Cooking Thanksgiving

I had a hankering for turkey and dressing and the local free-range turkey grower was offering birds through my CSA, so I decided to do Thanksgiving. (I do that every year so not such a big surprise.) With time on my hands at work last week, I added a few side dishes that had accumulated in my to-try folder and created a Thanksgiving "menu."

Deviled eggs
Asian shrimp cocktail
Turkey with herb rub
dressing
gravy
mashed potatoes
roasted Cipollini onions
Mexican street corn salad from Serious Eats
Golden Crusted Brussels Sprouts
cranberry sauce
Rolls and butter
pumpkin pie

The Asian Shrimp Cocktail was soon slashed from the menu--too much work and too much food already. Also the rolls and butter. But all the rest were faithfully executed. Some notes for future planning (and current amusement) follow.

Deviled eggs: this is one of those to-taste recipes I learned from my mother. No measurements, just taste and add until it's just right. The only problem is that every time you taste, there's a little less filling in the bowl. Note to me: watch the salt! Stop before you think it's enough. And  try adding a little real horseradish--mysupermarket horseradish mustard doesn't have enough Devil in it.

Roasted Cipollini Onions: well, that was pretty much a fail--no Cipollini Onions. Best I could find were small-ish sweet onions and they weren't very small and they weren't very sweet. I ended up cutting them in fourths. Plus the recipe was silly--it said they'd caramelize in 30 minutes in a 325 degree oven. Impossible! They weren't even soft at that point and the four tablespoons of butter wasn't even brown.

All that said, I'll save the recipe. Adding mushrooms, it would make a no-fuss addition to grilled steak. With a lot less butter.

The Mexican Street Corn Salad was a maybe--I need to try again using fresh corn, and I need to throw the chopped cilantro, onions and garlic in the pan right before turning off the heat. You heat up a big pan and char the corn kernels over high heat. Then, to all the ones that don't pop right out of the pan, you add the chopped herbs, mayonnaise, and a little cotija cheese. Lacking better instructions, and not wishing to goo up my frying pan with melted cheese, I cooled the corn down, transferred to a bowl, then added the herbs and stuff. But I think it would have been better if the herbs had gotten a minute of cooking in the hot pan.

Golden Crusted Brussels Sprouts was very simple. Instead of roasting them in an oven, you cook them in a pan until tender, then turn up the heat and brown the outsides. Sprinkle a little salt and grated cheese (I used gruyere). Serve warm.

I say, blah! Roasted vegetables is all the trendy thing, and in general it works, but I'm getting tired of it. What the recipes don't mention, although this one hinted at it, is that if you over-roast the vegetables, they turn from delicious to dull. This recipe said to start at a low temperature and to check them for doneness at ten minutes.

All I can say is, whoever wrote it needs to have his clocks checked. Mine weren't at all tender at ten minutes. So, needless to say, I burned 'em.

Never again. Brussels Sprouts are so sweet and yummy when cooked in a pan with a little water, I'm not wasting them on any more of these fancy cooking techniques.

I didn't taste the pie yet. I was so tired I went to bed early. The crust may be hideous--I started a bad recipe and realized my mistake, then tried to correct it rather than throw it all away and start over.





I did get an opportunity to try out the "How to Carve a Thanksgiving Turkey" instructions on Serious Eats.

What do you think?




Theirs:








Mine:






Close, huh?

Lots of rocks, yeah!

Basin and Range
by John McPhee

A classic, of course, and beautifully written to boot. But it's the sort of thing I'd be better off reading on paper. I tried the audiobook and listened while jogging--every time I noticed a flock of ducks in the pond or a new planting of flowers, I lost track of a few million years and had to skip back. Not that it's not gripping, but it's dense. In a good way.

