Monday, November 26, 2018

To buy or not to buy

I’m thinking about buying a 3-quart Instant Pot for cooking in our motor-home. After spending too many hours reading reviews (I usually start by reading the one- and two-star reviews and then move up to the higher ones if it still seems like the product might be worth it) I’m starting to think I am over-thinking this!

Of course, I don’t want to waste money or throw away food if it ruins something. But my time and energy are worth something too. It is draining to spend this much effort and time considering all the options. Shopping on-line means I don’t have to spend hours driving all over town, but how much have I gained if instead I spend twice as long on the computer reading all the reviews?

One gain, if you can call it that, is that I’ve learned that there seems to be an endless variety of one-pot cookers out there—even ones that look like little ice chests. I was particular interested in a couple of Crock Pot brand cookers I discovered during my researching instant pots. One is a 2.5-quart Crock Pot slow cooker that looks like a pretty oval casserole dish. Another is a slow cooker that has a metal pot that allows sautéing first before slow cooking. It also can be used as an extra oven.

It struck me this morning how ironic it is that I, who am trying-to-overcome-perfectionism, am driving myself nuts trying to make the perfect choice about which cooker to get.

What am I afraid of? Wasting money for one thing. Maybe one way to help battle that fear is to buy all three at once, there by “wasting” all the money right off the bat.

I’m also afraid that it will just be another big thing making more clutter and that I won’t use it enough to make it worth it. So, buying all three at once and increasing the clutter even more will certainly confront that fear too!

I am also afraid that it will make cooking more challenging and frustrating. After all, I have gotten along all these years without it and I know how to cook fairly well with the simple equipment I already have. Why mess up a good thing? Of course, cooking in our motor home is already more challenging than cooking at home so maybe one of these tools would really make life on the road easier with just a little effort to learn some “new tricks.”

And true confessions: Since all cooking lately feels like a frustrating waste of time maybe trying one or all of these devices will stir up a sense of adventure or will at least help me appreciate and even enjoy regular cooking with my simple methods again.

So what will I do? I don’t know. We'll see…

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Vacation Part 2 - Caprock Canyon


It didn’t take very long for me to readjust to being back in our regular sized house after our vacation in the motor home. It is still just as big and crowded with things as it was when I wrote the last post but I was quickly reminded how helpful some of those things really are.

One of the large things I especially appreciate in our house is the oven. Not only does it hold more but it also gives more predictable results. And being electric It doesn’t have a pilot light. Which means no painful contortions on the floor every time we want to use it like the motor home oven requires. Maybe we can upgrade the one in the motor-home some time. It is 20 years old. There must be easier ones to operate by now.

So, what did we do on our vacation?

I’m glad you asked.

We camped at two state parks in the Texas Panhandle. The first weekend we stayed at Copper Breaks State Park (I hope to write more about that another time). Then we spent a week at Caprock Canyon State Park. Then we went back to Copper Breaks for the last few days.

It was, in many ways, the best trip we’ve had so far in our RV. Once we got out of the Dallas Fort Worth area the road was really good. We were on TX 287 most of the way. It has two lanes each way that are mostly nice and wide. There were only a few “nail-biter” road construction zones where they narrowed the road down to just a few feet wider than our motor-home with cement barriers on either side. John did a good job threading the needle. And by some miracle I did a good job not being too anxious. Even John noticed and commented that I seemed much less nervous over-all on the trip there. I unfortunately made up for it on our return trip—[see last post.]

The scenery at Caprock Canyon State Park is stunning! It is an interesting mix of the huge spectacular and the tiny spectacular.

The canyon is the most obvious huge spectacle. And it is gorgeous! The colors are amazing. The photos can't really do it justice of course.

The other huge spectacle are the bison. Not gorgeous! But huge. We definitely saw more bison than we expected.

Then there is the tiny spectacular.

I love to photograph small things, especially wildflowers. I’m learning, the hard way, though, that with wildflowers I need to seize the moment. When I see one I want to photograph I should just stop and do it right then because invariably when I tell myself I’ll do it later something always happens to prevent it, and wildflowers, I'm slowly learning, don’t last forever .

