Pretty. Dull.

My friend Kirby and I did a little wandering around Iowa for a couple of days this past week. There are a couple of dozen counties in the northwestern part of that state that I'd never been to before, and we had just enough free time to drive over there (from Wisconsin), cruise through them all, and head back (to Wisconsin).

Impressions are that (a) the people there are of the friendly sort; (b) the countryside is pretty, even with all the fields lying bare awaiting the planting of crops; and (c) there is no reason on earth, beyond making a living, to be there.

Here are all the things I spotted in 24 counties that were worth stopping to take a picture of:

There seems to be a local tradition of painting big rocks with patriotic themes. These two pictures are of the Lyon County "Freedom Rock."

And these three are of the Clay County "Freedom Rock."

In Britt, Iowa, we stumbled across the National Hobo Museum, located here because it's where the hobos hold their annual convention. I didn't even know there was such a group.

The next few pictures were taken inside.

hobo symbols

racks of exhibits

drink holder

 

We drove out to this mound expecting it to be an Indian mound; it's not, as the sign explains. The area is operated as a wildlife refuge by a group called the Osceola County Conservation Board, which is either not really a governmental entity, or else indulges in an un-American mingling of church and state.








Somewhere along the road we came to one of those outdoor Heritage Parks; I forget where. It was closed, so this is the only photo I could get. This bit of folk art appears to be old farm machinery piled up and welded together to form a sculpture.

And then, finally, this bit of folk art: Pocahontas represented as a Plains Indian.

Hard to Dislike

Texas Roadhouse
5019 Keystone Crossing
Eau Claire, Wisconsin

(just off Hwy 53, one exit north of I-94)

My main gripe about chain restaurants in general, as I've said often enough that I shouldn't have to say it again, is that their food is dumbed down to a corporate idea of what average people like. My gripe about Texas Roadhouse (a Kentucky corporation, by the way) in particular stems from an article in a San Antonio newspaper more than 20 years ago.

It was the first time I'd heard of Texas Roadhouse. I don't remember if it was in the local daily paper, or the throwaway weekly rag, or in a legal news publication. I think it was the last, but I could be wrong.

The gist of the article was this: there was a small business in a town east of San Antonio that went by the name of Texas Roadhouse. It had been around for decades, selling beer and who knows what else to the people of its small community. We call those places "ice houses". The Kentucky corporation, looking to expand into Texas, wanted the rights to the name, which, according to the article (and my own understanding of that field of law) they couldn't get without the co-operation of the little ice house. Apparently the little ice house wouldn't give up the name. (I suspect, more than remember, that piles of money were offered; I know that, were I the ice house's attorney, I'd've sure recommended selling the name for anything with six figures left of the decimal, and then using some other name. Lord knows, the people that constitute its market don't give a damn what the place is called, they just want their beer and they know where to get it. Besides, they probably just call it "the ice house" anyway.)

Anyway, the upshot of the article was about the heavy-handed browbeating legal tactics the Kentucky corporation used to force the little ice house to give up the name. I don't know now what they were, though I recall there was an extensive discussion of it (which is why I think it was probably in a legal publication), but what I have remembered all these years is the indignation I felt that such robber-baron tactics would be used by Goliath against David. As a result, I've never been to a Texas Roadhouse.

But a friend of mine was taking me to dinner and Texas Roadhouse was the place he selected. 

This place is no different from a handful of similar steak houses: it's Outback without the Ozzie theme, Logan's Roadhouse with a southwestern theme, Beau's Place with more peanut shells on the floor. There's nothing original about the concept, but I find that it's done, overall, a tad better than similar places. 