My only complaint is that he seems to think that listing off names that mean nothing to the reader is somehow elucidative. Or poetic.  I've seen other writers do it, even my beloved Terry Tempest Williams, and I always find it boring. What's the point of listing of names of geologists with only the context of "they were all part of the development of James Hutton's theories. I won't remember them. If he wants to give them credit for their work, he could put them in a footnote.

Listing of geologic eras, again without context, is just listing of random words. He might as well say, "fish; tree roots; cryptography; Mercedes; chewing gum; currency; nuclear physics."  That would mean as much as "Cenozoic, Paleozoic, Triassic, Deuteronomy, Genesis...oops. You see what I mean?

Cookinig with the ones who know

Apron Strings
by Jan Wong

What a delight! Mother and son go in search of home cooking in three countries, and find it by living with the ordinary people who host them. France and Italy were best--who can resist Chiara and Maria Rosa's Two Stir Risotto al Porro?

Here is how she introduces it:
Cookbooks tiresomely insisted you stand over the pot, constantly stirring risotto, one reason I rarely made it. Restaurants back home made a fuss about risotto: they charged a fortune, forced you to order it for a minimum of two persons, and warned you it would take forty-five minutes. In Italy, just as there was no cult of pasta, there was no cult of risotto. It was just rice. I watched Maria Rosa toss in half a cup of hot broth, give the rice a couple of stirs, cover the pan and turn down the heat. That was it. Every now and then, she checked on the rice. When it dried out, she added more broth.

In addition to teaching you an easy way to make risotto, that passage gives you an idea of how Jan Wong writes. I just love it. Chatty, informative, and .  Plus I learned that Italian people eat dried pasta, just like we do. French people--or at least the ones she stayed with--do indeed drink wine with their meals, but the amounts were scanty. The best of cooks occasionally favored a recipe that most of their friends would call hideous. And most of all, if you cook for a cook, even if you have to substitute or omit half o the ingredients, they will be extremely appreciative.
right there

Their trip to China was strange. The family that was hosting them was either extremely wealthy or extremely overextended on credit--they lived in a 5-bedroom, two story penthouse full of antiques and art. But the kitchen fare was meager--the hostess was on an eternal diet and her maid was timid and lacking in self-confidence. She could cook, all right--they both could--but the hostess was too busy with her beauty regimen and the maid was too scared.

Garlic Gripes

So I've wasted an absurd amount of time on the Internet trying to find support for why I hate garlic powder. And I have failed. So in addition to the time lost, I have lost faith in my own judgement.

Here's the most informative article I found:
In defense of garlic powder  by Ari LeVaux

On the other hand, my research suggests this: (1) if you can taste the garlic powder in the finished dish, it's too much; and (2) old, stale garlic powder is insipid. So maybe I wasn't crazy in thinking that the turkey at a relative's house was awful on account of the garlic powder--it was indeed too much and it was indeed old and stale.

So...powdered or no, does garlic belong on turkey at all? Most recipes use it; my mother never did. Let us see........

Garlic, garlic, garlic. Ina Garden, Martha Stewart, Alton Brown--they all use garlic.

Bah!

Bowed over and wordless

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
by Terry Tempest Williams

I was not prepared for this. My mistake, I'm sure--I probably got it confused with another of her writings.  I'll let you read the cover for yourself and see if you can deal with the subject of a lake rising out of its borders and a mother dying of cancer.

Her writing is beautiful and never seemed forced, like it did sometimes in The Hour Of Land.  But more important than beautiful, it says things that need to be said. Topics as deep and as trivial as laughter, love and sorrow. It's beyond me to critique, or even describe.

Not that funny warning

Of Thee I Zing
by Laura Ingraham

Such a promising beginning!

Children should not be named after a piece of furniture, a planet, a fruit, or an herb. Today's little ones are saddled with some of the most ridiculous names ever--it's as if the parents are trying to force the kids to hate them early.

She goes on with a hilarious list of celebri-tot (her word) names.

This is followed by some swipes at fashion, slutty clothing, music lyrics, and colloquial speech. I found that amusing, so I kept reading...

