusk by the time we unpack, W is exhausted and wants to sit, and I am hungry. We have our snack lunch for dinner and save the skillet meal for later – a skillet is another thing W has forgotten.  An application of Off! keeps the bugs at bay, W has a mini-lantern for the table, and we make our way through a tin of sardines, a half-box of crackers, and half the cherry tomatoes – Excellent, and easy!

We had planned a post- prandial fire sit, but the fire is short-lived, as we had not stopped for firewood on the way in. Still there is magic, as the stillness thickens, and fireflies begin to flicker in the trees. The humidity is so high that the evening dew is condensing in puddles INSIDE the shelter, but W has brought a tarp for the floor, and cots to raise us above it. A sheet is all I need for a cover as I snuggle on top of my sleeping bag, listening to the stillness until I fall asleep.

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21 Nov 2023
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Freeway Free in Washington – A Ghost of Lost Hawaii

When our boat docked at the small town of Kalama (population just under 3,000) I had a strange sense of deja vu. That three-story tile-roofed hotel facing the beach, with verandas wrapping around all three stories – hadn’t I seen it before?

It turned out I had – years earlier, on a honeymoon trip to Lahaina, and then again on an anniversary return trip to the same place. Nestled on the beach side of the railroad track which separates the town of Kalama from the marina, beach, and boat dock is a replica of the old Pioneer Inn in Lahaina, built from the same blueprints. This recreation is especially poignant as the original Pioneer Inn had been demolished less than two months earlier by the wildfire which destroyed most of historic Lahaina in August 2023.

The Oregon version has an extra level, and the palm trees are replaced by a trio of historic totem poles, but the exterior and interior are meticulously crafted to evoke the historic Pioneer Inn. Inside, the bar has a tiki theme, the walls are pine-paneled , a bark canoe hangs from the ceiling and the furniture is vintage.

But the Mcmenamins empire includes more than a single nostalgic lodge. At this establishment, instead of mai tais, the customer is offered beer from the Mcmenamins’ brewery and hard cider from the Mcmenamins- orchards. The brewery is conveniently located right across from the gift shop, so you can taste and buy onsite within a few steps.

Mcmenamins also owns a number of entertainment venues across the states of Washington and Oregon, and the pine-paneled walls are decorated with posters of noted concerts.

There is a claim, enshrined in oil paintings though not in photos, that Elvis Presley himself stayed, not at the Lodge, but nearby in Kalama on his way to film a movie in Seattle, and it is quite true that Marlon Brando was a frequent visitor to his son Christian’s home in Kalama. The oil painting of the two icons fishing together, however, is purely imaginary, as their visits were two decades apart.

Posted in Freeway Free, hidden treasures, Travel, Washington State and tagged , , ,
24 Oct 2023

Freeway Free in Washington: Eating Wild in Spokane

D and I were at the Hilton Garden Inn in Spokane, about to embark the next day on a cruise down the Snake and Columbia Rivers. The Garden Inn is a functional airport hotel, made charming by exceptionally pleasant, smiling staff. But dinner at the hotel looked like a bleak proposition; a bunch of folks were playing cards in the lounge, and the dining area was over-brightly lit and uninviting.

So we walked across the parking lot to the Rusty Moose, which, turned out to be very welcoming, despite being decorated with a lot of staring animal heads and other effigies. Though wild game burgers were the featured attractions, Destiny (our smiling server) served us a delicious dinner of seared halibut (D) and Idaho trout (me) with a yummy rice pilaf and baby asparagus on the side. We splurged on a bottle of the house Sauvignon Blanc from WA state, and a berry cobbler shared for desert (served with ice cream AND whipped cream on top – Washingtonians don’t stint!)

Maybe not a destination restaurant, but certainly a worthy haven en route to wherever!

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05 Sep 2023

Freeway Free in Colorado: Strolling through the past in Georgetown

Instead of turning north at the Granby junction off I-70, DM suggested that we continue another five miles and have our lunch in Georgetown, a discovery she and a friend had made in exploring the west side of the Colorado Rockies.

Georgetown is a town preserved in the 1889’s, except it has been somewhat cute-sified with colorful paint a la San Francisco’s Painted Ladies.  What used to be the bank is now painted a trendy purple and contains an assortment of “antiques”, “local crafts” (some made in China) and kitsch shops selling Xmas ornaments, Colorado souvenirs, “Indian” turquoise and silver jewelry,  etc.  The town includes several attractive restaurants; we ate at “The Happy Cooker” – a cottage with a cheerful patio outside decorated with oddments, friendly bustling service, and ample servings of French fries to go with wraps and salads. Wandering around as we waited for our table to be cleared I even found a shop with a fine assortment of Georgetown postcards – increasingly a rarity in the days of email and Instagram.