There was a wait of about 15 minutes for a table, an interval spent shelling peanuts in the waiting area by the front door before we were led through the labyrinth to our two-person booth. Drinks were ordered and quickly brought by the assigned member of the uniformly chirpy waitstaff, who without exception managed to make terminal chirpiness seem not just normal, but infectious. Orders were placed with our capable and knowledgeable waitress. A couple of people nearby had birthdays, prompting me to observe that, in the hour or less I was there, I heard the word "yee-hah" more than I have in nearly a lifetime in Texas. I felt I should be insulted by the perpetuation of simplistic stereotypes about Texas, but then I thought of everything ever said about the state and its people on The Big Bang Theory, and decided that these simplistic stereotypes are the lesser evil. 

The time we spent waiting for our food -- not a long time, especially considering the crowd in the place -- was used to shell more peanuts and plow through a tray of deliciously fattening dinner rolls served with butter laced with honey and cinnamon. 

My dinner was a rib eye, ordered medium rare, a baked potato with everything on the side, and steamed vegetables. Everything was prepared exactly as it should have been: the veggies were hot and cooked to precisely the right point, with no spritz of oil or butter to diminish their healthful attributes; the potato was perfectly cooked (and of a proper size, not one of those over-large things you get at "steak houses" patronized by broke students); all the accoutrements were served on the side, as requested, in amounts that would ensure that I would have more than enough without being made to feel wasteful; and the steak, surprise surprise, was actually medium rare and tender.

My friend ordered a rack of ribs; I tasted the sauce and found it more Kansas City than Texas. Not bad, but not authentic either. Maybe corporate research indicates that KC-style barbecue plays better in Wisconsin. 

The place was loud in a bubbly sort of family-friendly way, not uncomfortably so; it was clean, except for the peanut shells all over, for which there is a traditional exception to standards. 

The prices struck me as about right for this sort of mid-range steak house; except the price of drinks ($2.59 for a bottomless glass) is higher than it should be, though I am apparently the last person in the whole world who cares.

 

Spring in the Midwest

The pictures I took on my recent trip to Wisconsin and St Louis are now available for viewing. There aren't a lot of them. Click here to see them.

Dragon
from the Minnesota "Science" Museum
(they don't put "Science" in quotes, but they should)

I got a lot of new counties in Iowa, and finished touring the counties of Illinois (making it the 27th state completed). I've now been to more than 90% of the counties in the US. Whoopee.

Makes me wonder...

From the BBC:

Uefa has also fined Bayern Munich £2,600 after

their supporters delayed the tie at Arsenal's Emirates

stadium by throwing rolls of paper onto the pitch

in protest over ticket prices.

If they think the ticket prices are unreasonable, why are they at the match in the first place?

I'm just saying...

I came across a quote the other day, said during World War I by

Admiral John Jellicoe, about Prime Minister David Lloyd George:

Jellicoe

Lloyd George

"He gets figures from any source and believes them

if they suit his views."

I suppose if Britain can survive Lloyd George, then we can survive Donald Trump. Hope so, anyway.

Trump

This Year's Huntsman Trip Pictures Posted

The pictures for this year's trip to the Huntsman Games are up now. They include photos taken at Bisti Wilderness in New Mexico, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Capital Reef National Park, Utah. My favourites are the pics from Calf Creek Falls, the high point of a six-hour hike. Carly liked that part best, too.

Bisti Wilderness

Capital Reef

Devil's Garden

Calf Creek Falls

Good Food in Albuquerque

Mac's La Sierra
6217 Central Avenue NW, Albuquerque

(just east of Coors Boulevard)

For a South Texas boy like me, finding acceptable Mexican food west of the Pecos is a challenge; finding good Mexican food was, I thought, beyond hope. I feel renewed now, though.

The desk clerk at our hotel recommended this place; I almost didn't take up her suggestion, because it seemed a little too far, especially since my experiences of Mexican food out here have all been pretty dismal. But what the hell, I decided; the alternative she suggested was Chili's, which held no attraction for me either. At least, I figured, I might get a good, snarky review out of the local place.

