This is my neighborhood up in Tahoe. All this snow fell last night. The amount of husky mom fail I feel right now is unmeasurable. They should be running and bounding through the snow with that golden retriever in the video! Especially now that Stormy has his new fur coat growing in so nicely!!
If I didn’t have a doctor’s appointment at 7:30am tomorrow AM, I’d drive up there tonight. Damn.
And to think – this past weekend I was up there in sundresses and flip flops!!
Today is the last day of my birthday/4th of July vacation :( very sad…
I’ve been hiking every day and doing chores, staying and then yesterday had an afternoon/evening/night out at the park/beach for the 4th and fireworks. My hike yesterday was awesome. Gorgeous as always. But again – for the 3rd time on this trail – butterflies swarmed around me during this 1 section. VERY AWESOME! Like walking with them. I wish I could have videoed it :) On Friday I did a 3-hour hike but yesterday changed my route and it ended up being 2.5 hours. But all pretty – all the time :)
Tahoe Mountains 1
Tahoe Mountains 2
Tahoe mountains 3
I will be back either next weekend (depending on Wicked Tickets in SF!) or the weekend after but I still hate leaving. SOOO planning a Labor Day week vacay…
So because it’s my last day, I decided to just chill today. No plans of hiking, Squaw Valley pool party (going to the August one though!), hiking to Squaw High Camp, whatever. Just chill. It’s been nice :) Spent the day in the sun – on my deck, walking the huskies by the lake (although did try to avoid the sun for them!!) and then our clubhouse pool. Husband said “we should do this every time we come here.” Ummm…I always want to go to the pool – it’s YOU who can’t relax!
After about an hour, I went back home and to our deck again! Been getting caught up on my last 3 Vanity Fair magazines today that I haven’t had time to really read. As much as the articles have SUCH a grossly LIBERAL BENT, I still enjoy reading the mag for their old-world, old-society articles. Plus any Annie Leibovitz photo spreads are beautiful. For now…but if they keep up with the pathetic Obama ass-kissing, I might not renew. At some point it’s just gross. Although they did turn on Bill Clinton so who knows – might make for fun reading in a year or 2…
I was still determined to make one of the mac and cheese recipes from my new-ish cookbook. I chose the City Hall Mac and Cheese by Henry Archer Meer. I do not know who that is but futzy, fancy foodies might? I googled him and he owns a NYC restaurant called City Hall (hence the name of this recipe!)
It was fairly simple. This is pre-baking after milk and cream reduction and cheese adding/melting and spice adding and then pasta adding…
City Hall Mac & Cheese
Put it in the oven to bake and then took Angelus on a short after-dinner (his dinner) walk. And we FINALLY saw a coyote!! Hadn’t seen once since winter!!! Storm decided he didn’t want to come on our walk and all I saw was a tail out of the corner of my eye and it looked just like a fluffy Storm tail! I thought did husband bring Storm out? NO! Once I looked and saw it was a brown and grey coyote looking quite cute and fluffy like our little Storm. I tried getting a picture but he wanted no part of me or Angelus. But he was only 2 houses away from us so I am keeping my eye out tonight!! I did hear 1 in our backyard 2 nights ago – maybe the same little guy.
Timed walk to be done with mac & cheese baking. Looks and smells SOOOOO good:
Baked mac&cheesey goodness!
Having with BBQ hot dogs (since I didn’t get one yesterday for the 4th – I have been craving one!) and they will compliment this mac&cheese nicely! I just tried it….OHMYGOD good!!! Page 32 of the Macaroni & Cheese cookbook “52 recipes, from simple to sublime” by Joan Schwartz. Get one!!! :)
Today was a fun day! I did sleep in till about 7am like a lazy slack! Huskies said HOT outside already Mom! I took them down to a forest walk so it was mostly shady so they could stay cooler. They had the same reaction today that they had last fall on this same walk – something wicked this way is! They smell a bear? Or a dead body? Ghost? Angelus is afraid of nothing (ok, well…bees…) and he was acting strange and not wanting to continue on down the path. And Storm had less than zero interest in continuing. So I of course made them continue on…but then was imagining a scary movie…where the dumb girl makes her dogs keep going down the scary path even though every person watching the movie is screaming at the screen to listen to your dogs!!! So we turned around :)
After doggie walk and coffee and email..I went on my hike. About 6 miles with 3 of it straight uphill. Beautiful though. A great hike. The goal was making it up to Hawks Peak. And I did :)
Hawks Peak view 2
There was still snow in some of the higher elevation areas. And the best part – I saw 1 biker in the distance but other than that – came across no one. Very peaceful. It was windy up on the tippy-top rock at Hawks Peak so I had to be careful not be blown off the rock!