There is also a railroad running just outside of town, a relic of the old mining days. We did not visit the railroad, being on a schedule, but we heard a very authentic-sounding whistle, and there were postcards. (If you go, check out the railroad and report back!)

After lunch we strolled the other side of the street and stopped in at the charming little library beautifully laid out with the more modern children’s wing tucked away behind so as not to disturb the overall quaintness.

A perfect way to break a trip from Denver or Boulder to the western slope!

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29 Aug 2023

Freeway Free in California: Along the River in SLO

 This morning we went to downtown San Luis Obispo, magically stripped of its food stalls, produce, and acrobats from last night’s farmer’s market, and checked out the mission – lovely, quiet, full of apologetic acknowledgement of the mistreatment of Indigenous People’s.  We left W, who had seen plenty of missions, outside on a bench by the creek, and returned to find her having befriended Adrian, a very well-spoken and tidy vagrant who welcomed us all to SLO. 

We wandered along thecreek to the SLO Art museum, a very small but attractive venue with three local artists exhibiting (loved Anila Agha’s India-inspired lanterns), plus a colorful abstract mural which wrapped completely around the outside of the museum.

On our way back to the car we couldn’t pass up the old Carnegie Library, now the home of the SLO History Museum.  The exhibits and the docent who talked about them were unexpectedly fascinating – I had to go out for extra time on our (very expensive) parking meter. The docent was a Viet Nam vet who knew a lot about the Dust Bowl and the Japanese internment, and is doing research on WR Hearst.  He explained and enhanced a lot about the old photos which were displayed, and recommended The Habit for a light hamburger lunch just a block away.

The Habit is a fast food place a cut or several above McDonalds – I had a fancy burger with mushrooms and garlic aioli and tempura string beans instead of fries for about $12 including tax.  The most unusual aspect is the ordering, all done at touch-screen kiosks at the front of the store, with a buzz to your cell phone when your order is ready.

When we left the mission in the morning, we had seen people setting up already for the free Friday concert in the Plaza in the evening. (People were already reserving their spaces at 11AM). We thought about attending, but decided instead to reserve a riverside table at Novo just down San Luis Obispo Creek from the mission and the Plaza.

 Our dinner at Novo was a triumph – all participants raised a toast to D for having suggested and reserved the place.  We were outside next to the creek, but far enough down the creek and across so that the noise of “The Molly Ringwald Experience” rock band going in in the Plaza was just incidental background noise.  

We feasted on four appetizer plates:  calamari with 2 kinds of sauce, roasted Brussels sprouts, warm Chèvre (goat cheese) with olives and sourdough toast, and minced chicken in lettuce cups.  We finished off with a shared chocolate decadence fudge thing, all deliciously accompanied by a generous pour of the house Merlot. 

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15 Aug 2023

Freeway Free in California: Cool Stays in SLO

If my posts have you thinking about a stop in San Luis Obispo, you’ll want a place to stay. Here are three very different choices:

For families: Quality Inn Suites  (qualitysuitesslo.com) – Located well off the freeway and only a few blocks from downtown. This is a great value. TQuality Suites in SLO is a beautifully laid out establishment with lots of outdoor shady sitting spots for contemplation.  One courtyard adjoins the breakfast cafe and the Lobby and contains the spacious swimming pool as well as plenty of outdoor seating for patrons of the Cafe or the evening Manager’s Reception (one generous pour of wine or one beer.) The second, quieter courtyard hat has a gazebo, a fountain, and several tiled tables with benches for sitting as well as a gazebo and a fountain.). Behind the hotel is the river with several nicely situated benches for even quieter contemplation and perfect fend shut.

The complimentary hot breakfast offers a variety of egg dishes, pastries, bagels, cereals, and the usual trimmings.   In the evening along with the complimentary wind and beer, an evening barbecue grill on the swim deck offers hamburgers, hot dogs, cheese steak sandwiches, and grilled chicken sandwiches along with help-yourself salad fixings and cole slaw. If you want something fishy, I can recommend the Splash Cafe for takeout fish tacos and wraps just down Monterey Avenue.

The rooms are large and well equipped. W, C and I rented a Suite, which has two double beds plus a comfortable sofa bed. If you are traveling with children, the pool and the barbecue are easy entertainment and eating options if you have had a long traveling day or a strenuous time getting a student settled at Cal Poly.