And then came endless pages of boring gripe sessions about the same old stuff that has been annoying us since the 1970s. She ran out of steam after the first chapter but stupid me kept reading. Oh--sorry--that should be, "stupid I kept reading." Among other boring subjects were grammar (use of there vs. their); airline seats (she's a closet fat-shamer); teenage trick-or-treaters (Erma Bombeck wrote about this twenty years ago and she was able to make it funny); holidays (for crying out loud--there's even been songs written about Christmas in October--why I the would would I want to read her repetitive rants?)

I wish I'd stopped after the first chapter.

Sunday Cooking

Last weekend we were camping; next weekend we are running up to Arkansas to check in with the mother-in-law.  So this weekend, I thought I'd do a little cooking.

(Also, my to-try recipe list has jumped up to twenty-eight. I swore off collecting recipes last year, so how did this happen?)

I find myself pounding little wads of raw pork sausage, soy sauce and garlic into hollowed-out cucumbers. Pretty darn near impossible and stupid to boot.  I can't believe this is going to taste good enough to be worth the hassle.  Here's the picture, pre-cooking.


After cramming in as much pork as you can (and swearing in frustration as it oozes back out), you simmer these things in chicken stock for a half hour; add mushrooms, simmer some more, and decorate with green onions. And here it is:



Chrissy Tiegen's Mother's Pork Stuffed Cucumber Soup



(forgot to sprinkle with chopped green onion but I'll do that in a bit)

Indeed, it is a light and refreshing dish, although almost unbearably bland until I embellished my bowl with a slug of soy sauce. If I ever again feel a need to torture myself by cramming bits of ground pork into tiny cucumber cavities, I'll do this:
1. Substitute cooked rice and chopped shitake mushrooms for half of the pork
2. Roll them into tiny meatballs
3. Seed the cucumbers and chop into chunks
4. Throw them all in the broth together. It would taste just the same (or better)

Prior to making the cucumbers, I was exploding an eggplant in the broiler. Hint: if a recipe tells you to place a whole eggplant under the broiler and roast on high for one hour, you should heed the little voice in the back of your head that says, but shouldn't I cut it or something first? Else after fifteen minutes you'll hear a muffled "pfloof" from the oven and open the door to find your eggplant has split and spilled its guts all over the place.

Exploded eggplant:


After that I was supposed to close the eggplant up in the foil and let it "sweat" for a little while. And I totally forgot that step. So when it came time to squeeze out all the juices and then add enough water to make a cup of liquid, I didn't have to mess up a measuring cup. I simply scraped the two or three teaspoons of liquid into the water.

To this liquid I added a piece of dried kombu (Pacific kelp seeweed), brought it to a simmer, then added a quarter cup bonito flakes.  After this had steeped for five minutes, I was supposed to strain it--oops again. My eggplant liquid had been strained through a large-holed seive, so it had some of the eggplant solids in it. But now they were strained out along with the bonito flakes. (Bonito flakes are smoked skipjack tuna--if you smell them or taste them, they're grossly fishy. But added to a dashi like this, they're fine.)

Now the liquid received a dollup of soy sauce and mirin and was reduced.  And that was it--add the reduced liquid to the eggplant solid and sprinkle with toasted sesame seed, and i had made:

Smoked Eggplant for Ramen [eggplant stuff]
J. KENJI LÓPEZ-ALT

Sadly, it wasn't very good. I added a little more soy sauce and tried it on top of some ramen. It's a change...but not all that much better than ordinary dashi on ramen.  Eggplant is a wonderful thing but this recipe did noting for it. It will not be repeated.







Next, and last other than roasting some potatoes for breakfast hash, I created



One-Skillet Cod and Kale With Ginger and Garlic
from Serious Eats

I had collards rather than the Lacinato Kale they requested, so I pre-cooked them in the microwave.  Saute the collards with garlic, ginger, and rice wine. Put fish pieces on top and steam. Decorate with soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds. It couldn't go wrong and it didn't.

