We found a really cool chapel (non denominational) in Sea Ranch on our drive up.  It was one of our best random finds yet.  These are my favorite parts of a trip particularly a road trip, spotting something from the road and checking it out rather than seeking out something you read about in a magazine or something, random finds are just almost always more rewarding.





Mendocino has lots of artists and art so we went to a gallery actually originally in search of a restroom although it turned out to be fun and they had lots of these tall back chairs.  We were going to take a picture of everyone we found although then our battery died and that idea lost steam.

I don’t know what got into us although on the trip we also took more pictures using the macro function than I think we realized.  We went to a botanical garden which is where most of that happened, if anyone ever wants a picture of a flower we have you covered.

Other than that we went to a lighthouse, had a great dinner, and we took the long way home – we love road trips.

On a side note, this weekend I am still recovering from our Monica Margarita evening Friday night.  Monica shared a margarita recipe with me forever ago that I had always wanted to try and we did Friday night.  Its equal parts limeade, corona and tequila or at least that’s how we made it.  I think there’s a chance its supposed to be one limeade, one limeade tin worth of tequila and then an entire corona, oh and ice.  Although we had to have half it for our little party so we did just one half tin of each, pretty yummy.

Oh and I got a new bathing suit this weekend which always inspires a diet, good thing we have 9 miles to log today!  Our last run was not very successful although I expect we will get all the way through nicely today.

After leaving work, a little later than I should have I came home for a first.  Our first herb garden!  Elliott had to go out of town for an off site meeting so that left me to complete our seed planting.  Many of the seeds required soaking which was reminiscent of the wedding flowers, every cup out of the cupboards, filled with water and spread out on kitchen counters.  We didn’t get organized early enough in the weekend because of our special date to see the nerdcore movie so we didn’t start our soak until Sunday.

Tonight I had to prepare the pellets of soil by soaking them in water and then plant the seeds as instructed from 1/16″ to 1/4″ to 1/2″ deep.  I certainly hope that this measurement is not critical because I found this placement of the tiny seeds to be sketchy at best.  I started out spreading out the 3 seeds throughout the 2″ diameter pellet until after 2 or 3 I decided they could all go in the same hole in the middle.  I felt like a sushi chef, hunched over, with a spoon corralling the seeds from the glass and pouring them into the hole in the dirt, completing each implantation slowly and deliberately.  I kept a chart to know which herb was planted in which pellet, we have 2 of each including herbs like sage, basil, chives, mustard, and many more totaling 12.  We purchased the kit from www.herbkits.com.

After the herbs where planted and the lid installed  I walked to the grocery store in my “flip flops, flip flops” to purchase the remaining items I would need to make a broccoli salad.  Now all of this may sound normal to some of you but for those of you who really know me lets take a second to appreciate that I am starting a garden and cooking!  These are truly phenomenal steps for me.  I have had few hobbies at best the last few years and none of them have included cooking or gardening.

The cooking has been inspired by our recent efforts to go to the farmers market each week.  We started this as a step towards increasing our sustainability – buy local food.  It turned out it has also inspired us to eat more fruits and vegetables and to try new things.  So each Saturday we go to the farmers market, select our inspiration for the week (which has included a variety of mushrooms, eggplant, purple potatoes, green beans…) as well as our staples dates nan or focaccia for our weekly pizza dinner and so on and we are off.

So this week we bought broccoli which inspired us to make a knock off of the Costco broccoli salad.  The recipe I used is a blend between 2 I found on the internet:

• http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001949broccoli_salad.php
• http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/broccoli-salad-recipe/index.html

The second one suggested blanching the broccoli which before today I would have thought had something to do with this Golden Girl . But now I know that it means to drop food in boiling water for a short amount of time which I decided was a good suggestion.  I also followed the instructions to cool the broccoli in a bowl of ice water, the crackling of the ice made this step fun.  I modified the recipe slightly, this is a confident cooking move that Elliott taught me.  In lieu of red or purple unions I used the white onion I already had in the fridge and caramelized it using brown sugar (another trick Elliott taught me).  This is partly because Elliott doesn’t like red onions and partly because I already had white onion and didn’t want to waste it, besides it allowed for creativity.  Also I decided to exclude the bacon so the caramelized onion would add some extra flavor.  I liked the dressing of the second recipe better using honey instead of sugar.  I did use white instead of apple cider vinegar because we currently have an overstock of 2 bottles of white vinegar, a good reason why to check your cabinet while making your grocery list.  I included peas and will use raisins, although those are at the office so I will have to add them to my lunch tomorrow before enjoying.  The end product looks like: 

All of this was completed with the sound of the waterfall from our courtyard for better or worse and the slight breeze through the apartment that every once in a while catches the vertical blinds and sends them dancing into each other for a few moments, “click clack, click clack”.

Tonight I will turn in by myself and will look at the soft glow of our sun in a jar.  A pretty cool gift that my Vistage group gave us as a wedding present along with some other goodies.  The sun jar is a solar panel with rechargeable batteries and a little light.  It charges during the day and lights up at night, pretty cool.

To more nights full of planting and cooking, who knew how fun it could be!  Of course the only thing that would have made it better besides raisins and a green thumb is Elliott.

Another observation, while driving today.  Nearly all cars going only 5-10 mph over the speed limit.  All in their own lane, charging along happily and friendly.  There were a few cars who were in a hurry, but these people were not the majority.  After driving in California for a year this felt strange.  This is typically the scene only after passing by a speed trap and it usually only lasts 45 seconds.

Our honeymoon although not to a foreign country has still provided some interesting cultural experiences.

