Camping, Princess Style

[ElsieD]

The cauliflower was from California, the bagged carrots from Ontario.

[Jacksoup]

I actually lived in Tucumcari when my dad worked for the old Southern Pacific railroad.  At that time the town of approx 3000 had one stoplight on Route 66 which cut through the middle of town. As teenagers we 'dragged the strip', which means we had nothing to do so we drove back and forth on Route 66 every Friday and Saturday night.  Now I believe the freeway bypasses the town.  There's a railroad siding named after my dad somewhere south of Tucumcari.

Edited April 25, 2017 by Jacksoup
Extra (log)

[Smithy]

We probably passed that railroad siding, since US54 parallels the rail line for quite some distance.  Tucumcari has more than one stop light now, but it still has that old Route 66 feel about it and a lot of the businesses celebrate the old road.  A burger joint that we didn't eat at this time, but have eaten at on overnight stops, celebrates the old classic car culture.  We were trying to remember what it has out front: an old Corvette, we think.  From the highway we couldn't clearly see the car to refresh our memories.  

[FauxPas]

I loved Tucumcari! My husband loved it because of all the filming there - Clint Eastwood and the related flics, but we both wanted to see a bit of the Hwy 66 history. There are some powerful stories there. 

 

Dragging the strip was a thing in many towns, I think. @Jacksoup, would love to hear more from you! 

 

 

[Smithy]

You've seen these pictures already, but I'll show a composite again as a refresher.

 

 

We looked at that trailer tongue protruding from a concrete foundation, and the building apparently built around a trailer, and decided that we had to ask about the structure.  Besides, we were jonesing for 'cue. We climbed the steps and went inside.

 

 

Yep, it's a concession trailer with a building around it!  When they opened for business on 2 September 2016, it was just the trailer.  (It's still taxed as a concession trailer. I assume that's an advantage over being taxed as a restaurant.) The young man greeted us cheerily and invited us to look around and have a seat: there are three tables of varying sizes, and extra chairs for people to sit as they wait for their take-out orders.  What would we like to eat?  We learned about the brisket.  It's cooked on the premises every day, mixed with his and his wife's own sauce of melted butter, herbs, salt and pepper (and vinegar?) and rewarmed upon demand.  Barbecue sauce of their own devising is served with it.  The meat is usually dipped in the sauce when served, but we could have the sauce on the side. We could buy brisket sandwiches, or buy brisket by the pound to take home.

 

Take a close look at this menu.

 

 

Build your own burrito!  Pick your meat, pick your additions - what kind of cheese, chili, other fillers.  Brisket in a burrito?  I'd never had that.  While we were looking over the menu the owner chatted on.  He was a merry man, full of jokes and stories. He had been in the U.S. Navy, first on a destroyer and then on an aircraft carrier.  While we were chatting another customer came in, and the talk came round to military service experience.  Then it came back to food, sort of.

 

"Do you know what a MOAB is?" he asked us.

 

I thought quickly.  I was fairly sure he was punning on, but not directly referring to, the military ordinance currently going by that nickname. "Mother Of All Burritos?" I guessed.  He laughed.  I had guessed correctly.  This particular burrito involved 5 extra-large tortillas overlapping each other to make a long wrap, some of each meat, some of each filling, and so on.  If I recall correctly, it had weighed 5 pounds. He's considered putting something like that up on the menu, but decided against it.  How would he charge for that?  How many people would be needed to order one?  

 

I'd expected us to order brisket sandwiches for lunch, but my darling surprised me.  "Let's get brisket to go for dinner tonight, and some chili cheese fries to tide us over until then."  I was quietly dismayed.  I have never, ever liked chili cheese fries.  The cognitive dissonance of putting something heavy and gooey over long, thin fried potatoes is just too great to sound appealing.  Then again, I haven't had chili cheese fries since I was about 8 years old, at an age when I didn't like chili under any circumstance.  Maybe I'd been missing something.  The proprietor assured us that he and his wife make the fries fresh with each order, make the chili on the premises, and offer a choice of cheese.  I considered ordering regular fries for myself, but decided to keep an open mind. We placed our order, and he began adding up the charges.  "Is either of you a veteran?" My darling is.  "Well, that's a 10% discount!" The young man and his wife believe strongly that Service personnel (including domestic service people like firefighters and peace officers), who have given to their country, deserve something in return.  Then he handed my darling a permanent marker. "The only condition is that you sign our wall."

 

 

My darling signed.