First, the look of it: straight out of a Southwestern version of Happy Days, the show they should have made, but with Nacho instead of Fonzie. The place looks like it was built in the 50s, added onto in the 60s, and untouched since. Could use a larger parking lot, but otherwise it exudes a working-class cultura-coche charm: soda fountain-style stools in the front, tables and booths in the back (and I think there was another dining room beyond the kitchen). All done up in a red shade you haven't seen since before Nixon resigned, with some classically uninteresting prints on the walls.

Next, the service: after an initial bobble -- a pregnant pause before menus and water appeared -- the service was excellent, and included an apology for the misunderstanding between staff members that resulted in the delay. The waitress was very helpful as we tried to make our selections (one of the big problems with trans-Pecos Mexican food is the language barrier: they use the same words, but for all different things). And all her recommendations proved solid.

The food was almost great. The chips were only so-so, but the salsa was pretty good. My wife chose the daily special for her meal: green chili stew. I had just a taste of it, but found it delicious and piquant, and it sure looked good, with nice chunks of potato and other good things in a deep dish of ... well, green chili salsa. My own dish was the "house special," steak fingers and enchiladas, with an egg added (one of the waitress's recommendations). It was served with charro beans, some pretty good Spanish rice, a little salad, three very small breaded steak fingers (which looked kind of sad all by themselves on a side plate), and puffed bread called sopapillas. (Sopapillas are a dessert dish back home....) Because I'd ordered the egg on top, the enchiladas were served open, and topped on one side with red salsa (which they call "chili" here) and on the other with green salsa.

My biggest objection to the style of Mexican food out here is the amount of chili powder they use in their red salsas: it's overpowering. But tonight I discovered that if you mix a runny egg yolk into it, it becomes quite good. Better than merely acceptable. And except for the puniness of those steak fingers (which still tasted good; well, they're fried, you know, and fried food is always tasty. You could deep fry squirrel leg and it'd be good eatin', as I'm sure most of my peeps in West-by-God-Virginia can attest), everything was really enjoyable. The salad was fresh, the tortillas in the enchiladas had excellent texture, the cheese was creamy and not so profuse as to be overdone (a common affliction of many  American adaptations of ethnic cuisines), and even the bread was flavourful, if not as tasty as a good flour tortilla.

We had all this for about ten bucks a head. That, I think, is pretty good value.

THE CURMUDGEON'S RATINGS:
FOOD: 4 1/2 chili peppers (out of 5)
SERVICE: 4 1/2 chili peppers
AMBIENCE: 3 1/2 chili peppers
VALUE: 3 1/2 chili peppers

 

Recipe Post

I keep a supply of paperback books in the car, for those unexpected times when I find myself with time to read. The current book -- I don't even know the name of it, but it's a spy story about a guy who can't keep it in ... you know -- anyway, this book closes each chapter with little synopses of the preparation of dishes mentioned in the chapter. This one I've made a couple of times, and really like it:

Kremlevskiye Griby so Shpinatom
(Kremlin mushrooms and spinach)

Ingredients:

olive oil
sliced mushrooms (as much as you want, depending on how many servings you want)
fresh spinach (you can use other greens instead, like chard) (if you're going to use this recipe as an appetizer, chop the spinach first)
capers, drained (I use about a tablespoon for 2 servings)
salt and pepper to taste
prepared mustard sauce (regular, Dijon, or spicy, depending on your preference)
vinegar (any kind, but the taste will be very much affected; I prefer white wine vinegar, but would also recommend a good balsamic)

If you're making this as an appetizer, you'll want a bunch of large mushroom caps too.

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushroom slices and sauté until the edges begin to brown; about 7 minutes. 

2. Add the spinach or other greens, and the capers; toss until wilted, about 4 minutes. 

3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium, and add mustard and vinegar. Spoon sauce over greens until it thickens, about 3 minutes. Serve lukewarm.

If making appetizers, stuff the mushroom caps with the spinach mixture.

County Count Synopsis

With the unfortunate but long-expected demise of my old Dell computer running Windows XP (which, I confess, I prefer to this Mac Airbook running OS-X), I can no longer access old WordPerfect documents ... like the document where I kept my list of states with a count of how many of their counties I have been to. Rather than recreating it in Apple's "Pages" format -- which I find tedious and unintuitive after 30 years of word processing -- I'll just put it here, where I can update it whenever.