But oddly, it was "too" rich.  A real chef would probably have added a sprinkle of lemon juice. Maybe I'll try that later. But eaten with a bowl of plain rice it turned out be just right.



And guess what I did next (after trucking out to the field to track down a lost cat)? I put all this food in the fridge and ate my leftover Golden Chick fried catfish.

Superlatively deep, funny and informative

On Trails: An Exploration
by Robert Moor

Take a topic: trails. Sounds simple, no? My immediate thought would be deer trails through the eastern forest, bighorn sheep through the Grand Canyon, Oregon Trail, Mormon Trail, the Trail of Tears....

And I wouldn't have written a book one-millionth as fascinating as this. He has a brain-bending essay on the difference between trails and roads; a description of the oldest living trails in fossils rock and you'll  never guess the creature that made them; a personal story of the Appalachian trail and what it meant to him and other people; the potential of extending the Appalachian trail through Greenland and down its companion mountain range in Europe; and tons of other stuff.  I'd have to read this book three times to get it all.

Great quotes:
When researchers tasked a slime mold with connecting a series of oat clusters mirroring the location of the major population centers surrounding Tokyo, the slime mold effectively re-created the layout of the city's railway system.

[on watching sheep]
..The better one gets to know sheep, the less sheep-like they appear.

[on losing the sheep he was supposed to be watching:]
In my mouth had grown a cat's dry tongue.

[on the difference in meaning of 'place' between European and Native American culture]
The full ramifications of the Removal, and the pain it inflicted, are difficult for non-Native Americans to grasp. As Belt made clear to me, our two cultures have a drastically different "sense of place." To Euro-Americans, places are most often regarded as sites of residence or economic activity--essential blank backdrops for human enterprise. As such, Euro-American places are largely ahistorical, replaceable;  they change hands, and their names can change, too. By comparison, the Cherokee conception of place is more fixed, specified, eternal. "In the native world, places don't change identity," Belt said. "We are more in touch with place as where things have happened, and where things are, as opposed to where we are."

[on our own trails]
in the end, we are all existential pathfinders. We select among the paths life affords, and then, when those paths no longer work for us, we edit them and innovate as necessary. The tricky part is that while we are editing our trails, our trails are also editing us.

[said another way]
The same rule applies to our life's pathways: collectively we shape them, but individually they shape us. So we must choose our paths wisely.

Monday and leaving Lake O' the Pines

Another late start, and after a second cup of coffee and a good bit of deep thought, we decided not to take the boat out on Monday morning.  We figured that by the time we got everything loaded and packed, it would be past noon (and it was).  The dogs and I went for a good long walk instead. Sadly, Izzy had developed loose bowels. There was no way my little blue baggies were going to pick up the droppings she left in the grass.

I heard a couple of slow drummings in the trees, and looking up, could see a large swathe of bark stripped off a dead pine. Could it be...?  After a trip back to campground area four to check out the site I wanted for next time, we wandered back to the dead pine. Finally I saw him--Pileated Woodpecker! Just as I'd hoped. Those guys are unmistakable.

Then we loaded up the boat...no birds except this sweet guy








And proceeded with all the usual packing up. I was mildly bummed because there had been so little bird watching this trip. I can't blame the boat--for a couple of the days it was too windy and birds don't seem to get out much in the wind. At least not so I could see.

Bird summary: chickadees, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Pileated Woodpecker, common crow, bluebirds, that annoying lttle yellow bird (probably pine warbler), Bald eagle (two adults and a probable immature, circling), Turkey and black vultures, cardinal, mockingbird, blue jay, double-crested cormorant, probable osprey, American White Pelican, mallard. 17 species. Sad.