For couples or BFFs on a girls’ weekend who are into kitsch – The Apple Farm Inn is up the street from the Quality Inn, a little further from downtown, and offers floral decor and chintz galore, with poster beds, ruffled pillows, overstuffed chairs, and a gift shop full of china in traditional patterns and knickknacks. It’s a new establishment that is trying to be quaint, but with modern gas fireplaces in the rooms. D and I stayed here years back and remember that the breakfast, though not complimentary, was to die for (or die after from surfeit). Current pix look less ruffly and chintzy than I remember.

For couples who want genuine vintage without the kitsch and don’t mind stairs, the Garden Street Inn is a quaint and charming B&B located in a historic Victorian within easy walking distance of downtown. It has stained glass windows, a library with a ladder to help you to the top shelves, clawfoot tubs in the bathrooms, and a sunny breakfast area for enjoying a different creative breakfast every morning.

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08 Aug 2023

Freeway Free in California – SLO Farmers Festival

The San Luis Obispo “Farmers market” is justly famous, but not for farming.   I put the quotes because the actual produce-vending section occupies maybe two blocks, while the food stalls, real estate booths, craft booths, and beer dispensers made up at least five.  You might also see a balloon guy with balloons that light up in rainbow colors, an acrobat who climbs a pole held steady by four volunteers and does gymnastics thirty feet up in the air, a group of rock performers who alternate on instrument playing and K-pop style dancing, or a dancing dread-locked saxaphonist. 

The market is held every Thursday evening beginning at 6PM on SLO’s main street, Higueroa Street, which is decked in lights and lanterns and shut down to all but foot traffic. In summer, long-lasting daylight allows you to appreciate the beauty of the produce and see the performers more clearly, but there is something magical about lantern-light and sparkly garlands which will lure you to spend more time after dark.

The food-stall section offers a huge variety of walk-away food, as many of the local restaurants set up food stands and offer sample platters of their standard menu items. W and I shared a couple of platters of Indian food from the Shalimar restaurant, with mango lassi as drink/dessert, while C wolfed her way through a plate of large juicy beef BBQ ribs. Roasted corn on the cob, churros, tacos, gyros, hummus. BBQ chicken, varieties of satay,, ramen, and chowmein, ice cream, crepes, and many other exotic, vegan, and other choices were available.

W sat and people-watched (lots of summery swirly dresses, bare midriffs, ripped jeans… SLO is a college town, after all) while Cindy and I explored up and down the blocks. Market closed down at 9 and so did we, making it back to our hotel by 9:30 and everyone well-fed and snug in bed by 10. 

One word of warning: Parking in downtown SLO is expensive ($4/hour) and hard to come by on Market Night. I let W and C off a block from Higueroa and drove five blocks in the other direction before I found a parking place (at least it was beyond the range of the parking meters). Make sure to take note of where you park, and have a phone with a flashlight for your return, as the street lights of SLO are also few and far between once you are off the main drag.

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30 May 2023

Freeway Free in Texas: The Good Life in San Saba

Imagine:

You wake up in the spacious master suite of the home you designed yourself on 140 acres of open land. You make your coffee and stroll out to the spacious veranda which runs across the front of the house, looking out over a pasture with cows and pecan trees, and an occasional herd of deer or feral hogs around the pond. It’s bluebonnet season, and the blossoms are carpeting patches of the pasture.

Next to the white ranch house, but not too close, is the barn/workshop which stores equipment for maintaining the fence that keeps the cows, deer, and feral hogs away from the nearby vegetable garden, green with lettuce beginning to bolt, sugar peas just ready to harvest, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant well along. It’s a bit too early for the strawberries and blackberries. You check the chicken coop for eggs and find enough for breakfast for you, your spouse, and guests who are bedded down in the wing on the other side of the kitchen.

Breakfast includes the eggs, bread you made yourself, and blackberry jam from last year’s berries. After breakfast you see your daughter, son-in-law, and three granddaughters walking over from their house just kitty-corner across the pasture. (You designed their home also, when you and your spouse and your daughter’s family agreed that buying the property together would be a good move.) You leave the guests to entertain themselves while the two families jump into your SUV and off you go for a morning of soccer.

Back in time for lunch, you serve everyone goulash made of home-grown broccoli, ground venison shot and butchered by yourself on your property, and wild rice.

After lunch you take the guests for a tour of the new San Saba County Musuem, assembled and curated by volunteers, very creatively arranged by types of activity (law, business, church, school, home , children , agriculture , ranching, etc). You are a board member of the Museum, and can regale your guests with a fountain of info and anecdotes. including why Queen Victoria named San Saba “the World’s Capital of Pecans”.

Then you take the guests on a tour of the town of San Saba starting with the “Longest continuously used jail in Texas”, the refurbished courthouse (painted in authentic avocado green and harvest gold), lovely old homes in various states of repair, and the Methodist Church, “the only church in Texas built entirely of local marble” with lumpy white pillars like stacks of slightly bubbly marshmallow on a skewer.

