Instant Pot – TooBusyForWork

Summer 2023 trip is begun!

There was a lot of prep work to get this trip started. First we had to get the motorhome repaired. We found a guy who does upscale fiberglass boats, and he did a great job with a quick turnaround. He said we were lucky it was before Memorial Day, because he gets busy as soon as people put their boats in the water! Then Kevin ordered the new solar panels, and my lovely son in law Nick helped him put them on the motorhome. They were luckily able to McGyver an approach to use the old mounting hardware on the new panels which saved him having to drill new holes in the roof, always a good thing.

I finished up the quilt I started at the quilt retreat too. It was cut with an Accuquilt Hunter’s Star die. I planned for it to go into my stash of baby quilts for future needs, but a friend I have been camping with for 8 years was diagnosed with cancer, so I sent it to her instead. It is PINK, way more PINK than I anticipated when I bought the fabric. I tried to tone it down with a dark quilting thread, but it didn’t do much for the PINK. I did experiment with my rulers on this quilt, and I like the result.

One thing I did differently on this little quilt was to sandwich it using pool noodles and basting spray. Why did I wait to long? It was so much easier to keep things straight and wrinkle free. I made Kevin buy me an extra set of pool noodles to I can do the bigger quilts I have too.

I also finished quilting 3 quilts for my quilt guild donation program. It is enjoyable, and I get good practice. I am still learning about my quilt regulator table, so practice is needed. I also had time to make a sample block from a new die I bought from Blue Wren, a circle in a square. It is basically a Drunkard’s Path variation where the circles adjoin each other. The fabric is not my favorite! I grabbed two fat quarters I didn’t like, and here is the result. I never would have tried this without the cutter, but I love it!

In preparation for the summer, I cut bunches and bunches of tumblers for a scrap quilt. I also cut 20+ bowl cozy sets out of a variety of fabrics for a class I am going to teach at the FMCA convention in Gillette, WY this August. The class size is 12, but there always seem to be a few extras, and I wanted some variety for the students to choose from.

Another preparation step was to buy a small bread maker. This makes a 1 pound loaf, just the right size for Kevin and me. It is quite easy to use, and we are taking it with us on the trip.

Really nice garlic butter rolls (we ate the others)

We tried to leave on Tuesday, 30 May, but we had to wait for an Amazon package that was late. We did get out on Wednesday, and decided to make it a long day. We drove all the way to Kearney, NE, about 450 miles, in order to sneak through a nasty wind storm forecast. We spent the night in the Cabela’s parking lot there, a place we have stayed in before. Lots of trains coming close by, but I put in foam ear plugs and crashed.

Thursday night we stayed in a fabulous National Forest Service dispersed campsite at Vedauwoo Recreation Area about 20 miles west of Cheyenne, WY. What a fabulous place! It is a popular climbing destination with a small campground but lots of dispersed but designated campsites. The rocks are amazing. We will definitely be coming back with the RZR to ride some of the trails. Absolutely no cell service, but the Starlink was ok with downloads of 8-15MB.

Lots of these rocks looking like giant building blocks

We are in Rock Springs tonight at the Walmart. As usual a bit noisy, but very convenient. Tonight’s dinner is salsa chicken in the Instant Pot and frozen Trader Joe’s Mexican corn. I better get going on it!

Life is looking up

We are still semi-isolating, it it is a lot better than full isolation. The local medical facilities are managing well, and the local hot spot is a meat packing plant that we have no interaction with. We are going to the grocery store by ourselves now, and it is so wonderful to choose fresh produce! We have ordered more takeout too. We wear masks everywhere outside except in our own car, and I made some more masks of a fitted style since Kevin has issues with his glasses fogging up. I even bought a die from Accuquilt to speed up production. I keep refining my design. This is the most recent.

Accuquilt die cut, bound with 1 1/2” double fold binding.

To get an even better fit I am going to put a small dart on the side. It has a tendency to gap there.