Trip home, without stops, took 2:31. (From 1:19 to 3:50)

Sunday at Lake O' The Pines

Awoke late (7:45) to clouds. I'd left my east-facing window with the shade half pulled, to let in the daylight...but all it let in was the light of the camper next door. That was enough to wake Ed but even he didn't get up all that early.  The plan for the day was fishing, but this time I'd insisted that it be a two-part plan--morning fishing, lunch break, afternoon fishing. So I did a quick dog walk and breakfast, then to the lake we hurried.

It was windy and pretty much miserable out there...and then it started raining. Not hard rain but very, very unpleasant. My feet in swim shoes were getting numb and I'd brought socks but no boots. Changing into the socks helped, but they were quickly wet.  I fought several lovely little catfish--they're fun to catch because even the smallest fight like demons. Since I was using a crappie hook with no barbs, they were also easy to take off the hook and return to the water.


Due to the late start, we didn't get back for the "lunch break" until two o'clock, but still it was pleasant to have dry socks, warm feet and a real bathroom. And I'm sure the dogs appreciated their afternoon walk. When we got back out on the water the wind died down a little and the sun peeked out a moment or two.  We were fishing the dead trees that stick up in the shallows, and on our third tree I caught another lovely crappie. After that, nothing.

We weren't equipped for fishing after dark but that was a shame, because it turned into a beautiful night. On the lake, that is. Back at the campsite I was sad to realize that even though a lot of the noisy and annoying people had left, a fifth-wheel had arrived with a guy playing heavy metal, and not even something new--this was some very old junk that I remembered and disliked from long ago when I used to listen to the stuff.

So there was no sitting outside and enjoying the moonlight. But at least the dogs got a decent walk and I got a big bowl of neogiri nooodles with shrimp.

Saturday at Lake o' the Pines

I slept better than the night before, despite having gotten the shivers before bedtime; it took a good while before I got warm enough to sleep.  Guess I got chilled somehow.

In the morning it didn't seem nearly as cold as predicted, but still I needed gloves, hood, and heavy jacket. I managed to see the sunrise--I was determined to get up and enjoy the morning before all the kids started running around. It wasn't much shakes as a sunrise, but still, as always, a sunrise.

While Ed got hooked watching a Castle episode, the dogs and I took a early morning birdwatching walk. I was barely out the door when I saw a woodpecker in the top of a dead tree--and it wasn't in the book!

Okay, it probably was. It had a dark head and dark back, maybe some white on the wings but not much, and no other markings. It was almost certainly an immature red-headed woodpecker.

We didn't see much else other than three very annoying birds at the very top of this tree--





Yeah, I should have nailed 'em, don't ya think?  We went on down the same route we had the day before because that's where I've always seen birds. There weren't much any this morning--just jays, bluebirds, and a pair of cardinals in the bushes--but then I had the sun in my eyes. I did identify the camping spot we need to occupy next time--E410. It's right where I've ben seeing all the little yellow birds.





On back and we found a spot where the black vultures hang out; then saw a medium-sized bird (probably Kingbird) and a little bird at the very top of the adjacent tree.  Then it was time to start the day. (Sigh) There was a whole sink full of dishes to do, then a trip to a nearby bait store to get minnows, then fishing.





Few fish and even fewer birds. We fished some underwater "structure" for a while and then went into the dock for a bathroom break. (I may have this next sequence out of order by a bit) At the dock, Ed talked to a guy who had caught a whole bucketload of crappie; Ed got the location from him and marked it on his phone.

Then we took the boat south for a bit and found a stand of dead trees sticking up from the water. We tied up to one and right away I caught a 12-inch crappie. Lovely! Assuming we were into a big flock of them, we fished on. And on. And on. It appeared that this was a one-fish stickup.

So we went upstream to the place Ed had marked but it's a big lake and the guy might have been off on his directions. We passed several places where drowned trees stick up, plus a lot of very expensive houses on the Eastern shore.  On the way I saw three terns and a bird perched on a boat dock that could have been many things but was probably just a great blue heron with his neck drawn in.

