Friday, August 21, 2009

Grand Teton National Park

On Saturday morning I bid Liv a nearly-tearful goodbye and left to pick my parents up from the airport. We had a full day of driving ahead of us, not helped by the fact that I missed the exit I was supposed to take, but since I was on a toll road I couldn't just turn around. After an unintentionally long lunch in Laramie, Wyoming, we headed north to try to make it to Moran at a decent hour. This goal was hindered by the SNOW that started to fall.

I thought that it would just be a few small flakes falling, because of the elevation, but it started to come down pretty thickly. It also happened on a stretch of road that was under construction, so muddy, gravelly, and one-way. This section of the road trip was all about impeccable timing. There were trucks escorting lines of cars at a pace of 15 mph or so - we happened to catch the tail end of one of these lines, and based on the length of road we drove, it is quite possible that we could have been waiting for up to an hour for our turn.


After we woke up the snow was still everywhere.




Driving up to the Signal Mt summit we saw a little bear.





After enjoying the views from the summit, we drove down to Jenny Lake, where my parents clearly liked what they saw:

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Road trip scar count

Anne: 2
Car: 1 + lots of bugs
My poor windshield.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Denver

So here are some orphan photos, along with a very quick recap of my (very quick) time in Denver.

I arrived on Friday to a smiling Liv and a shiny clean house. After a quick stroll around the neighborhood, we treated ourselves to massages. Back home for a nutritious dinner.

Poor Liv had to work on Saturday. I enjoyed sleeping in, found myself a yoga studio for the week, and then went grocery shopping for a casual dinner. Liv's co-worker brought over her adorable new baby - I restrained myself from sniffing a stranger's child's head. Go me!.

Sunday was epic:

I went rafting for the first time ever!

Here we are smiling before the trip. Clearly, we haven't had our "safety" lecture yet, where they pretty much told us we were going to DIE. I'm actually pretty impressed with myself that I even got into the raft after they mentioned the rattlesnakes.


I think I went to the grocery store for some reason or other almost every day, until I saw this guy. Yikes.


On Monday night I introduced Liv to H Mart. We marinated kalbi, then on Tuesday I made korean bbq dinner. We invited her awesome neighbor over, and he repaid me tenfold by feeding me banh mi and watermelon cream soda, letting me bottle whiskey, and then cooking us dinner on Friday. With all the korean bbq leftovers, I made these spring rolls.


It's very hard to say no to this face.

I got my hair chopped off:


The aforementioned whiskey bottling process, and dinner:

This is harder than it looks. Actually not, but if you're clumsy like me, you'll end up with a rockstar scar on your forearm.






Besides all this, Liv and I managed to watch two movies, go shopping, treat ourselves to an amazing celebratory dinner, make cookie dough, and catch up on all manner of important life discussions.

I just drove a gazillion miles...

...so I deserve a beer the size of my head.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Beehive Geyser

People in the first two rows may get wet.

Happy Sunday!

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Izakaya Den

I have a lot of catching up to do! But I drove 500 miles today, some of it in the SNOW, and I'm quite tired. So for now, I'll just post the pictures of the lovely celebratory dinner Liv (rocket scientist promotion, whee!) and I had at Izakaya Den:


Pink blossom martini. I'll try anything with St. Germain in it. Perhaps I should not have been so optimistic about the amount of alcohol I could drink, however...after a few sips of this, I completely forgot to take a picture of our lemongrass vichyssoise.

Salmon collar. Fatty. Delicious.

Bacon-wrapped monkfish. Oh. My. God. Our favorite dish of the night. The beans were out-of-control smoky and delicious.

Sake. Poor Liv had to do the heavy lifting here, or else she would have had to piggy-back me home. This new introduction to our meal explains why the next two pictures were not taken *before* we dug in.

Kobe beef medallions. With a yummy wild mushroom arugula salad underneath.

Hoisin duck tostadas. On a bed of forbidden rice, covered with crunchy strips of iberico cheese. Whoa.

So clearly, we hated this meal. :)

Snow in August????

Wow. Nuts.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Friday, August 14, 2009

Blue corn pancakes

What better way to start off the morning? I'm actually surprised I can eat anything after last night's epic celebration dinner (Liv's promotion, my graduation) at Izakaya Den, but it looks like we've recovered :). My computer is being silly now though, so that post will have to wait.

Hi Fatima! Hi Randall!

Thursday, August 13, 2009

ooh ooh! oogave!

Watermelon cream soda (and other flavors!) sweetened with agave nectar. Freakin' amazing. I may have to move out here if I can't find the stuff in SF.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Just call me the traveling Korean BBQ lady...

Do you need me to come visit you and make kalbi? Because so far I've had wildly successful dinners in both Boston and Denver.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Scratch that

Life just got better

Life is good

Class IV rapids followed by a margarita the size of my head. Nice.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Playing catch-up

Here are a few pictures I never got around to posting because it's a pain to get photos from my camera to my laptop:


As I drove to New Mexico, I decided to go through Petrified Forest National Park. The photo above is the painted desert. The one below is the blue mesa.



This crazy bird tried to eat my car.


This used to be a tree!


Yikes. This was somewhere in Arizona. It was almost as good as the truck I saw that had "Jesus Christ is lord, not a swear word" painted on its side. I admit, "Jesus Christ!" is one of my favorite things to exclaim, right up there with "yowza!" and "yergh!"