I have also been cooking. We ordered an Air Fryer lid for our Instant Pot, and it finally got delivered after 6 weeks (Amazon u essential items). It certainly does make good crispy things like tater tots are brilliantly. I made onion rings from scratch that were pretty good too, but I overcooked my diced potatoes. Live and learn. Kevin has been sous vide cooking steaks and a pot roast. Love the steaks, but the pot roast was bland even though he seasoned it. I think I will go back to doing that on the stove or in the Instant Pot.

My Accuquilt adventures continue. I got a great deal on a 12” Qube that makes bigger blocks like I will be using on our bedroom quilt. I also ordered a Drunkard’s Path die and a 1 1/2” strip cutter. Those haven’t come in yet, so I am working on my piecing skills. I still have a ways to go. Here are some examples and comments. And yes, I am being hard on myself. I really want my piecing to move up a notch. I picked up the fabric at a local shop, and the blocks will eventually become a baby girl quilt.

Flying Birds block looks good, but the first one ended up too small. This is the first and second one showing the difference.

See the 1/8-3/16” size problem in the closeup?

This is a Flying X block. It came out the correct size too. What a bear to put together though. Won’t make more of this one!

Dutchman’s Puzzle looks better. Best flying geese I have ever done, but still needs some improvement.

I have also been sewing some isolation gowns, but my serger is having issues. I can’t seem to get any of the repair folks to call me back! Frustrating. Oh, and I made 7 masks for a local non-profit. I intended to make more, but they didn’t get my fabric pieces put together well. They were the Olson masks with a spot for a filter. Hard to sew!

We did break our isolation to spend Mother’s Day weekend at a local lake. The Friday before my daughter called to say a campsite was open and to ask if we wanted it. We instantly said yes and began getting ready. It was a lovely weekend, and it was so nice to see a different view outside. We are looking forward to a couple of trips this summer, so we got our yearly diesel maintenance done at a local Freightliner shop. We also had them install the Koni shocks we bought a few months ago. They make a huge difference! The coach seems a bit smoother, and it doesn’t wiggle when we hit rough roads and pot holes. Our next trip is to Badlands NP in mid-June, and we will drive I-90 which is very bumpy, so the shocks should help. Kevin got reservations at the NP campground during the week of the new moon. He is looking to get some astrophotographs of the Milky Way which is at its best this time of year.

Salt Lake City #2 and St.George

It was quite cool and wet on Monday, so we didn’t do an awful lot. We did get some shopping done, and we had a good meeting with our financial planner. We have a short term financial contract that expires next summer, and I will be going on social security next year at age 66. So we really needed to chat face to face about some options. Now that we have talked through it, we can do the rest over email and the phone when the time comes. We ate dinner at a lovely Mediterranean place called Mazzo’s. I recommend it.

Tuesday was a very enjoyable day though. The weather cleared, and the mountains were beautiful. There was no way I could get a good picture, so you will have to take my word for it! We also did a major shopping trip to Trader Joe’s for the last time this year. A follow-on trip to Smith’s grocery stores for a pork butt followed. We were having friends over, and I wanted to make pulled pork. A good rub, a bit of chicken brother, and 60 minutes in the instant pot (plus 20 minutes pressure release) made a gorgeous base for pulled pork.

I decided on a baked potato bar with pork, cheese, broccoli, butter, sour cream, and green onions. I did debate how to cook 10 potatoes in the motorhome. Should I use the “automatic” function? Combo micro/convection but manual? Or do I do it the old fashioned way and just oil them, sprinkle with kosher salt, and bake them at 400 for an hour? I ended up old fashioned because I wanted a nice crisp skin on the potatoes, and it worked. Of course we also had the complication of the campground power going out! I had to run the generator for about 3 hours since I was using the Instant Pot, the convection oven, and the washer and dryer. Luckily no one was around to bother with the noise, though the in-coach generator isn’t terribly loud. Any generator is annoying to me though, but the bigger heating appliances don’t work on battery power.

We did have a great time with a bunch of my choir buddies. They even did the dishes! We were able to finish off the flan too.