 

 

More customers came in.  One warned us that the food was plentiful.  A burger from this place was a four-hour affair, and he was still full from yesterday's experience.  "I'll be eating lightly today!"

 

Our brisket came before the chili cheese fries.  The conversation was fun while we waited.  Eventually, our chili cheese fries arrived.  We boggled and goggled. If you are grossed out by fats and carbs, look away.  Now.

 

This was a paean to glorious excess. In my mind, the only thing wrong with it was - well, everything about its dietary implications.  The chili was tangy - a little sweet, with a little bite, but not too much of either.  The cheeses (I had asked for both cheddar and jack) were melted just the right amount, and a nice counterbalance to the chili flavor.  I decided that my cognitive dissonance could be overcome.  Everything about this was delicious, if you aren't horrified by fat and carbs.

 

While we gamely struggled with our "light lunch", the owner expounded on the fries.  He said that he or his wife cuts the potato when an order comes, not a moment before.  They only use Idaho Russet potatoes.  No other potato has the right starch content.  Judging by the size of this order, I'd say they must use "jumbo baker" sized Idaho Russets. When people ask for crispy fries, he said, he warns them that the fries will turn black.  Apparently the owners don't rinse the surface starch off or mess around with double frying or other steps that have been discussed in these forums to produce crispy golden fries.  On the other hand, this is honest potato - not the extruded stuff so common in fast food joints.

 

Eventually, we gave up the struggle and saved the rest for later.  About half the order of chili cheese fries remained.  I was very glad I hadn't ordered plain fries for myself.  We bundled it all up, thanked them, wished them well, and went home.

 

 

Not shown: the almost-pint of barbecue sauce, and a separate container of pickles and onion slices.

 

This is the sort of place I would expect to have featured on Jane and Michael Stern's Road Food series.  The food was good and excessively plentiful, the people are friendly, and the place is conveniently located on U.S. Highway 54 - a highway with enough traffic to support business but not so heavily traveled as an Interstate Freeway with its frequent fast-food-chain joints.  It's inexpensive. The entire bill, with our 10% discount, was $15.  We hope they do well, but we fear that they undercharge.  Clearly, they're enjoying themselves.  We wish them the best of luck.

 

 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Smithy
Added missing image (log)

[BeeZee]

ahh, the ultimate in comfort food. Lot to be said for a genuine person like this, love to support people like him.

[Smithy]

Toto, I've a feeling we're in Kansas.

 

 

We've been in the state a few days, at a couple of different parks.  We left New Mexico last Sunday and headed northeast, clipping the corners of the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, making it a 4-state drive day.  

 

We stayed one night at a fishing lake, and ate leftovers.  The next day we drove northeast again and passed through Liberal: the self-proclaimed home of Dorothy, from The Wizard of Oz. 

 

 

We found an Army Corps of Engineers campground between Wichita and Topeka, and pulled in.  This campground isn't technically open yet, but they're getting it ready and the gates were open.  We were welcome to stay at no charge, and since we're self-contained it was a welcome bargain. The woods are green and the flowers are budding.  We've traded desert color for midwestern spring flowers, and as we go north the seasons will roll back even further.

 

 

We ate leftovers from the freezer one night - chili, I think.  Dinner last night was the leftover chili cheese fries and brussels sprouts; his was accompanied by toast. 

 

 

I also set some cranberry beans to cook.  The finished product is unlovely, but aren't the raw beans beautiful?

 

 

I haven't decided on tonight's dinner but it will be the last time we eat in our 'dining room' until we get home. Starting tomorrow we'll be driving each day, and it isn't worth unpacking the back room so we have a dining room.  Our goal is to be home on Saturday, after the current snow(!)storm clears and before the next one hits.  It isn't the weather we'd hoped for our homecoming, but our schedule is set.

[Smithy]

We had an eggplant taking up space in the refrigerator.  There were potatoes and onions in the overhead baskets.  There were tomatoes in the on-counter baskets. What to do with all that stuff? The potatoes and onions could be fine until we get home, but the rest would not last.  I began thawing the last package of beef chorizo from Arizona, set a pot of water with lemon juice to boil, and went to work slicing.

 

A trick I've picked up from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook is to boil sliced or cubed eggplant in water, with lemon juice if I remember it, instead of microwaving, frying or broiling those pieces.  I agree with her that the boiled eggplant is sweeter and silkier than by those other methods. My only difficulty is getting it drained thoroughly afterward.  I haven't quite got that down yet.  This time I counted on that liquid to help cook the potatoes.

