In the Headlights

Sudoku Groupie

A few months ago, I wrote about my despair at realizing that I would have to work, and would miss the first ever National Sudoku Championship.

I love sudoku and do several every day.  I prefer the hard but not brutally hard ones:  I try to solve them without writing multiple numbers in a box...sometimes you can get so tangled up that way.  But easy or hard, I tackle them all.

So the first championship is over.  It was in Philadelphia (mmmmm...cheese steak), sponsored by the Philadelphia Inquirer, and hosted by the New York Times enigmatologist, Will Shortz.  A Stanford University research associate and previous world champion beat out over 850 others to win the $10,000 prize.

Not only does he do puzzles, he blogs about it. 

Here's the story from NPR.

The Philadelphia Inquirer will be hosting the second National Championship next year.   I plan to be there.

[Image from Peopo.org]

[Thanks, Shawn]

Dine.com

Next time you travel to a new city, you can go to Dine.com to find restaurant reviews submitted by eaters like you.  There are almost 300,000 reviews of almost 200,000 restaurants, so you're sure to find something you like.

The downside?  They don't have my favorite special occasion restaurant, Matthew's listed.  So not all restaurants make the guide.  It just gives you a selection to choose from so at least it won't be awful.

Here's the review for our local Ruth's Chris Steak House.  There's probably one near you as well.  A fair variety of comments, a couple of dissenters, but the most recent is from almost a year ago.

Still, try it.  Knowledge is power.

[Image from Matthew's from blogs.move.com]

Sunflowers

I took these photos of a field of sunflowers at the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina this summer.

 

 

Naica Crystal Caves

Dee Ray sent us an email about the remarkable Naica Crystal Caves, hundreds of feet below the Naica Mountain in the desert of Chihuahua, Mexico.

The mountain was formed by volcanic activity, and filled with anhydrite.  When the lava cooled to below 156 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius), the anhydrite formed huge translucent gypsum crystals up to 36 feet in length, weighing up to 55 tons.

The cave, which is about 30 feet by 90 feet has a crystalline floor and large jagged crystals sticking out of the walls.  It was discovered by two miners in 2000.  An international team of scientists from Spain, Italy and the US have come to Mexico to study the caves. Their scientific specialties include speleology, geology, mineralogy, topography, biology, exobiology, physics, medicine, scientific philosophy and ecology among others.

 

[Images from Crystal Cave of Giants, Mexico]

Serpendipity

Yesterday, I wrote a post on our trip to Linville Falls. 

I neglected to mention a high point of the trip.

The last path is to a place called Erwin Point, or Erwin Overlook or some such thing.  (Erwin something, anyway.) 

Walking along the path, we came upon a small crowd of people (6-8) stopped on the path.

They were all looking at the brightly-colored specimen in the photo, which was four or five feet off the path.   The young boys in a family had spotted him/her first, and others coming along stopped to photograph and chat.  And squirm.  I did, anyway, even more when they told me they had seen a bigger one under a rocky outcrop by the overlook.  I got so squeamish, they walked me there for protection.

I didn't get a good look at the tail, but they said it had rattles.  Interestingly, the snake, which was about 2 1/2 feet long, just sat there looking at us, too. Looks like a pit viper to me.   He didn't appear rattled... no evidence of agitation.  He did slither a bit, though, so I knew he wasn't stuffed.

Speculation was that he knew he had lots of room to get away into the brush and wasn't feeling cornered.

We also discussed the fact that we were calmly watching (admiring!) a snake near a place called "Erwin."  It may not have been the same spelling as Steve Irwin's name, but it came up, and we credited him with the fact that we weren't freaking out.

I seem to be getting quite a collection of snake photos.  I'll have to try to get a snap of the big black racer who pops up in my yard now and then and scares someone (often me) half to death.

I will never forget the word that is the title of this post.  Many years ago, a friend of mine used this neologism for "serendipity".  I hugged myself with delight. I've always thought the proper definition for it was fortuitously coming across a snake. 

Linville Falls

When Sandy and I were in the cabin at Roan Mountain State Park a couple of weeks ago, we didn't hike as much as we had the year before.  Not by a long shot.  Maybe it was because it was a month or so later in the year, but it was hot as Hell.  Maybe because the whole area was having a heat wave, so while it was 104 in cities in Tennessee and North Carolina, it reached the high 80's at Roan, and was in the 70's at night.  So mostly we stayed in the shade.