This morning we were out of the campground a little after 9:00 am for the drive through town and on to St.George, UT. I timed it so I didn’t have to drive in heavy traffic, but oh my, was the road bad for about 5-7 miles in northern Utah county! It was a construction zone, and the road was uneven and had little wiggles, not curves, just wiggles that were hard to see the marking for. Once we got through that it was smooth sailing.

As we got near Kolob Canyon, the landscape started showing its renowned red rock beauty. The land is so big that I just can’t get a picture of it, but you have probably seen them other places. I started feeling I could breath again in the dry, clear air with space all around.

We are saying at our normal St.George spot, Temple View RV Park. We got a huge pull-through site, and the temperature of 80 degrees at 4:00 pm convinced me I could start wearing sandals again. We sat outside for quite a while, then went to dinner. As we left the restaurant, the hills were just finishing some reflected beauty. Again, my camera can’t capture the breath of the view, but I at least tried.

The view was somewhat spoiled by businesses

But I cut the businesses out of this one.

Tomorrow we head towards Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. It has a no-reservation campground, so we are going to get there early. Hope we find a spot!

Ely, MN – Canoe capitol of the world

We arrived in Ely after a short 3 hour trip from Askov. Roads were good without much traffic. We were set up in the Forest Service campground at Fall Lake by 1:00. The site is very deep, but the entry road is narrow. Luckily Kevin got us tucked in just right with room for the Jeep up front. The site has 30 amp electric. Water is available at random spigots or when you check in (we came in full), but the dump is in town at the visitor center for a $5 fee.

Lighting was bad, but the shade is lovely

We headed to town for the Blueberry Festival. This is one of Ely’s big activities, and parking was crowded. There are vendors for food (we had a great gyro) and artisans of all types. I ended up buying a lovely silver necklace and matching earrings with a dragonfly design.

We also stopped by Piragis, a local outfitter, to buy a new daypack. Turns out we left mine at home. I won’t complain if that is the only thing we ended up forgetting.

Saturday evening we met friends at a party. Some of these folks I met online 20 plus years ago, so it was nice to catch up. Sunday we had breakfast at Britton’s, an institution. We also went to the local Presbyterian Church, nice! We then went back to the Blueberry Festival. This time the food was Indian fry bread, another yummy. We also saw Pat Surface do two sets. He is a local standout singer/songwriter even though the sets were mostly covers of other artists. Monday we had lunch at Boathouse Brewpub. In keeping with the Blueberry Festival theme, we had nice burgers and blueberry beer which was quite good. we hung around the campground. I also sewed much of the day – a cute little bubble for the new grand baby. The sewing that day went fine, but I am ready to tear my hair out today! I am learning to make buttonholes on the new Viking, and I am fairly frustrated. We will see what I feel like tomorrow! Either I will finish the bubble, or I will throw it in the trash. The odds favor the trash right now.

Tuesday we went to Duluth. Lovely trip, but I didn’t take many pictures. We have been there so many times that it just doesn’t seem necessary.

Wednesday day we had breakfast and chai teas at The Front Porch, a local coffee place. We had a lovely lunch at the new Insulated restaurant. Definitely a nice upscale option. I also did some cooking for friends who came over in the evening – Dutch Oven cobbler with fresh gala apples, flan in the Instant Pot, and two types of dip along with store bought chips. As usual, I made too much! I also had some very interested fauna.

Thursday we got out by 8:00 am and headed to Grand Portage National Monument, a long 150 miles away. The drive was nice though, either through a mixed deciduous forest or along the shore of Lake Superior.

I wish the pictures showed the hillsides better. Besides the green of the forest there were riots of wild flowers – yellow, white, shades of pink.

One of the highlights of the trip was lunch at the historic Naniboujou Lodge. It started out as an exclusive hunting and fishing resort, but now is a public facility. Oh my the colors! They advertise the fireplace as weighing over 200 tons, and it is huge! Oh, and the food was very good, much like it would be in an upscale eatery at a national park – lots of locally sourced items.

The National Monument was pretty good too, and well worth the drive. Native history interspersed with European history, primarily about the fur trade that drove the Grand Portage. I thought I had taken a number of pictures, but I was sadly quite wrong. I would like to spend a lot more time both at the monument and the towns we went through along the shore. Oh well, there is always time for another trip!