Back at the ranch, your spouse prepares the charcoal grill while you take the guests on a tour of the property on your electric golf cart, checking out the wildlife feeders and adjacent hunting blinds, but no feral hogs or deer to be seen, only placid cows.  At 5 pm the family across the pasture arrives preparatory to dinner. You sit on the veranda, the men talking hunting, fishing, trapping, the girls playing hobby horse or doing gymnastics on the lawn, the women exchanging information about cooking, planting, and coping with energy blackouts, (Your houses have solar panels and backup generators, so no worries) while the girls are playing hobby horse or doing cartwheels on the lawn.

Dinner is home-grown broccoli, oven-baked new potatoes, and the grilled chicken. After dinner you all sit on the veranda and watch the stars – the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and a glowing cloud that may be the Milky Way.  It’s not quite a Dark Sky, as the moon is rising over the roof and the horizon is lit by the surrounding towns, but pretty close. “Orion just leaps out of the sky at you,” says one of the guests.

You tell the guests of a visitor from Boston who looked up awestruck and said “I can’t believe this!  how come you have so many more stars in Texas than we have in Boston?”  He couldn’t believe that the stars were there in Boston, but obscured by urban glare.

A fantasy? There are some downsides to being some distance from a grocery store or a doctor or a local school or a library, but overall, the Good Life outside of San Saba looks pretty fine to me. I was one of the guests.

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23 May 2023

Freeway Free in Texas: Odds and Ends on the Other Side of Somewhere

W and I agreed on the first day to shift off driving every two hours, although she grew a bit impatient at my refusing to drive faster than 65 on a two-lane road where the posted speed is 75. Texas drivers seem to have no fear of oncoming traffic or soft shoulders. As we move along and I figure out the cruise control I am more daring, but still not able to pass anyone unless there is a passing lane.

The first day my two hours ends in Hamilton at lunch time. Yelp reviews speak well of Garlands, but this turns out to be a little blue trailer kitchen in an RV park, with nary so much as a picnic table to eat at. The fallback is Central Perk, a funky converted home with a wide veranda which would have been charming to sit on if the weather had not been in the 50’s and windy.  They were out of soup, and the Veggie Panini was… interesting. Whole wheat bread grilled on one side, with eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, and onion with a slice of Romano cheese.  The cheese was melted, but the vegetables were raw.  I’ve never had raw eggplant before, and hope not to ever again. but the rest was surprisingly good, with a copious salad of greens, a tomato, and honey mustard dressing.  The wall held several certificates lauding CP as “best sandwiches in four counties” which considering where we were may very well have been true.

I’m always on the alert for reasons to stop along the way beyond simply natural necessities. Seymour, Texas, strategically located on the way between Archer City and Turkey, boasts the excellent Whiteside Museum of Natural History, with a Sound Garden across the street, in addition to the requisite gas stations.  Two busloads of I’d judge third graders were also exploring the museum and the sound garden at the time we dropped in, but their chaperones kept them well in hand, and we dodged around the Pleistocene and Jurassic and other exhibits in avoidance.  I’ve not seen a better T Rex simulacrum, the Triceratops skull was awesome, lots of other excellent taxidermy of currently thriving wildlife all around. The only complaint I have is regarding the sole, ridiculously expensive ($2.50) and very ugly post card available in the rudimentary gift shop.

From Turkey we headed east off across the boundless open high plains to Abilene. It seemed odd to see banners in this North Central Texas cattle capital, proclaiming it to be the “Storybook Capital of the World”, but in the downtown area a former commercial building across from the historic railroad station houses the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature Illustration, and a number of statues depicting storybook characters can be found on rooftops, on corners, and in parks around the downtown area. We lunched in the Storybook Garden down the street from the museum. next to a statue of the Lorax. The museum itself is fascinating, full of memories of stories I read to my kids as well as stories read to me.

Abilene also boasts of Frontier Texas! a history museum with modern interactive exhibits which also serves as the official Visitors Center for Abilene and the Texas Forts Trail Region. We did not stop here, nor did we take in The Grace Museum, an art museum featuring rotating exhibits of contemporary art and local history, located in a handsome re-purposed circa 1909 hotel in the historic downtown center of Abilene.

Abilene is doing its best to be Somewhere. It’s certainly worth a second stop, the next time we go west from Dallas.

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My debut novel, Fox Spirit, is appearing episode by episode on my sister blog, ajmccready.wordpress.com. New episodes arrive every Monday and Thursday. They’re short, so you’re not too late to check them out, and sign up for future happenings. Here’s a link to the first episode: http://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2023/02.

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