Great Sand Dunes

A couple of weekends ago we hied off to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

We had planned on a long weekend up at Cascade, with side trips to Pikes Peak and Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. We were after the obligatory Pikes Peak donut, and a hike from the Crowe Gulch picnic area. But ... it was forecast for heavy rains, so we changed to the Dunes.

The Dunes is always worth a trip.This time of the year is quite nice. The leaves were starting to turn, and it was cool enough for a windbreaker on the hikes we ... hiked.

We did hike up above the dunes, on the east side of the preserve. Then we hiked up to Zapata Falls. That hike, though up a good slope over rocks and small boulders, was actually fairly easy. It's only a half mile, with magnificent views of the San Luis Valley floor, the dunes, and Mt Herard and associated peaks.

We stayed at the Pinyon Flats campground, which is on the preserve, and run by NPS. We are great fans of NPS, and were not disappointed on this visit.

We got some great star shots, too, the first night.

The obligatory selfie

This one is up at the Falls. Blurred; I was trying to keep the camera dry.

Life in the backyard

Here's a few shots from the backyard:

Chamomile. We have several pots of this. Leece uses it for tea.

Echninacea. Also good for tea, though we do not have near as much of this as we do chamomile.

Giallardia. It's starting to fade a bit. This is actually from near the Cape Lookout National Seashore. We smuggled it back with us on one of our trips. Note the 'near,' not 'from.'

Morning glories are looking good. We have some hummingbirds hanging around these.

Checking out the sunflowers, which are just about to burst forth in blooms. When they do, we'll have a surge in honeybees, and as they go to seed, we'll have herds of finches chowing down.

Smokin'

We've been busy on the smoker.

Here's a recent project - a London broil, rubbed and left overnight to its own devices:

This was with an applewood rub, to which we added some thyme and a wee bit - just a wee bit - of rosemary. We smoked it at 150, over a fruitwood blend, for a couple of hours. Then, we kicked the smoker up to 325 and brought the broil up to 125 by the probe, flipped it, and brought it up to 125 again. As you can see, it's a nice medium-rare, actually leaning more toward rare. And, it's quite tender. This makes the best fajitas and tortilla rollups, with fresh peppers and onions and cheese. It's pretty good sliced into smaller bits and snuffled with rice and nam pik.

Here is a reasonably decent basic nam pik recipe:

Don't use the fish sauce (nam pla) from Walmart. You have to use the real deal. Tiparos, for example.

However, if you can get some Vietnamese RedBoat 40N, that's the way to go.

Absent real southeast Asian peppers, a blend of mixed Serrano and habanero works quite well.

Here's a small rack of spare ribs, with a brown sugar rub.

 Chuck, the Grillmeister-in-Chief, approves.

Green Mountain Grills

So ... I had been thinking about getting a smoker, to go along with the propane grill. I smoked fish and meats some decades back, but drifted away from it after burning down our smoker.

I had a box, a large wooden packing crate, good construction, that I had converted to the smoke box. I had a couple of fire pits, one close, one not, for hot smoking and cold smoking. Iused regular flue pipe for the smoke conduit. This was a live fire, stick-fed operation.

One day a short period of inattentiveness led to a fire, and the loss of the smoker and a nice load of Gunnison area salmon.

I'd recently been looking at propane-fired smokers.

It turns out that a couple of guys from the PD are heavily into smoking; both use Green Mountain Grill smokers. I tried some smoked ribs and some pulled pork from their GMG's; it was impressive.

So after a bit of hemming and hawing over it with Leece, we ordered one of GMG's Davy Crockett smokers. This is their smallest item; it's actually quite portable, and suitable for tailgating. And, it runs off 12VDC, though it has a 120VAC power supply adapter for house use.

The GMG's are hopper-fed pellet smokers. Some of them, like the Davy Crockett, can be controlled via Wi-Fi and a phone app. These ain't yer great-granddaddy's smokers.