We arrived on Monday afternoon. There was a trail along the canyon rim within walking distance from our RV site. We didn’t plan to go far. It was getting late in the day and we were tired from the trip there. We thought, “we’ll just go a little way along the canyon rim and then come back and make dinner and get settled for the night.” Thankfully we did at least take plenty of water. And we always have a few snacks in our backpacks. So, we set out.

We were excited when we saw some bison at the beginning of the walk. John said wasn’t it great that we saw them on the first day as he has heard that some people go their whole time and never see any. John got this photo with his camera. It has more zoom built into it than mine. We weren't as close as this looks!


We were also of course wowed by the gorgeous views of the canyon and took lots of photos.






As we walked along I started noticing some really pretty little wildflowers too--spectacular in their own way. There was one in the middle of the path that especially caught my eye. It was a lovely shade of orange in a tiny trumpet shape. I told myself that when we came back by there in a few minutes I would definitely get a picture. I saw another one on the side of the path a little further on, but still didn’t stop. I felt like I needed to keep going. I guess it was a misplaced sense of duty to not hold my husband back, and after all we were supposed to be getting exercise. I was sure we would be coming back that way in a little while anyway.


I did take this photo of John with some flowers and promised myself I would take close ups of some of them on our way back.

But I didn’t see any more of the cute little orange one that I had seen. After a little longer we decided to turn around and head back.


A few minutes on the way back, we rounded a bend in the trail and were surprised to see… bison. About three of them were grazing near the trail. We had been warned that we should not get closer than 50 yards to them. Since we were already closer than that, John didn’t think we should stand there and wait for them to move on. The bison didn’t seem to think we should either. One of them looked at us in a way that made me think he thought we were already outstaying our welcome. So we did what any normal (crazy?) tourist would do: got our cameras out and took pictures. Then we quickly went back the way we had just come. (the other two moved out of the photo just before this. It is amazing given their size how quickly they can disappear among the bushes.)

As we considered our options and examined the map it was clear that we had to keep going on the trail that went along the canyon rim and hope that we could find the next short cut back. We were worried though because we had already passed the first short cut back and hadn’t noticed it at the time. So we wondered if we might miss the second one too. We were hoping we wouldn't since the trail kept going for several miles beyond that with no other way back.

We kept checking the map and John’s GPS on his phone trying to figure out where we were on the trail. I could tell John was worried when I offered him a bite of my my gluten free snack bar and he declined because he said I might need it for breakfast too.

After what seemed a long time and a lot of checking of the GPS and trail map we finally found what we assumed was the short cut back. There was no signs or arrows that I can remember, but there were two white metal poles and what looked vaguely like a trail heading back through them in the right direction. So we followed it with great relief and rejoicing.

We made it back much quicker than we had come since the short cut didn’t follow the canyon rim. And thankfully no more bison got in our way! I noticed that although John expressed delight over our good luck seeing bison on our first day the first time we saw them, he didn't seem quite so pleased the second time by our doubly "good fortune" to see them two times on the first day!

We also didn’t see anymore of the cute little orange flowers I wanted to photograph.

Several days later we went back on the same trail in hopes of finding them again but there was no sign of them. I did get several other flower photos, but not that one. Like Isaiah said grass withers, and flowers fade. Here are some I did find to photograph:














There were other small spectacles. Even the ant mounds were spectacular. They seemed to be inspired by the gorgeous canyons:




The winners of the cuteness award of course has to go to the prairie dogs:




i noticed one day when i sat a ways away from them that when prairie dogs are not frightened from humans being nearby they are not nearly as interesting to watch. They just quietly eat grass like rabbits or miniature cows.


Amazingly the prairie dogs didn't seem fazed by the bison. My friend Susan said that ranchers hate prairie dogs because cows frequently break their legs when they accidentally step in their holes. But bison don't seem to have that trouble. I guess bison are smarter than cows.
We also enjoyed seeing quite a few Monarch butterflies. They were coming through Texas on their Fall migration to Mexico. We didn't see large numbers like some towns in Texas get but we really enjoyed the ones we did see. Someone has described their flying as floating. There is something majestic about it.:

The butterfly on the left in this photo is the monarch. I don't know what the other one is called.