Today we again had breakfast and a chai at The Front Porch before I came back to sew. Ugh. I decided to quit for a while and update the blog while deciding to not cut everything up! Hope for a better mood tomorrow.

I love Death Valley!

Warning: long and picture heavy.

People either love deserts or they hate them. I have met few who were neutral. I am one of those that love deserts – the vastness, the stubborn plants surviving in harsh conditions, the adapted animals, the massive empty skies, the mountains showing their bones without being hidden by extras like trees. Death Valley National Park is my second favorite national park behind only Yellowstone. We are here for two weeks, and I love everything about it except the lack of internet.

First, DVNP is huge! It is the largest national park in the lower 48. It takes a long time to get from one major site to another, so you can’t do lots of activities scattered across the park in a short time. We got in on Monday, 30 October, and found a primo site in Sunset campground at the east end of a row with nothing between us and the mountains. Since we had driven through two time zones in the last two days, I was hurting! I managed to stay up until 9:30 Pacific time, but it was hard. We had planned on activities on Tuesday, but I was so tired we just stayed at the Furnace Creek area across the street from the campground.

This is a sunset picture from our campsite. No editing, just my little point and shoot camera on a “low light” mode. Pretty impressive, huh?

We went to Pahrump on Wednesday to get an ATT phone and data plan, hoping it would give us better connectivity. It did, but not in DVNP. They use a private network, and pretty much nothing else gets through. Oh well, it should help other places.

On Thursday we got to Father Crowley Point, a canyon overlook where fighter jets from the numerous air bases nearby do training. We were lucky enough to get five flybys from a combination of F-18 and T-38s. Nice! I couldn’t capture a photo, but the sight of aircraft flying below you through a tight canyon is pretty impressive. There are aficionados that go out every day with radios to track the flights, and a pair of them were kind enough to announce the flights just before they showed up. Along the way we stopped at Panamint Spring Resort for lunch and a bit of WiFi. Well worth the cost of the sandwich. Of course I didn’t catch up, but I made a small dent in my backlog.

We have friends arriving too, and it was enjoyable sitting around the propane fire pit (no wood or charcoal fires allowed). It has been hotter than average, so we had to wait u til after sunset to get comfortable each evening. I really don’t like heat, so we gave in a few days and ran the generator for air conditioning.

On Monday, 5 November, we took a trip with the Death Valley 49ers for a private tour of the Cerro Gordo mining town on the west side of the Panamint range above the Owens Valley. Fantastic!

See that little cage in the bottom center of the last picture? That is what you would use to travel 900’ down. This is an unusual headframe in that it was completely inside a building.

Oh, and just in case anyone tells you the desert is just brown, you can show them this.

On Tuesday we did the Westside Road along with some friends. This is just a rough, sandy road on the west side of Badwater Basin with a number of historic sites. We got a nice surprise when we ran across the 49ers wagon train making their way to Furnace Creek.

Wednesday we didn’t do much, though I got some sewing done. I now have all the blocks for the RV quilt completed and we even laid them out, using the bed as a “design wall” to determine layout.

Thursday we drove Titus Canyon. This time our friends went with us in the Jeep since their dual real wheel pickup would have been challenged in a few spots. This is one of my favorite drives in the park, and I think you will see why. It starts with a long drive through sage into the mountains. Eventually you get to steep, rocky switchbacks with great canyon views. Eventually you go downhill a bit to the ghost town of Leasfield (a total scam that blew upon the investor’s faces), though I didn’t take any pictures this time. It was COLD with a nasty wind so we didn’t wander around like we usually do. Then there are more switchbacks until we got to the canyon wash you follow to the end.We were about the first through the canyon since we left early, and we were lucky enough to see four quail and even two desert bighorn ewes. The latter were a first for us in DVNP.

Remember I said it was windy? Here is a view of the dust storm from the exit of Titus Canyon. This is mostly in the area of the Mesquite Sand Dunes.