So far we've done up some smoked mac and cheese, which was just outstanding, as well as some boneless pork ribs, some beef jerky, and some spare ribs.  All have been drool-fests.

Boneless pork ribs

Smoked Chicken Thighs นครพนม, based on an ancient Siamese recipe. We started with a basic rub of coarse black pepper, garlic salt and onion powder, and more than a hint of chipotle. After letting the thighs think about that overnight, we then bathed them in a nice sweet chili sauce for several hours. Then, two hours in the smoker, and finished on the grill. Like ... dude.

Le racque côtes de porc, avec sauce au rhum aux pêches. From an old recipe from the French West Indies - Rack of ribs with peach rum sauce.

Taos Wool Festival

We went to Taos the first weekend of October for the Wool Festival.

Leece attended a basic weaving class, presented by Liz Gipson.

While she was occupied with that, I wandered around and got a few shots of the various activities and vendors' booths.

This last shot is of one of the vendors working on a Schacht 'Cricket' rigid heddle loom. We got one of these as Leece is really developing skills as well as interest, and it's time to move on to the next weaving step. This particular vendor, Dancing Hooves Farm from Farmington, NM, also has a good selection of naturally dyed yarns.

We had a great time. The vendors are quite helpful, will take the time to answer the dumbest questions and explain their methods and products, give tips and helpful suggestions.

We stayed again at the Casa Benevides, just across from the Couse House, and within easy walking distance of the Taos square and a good many of the shops and musems. Aside from serving an excellent breakfast, Casa Benevides is only a block or so from the festival, so there was no stress or strain over finding parking or fighting traffic.

We are already planning our trip for next year's festival.

Salida Fiber Festival 09.10.2016

We went to Salida for the weekend, to visit the 5th Annual Salida Fiber Festival, and do a bit of walking in the hills.

From the festival's website:

The Salida Fiber Festival, started in 2012 and conducted entirely by volunteers, has become one of the premier events in Central Colorado and one of the most diverse and well-attended fiber festivals in the West.

Featuring vendors focused on all aspects of textiles, the festival has grown in five short years from 38 to 70 vendors, and also includes fiber-related classes and demonstrations, a make-and-take activity tent, a silent auction tent featuring a variety of goods donated by vendors and Salida businesses, and a tree-shaded beer garden offering local beer, wine, and distilled drinks.

The festival is held in beautiful Riverside Park, alongside the Arkansas River, framed by 100- year-old trees.  The Salida area offers something for everyone, including outdoor activities such as rafting, mountain biking and hiking, as well as an historic downtown featuring numerous art galleries and shops in the state's first Creative District.

Leece examines some fleece in one of the stalls

This vendor gave weaving demonstrations and tips. She is on a Schacht Baby Wolf loom

This is a demo on how to separate and prepare the layers peeled from a mawata, or 'silk hankie.' Each layer is formed from a single silkworm cocoon; a mawata may have 20-30 layers

We went up to Monarch Pass and that area. This shot is from later, taken along the Arkansas River between Salida and Cotopaxi

Sunflowers

Field of sunflowers just west of the Arkansas bridge on CO 266. Taken about 0730, while the morning light was still relatively soft. We played with apertures varying from f5.6 to f22.

We collected some sunflower blooms from some clusters by the side of the road. Leece is experimenting with yarn dyes from these blooms. So far she has really liked the bright golden-orange, on wool, from marigold blossoms. Echinacea blooms from the garden, with an iron modifier, gave a rather nice battleship grey. We got the iron modifier by soaking old iron nails - no coatings on them - in a slightly acidic solution for several weeks. We used white vinegar for the acid.

Here are some articles Leece has written about dyeing with natural products:

Dyeing Yarn Naturally (this is the marigold article)

Madder Yields Shades of Red (Madder root was used extensively for reds, for centuries. Did you know that the red stripes in our early flags were dyed with madder root dyes? Also the red coats of British soldiers?)

Pink gone wrong! Well .. sort of ...