 

I layered very thin slices of potato, onion, and tomato with the boiled and drained eggplant and the chorizo.  I added a bit of half and half to help provide something for the potatoes to start cooking.  The whole thing went into the oven for a good long bake.  It's getting cool, and the hot oven helps warm the trailer.

 

 

We went for a walk, exploring the park and enjoying being near a river after the deserts' aridity.

 

When the potatoes were done I removed the lid, added cheese, and put the dish back in the oven until we were ready to eat.  

 

 

This was a gratifying dinner: easy, cheap, and good enough to our tastes that I'll do it again. If I'm feeding people who don't like hot seasonings then a less spicy meat would be appropriate.  I'd like to work out a way to have less liquid in the finished product.

 

The next morning we loaded the trailer and hit the road again.  We won't unpack the back area (the "dining room") until we get home now, so our living space is cut roughly in half.  We drove into Iowa and stayed at a casino that has a huge RV park.   

 

 

The first time we stayed here it was Terrible's Casino (named for its association with Terrible Herbst Oil, a Nevada-based company) and the camping fee was $20/night for water, electricity and sewer.  Campers got a rebate in the form of a $10 chit for gambling tokens.  In this new incarnation as the Lakeside Casino the rebate has been eliminated.  $20 for water, 50A electricity and sewer is still a bargain.  The scenery around the park is entertaining, too.

 

 

We did a minimalist setup, walked, relaxed, and went to the casino for dinner.  They had an all-you-can-eat buffet for around $20/person.  After we'd ordered away from the buffet I was almost sorry for not accepting its invitation to gluttony.  There were 3 or 4 kinds of beef steak; pork steaks, chops and roast; ribs, chicken, spring rolls, tamales, taco and burrito fixings, stir-fried vegetables, steamed vegetables, salads, potatoes of several types, rice...and a glorious dessert table. If we'd paid the money we would have felt obligated to take a bit of everything.  Our choices were more pragmatic and less expensive:

 

 

Barbecue bacon cheese burger, with crispy onions strings (and, alas, soggy french fries) for him. The burger was huge: with two beef patties, he almost regretted ordering it.  It was good, though, and the onion strings were delicious and delicately crisp. We'd have been pleased to be able to take home a bag of those.  I'd be pleased to know how to make them.

 

I ordered an Awesome Chicken Sandwich, our bartender's favorite, and it was well named. 

 

 

The chicken breast was perfectly fried: crispy without being dried out, and nicely seasoned.  Chipotle mayonnaise was the dressing. Generous amounts of tomato, onion, dill pickle and peppery baby greens (arugula?) were the perfect accompaniment.  My fries were also soggy.  That made it easier not to eat them all.

 

We learned an interesting fact about Iowa's casino bar rules.  Our bartender was ovewhelmed with work and finally got help behind the counter.  When my darling asked for a second beer, the new man said, "I'll have to check with her to see if it's been 20 minutes yet."  We puzzled over his statement until he came back with the beer and explained.  In Iowa, casinos may not serve alcoholic beverages to customers at a rate faster than one every 20 minutes!  We can see some logic behind it; no doubt there have been lawsuits to recoup gambling losses based on the accusation of casino-encouraged inebriation.  Nonetheless, the impulse to test the logic was irresistible. "What happens if someone orders a double every 20 minutes?" my darling challenged.  "We can't serve doubles at all, sir," was the response. "What happens if someone orders a beer every 20 minutes for 24 hours?"  I rolled my eyes.  I don't remember the answer. 

 

[IowaDee]

Well, if  you were at Terrible's in Osceola, you were less than an hour from our house.  We live just outside Bloomfield in Davis Co.

So close........and there's always room for a couple of more Smiths around here!  And, there is NO time limit when it comes to serving beer.

 

 

[Smithy]

4 minutes ago, IowaDee said:

Well, if  you were at Terrible's in Osceola, you were less than an hour from our house.  We live just outside Bloomfield in Davis Co.

So close........and there's always room for a couple of more Smiths around here!  And, there is NO time limit when it comes to serving beer.

 

 

 

If only we'd known!  I'll keep that in mind for future trips.  

[IowaDee]

All right, Let me know and I will send you the details for finding us.  

[Smithy]

Our trip wasn't supposed to begin like this.