One day, we drove to Linville Falls, in North Carolina.  Linville Gorge is called the Grand Canyon of North Carolina.  That may be a bit of hyperbole, but the falls is (are, actually, as there are a few cataracts) nature at her beautiful best.

The source of the river is on Grandfather Mountain (the highest peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains), which we visited last year.

Within the gorge, the water descends over 2000 feet.

There are hiking trails and paths leading to different vistas.  We visited all of them, and each offered a different vantage point.  All were well worth the walk.

All in all, the paths got pretty challenging, and we were  beat by the time we finished.  I still blame it all on the heat.  But even the path up to the parking lot seemed like it was on a 60-degree plane.  We got pretty winded, but so did everyone else on the path.

But when we do this again (I think it will be for the Highland Games at Grandfather Mountain.  Maybe not next year, but down the pike a bit), I'd like to visit Linville Falls again.

Heirloom Tomatoes

When we drove to Roan Mountain State Park last week, Sandy and I each packed some special food items so we could really indulge during our vacation.

But one of the standouts was something we picked up in a roadside stand in North Carolina, near the Tennessee border.

We passed a store with a small sign that said "fresh produce."  It didn't look real promising, but we stopped all the same.  Inside, there were bins and bags of fruit and vegetables.  We got some banana peppers, and a basket of peaches.  We were looking at tomatoes, and the owner suggested we look at some different ones.  We were skeptical.  They were dark, almost brown, and a bit soft, with harder green areas.  They looked like they were overripe in parts, and underripe in others.    He said no matter, they were special, juicy, delicious tomatoes. 

We decided to try a few.

OMG, they were transforming. The best tomatoes ever.  We saved them for tomato salad...cooking them would have been a shame, because they really needed nothing.  We ate quite a few slices just in making the tomato salad.

The salad was simply sliced tomatoes with finely diced onion sprinkled over the top, salt and pepper, and then a drizzle of olive oil and a drizzle of vinegar.  Rather than using the dominant balsamic vinegar, we used some milder sherry vinegar.  Normally, I'd have used shallots, and a bit of chopped parsley as well, but we didn't have any at the cabin.

So what makes a tomato an heirloom?  That is highly debatable, though it is agreed that they must be open pollinated...that is, the plants must be pollinated by natural means, like bees, wind, bird poop, whatever.  Since parentage is more or less random, this increases biodiversity.  Other schools of thought say that the seeds must be 50 years old, or 100 years old, or cultivated since World War II. 

I don't espouse any particuolar school, but I do know the ones we had at Roan were, arguably, the best tomatoes I have ever eaten.  They may have looked tomatoes likely to be last picked for the baseball team, but boy, were they fabulous.

After we got back, Sandy emailed me a site featuring heirlooms.  She thought our tomatoes looked like they might be Black Krim, or maybe Black Seaman, or maybe Cherokee Purple or even Paul Robeson.  Pictures of all these are at the site.  Because there is a Cherokee County in North Carolina, Sandy thinks they are probably Cherokee Purple.

These tomatoes were so good that she is going to get seeds for some of these varieties and attempt to grow them next year.  My tomato experience with growing tomatoes is that you spend a lot of time looking for caterpillars and disease, at least it was an issue when Red and I tried to grow some tomatoes a few years back.

I hope it works, I'd love to get some more delicious tomatoes, and if it works out, I might even try growing them again myself the following year.

Woman on the Edge

Sandy and I spent last week in Tennessee and North Carolina.  We drove to Roan Mountain State Park, and moved into our spacious cabin on Monday, unpacking huge amounts of wonderful food, books and wine.  No TV,and no computer access...enforced relaxation, which is great. 

We met Beth and Meredith, a mother and daughter who had a cabin a few doors down from us.  They were spending some time together before Meredith takes off for college in about two weeks.  We were all sympatico, and got together for some great meals and talk.

The down side is that that area of the country is going through a record-breaking heat wave, and at Roan, the temperatures were about 15-20 degrees higher than they were when we visited last year.  Without A.C., it was pretty stifling at times.

We had a long drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We had visited the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, and decided that rather than return on the highway, we'd opt for the scenic route.  Also, the access for the Blue Ridge Parkway was pretty close to The Biltmore, so we thought we'd shave off some time.