I was pretty happy to make it to New Mexico, where I discovered the deliciousness that is a sopaipilla, and how green chile tastes good on pretty much anything. After a short, yet informative, stop in Gallup, I headed to Santa Fe. Santa Fe impressed me for a number of reasons:
1. It seems that people there know how to enjoy themselves after work is over. There's free live music in the plaza most weekdays during the summer, and I was surprised to see how many people brought chairs to just sit and watch/listen/relax. There were also tons of people salsa dancing. Although, now that I think about it, I was probably seduced by the fact that this all took place outdoors. The thought of doing something outdoors in an SF summer makes me want to throw on an extra fleece and a big fuzzy hat.
2. Ummm....oh right. Downtown Subscription and Tecolote Cafe are both pretty awesome. It made me wish my dad were here for that part.
3. I wish I uploaded these pictures but they are still on my camera. It was interesting to see all the adobe houses.

But I have to say, Santa Fe gets a thumbs down for its drivers - they all seem intent on killing pedestrians. I crossed the street after the light turned green (complete with little white "it's-okay-to-walk-now" signal) and a woman making an unprotected left turn nearly hit me, then HONKED at me because I had the audacity to get in her way. I guess I wasn't walking fast enough? Clearly she had someplace important to be. This incident made me understand the shocked look on numerous people's faces the day before, when I let them cross the street as I was at a stop sign, instead of rudely cutting them off or nearly plowing into them.

After Santa Fe, I visited the Taos Pueblo. I must wear my emotions on my face, because the parking attendant instructed me to "sit by the river and let all the bad thoughts flow away..." How did he know I was having an existential crisis???? Although that incident was not as disconcerting as the one in DC where a security guard at one of the Smithsonian museums made me cry by being sweet and giving me helpful advice and telling me I had a "beautiful heart and spirit." Yeah, that was nuts.

So clearly, I needed to relax, so I chose to do so at the mineral springs in Ojo Caliente. Supposedly, the iron and arsenic in the springs are supposed to be good for you, but I can't help but feel I ended up soaking in a pool full of rusty water. At least that's what it smelled like. They also had a lithia spring, which you can drink, although they warn you it is not an EPA-approved water source. I like to live dangerously, so I had a tiny cup. I'm still alive, but I'm pretty sure I have an iron stomach thanks to the Great Food Poisoning Event: Seoul, 2001.

The drive from Taos to Denver was surprisingly beautiful - 80 miles of it was through a beautiful forest (unlike the hair-raising driving experience I had the previous night) and I saw lots of cows, buffalo, horses, and even a few llamas. And now I'm in Denver, at Liv's house, and am looking forward to a week of not driving hundreds of miles at a time. I see lots of reading, relaxing, yoga, good eating, and girltalk ahead of me. On Saturday, I'll pick my parents up at the airport and we'll drive to Yellowstone together.

But now I should go to bed (yay! a real bed!) because we're going river-rafting tomorrow.

Yum

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Liv has the best neighbor

He gave us this pie

Dinner

Because that's how the pink house girls roll...

WTF??

Who would pay $168 for a cake you can't even EAT??

Friday, August 7, 2009

Mom and dad don't read this

So I just survived what could have potentially turned out to be the opening sequence to a cheesy horror flick. It actually makes me wonder why there isn't a movie about a haunted GPS that leads young women driving alone into a "national forest" where the roads are named as state roadways, thus lulling them into a false sense of security, only to have them be massacred by a man with a hook/chainsaw/axe-hand. Not that I had this thought in my mind as I drove down a deserted windy narrow gravel road. And then was misled into a "primitive campsite" by that silly GPS. If that doesn't have the makings of a slasher film, then I don't know what does.
You have no idea how happy I am that I'll be in Denver tomorrow...

Cute, no?

Don't be fooled! I just saw him snatch a little girl's blue corn fry
bread right out her hands.

Taos Pueblo

Blue corn pine nut pancake

But that description is too long so I'll just call it a crack
pancake. At Tecolote Cafe.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Gallup, the melting pot of the West...



Or at least that's what Tom, the lovely man at the Rex Museum told me. This is the same man who also told me that he had met a few nice "Orientals" just like me last week.

So before I drove to Santa Fe, I decided to drive down 66 through downtown Gallup, just to check it out. I went into this museum because I needed to pee. I'm not gonna lie, I really had no intention of sticking around too long - at the most I'd take a quick look and maybe buy a postcard or two.

I think I must have spent over an hour in there, with Tom as my personal tour guide. And even though it was not at all my intention to look at anything in depth, I'm glad Tom decided he wanted to explain every single object in the museum to me, because I learned a few things:

1. Gallup was a coal-mining town. Lots of artifacts had to do with coal-mining, from the drills they used to use, right down to the aluminum lunchboxes they had to use (the only thing that won' set off sparks when opened, possibly igniting methane gas and killing everybody.)
2. Gallup's history involves Japanese people. Apparently they came over to work in the mines.
3. During WWII, when all the Japanese-Americans were being rounded up into internment camps, the fine folks of Gallup protested and wouldn't let them take anybody.
4. Gallup has one of the largest deposits of uranium beneath its water table.

The museum has cameras, batteries, pictures, clothes, shoes, an old washing machine, a potbelly stove, a bicycle, an old military autoclave, and a bunch of other stuff, all acquired or donated from Gallup citizens of yesteryear.

Besides all the fun facts about Gallup (which I have not confirmed, so don't get all upset if something is completely wrong, I'm just the messenger here), Tom passed along advice he had given to his daughters:

1. Stay in school.
2. Stay off of drugs.
3. Don't get in the family way.

So I learned a lot today.