Misc: Wyoming

On our way home from South Dakota, Mr X and I veered west into north-eastern Wyoming so that we could check out the Devil's Tower National Monument.

According to the Native American tribes of the Lakota Sioux, some girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock, fell to their knees, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach the girls. The bears, in an effort to climb the rock, left deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. (Taken from Wikipedia.)

May Latest Attempt @ Knitting

South Dakota Road Trip: Mt. Rushmore

Mr X finally saw Mr Rushmore! We first spied it during a beautifully scenic drive through Custer State Park. Whoever designed the roads there had the ingenious idea to make it so that as you drove through a rock tunnel, you came out on the other side with a surprising visual treat of Rushmore in the distance. How clever of those designers.

Even though we have a National Parks pass already, they charge $11 to park your car and get access to the visitor center/grounds of Rushmore. We opted to save that money for something else since we could see the stone carvings from various other turn-outs along the roads.

So we were smart saving our money because we then used it to buy pie instead. I know, we're not just smart, we're geniuses. So we stopped in the town of Custer for homemade, completely from scratch with fresh ingredients pie. Perfect pie. It was incredibly delicious. In fact, it was the tastiest thing we ate during our whole trip. Ah...the Purple Pie Place. I wanted to go back for every subsequent meal. But we didn't.

I ordered a slice of the fresh peach pie.

Mr X ordered a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie.

Pie makes everything better.

South Dakota Road Trip: Custer State Park

Mr X and I decided to do a hike in Custer State Park to better get a feel for the place. I picked out the hike for it. I settled on a hike to the highest peak in all of South Dakota. It's not very high: 7,242 feet. Our home in Colorado is at a higher elevation than that. But I thought  it would be fun to be able to say that we've climbed the highest peak in South Dakota anyway. 

So off we went. 

We saw lovely flowers along the way...

There were these rock formations called "cathedral spires" that were really striking.

We made it to the top in great time and had a picnic lunch there in this tiny bit of grassy area amongst the rocks. The view was wonderful. We'd finished our lunch and were scrambling about the rocks taking photos and such when we heard the thunder start rolling. That was our cue to head back down so off we went.

It was a great hike - my favorite excursion of our trip, actually. According to the maps we had it was supposed to take about 4-5 hours to complete. I think those estimate must have been very generous because we did it in 3 hours, not including our lunch break.

Cooking with Luz: Salsas

I have two more salsa recipes from Lucy. The first is smoother salsa:

Pour a "slurp" of olive oil into a frying pan and turn the heat on to medium high. Take two large jalapenos and cut them into two or three chunks each. Cut one clove of garlic in half and toss both the garlic and jalapenos into the hot oil.

 Let the jalapenos fry in the oil, tossing occasionally, until the skin blisters.

Then put the jalapenos and garlic into a blender along with about 3 or 4 tablespoons of the oil in which they were cooked. Blend them until smooth. Then add a half cup of good quality mayonnaise to the blender and combine until smooth. Add about a teaspoon of salt, blend and then taste. Add more salt as desired. Pour the contents of the blender into a server dish.

For Lucy's red salsa:

Into a small sauce pot, put a handful of dried Guajillo chiles along with 2 tomatillos (leaves peeled, of course). Fill the pot with water until the water level nearly covers the contents of the pot. Let this simmer until the tomatillos are soft and tender.

Pour the contents of the stock pot  into a blender or food processor along with a teaspoon of salt and one clove of minced garlic. Blend well. Taste and add more salt if desired.

Pour the contents of the blender or food processor into a serving bowl.

South Dakota Road Trip: The Badlands

Over the long weekend of the 4th Mr X and I packed up and headed to South Dakota. Why, you ask? Because when you've got time off and you want to go somewhere, you go to South Dakota. Duh. At least that's how it seemed once we got there. I've never seen so many different license plates from so many different states all in one place at one time. I guess South Dakota is a hot spot for vacationing Americans. Who knew. Mr X had never been to Mt. Rushmore and we decided it was hit patriotic duty to remedy that so off we went.

We started off with some exploration of the Badlands National Park. We've come to the conclusion that while simply driving through National Parks is nice and all, exploring them on our feet via hiking trails affords for much more rewarding scenery so we try to do hikes in every National Park to which we visit. There aren't a lot of hikes in the Badlands though. So we found and hiked the longest one - approximately 10 miles.

As you can see from the photos, the sky was constantly threatening to unleash it's fury on us. It made the hike even more eerie than it already was with the strange and barren landscape and all. We constantly heard rumbles of thunder in the distance. At one point we did, in fact, get caught in the rain and thunder. We ran for cover next to a pathetic little rock/sand outcropping. We waited there for about 15 minutes for the rain and lightening to pass.

Much to our dismay, as we were waiting a really large bull snake decided that it would like some cover as well. (Yes, we were relieved that it was a bull snake, but it was still huge and it was still a snake so we still weren't pleased.) Unfortunately that snake wanted to take cover among some rocks right next to us. Mr X attempted to deter the snake by throwing rocks and sticks at it. That snake was undeviating in it's course. It slithered into the rocks about a foot away from where we were hunched up. At that point we both started looking at all of the rocks around us, wondering how many other snakes might be holed up among them. Creepy. Very creepy. The second the rain let up we practically sprinted back to the trail.

Cooking with Luz: Flan

This is how Lucy makes Flan:

 What you'll need:

4-5 eggs (depending on size of eggs, 5 if smallish, 4 if large)
1 can of evaporated milk
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 cup of sugar

Put the cup of white sugar into a pan on the stove on medium-low heat. Let it liquefy and turn golden.

Then pour the liquified sugar into a loaf pan or other baking dish of your choice.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs until frothy. Then beat in the two can's of milk mentioned above until well mixed. Pour this into the pan on top of the caramel sauce.

Place the pan in another, larger baking dish and fill the large baking dish with water, about halfway up the side of the dish containing the flan.

Bake in a preheated oven at 360 degrees for about an hour.

Let it cool completed.

To serve, invert the pan in which the flan resides onto a serving plate.