One of the other fun things to do at the Encampment is to hear from the historical reenactor they bring every year. This year Steve Hale acted the part of Bill Keys, pioneer jack of all trades. He even had others at the Encampment play roles including Kenn McCarty who brings the Belgiums and wagon plus the blacksmith who was demonstrating his skills. There was a tie in with Death Valley Scotty, but the material spent most of the time on Keys’s time as a miner and rancher in what is now Joshua Tree National Park. We visited his ranch when we were there a couple of years ago. It has been preserved by the NPS as a significant historical site. Steve Hale really gets into character. Last year he was a rich and very proper insurance executive.

Friday was the big wagon train arrival, always a highlight. The last Marine Corps mounted color guard lead the way, though I seemed to have posted the pictures in the wrong order!

There were lots of other wagons and riders, but my phone data connection is giving me fits on pictures.

I can’t leave this post without talking about the music at the Encampment. There is lots and lots and lots of music! An amateur group plays in the campground every night, and professionals play on Thursday through Saturday nights. Most of it is old Western songs with some more contemporary western music thrown in for good measure. Last year there was some bluegrass too, but so far we haven’t had any this year (sigh).

To end this incredibly lengthy post, I will give some results of our motorhome experience. This is the first time we have boondocked for two weeks, and all the systems worked very well. I LOVE the solar installation! At most we run the generator for an hour to do the bulk charging, and the solar tops off the batteries easily even on these shorter days. We have decided to be generous with our water usage and dump every 5 days at about 80% full. We could go longer with a few modifications of our routine, but the dump site is close and easy to use here. The sewing machine works great on the inverter, but the iron(even my small one), pulls down the batteries quickly (not a surprise). I sew quite a bit, then do all my pressing at once with the generator on. The Instant Pot takes a lot of power, so I won’t be using it on the inverter except for shorter cooking times – no ribs for 25 minutes! It worked fringe for souls vide style egg bites though. The microwave works great on inverter to heat something up for a few minutes, but is too big of a battery hog for more than that. Another thing I discovered is that I really, really don’t like going without internet access for long periods. After 3 days, I was antsy to read my mail and some news so we would drive to Stove Pipe Wells or Pahrump to get data access. Lesson learned! I had to drive to Pahrump to get enough data access to upload the pictures for this.

We leave tomorrow and head to Needles KOA. We will be storing the motorcoach until we come back after Christmas. Sigh. Lots of cleaning up to do before putting it to bed, and we have to figure out how to get the bikes stored inside! I really don’t want to drive to Iowa and back with them, and I doubt the Iowa weather will be good enough to do much riding between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Repair frustrations and more of the Natchez Trace

We are still sitting in the Tiffin Service Center parking lot. Sigh. We got into the paint shop on Friday, and today we had the paint finished up (buffing and such). They did a great job. I drove the coach back to our parking spot, hooked it all up, and 15 minutes later was asked to come to the cabinet shop. We only have one item left – a very poorly finished bathroom door. The very nice young man said the door had to be replaced, not repaired, and it would be two weeks! I nearly died. He saw my face, and said he’d go look to see if they had a spare one sitting around. Luckily, they did, and he said he’d get it put together and sprayed in “a day or two.” Yet another sigh, but not as big this time. We are hoping to get into Missouri on Thursday, but we will see what happens. Thank goodness I allocated lots of time for this trip.

On Saturday we took another trip along the Natchez Trace, this time heading towards Nashville. The pictures are from along the Trace.

This shows the old footpath and how it divides into different paths to go around what became mud puddles as the path as it wore down.

This is the Gordon house from 1818. It is t open for visitors, but it is pretty impressive anyway. The owner had a concession from the local Choctaws to operate a Ferry and trading post. He did just after the house was built, but his wife lived here until 1849.

This is the Inn (known as a “stand” in this part of the country when the Trace was active) where Meriweather Lewis committed suicide. Poor fellow was being stiffed by the US Government on a bunch of bills that he then had to cover from his own pocket. He was looking at bankruptcy, and was depressed. He is buried about 100’ away, his grave marked by a broken column indicating his early death. So sad.

