Eight More Days Or One Month

It happens every year and I hate the thought of it. Our stay down south is nearing it’s end. We have eight days to the end of February or just one month to our departure. But then I comfort myself with the fact that the day temps will have risen to pretty much unbearable levels. I really don’t like to be in a sweat lodge all day, and that’s what it will be when temps are crawling towards 90F. This winter has been on the cool side though and who knows, it might even stay that way. Right now we have quite a storm rushing in from the north-west. That little rain last night hardly left any puddles around and the rest of the humidity will be gone with the wind by tonight. That’s life in the desert! Had me a dip in the hot pool today. A guy was sitting beside me and chatting along with another guy in the other pool. He was rambling on about the American wars for Independence and let me tell you his stories let your imagination run wild. But as he was rambling on it became too much for me and I had to get out of there. This guy was a history book! We are mostly spending the day inside the rig. The sun is on and off but the wind is soooo cold that nobody is staying outside. Molly is sleeping on the couch (where else eh?) and I can’t wait to have lunch. We have had problems with our BEAMSPEED Internet connection today. making a call via SKYPE was all but impossible. After I ran a speed test the ping was down to the sixties and download often under 1mbs while upload was mostly between 0.1-0.2mbs. That is not enough capacity to use SKYPE. Now we are wondering whether the service provider has problems with his allocated bandwidth (too many users out there) or whether we should blame the high wind speeds. To compare we turned on our Verizon MIFI and the speeds were showing over 2mbs download and about 0.6mbs upload – a huge difference. So in the future we will just turn on the MIFI for the day when we want to make phone calls. And I’ll have to talk to the BEAMSPEED guys. Remember I was wondering about those rock piles long I-8 in the San Diego Mountains?  Well a reader send me this explanation: (quite astounding) The big boulders ... ... aren't boulders. They're a few huge masses of rock that solidified underground and are now being pushed upward and exposed by erosion. They're made of relatively soft stone, so they crack. The weather works at the cracks and rounds them off. That's why it looks like a pile of boulders. And yes, every once in a blue moon one of those masses gets loosened and rolls downhill. Unfortunate houses downhill may suffer. Welcome to geo-dynamic California. :-D How nice to know! Thank you “Unknown”. And now I need to whip up some lunch. Hmm… let’s see what we got…. Thanks for hanging in here!

The Julian Pie Company

As a follow-up to yesterday’s story here’s about the Julian pie: The Julian Pie Company became  a reality for Liz Smothers in September of 1986. It all started when she and a neighbour began peeling apples for a local pie shop where she was soon employed to bake and sell pies. Tim, her son worked after school rolling dough. Recognizing her expertise, two other pie shops hired her to bake for them. While Liz enjoyed the activity and baking for the pie shops, she had a desire to be creative on her own and not merely bake someone else’s pie. With the assistance of a friend and emphasis on quality control and clean, neat surroundings, the Julian Pie Company began. In 1989 Keith and Liz purchased an apple farm and with the help of son Dan, 17,000 trees were planted to supply fresh apples for the pie shop. While the orchard occupied much of Keith’s time, Liz’s expertise was in the kitchen ensuring quality control. Her goal was to produce a pie that would capture the essence of the small mountain town of Julian. Being the youngest of eight children, Liz attributes the love of pie making to her mother. “One of my fondest memories is standing on a box beside my mother putting leftover pie dough in a metal jar lid to make a pie.” Today she attributes the success of the pie shop to her dedicated team of bakers and staff. It sure is a story of unique American entrepreneurship as it cannot found any better anywhere else. Thanks to the Pie Company we had just another afternoon with Apple Pie and fresh whipped cream. I could get used to that! While we were enjoying the pie, the temps kept climbing up reaching 80F for the second day in a row. So we kept ourselves within reach of a slight nice breeze. Another gorgeous day in the desert south-west is slowly coming to an end and I cannot but think of that we only have another month left before we need to turn the van north and east. We sure will miss our nice trailer but then a new tourist season will keep us busy, and I kinda know that the summer will be on the fast track and over as quickly as this winter will be soon. Thanks again for stopping by!

