Beach, wine, beach

Day two of our California trip included 5 wine tastings sandwiched between two beach trips.  Wonderful!

We hit El Capitan State Beach, north of Santa Barbara, by 9:30 am. Here I spied a clump of rocks, which meant one thing – tide pools!

Lisa and I walked among the rocks looking at the pebble-covered anemones and barnacles and caught glimpses of the mini crabs as they scurried under mussels and rocks to hide themselves from us. I couldn’t get enough – I loved all of it! We even spotted a few starfish!

We eventually wandered back to the towels and took in the sounds of the ocean and the relatively quiet beach (not too many people), we read our books and Lisa got in the water. Next we headed out for our wine tastings! 

First stop: Solvang, which is a small town in the Ynez Valley with a strong Danish influence. Here wineries are nestled among the Disney-like Danish windmills and authentic bakeries and tee shirt shops and other cute places.  Our favorite spot was the Dascomb winery – they had good wine *and* they paired it with micro-cubes of amazing cheese. Here are a few shots from our wine tasting times in Solvang:

After lunch we moved on to Los Olivos – a town that is just about all wine tasting rooms. We were challenged with how to choose among all the different wineries. We were lured into Saarloos + sons by the attached cupcake case. The wine was ok and I didn’t turn out to be attracted to any of the cupcakes, but we did enjoy this little photo booth thing they had. Here is one of the photo outcomes:

By far, our favorite stop was Refugio Ranch. The wine was good and the feel was laid back. If I could have wine from one place again, it would be here.

After this last wine stop, we grabbed some jalapeno-cheddar popcorn and a pellegrino and headed back to El Capitan State Beach. This time it was just playing in the water and laying on the beach as the sun retreated. It was so nice…

Santa Barbara (not the soap opera)

It all started with a discussion of Lisa’s upcoming 40th birthday and a failed attempt to get away together in May when her agency canceled travel due to “the sequester.” We decided that Santa Barbara, California, would be a lovely place to spend a few days. It has the beach, wineries, good weather, the Channel Islands, and more. Perfect – we booked it for the last weekend in June!

So, one sweltering June morning we  boarded a plane for the west coast. For those of you who may not have enjoyed a plane ride from Colorado to Southern California during the day, if you have a window seat, there is plenty to see. First you go over the Rocky Mountains and then you get to see the Grand Canyon! Here’s what the big canyon it looks like from this perspective:

We did arrive and safely made it to our lovely Lavender Inn room, just blocks from the coast in Santa Barbara.  We were giddy to find that the hotel provides a complimentary bottle of bubbly with real champagne flutes! I recommend this hotel – not only did we get the free bubbly and, of course, a continental breakfast, but there is also an evening wine and cheese service (complimentary) as well as tasty cookies at night. I was also impressed by the well-kept grounds full of flowers and succulents and other climate-appropriate plants.

Anyways, we spent the rest of the evening perusing State Street in Santa Barbara, getting dinner at Pierre Lafond, and watching the sunset on the beach. Here are some photos to give you a feel for our experience:

Stay tuned for the second installment of the California trip!

Our nation’s capitol

Washington DC the first week of June was hot! And don’t even talk to me about the humidity that caused us to change our clothes in the middle of the day and feel sticky and smelly most of the time. We managed to do quite a bit and get around town and have fun despite the heat though.

We spent last weekend in DC for no other reason than to be a tourist and enjoy the city. And enjoy we did!

First, transportation. I had assumed we’d spend most of our travel around on the Metro or on foot, but we actually ended up mostly using Capital Bikeshare and it was awesome. We bought a three-day pass for $15 each and away we went. It’s the perfect way to see the city. You get to cruise by grand museums, through old neighborhoods with big trees, and through lively business districts all from the seat of a bike.

 

It has been a while since I’ve been to DC and I never really spent much time on the street on a bike. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the plentiful and innovative bike lanes throughout the city. In addition to the typical striped bike lanes, there were two way bikeways between the parking lane and the sidewalk with vertical buffers.

There were some green bike lanes and bike boxes. Most interesting were the lanes in the middle of a busy street in downtown DC. Yep, right between buses and cars whizzing by was an ample bike lane! Despite the traffic, I felt pretty safe – especially because there were so many cyclists and many of them using bikeshare bikes.

Speaking of bikes, we happened to be in town during the DC Tour de Fat. We couldn’t resist the Colorado-based New Belgium event. We were particularly drawn by the main stage having an hour of The Moth! Not only did we get to drink a Ranger beer and see people ride ridiculous bikes (see below), but we also got to see true stories told live on stage without notes – The Moth (I highly recommend the podcast!).

The first night in DC we took advantage of free jazz in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. It was a relaxing way to end a day of walking and biking around the city.  We sat at the edge of a pool, watched people, drank sangria, and soaked our hot feet in the cool water all while listening to Chopteeth (“afrofunk big band” music).