Sunday we just hung around locally. I made some of the wonderful Instant Pot egg bites with sausage and cheddar cheese this time, and I also made an Instant Pot cheesecake. Both turned out wonderfully. I also got my sewing machine set up to get some work done on the quilt for the coach. Hopefully I will have all the blocks done before we go home for Thanksgiving.

Getting the hang of this

We have now been at Pleasant Creek Recreation Area for 8 nights. It was lovely. Some of my kids came out a few times for dinner and boating, and we were close enough to home to pick up a bunch of things we needed for the motorhome. I made two racks of beef ribs in the Instant Pot one night that my son in law finished on the grill. We also grilled burgers one night. It has been nice!

One of the things I have gotten organized is my sewing area. I tried using the machine on the dining table, but that just didn’t work. It was the wrong height, and the chair just wasn’t right there. I brought my little Gadget table from home, and it is perfect sitting in front of the TV. I will put my supplies on one end of the sofa, and the machine can travel on the sofa using the seat belt there.

Notice the little Ott light on the left and the purple Sip and Snip on the right. I love both of them! The Ott light provides just enough light from the back of the machine to make sewing much easier. It just sits wherever I want it. The Sip and Snip has a big cup holder and a trash bag for thread and other items. It is clamped on the edge of the table. I not only finished a baby quilt top but I also made some bowl cozies for the coach using some Native American pot fabric I bought in Arizona near Ft. Huachuca. I slightly rounded the corners of these, and they were easier to sew that sharp corners.

The site here is really lovely. There was hardly anyone here until the weekend. Three fourths of the sites accept reservations, and they are pretty empty during the week. We took one of the 7 non-reservation sites which were luckily not occupied.

The last picture shows the motorhome in a much truer color than the other one I posted. Most Tiffin paint schemes have black on the top. The lighter red should be somewhat cooler. Besides we like bright colors!

We are headed back home today. We won’t head out again until a couple of days after the 4th when we see friends in Ely, MN for a week then head west to Gillette, WY for a FMCA rally. It will be fun!

Back in Iowa in the motorhome

We left Alabama intending on staying at Cuivre State Park in Missouri, basically between St. Louis and Hannibal. We got there, but we didn’t fit! The park website said we did, and the reviews on RVParkReview.com said we would, but that must have been before they stopped trimming the trees above and next to the road. We actually scratched the coach, something that made me very sad. We then headed back north, but we couldn’t find a nice campground with openings. The campgrounds in the Hannibal don’t have good reviews, and Mark Twain Lake, a great place, was just too far off the road. We ended up staying in the Hannibal Walmart parking lot, running the generator pretty solid because it was so hot. I didn’t feel too bad because everyone else was doing the same thing!

We stopped at Center Point, Iowa, about 45 miles from home, to dump the tanks at the Travel Plaza. After we finished, we realized we were within 5 miles of one of our favorite camping spots – Pleasant Creek State Recreation Area. We decided to stop there for 6 days. Luckily it was Monday so the few no-reservation campsites had openings. It is a huge pull through site with 50 amp service at the princely cost of $16 a night. We decided to stay here until Sunday morning.

It was miserably hot on Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday were rainy and hot. My daughter, her husband and son, and my second son came last night for dinner. I used the Instant Pot to make pulled pork (cut into 1 pound chunks, use vegetable broth, garlic, and onions as liquid, pressure cook 70 minutes, natural pressure release after 10 minutes – delicious). I also made my daughter’s favorite chocolate cherry dump cake. I usually make it in a Dutch Oven, but the rain put a kabosh on that. I made it in a 6×10 baking pan I had. Put 2 cans of high quality cherry pie filling in the pan, spread about 1/2 a package of chocolate cake mix, and apply liquid margarine in a cross hatch pattern. I baked in the convection oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Today it was absolutely lovely most of the day with mild temperatures and just a bit of wind off and on. I tried to sew just to see where things would work best. I have already decided I don’t like seeing at the dinette table, so tomorrow we will pick up my little portable sewing table and see how that works.