No more fish, though. Just a small crappie and a lot of little catfish that kept stealing my minnows.

When we returned, the party across the way was in full swing, with stupid top 40s music playing to our left and big groups of adults talking to the right; kids fishing on both sides and just a lot of general hullaballoo. Not what we were looking for, as you can imagine. We retired indoors and watched old British comedies recorded from PBS.

Is it significant to note that I haven't cracked a single book so far this trip? I packed three plus the kindle!

Friday at Lake O' The Pines

It set in raining around 2am. Or so I guess--I woke up and heard raindrops, then checked my phone for the time. Several times in the night I heard it raining again, but when I got up (awfully late, after eight o'clock) the pavement had mostly dried up. Just a few puddles remained when the dogs got their morning walk.

It wasn't all that cold, but the wind had shifted to the north without lessening any. So we hung close to the RV all morning. Weather Underground predicted showers at eleven o'clock and sure enough, they came.  Then it predicted clearing, with a possibility of more showers coming through later.  I voted for clearing.

The dogs got a short walk in the rain. I found if you're wearing a rain jacket with a hood, and you try to look at birds up in a tree, the hood funnels all the rain onto your face and down your back. So...no birds for a while.

It quit raining--or pretended to quit--at about 3:30. I played with the camera for a while, trying to photograph six mallard ducks that swum up in close formation. Of course, by the time I got a shot, they were leaving.

Then three little birds that might have been brown-headed nuthatches came by the window, but they left too rapidly to get glasses on. Then a Carolina chickadee moving at light speed...after that, I had to get outside.

So at about four, with streaks of blue sky showing to the north, and dogs and I took the same walk as yesterday--over to the E4 campground near the fenced-off boat ramp. Aside: I don't get this at all. There are two boat ramps "in" this park. The one at the north end is connected to the park, but the one at the south is separated by a four foot chain-link fence.  It goes alongside the E4 campground and all the way down to the water. To get to the boat ramp, you have to go back to the front gate and exit the park. I assume the reason for this idiocy has to do with the gate being locked after hours. Fishermen who aren't campers can still access the lake there. But I found it inconvenient.

The little yellow birds were still there--that's when I decided Pine Warbler for sure. On the way back I saw ten White Pelicans in formation--magnificent! Plus bluebirds and blue jays and a couple of annoying woodpeckers--probably Downy--that I couldn't see. When I returned I was planning to drop Zack off and take Izzy for a long, fast walk uphill to the northern boat dock, but Ed was ready to launch the boat. So we did.

While waiting I saw a pair of adult Bald Eagles circling over the water.



Sadly, when we were done, traffic at the campsites was starting to pick up. There were at least three cars at the tent camping area and more coming in--they were making an awful racket. So when I walked the dogs, instead of going by the ten camping we went downhill again, toward the "out of park" boat ramp. Third time for the same walk in a place with so many wonderful walks!  We were going to go on out of the park and down to the boat ramp, but there was a crowd of deer eating the grass there, so we turned back rather than scare them off.  The deer don't seem to mind me, but the dogs alarm them.

This is the spot in the E4 loop that I wish I'd reserved--it's off by itself and that whole camping loop seems to be occupied by older people. No kids, bikes, or motorcycles. Ideal for me!

Back at our site, things were on the downward slope. A family with at least four kids moved in right next door. Across the drive was a trailer with a dog. They kept it on a long rope but still my stupid dogs had to bark and get all aggressive. It's my fault that they're not socialized, but still annoying.  And then the electricity went off. It turned out the water had been off earlier--we'd noticed that our water pressure was abominably low so Ed had filled up the fresh water tank. That way we'd be able to use the water pump for showers.  But it appears that the water had been completely off for most people.

We ran the generator for a while, but within an hour the electricity came on. Did I mention that after the sun came out the temperature climbed to mid-fifties, which was quite pleasant. I was comfortable with just a tee shirt and flannel shirt. Excellent weather!