Hawk's Peak View 1
I was using my iPhone app TrailGuru and it said about 6 miles and almost 2 hours but then my battery died – doh!! Good thing I didn’t run across any bears and need the phone camera!
Then it was lunch (turkey burger!!) and sun/tanning time! I just started reading James Patterson’s “8th Confession”. I realized today as I was going through my stack of books that I brought that I *always* read a James Patterson book on my vacation. So I moved it up in the priority pile :) These are always fun summer reads. This is the Women’s Murder Club series he does. I really like this series. ABC made a short-lived TV series based on it last season which I also liked. But not as much as the books obviously. Although Angie Harmon (who played the main character – Lindsay Boxer) was quite likable. I find his books, and this series in particular, to be very fun reads. And when you are baking in the sun, “thinking” books are not always the best (Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” is next in my pile…might get pushed down for “Gossip Girl” till after vacation..)
After sun time, it was chore time – laundry, cleaning guest bedrooms used this weekend, vacuuming house (I am ALL FOR 1 story houses btw…truly….stairs suck), hosing off deck pollen & spider webs (Angelus was VERY happy with this), and taking the garbage and recycling out to the bear box for pick-up day tomorrow. Now…I considered “accidentally” dropping garbage in the driveway and entryway to “accidentally” attract a bear or 2 (they LOVE and know when garbage day is – very smart bears!)…but I didn’t (dang it!)
Then we did another short buddy walk. I wore flip flops when I did this…unwise…I stabbed my foot on a big stick. OUCH! Bleeding!!! Crazy that the buddies can walk on all the sticks and rocks like they do. What pansy feet I have :)
I set myself a time limit on chores so it was time to make dinner and pick a movie! I made my tofu spaghetti – yum! And watched “Doubt”. Good movie. Not as dark as made out to be…but perhaps that is because A) I like the actors (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams) and B) I’m not Catholic. Good watch though.
But now just about time for sleepy so I can do it all again tomorrow :)
Friday night we got up here up around 12:30am…pretty late for me!! I was very tired since I woke up at 5am. Once here, we unloaded the car, got ready for bed and finally got to sleep around 1:15-1:30am.
Angelus barked at me to wake up around 3ish…he *never* does this unless he has an upset tummy. But he did not. He had no interest in going outside to pee or anything. So I went back to sleep. Then he woke me up again a short time later. Again, he did not want to go outside the front way to pee. He wanted to go out on the back deck. I was exhausted so I just let him out and said good night.
Then he woke up husband around 4am and was going crazy running from the back deck to go out at the front door. We are pretty sure he was tracking a bear or coyote outside as he simply doesn’t get that excited about a raccoon or smaller critters unless he is actually chasing them – DAMMIT! I wanted to see the bear!!!! Next time! It’s been almost 2 years since I saw the bear in our driveway – I am due!! :)
I woke up at 7am and took the buds on a walk for an hour. Then it got too hot for them. Pretty sure Stormy gave me the paw. Then it was vacation-coffee-mode on the deck in the sun :) I love sitting out on the deck facing the forest. Very peaceful, pretty and the forest smell is amazing. Mandy came over about an hour later and Helen woke up and we eventually rallied to do a 6-mile hike where we found this alien pod:
Alien Pod
Not sure what is was. But had fun convincing ourselves it was poisonous and might kill us all on touch if we touched it (we were clearly dehydrated by this point ;) ) So I moved it out of the path with 2 sticks….where it dropped. Lesson 1: do not put me in charge of the nitro-glycerin. After giggling at ourselves we continued on and finished the hike unscathed by the alien pod…oh yeah – we did name it John :)
Mandy and me looking out over Donner Lake
Helen, me and Donner Lake
Got back and laid in the sun for an hour or so reading magazines and chatting. We opened up a bottle of Brut and a great time was had by all!
Later we had a yummy sushi dinner at Yoshimi Sushi in Incline Village. This is one of the several rolls we go that were not on the menu. This one is called the Lucky #7:
Lucky #7 sushi roll
You can link to my Yelp review from a previous visit on the front page of my blog (under Lifestream.) I HIGHLY recommend this place!!!! But then again, not so much that it gets too popular and I can’t get seated :)
Now I am in a food coma on top of 5 hours of sleep, sun and hiking…so I think this party girl should go to sleep by 10:00pm on her first day of vacation in Tahoe :)