Ah, the best laid plans...

It took us almost twice as long taking the scenic route, which was one lane each way with no divider, along winding mountain roads. At its highest, the parkway is at 6050 feet.  Talk about scenic. We crawled all over Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the Eastern United States.  I was driving.

Some of you may remember my meltdown/panic attack driving up Grandfather Mountain last year.  I suffer from acrophobia...fear of heights... and terror struck my heart as we wound around those mountain roads, with the long drop-offs right next to the road. 

Had I realized it was going to be like that, I a)  would not have chosen (or allowed to be chosen) the Bue Ridge Parkway, b)  certainly would not have been in the driver's seat, c) would have begged, borrowed or stolen some kind of major tranquilizer to put me into a stupor.  Come to think of it, we had several bottles of wine we'd bought at Biltmore.  That would have done.

So I found myself behind the wheel.  I decided pretty early on that I needed to conquer this fear:  there would not always be someone else there who could take the wheel when I decided to curl up in fetal position in the back seat.

Without a doubt, I white-knuckled it quite a bit, had my heart, which was racing considerably faster than we were, in my throat.  But we survived.  My strategy was NOT to look over the scenic overlooks.  In fact, I looked to the inward curve of the road on all of those, and generally focused down the road rather than on anything actually close to us.  It was a very scary two hours.   Particularly when opposite traffic would appear out of nowhere, casually straddling that center line.

Sandy was the picture of cool as I did this.  Either she was comfortable with my driving, or she was afraid to spook me further.

So we did it.  I'd like to say I conquered my fear, but I know it will be waiting to leap out at me next time I take a lovely mountain road.  At least next time I'll have a strategy.

[Image from Mount Rogers.org]

On The Road Again

I'm so tugging at my leash.

Tomorrow, Sandy and I head off for Roan Mountain State Park in Tennessee.

Today, we plan on loading the car with suitcases and stereo, books and games...anything that won't spoil.  Tomorrow, I'll load up the food I've been tasked with bringing, drive to Sandy's, load up her food and we'll hit the road.  Hopefully we'll be on the road by 0630, 0700 at the latest.  It's about a 500 mile drive, and we should be able to make it in eight hours, plenty of time to be unpacked and sitting on a rocker on the porch with a cool drink by sunset.

Guess I'd better dig out the GPS unit, though there is no doubt that Sandy will have Mapquested every possible permutation of this trip. The GPS will be a curiosity, to see if it takes us along what has been predetermined to be the best route. 

One thing we might use it for is a side trip to the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina.  When Sandy said she wanted to visit the Biltmore, I thought "Biltmore Hotel", of which there are many.  But she meant the prototype, after which all the swank hotels were copied...in name, if not in appearance.

The Biltmore Estate was George Washington Biltmore II's display of conspicuous consumption (or erection, whatever metaphor for dominance you prefer) in an age when you could be a multi-millionaire, and it meant something.  Before Uncle Sam took his share in order to display his own dominance.

Anyway, in 1887, Vanderbilt built his dream chateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains, on a modest lot:  125,000 acres. The floor-plan is measured in acres (four of them).  At least it's easier that way.  It is 175,000 square feet in area, making it the largest privately-owned home in the U.S.  It boasts 250 rooms, some with 70-foot ceilings, including 34 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms.  The walls are covered with 1600 works of art, making it an art museum as well.

The landscaping was done by Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park in New York City.

The project was so costly that Vanderbilt spent most of his fortune, and after his death, his widow sold most of the acreage to the federal government, which added some of its own acres to make the Pisgah National Forest.

Unfortunately, we'll miss the beauty of the Biltmore at Christmas, when it is decorated with 35 huge evergreen trees and 10,000 feet of evergreen swags. 

Wow.  Can you imagine keeping that place clean?

I'll take pictures if they don't take my camera away.

[Image via ATPM]

Old Rag

I recently mentioned that some friends and I are going hiking at Roan Mountain State Park in a couple of weeks.  Not to be outdone, Stryder sent us these photos of a recent assault he made on Old Rag in the Shenandoahs.  The scenery looks a lot like we'll see at Roan.

 

Beautiful, isn't it?

A lot of rock, which makes for challenging climbing.

I can't wait.