In summary, it was awfully nice to have a comfortable place to really try out the coach. We are close enough to home we can pick up things, and we have packed a number of things we will be wanting to take with us.

Kodachrome Basin State Park

Last January we made reservations for Kodachrome State Park in southern Utah. Spring is the most popular time, and reservations are truly necessary in this popular spot. We were able to get a lovely site with full hookups for only $30 a night, pretty good! There was no cell service, so we kept having to go to town to check on emails and texts to deal with selling the house.We had some friends join us, and we had a lovely time. I am going to add a lot of pictures, so be prepared.

Sorry for the antenna, but this is the general look of the area. Lots of rolling hills and mountains with juniper and sage.

While this part of the country is know for its red rocks, there are some big white bluffs too. Much of the white is clay, and it was mined extensively in the area.

This is a view of the area from the scenic byway Highway 12. We took an entire day to drive the 70 or so miles to and from the town of Boulder. Absolutely gorgeous.

On another day we went to Bryce Canyon National Park. It is high enough in elevation that it has lines instead of junipers, and snow was on the ground above 8000’.

View from a lookout at Bryce.

Nice arch at Bryce.

We also drove a rough dirt road, Cottonwood Canyon Road, to Grosvenor Arch. This is a well signed BLM site with picnic tables, a toilet, and a paved walkway that went most of the way to the arch. It was quite impressive – a full double arch that just opened up before you. Quite cathedral – like.

Kodachrome Basin is definitely off the beaten path, but well worth a detour. Mostly full hookup sites, 50amp electrical service, with a few no hookup sites available. All are reservable, and you need to reserve if you want a site. Almost all the sites will accommodate a big motorhome or fifth wheel with ease. Our friends had an electric site for the first 2 nights, but had to move to a non-electric on the third night. We shared cooking duties. She made sloppy joes with a wonderful fresh salad on her cooking night, and I made baby back ribs in the Instant Pot with pan fried potatoes, onion, and peppers on my night. Yum.

Military bases plus quilting

Odd title, but we did a couple of quite different things today. First we went to Fort Huachuca and it’s fascinating Buffalo Soldier Museum. Buffalo Soldiers were what African American soldiers were known as before integration of the Armed Forces after World War II. Supposedly the curly hair reminded the Native Americans of buffalo (bison). It was a good thing the museum was good because it took a very long time to get a pass for the post. It took my driver’s license and a long questionnaire, followed by a criminal background check and military records check before I got the pass, about 30 or 45 minutes total. While most of the post was very modern, I took a few pictures of the older part because I like the history.

EC965990-E2F9-40E8-A519-4A1C997DA4E8 — A duplex housing a Major and a Command Sergeant Major.

9C4C0D2B-24E3-4B4E-BB2B-887DD7FFE8C8 — Just looking into the distance across the old parade ground.

D02EC9F5-3E07-42E9-A011-9C98F5618541 — An old mission-style building.

72372CDC-0CF4-4EB8-A9BD-1EF4DFEDD482 — Old barracks now made into offices.

We did exciting things like laundry at the campground, and I got my latest Quilts for Kids project completed. I am pretty pleased with it. I did the quilting on my Bernina sitting at the dinette table, something much harder to do than using the quilting machine at home.

2B069882-93B1-456E-947D-80139E7AE5E4 The design is called “I Spy” because of all the different fabrics. I used a dark blue thread for the meander quilting. I probably should have used yellow, but I didn’t have any nor did I want to go to the store, so blue it was. It feels nice to get this one done. Next I need to work on the microwave bowl holders with the cute fabric I bought here, but we are leaving this campground tomorrow. I like the area, but the campsite is not nice at all. There isn’t room for the truck, so we have to park it in the overflow area, and it is quite inconvenient. We will probably head some place north of Phoenix for tomorrow night. Thursday and Friday we will be at Willow Beach below Lake Mead. A full hookup campsite! Of course that assumes the Government doesn’t shit down again.

Oh, and tonight I made baby back ribs in the Instant Pot again. Yum, yum! You notice no pictures; they didn’t last long enough.