So here goes:

States I've been to all the counties in:

as of August 2016

Arizona
Arkansas
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Kansas
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Minnesota
Mississippi (just finished this last trip)
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York (also just finished)
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Texas
Vermont (also just finished)
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

States yet to finish (with number of counties remaining):
Alabama (1, of 67)
Alaska (there aren't any counties there; haven't decided how I'll count it when I eventually go)
California (6, of 58)
Colorado (2, of 64)
Florida (7, of 67)
Georgia (68, of 159; counties there are really small)
Idaho (10, of 44)
Illinois (14, of 102)
Indiana (9, 0f 92)
Iowa (43, of 99)
Kentucky (28, of 120)
Massachusetts (2, both islands; of 14 -- the only counties left to visit in New England)
Michigan (20, of 83)
Missouri (7, of 114)
Montana (20, of 56)
Nebraska (10, of 93)
North Carolina (4, of 100)
Ohio (6, of 88)
Oregon (12, of 36)
South Carolina (11, of 46)
Tennessee (15, of 95)
Utah (2, of 29)
Virginia (16, of 95, plus a few of the independent cities, which I haven't decided whether to count)
Washington (5, of 39)

The Trip Goes On: Montreal

So we've moved our base of operations to an interesting little motel in Laval, Quebec, right across the bridge from Montreal, where we've been spending the last few days. Pics from the time we've been here, covering the botanical garden, the bug house, the Oratory, the harbour and miscellaneous parts of town, are now up on the web. Click here to see 'em. We have one more day before N&J have to go back to Colorado, and S&I will be off to Niagara Falls, and then home.

Old Montreal

penzou, botanical garden

St Joseph Chapel altarpiece,
Oratory of St Joseph, Montrealhttps://goo.gl/photos/PujFy8qfpuEnTYbc8

Oh, By the Way...

I hardly ever post restaurant reviews here anymore. Nowadays they're all on Zomato.com. If you want to know what I think of a place (though I have to wonder why you would), you can find it at www.zomato.com/passepartout22. I hope.

A Week in Vermont

Since my last post at the start of the week, I've figured out how to add descriptions to the photos in my Google Photos albums. Of course, unless you click on the little "info" icon (an "i" in a white circle near the top right corner) you won't see those descriptions; and you'll think, "Huh...I wonder what that's a picture of. Oh, well, it doesn't matter." And you'll be right, of course, but probably less impressed with my composition.

Stowe Village, from the back side

Anyway. So the first day in Stowe, a Sunday, we didn't do much of anything, after a very late night due to airline delays. We went to the farmers' market for stuff for meals (then to a grocery store for other stuff), then in to the village center where we had some ice cream ("New England" is, I'm sure, an old Algonkian term for "really good ice cream") and got lost on the "quiet trail," an unpaved walking trail where bicycles aren't allowed. Ended up walking quite a ways around the village and back down the main highway. Everybody got all their Fitbit steps in that day.

The next day it rained all day. We puttered around the apartment for a while, then went to a couple of shops down in the village. We, the members of the Once-a-Year Bowling League, went to the one bowling alley in town, which has 8 lanes and opens at 2pm and charges by the hour for the privilege of bowling under flashing disco lights between groups of children who don't know the first thing about bowling (and who are supervised by nominal adults who don't know the first thing about teaching children proper behaviour in public). They had a waiting list and said they'd call us when a lane opened up. So we went and did things, ending up eventually at a yarn shop in the Village where the wimmenfolk spent entirely too much time. Then the bowling alley called, yay! and we went and threw balls at pins in the dark for about an hour. Came back and had burgers at the condo.

The Round Church

We went down to Ticonderoga the next day, with a couple of stops along the way, first at the Round Church in Richmond, Vermont, and then at the old lighthouse on Lake Champlain at Crown Point, New York.