Mammoth Goes to Lake O' The Pines

Thursday 10 October 2019
Lake O' The Pines, Johnson Creek Recreation Area COE

US 380 to Greenville; TX-49 to TX-271 S, then FM 729 to the park. 
1. Planned distance: 136 miles
2. Map time estimate: 2:24
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: 118 miles which makes no sense--are our tires mis-sized?
5. Actual time:  about the same, maybe five minutes more
6. No stops
7. Average mph trip: unknown

I'm not sure when we left but we arrived at 3:08. It was an unpleasant drive--not due to the weather, which was hot but bearable, nor due to the route. The problem was big trucks on the interstate plus the stupid walls Texas chose to put up right next to the left lanes of I-30 east of Dallas. I don't understand it--every other interstate highway in the whole United States of the Americas is wide open, with broad shoulders on either side of each pair of lanes. But Interstate 30 in Texas has walls, alternating eastbound and westbound, placed right up against the left lane. I've never measured how close they are, but my wild-eyed guestimate is about two feet away.  You have about two feet of safe space to swerve into if you're passing a big truck and he starts to cross the line into your lane. Walls--especially those walls--absolutely scare me to death.

So, there I was, stupid me, driving that big old Ford F250 on I-30 eastbound. It was very windy and the F250 drives like, at best, a boat. I cowardly missed a chance to pass a pair of trucks; waited behind them as a long line of cars streamed by; got an opening--and then the second of the trucks started to pass the first.

It took him a long, long time. After that I despaired of ever seeing the RV until we arrived at the park gate, so I kicked it. You wouldn't think a ten-year-old Ford pickup could go ninety miles per hour with a strong wind out of the south blowing crosswise. And a scaredy cat driver at the wheel. But it did.

I finally decided to slow down to seventy-five so I wouldn't get a ticket. (I knew the motorhome was going about seventy.) And eventually, about ten miles before our turnoff, I caught up.

Never again will I do such a thing. If I have a working phone and I know the route we are taking, I'll just go at my own speed and get there when I get there.

All complaining aside, once we got off I-30 it was an easy drive along two- or four-lane east Texas highways. There were more hills than I expected, but the road was mostly straight and even the smaller roads had a bit of a shoulder.

Beautiful park; gorgeous lake. The fishing report called the water "stained" but it looked pretty clear to me. Here we are, all set up:

The water's edge is rocky and drops off fast--I've seen several fishing boats and bass boats with big motors pulled up by the edge. And just beside our site is a little inlet with a surprising floor:




Knowing there was a line of thunderstorms coming through in the morning, we chose to keep the boat out of the water.  There was just enough room to park it on the pad next to Mammoth. With a little extra maneuvering, we could have gotten all four wheels on the pavement. But three out of four seemed good enough.


Dogs and I went for a walk and were entertained by deer hanging out near a campground host's site. It was hot (about ninety) but not unbearable with all the lovely tall trees.

After Zack got tired out, I took Izzy down to have a look at the second boat ramp and found that a four-foot chain link fence separated us from the day-use area. It wasn't worth the looooong walk around; and besides, I soon found a tree full of little yellow birds to amuse me. Plus one bluebird and a woodpecker I didn't get a good look at. He flew into an occupied campsite so I couldn't run him down.

NOTE: after several studies and a long perusal of the bird book and All About Birds, I have concluded the yellow birds were Pine Warblers.  The book says: ...sometimes joins bluebirds and Chipping Sparrows to forage on the ground in suburban settings.

When we returned to camp, the waves were picking up. These was still a strong wind from the south [waves] .  We watched a scissortail try to make headway against the strong south wind and fail. He stopped at the top of a tall, leafless tree and soon was joined by a whole flock of them.  I took a picture but you have to know what you're looking at to recognize them.


Scissortails at suppertime.





Even though we could see flashes of lightning far off to the north, the moon kept us company until bedtime.