A Trip Out West And A Pie

Hey, I’m back in blog land! Yep, skipped two days. Oh…I’m feeling bad, sorry folks, but when nothing happens (and nothing DID happen) and I have no alternative ideas, then nothing’s gonna appear on this blog.        Heading west on Hwy 78 However, for today we had planned a trip out west- into the San Diego Mountains. We’ve been there before, but like with all kind of places we liked earlier, we want to see them again. We left the Hot Springs at about 8.30a and were soon running up Hwy111 towards Brawley. North of Brawley is a permanent Border Patrol Station. We slipped through and right behind is where Hwy 78 turns west towards Julian. First thing we noticed was hundreds of “Duners” (=people who play in the dunes). Their RVs were parked just about everywhere, and even the road was pretty busy with them. What makes adults to kids? What is it that makes them park their expensive rigs right in the flying sand and race on ATVs along the desert floor like the devil was behind them. I mean, seriously folks, gas prices in California have passed the 4-Dollar mark and here are hundreds and hundreds playing with their gas-driven ATVs like there is no tomorrow???? We finally got past all these maniacs and were heading further west. Once we got into the coastal mountains the scene changed from tan coloured desert floor to lush green mountain meadows, dark green live-oaks and lovely little places where people enjoy life. A few yellow flowers were already out, but obviously, it was too early for the big desert flower show. We really hadn’t expected anything like that either. Wonder whether there’s any Wildlife left at that noise level After driving through narrow canyons and climbing up  long winding mountain roads and getting through a few hairpin curves, we rolled into Julian.                         Everything is about Tourism   Much can be said about Julian. It is certainly an inviting little town, even though I think that there is a little bit too much of the tourism character over everything. It is almost like a tourist trap, OK- a nice tourist trap, and because of that we stopped and took a little walk. There is not much of a walk-about, it takes all but 30 minutes to walk up and down Main Street. Left: The Julian Pie Company Walking down, I thought of apple pie. That is always a good enough reason to take a drive to Julian. The town is the home of the Julian Apple Pie Company. It was founded in 1986 by Liz Smothers and I will make a separate posting of this as it is well worth to know about it. So I walked right in and bought a lovely crisp “Dutch Apple Pie”. Yummy, yummy… All I want to say here is that these Apple Pies are the best pies I have ever eaten. Especially as we topped it with real whipped cream after we got home. From Julian we went even further west down to Santa Isabel and further on through the lush green Ramona Canyon and through the town of Ramona.    A private driveway in bloom It became clear that the beautiful weather had intrigued many people out of San Diego to head out and get up into the mountains. Once we counted a group of 24 Harleys droning along through town. Boy, these guys sure know how to make them heard. Not my cup of tea though.         I-8 east of San Diego We were now on Hwy 67 and headed straight down to the broad Interstate 8, which turned out to be pretty empty, at least in our direction back east. There was way more traffic running towards San Diego though. When rolling down towards the desert floor into Imperial County we always marvel at the big boulders towering along the road. I really wonder how this landscape was created, what is the story behind these odd-shaped rocks. We put in a short stop at the Wally-mart in El Centro where we got a quart of HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM and a few other groceries. As soon as we had arrived at our trailer I made myself busy with that whipping cream and whipped up a good portion of it. There is NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, that can compare to the taste to this delicious apple pie topped with cream. After too good size slices I called it quits though and I can still feel it…..ah and taste it. Thanks for staying around here and sorry if you got hungry for apple pie. You just have to make the tour yourself.

Good Morning America, How Are You….

Yippeee…..  It’s February 14 and Valentines Day. The preparations at “SNOOPY’S” have been underway since the early morning hours. Tents have been raised, tables been set up and a blue tarp has been stretched out on the sand – the dancing floor.     “AL & Carlos”                                                                           The umbrella-march The annual Valentine’s Party at the Hot Springs is popular and about 100 people from camp are expected. Preparations are not limited to preparing the grounds, but extend into just about every RV, as many desserts have to be prepared for this afternoon. Valentine is prime time for every sweet tooth in the desert. Bea has made a coupla plates of cookies adorned with pink frosting. And as you can see on the pics here, there’s been made a large variety of cookies, cakes and desserts.   Dessert Heaven…. Of course it’s not only a dessert party, but we are also being entertained. Al, Carlos and Steve have been rehearsing and another couple, Pepe and Sue, have come from Yuma to contribute with their music.  Taking pictures…so important The weather is nice too, not too hot with that light breeze out of the north-west.  The dance floor                                                  What’s Al saying…? A couple tells me that they have been visiting Campobello Island and loved it out there. Where travelers go travelers meet with each other. Dancing with Teddy…                                                   “Snoopy”…our party organizer The good company we enjoy out here is what makes this place so special.