First off many things have come to mind that believe it or not I did not manage to fit into my recent wordy posts.  Two moments I will never forget at the wedding were on separate occasions when Brad and Russell came up to me and wanted to genuinely welcome me into their family.  They said they were so happy that Elliott and I were together and that they wanted me to know that they were happy that we were married.  This made me feel so welcomed into the Goodwin family.

Reflecting on an older post we have now flipped the outlook of in a week from now, which has become a week ago we were… at the rehearsal, and tomorrow that will be a week ago we were married!

For a honeymoon update things are perfect.

Ok not everything is perfect, the hotel was a little rocky at first.  The key didn’t work, we had to return to the lobby and when we did get in we couldn’t find the bedroom (sounds ridiculous but true).  They didn’t deliver the luggage because we ‘didn’t give them our room number’…  The shower takes awhile to warm up (which I feel is karma telling me to save water and energy by taking short cold showers… an inconvenience I have not yet adopted in my efforts to reduce my personal footprint).  The maids are emphatic about cleaning and turn down services which we have finally remedied with the do not disturb sign.  And there is a detector of some sort probably smoke that blinks all through the night above our bed. 

For the positives there is a fireplace.  Full kitchen that we have used a lot and magically gets cleaned every morning.  Decks over looking the village.  Robes.  TV with cable!  Living room.  WiFi.  Oh and a beautiful view!

We have catalogued our trip so far in pictures on our flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/elliottgoodwin/collections/72157605723758202/.

A quick (ya probably not..!) summary.

Day 1: Got in late afternoon.  Got settled.  Walked through the village.  Had dinner with a view of the river. 

Day 2: The walking tour of Vail.  We walked along the river a few miles to just about West Vail.  We stopped at a park and watched a bit of a girls lacrosse game.  On a side note can you believe they wear skirts?  I think if they want to wear a skirt to play a sport that they should be able to but it seemed like it was perhaps and expectation.  Personally I am not comfortable for very long in a skirt let alone playing lacrosse.  Elliott informed me that some mountain bike girls wear mountain biking skirts!  I guess one of his friends particularly enjoys this look when spotted on the trail, surprising.  On the walk back we stopped for gelato, yummy!  And eventually caught the bus back to our hotel!  We went to the grocery store to stock up and then went to a free concert in the park, which was a lot fun.  We were there early with all the families and kids, which was fine, and had a great seat.  Later on the concert turned out to be a drunk fest.  Elliott and I didn’t partake.  When we first got here I read the hotel guest book, don’t ask me why, I am a researcher by training!  Anyway they suggest drinking lots of water and staying away from caffeine and alcohol.  Apparently high altitude sickness is not as common as plain dehydration.  So we have been drinking a ton of water, but we enjoyed the concert nonetheless.

Day 3: One of my best days ever!  We drove to Stillwater lake.  Canoed around the lake, which was peaceful and stressful at different times.  We paddled out, docked poured out some of the excess water, paddled out further, stopped and read,, it got a little windy and choppy, “we” dunked our bag with the books and camera in the lake, and we struggled to make it back to the dock without being sucked into the outlet, relaxing and entertaining all in one activity.  Then we went on a horseback riding trip – amazing!  My first time ever on a horse, I had Norma, Elliott was on Blondie.  Julia was our guide.  She took us up to a cave that has Indian pictograms.  The horses went through a little stream (my favorite part!).  At one point my horse decided to go back down the trail.  I think she knew that I really didn’t like kicking her and pulling up on the reigns, but she made me.  She also stopped to eat nearly every 10 steps, hilarious.  We also ate at the restaurant next to the lake including homemade apple pie!  It was a wonderful day of new experiences, sunshine, a little rain, and a great escape from everything.

Day 4: Another great day, this time on the river, fly fishing with our guide Steven.  Fishing is amazing.  I didn’t think about a thing in the world while fishing.  You just think about casting and floating, watching the bobber or the fly and waiting for the fish.  The only thing I thought about was how I wasn’t thinking about anything!  We both caught a fish about 3 hours in.  Right after we changed to dry flies.  The fish were really cute, you can see pictures in our flickr pictures.  Please don’t laugh, they are tiny but as Steven said everyone starts somewhere!  After fishing we went to dinner at the GasHouse and then to the Beaver Creek Rodeo.  All I have to say is mutton busters.  Someone once told me that mutton busting was the funniest thing they had ever seen, I didn’t believe them but now I am a believer!

Day 5: Today.  We were both really tired.  I woke up to the blinking light at 5am and eventually went back to sleep but I woke Elliott up who couldn’t go back to sleep… oops.  Anyway we had a lazy morning and eventually got up and decided to to Edwards to get a coffee and to read.  This is a super cute town that we would stay in next time we come back instead of Vail, it just has more character to it.  Anyway we walked by an Aveda salon and we have both been daydreaming about getting a hair cut. So we walked in and scheduled haircuts for later and then went and got a coffee.  I watched a little bit of a pre book signing speech by Newt Gingrich, which was interesting and then had to leave for my haircut.  We are both cleaned and looking great!  After that we saw a movie, Get Smart.  This got bad review which I think were too harsch, I liked it, good action, good humor, a little romance – all wrapped up and enjoyed in a cute little theatre, perfect.  Tonight we enjoyed dinner in, we made pizzas – delicious and had York paddies for dinner.  It was a great day!

Tomorrow is Day 6 and we still have 3 or 4 more days to go!  Lots of exciting things left to do and see while kicking off our new marriage.  All is well for the Goodwin’s, in love and enjoying every minute.