Tag: KOA

On the road to Arizona

We pulled out of the storage lot this morning at 7:30. We spent quite a bit of time yesterday packing food, clothes, and gear. Kevin’s new hobbies of 3D printing and his astro photography equipment took quite a bit of space, but it all fit in nicely. We pretty much empties the freezer, deep freeze, and refrigerator so we won’t have to shop as often. I have lots of individually frozen packages of uncooked chicken breast and chicken thighs, nicely protected with the vacuum sealer. There is also brisket, smoked turkey, roasted turkey, and smoked pork butt in meal sized portions. Add in frozen vegetables, and we are pretty well set. We also have a lot more canned good and dry goods than normal. I want to grocery shop no more than once a week, and we should be able to do that.

The forecast for today said good weather along our trip until 10-11, but that icy rain/sleet started early. I drove 35-45 mph for probably 50 miles until the weather and roads improved south of Des Moines. The rest of the way was smooth sailing, though we had some winds as we left Kansas City. We are safely tucked in at the Topeka KOA, a place I do not recommend. Their long pull through are right next to the Kansas Turnpike; the highway fence is about 40-50’ from our door! Not only is it noisy, but the interior roads are truly awful with big ruts. It is just for a night so we can manage. I will definitely look for an alternative the next time we go this way though. Kevin got the rig dewinterized, and we have water and heat. What more can I ask for? Oh, and we even got the Dish satellite restarted, always a bit of a trial after suspending service.

Lily settled in about 5 minutes. She sat on Kevin!s lap a lot, and she slept in her carrier (one of her favorite places). She is now sleeping on top of the carrier quite soundly.

Salt Lake City #1

It isn’t that I think SLC is the best city in the nation/world, but that I expect to  have two posts while we are here.

We did have an easy ride through SLC on I-15 because we timed it that way. I have found pretty much any city is the easiest to drive through between 10 and 2, so we cruised through between 12 and 1, arriving at the KOA around 1:30. This is a nice KOA with lots of trees and even some grass. The sites are big for a RV park, with maybe 10’ between rigs. We got settled in and generally just relaxed. The. Verizon signal is ok here, so I downloaded a number of television episodes in preparation for no signal in Death Valley.

Saturday we took a drive to one of our favorite places, Antelope Island State Park. Weather was definitely coming in, and sadly there was quite a bit of haze. I still took a couple of pictures of the mountains across the lake.

The lake surprisingly wasn’t too low, or at least not for late fall. When I first moved to the area in 2012, we could canoe all around the island. Now you can only paddle around the western side because Farmington Bat on the east is only a couple of inches deep near the island. Sad. All the people on the Wasatch Front are using up the mountain water before it reaches the Great Salt Lake.
We also did some shopping. A particularly interesting purchase was a dozen 4 oz. canning jars to make flan sous vide, as described by the server at the Basque restaurant a few days ago. I use my immersion blender to mix these up, and it works great. Here is Kevin’s sous vide setup using a small ice chest.

A cover makes it much easier to cook.

And inside were 8 jars of flan plus one jar of left over custard.

Sorry for the poor quality. My high res version got deleted!

The results (samples this morning) were fantastic! Smooth and silky, though not easy to get out of the jars.

This morning we went to our old church, First Presbyterian, and I sang in the choir. It was great fun hanging out with my old friends and singing again. A small group of us went to lunch at a great Greek place called “The Other Place.” It has been around for years, but we never went before for some reason. That was definitely our mistake! It has been family run for about 40 years, and the food was food was great. We both had breakfast, but some of our friends have the lunches, and they were huge. I want to come back because they also have liver and onions, a weakness of mine.