Our trip was definitely fueled by snacks and coffee! We visited Filter coffee near Dupont Circle (they had a Salvagetti sticker on their grinder), which was quite good and had this amusing but hilarious sign on their wall:

We ate red velvet cupcakes from a cupcake truck and thick blueberry pie from Dangerously Delicious.

I want to make note of a fabulous place that had the most eclectic list of beers on tap – Churchkey. I started with a New Zealand IPA called Epic Armageddon, but we quickly moved on to share a sampler of beers and get a sense of the variety. We had a tripel from Belgium – Dulle Teve, a farmhouse ale from Belgium – Saison Dupont, a coffee-infused imperial stout from Canada – Peche Mortel, and a Belgian strong pale ale from Switzerland that was brewed with pinot noir wort – L’ Amoureuse No. 2. So good…

We visited Eastern Market on Saturday morning. The market is part farmers market, part urban flea market, and part indoor artisan food market. While we enjoyed perusing the various flea market items and outdoor plants and jewelry, I think our favorite part was the indoor market. It was well-lit with overhead skylights and full of fantastic looking foods – fresh meats, cheeses, seafood, fresh pasta, pastries and pies, and more! Here are some shots from both the indoor and outdoor portions:

Of course, we took in a few museums. The only two we spent any real time at were the National Building Museum and the Hirshorn (modern art). We popped into the Museum of Natural History and a few others but found that the crowds were a bit too much for us. Here are some shots from the museum portion of the trip:

National Building Museum

National Museum of the American Indian

The Hirshorn

Seth adding to the art at the Hirshorn.

One of the highlights of the trip and something I was very much looking forward to was the journey to Arlington, VA, for food at Ravi Kabob! Their kabobs and bread and chickpea sauce are my all time favorite foods. If you ever get a chance to go there – do not hesitate! Not sure my photo does it justice, but this photo represents a little bit of heaven for me.

After a sweaty but enjoyable few days in DC, we headed out for National airport on the beautiful Metro (hard to ride a bike with luggage…).

That was our weekend in DC. That is all.

Backyard after evening watering

Garden–The Beginning

For most of my adult life I’ve either lived in a condo or an apartment, with no balcony nor backyard. I’d yearned for one of these but never really wanted to deal with the maintenance of mowing and weeding or the cost of buying plants and so on. Last year (2012) moved into a house with a backyard and a garden.

At first I didn’t take much interest in the garden, I mean, I don’t really like vegetables and didn’t know much about gardening to really talk about the plants and such. However, when things like cucumbers and watermelons started to grow into real edible things I began to notice and became fascinated. I bought Gardening for Dummies and started to plan for 2013.

Last weekend we planted the garden! We have a salsa garden (hot peppers, tomatoes, garlic) and lettuces, cucumbers, pumpkins, radishes, shallots, carrots, brussel sprouts, peas, and bell peppers. There are also strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries but these were here before me.

Set did the majority of the planting, while I dealt with the window box flowers and did fertilizing of the newly planted garden.  Here are some action shots:

 

A week later most things are doing well. We lost one of three pumpkin plants and the cucumbers are struggling to adapt to their sunny spot, but the radishes sprouted last night and the peas are starting to send out tendrils!

 

It’s all far more exciting than I would have expected but there is a little nervousness that we’re just going to kill stuff because we don’t *really* know what we’re doing…we’ll see.

Dog

Plenty of people have done writings, drawings, and art of various kinds about the animals in their lives – dogs specifically. I haven’t paid much attention in my adult years to these things since I’ve been mostly with cats. However, now I am with dog. Big. Black. Flat-coat retriever dog. He is named Dempsey. He likes food.

He will eat anything – including lettuce and sticks. One time he ate about a dozen maple bacon biscuits in less than an hour. Another time he climbed up onto the dinner table to get at a higher spot in order to eat four sticks of butter (those came back up). Food must be kept at a safe distance.

After I had been living with this dog for a month or so, I became aware of the musings on dog companionship when a friend forwarded the link to The Oatmeal’s amazing and hilarious “My dog: the paradox.” Here are the first two panels:

I highly recommend you read the entire cartoon, particularly if you have dog experience – it rings true and elicits chuckles.

I also heard recently on one of my new favorite podcasts – Bad or Not Bad – that George W. Bush has become an artist and one of his favorite subjects is his dog. On the podcast, I think the verdict was “bad” on this topic because, well, it’s George W. Bush…but here’s what W’s dog looks like painted by W:

Though I have a canine around regularly as a subject, I have no artistic endeavors outside of knitting. And I’m not knitting a big doggie sweater (how embarrassing for Dempsey that would be) and I’m not knitting his likeness onto any article of yarn (mostly because that would be weird). What I have done is take photos of the sweet and needy beast. I have even arranged them in frames:

I have Instagrammed photos of the tennis ball-loving creature:

We have used Dempsey as a model for my ski helmet:

But mostly, I just enjoy having such a loveable though stinky-breathed being in my life – and I mean Dempsey.