Steamboat dock and
Lighthouse on Lake Champlain

Fort Ticonderoga from
Mt Defiance

I heard so often about Ticonderoga when I was in school that I was pretty sure it must be an important place. Having been there three times now, I've come to the conclusion that it was a mistake for the French to put a fortress there in the first place, but that, once that mistake was made, it became necessary for competitors, British and American, to take the fort. In a nutshell, the fort's only real relevance to American history is that it provided the guns that forced the British out of Boston, and helped keep the Americans from taking Canada later on. The fort was completely destroyed by the British when they evacuated it at the end of the Revolution, and would have been an unlamented loss had not some rich guy bought the property for his country home, and then had some layabout descendants who thought rebuilding it would be a Good Thing. Well, okay, so they spent a lot of time and money doing just that, and the foundation they set up to operate it is making plenty with it (and Mount Defiance, a better location for fortifications and the undoing of Ticonderoga); still, had they not it wouldn't be missed.


The bulk of our Wednesday was spent at Ben & Jerry's, down the road at Waterbury Center; and then going up through Smuggler's Notch and down to Bingham Falls, both very pretty places near Stowe.

Smuggler's Notch

Bingham Falls

Moss Glen Falls

On Thursday we hiked down to Moss Glen Falls
first thing in the morning, then went to the Shelburne Museum. Like Ticonderoga, the latter is operated by a foundation dedicated, it would seem, to keeping alive the memory of a local heiress, her children and their friends. It's a collection of old buildings brought together from around Vermont, spread over 20-something acres of well-tended landscaping. There are bits and pieces of living history, and some very knowledgeable curators and guides on hand, but basically it's about the woman who owned the place in life, and her family and friends. Get past that self-glorification, though, and you can enjoy your time on the property.

Hansom cab

There are some very interesting things in the museum. I was interested in the collection of vehicles, except that they include a lot of sleds and sleighs. For me, it was all about the carriages. And the train. And the 60 or so vehicles that I didn't get to see.

supposed bust of
Crazy Horse 

After the museum, we headed into downtown Burlington for a bit, but there wasn't much to see there, so we just had dinner in their pedestrian mall and headed back home.

Today -- Friday, our last day here -- we went for a drive up through Hazen's Gap, just so that I could go through the last two counties in Vermont. Now I've been to every county in New England except the two island counties off the Massachusetts coast. Next week (after Montreal): New York state.



And after lunch, we found this covered bridge right outside of Stowe. Built in 1844. Some of the timbers are original. (The bridges were covered to keep them from rotting. Seems to work.)

These pictures, and many others, can be seen in my 2016 Vermont Trip album.

The 2016 Condo Trip, So Far

OK, so I hardly ever post anything on this blog anymore.... But here's an attempt to share, with anyone who might be interested, the pictures from this year's Condo Trip.

Here's a link that (supposedly) will work:
https://goo.gl/photos/PujFy8qfpuEnTYbc8

Let me know if it doesn't.

The pictures start with New Orleans, then across Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia before heading up to Philadelphia (where we went in spite of the Democratic convention). I then dropped my friend Roland off in New York City and headed up to Maine, where I delivered my sister's dog to her. From there, I drove down to Boston to collect my wife, and over to Burlington, Vermont, to collect my sister-in-law and her husband for our week in Stowe, Vermont. The pictures in the album so far cover that trip through one day in Stowe.

By the time the album is finished it'll include a week in Vermont, a few days in Montreal, and the trip home with my wife, by way of Niagara Falls.

Oh, and I finished the County Count of Mississippi, and got a number of counties in Alabama and Georgia; and I've already been to 3 of the 5 remaining counties of Vermont; I'll get those last two on this trip, and will be done with Vermont.

The "Grand Canyon of Mississippi," a road wash-out

Alabama Natural Bridge

Philadelphia ... some ol' bell

granite quarry in Maine

Stowe, Vermont