 

 

Honestly, I love the snow and was glad to be home for it, but it wasn't part of the plan.  A variety of circumstances conspired to keep us a few days past our normal start. The largest reason was that the trailer didn't come back from factory-warranty work until the last Friday of October, when an early snow storm hit!

 

 

What is usually a two- to three-week process of intent packing and preparations was crammed into a single frenetic week. To make matters worse, we had emptied the trailer of much of its contents for said factory-warranty work, knowing that an entire side was to be removed. We're still discovering things we overlooked.  So far none of it has been major.

 

Although I love the cold and the snow, my darling neither loves nor tolerates it well. The trailer isn't built for it either, as frozen water lines attested.  Fortunately there was no damage. Another snow storm hit the day before we left.  We skedaddled out between storms.  It's the first time he's had to plow the driveway to get the trailer out - but plow he did, and away we went.

 

We drove long hours, straight south, toward the sunny weather.  We skipped the Gulf Coast and eastern states altogether, with mixed feelings about missing out on the fresh shrimp and some favorite places, but he'd had enough of rain and we chose the driest, warmest route we could find.  We stopped for the night at convenient places - in one case a state Welcome Center - and fired up the generator to reheat dinners we'd packed in the freezer for travel.

 

 

We had made giant pots of chili and pea stew, two of his favorite comfort foods, and portioned them into the 3-cup containers shown in the upper right of the freezer.  The rest of the contents are most of the contents from our house freezers, which were actually showing bottom by the time we left.  I haven't posted much in the Challenge: Cook your way through your freezer topic, but we've been pretty good about working our way through the contents in the last month or two. Incidentally, frozen persimmon puree is very close in color to his frozen chili.  I had to reheat an extra dinner that night, after discovering my mistake. 

 

Breakfasts for him have been fruit and cereal; most of the time, for me, they've been yogurt and fruit of some sort.  I've finished the last of the frozen blueberries from our freezer. I do love being able to make yogurt in our 3-quart Instant Pot Mini!  

 

 

 

On our third night we were at Lake Mineral Wells, Texas - a new place for us.  It's interesting, driving across a spillway to get to a campsite! 

 

 

We liked it enough that we may go back sometime, but it was still too cool for him to want more than a night's stay.  I think I took the time to make our "Bedouin style" tuna noodle hot dish for dinner that night.  Can't find a picture, but I posted about it here.

 

Next up: our first multi-night stop, in Llano, Texas. 

[blue_dolphin]

Yay -  I love   being back on the road in the Princessmobile - virtually, that is!  

Thanks for taking us!

 

Edited to add that here, it's currently 91°F at 10:52 AM so maybe head in this direction !

Edited November 22, 2017 by blue_dolphin (log)

[Shelby]

Very excited to be on the road again. 

[curls]

Wishing you safe travels and thank you very much for taking us along with you. I look forward to your blogging!

[Anna N]

So happy to be on the road again. 

[ElsieD]

Looking forward to travelling along!

[Darienne]

Wait up, wait up, I want to go to where it's warm too.  Glad to visit with you on the road again. 

[IowaDee]

I was hoping to climb on board as you passed my neighborhood but missed you.  Looking forward to your trip even if I am stuck here.

[Porthos]

It was 94 F here today. Notsupposed to have to run the air conditioner the day before Thanksgiving.

 

So happy to "ride along" with you as you enjoy your trek.

 

 

[suzilightning]

YEAH!!!!!

Hope you have a wonderful season of travel with the animals and each other.   Can't wait ot her what you are doing.

Course  MY idea is heading to Duluth for the hawk migration in September then down to Corpus Christi.  Unfortunately  Veracruz has kinda been taken off our tour.

 

Any new places?  

Anything you are going to look for?

 

[Kim Shook]

Travel well and be safe.  I have to admit that I'd have probably figured out a way to stay home for a week or two with that lovely snow.  Snowbirds follow the sun.  What do you call folks who follow the snow?  

[suzilightning]

9 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

Travel well and be safe.  I have to admit that I'd have probably figured out a way to stay home for a week or two with that lovely snow.  Snowbirds follow the sun.  What do you call folks who follow the snow?  

Crazy?  Masochistic?

[IowaDee]

Maybe "Shelbys".  She's the only person that seems to LOVE the stuff

[Shelby]

7 minutes ago, IowaDee said:

Maybe "Shelbys".  She's the only person that seems to LOVE the stuff

I do love it.  It seems very against my inner core to leave snow and go to someplace hotter than the sun lol.