Showing posts with label Colorado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colorado. Show all posts

Friday, 29 November 2024

It's Thanksgiving, 27 November 2024

A day of preparation and new ingredients
Our Thanksgiving menu:

Roasting a 10 lb turkey, basting with butter and Old Bay seasoning. Old Bay is a celery salt, with red and black peppers and paprika.

Sides: 

a traditional Green Bean Casserole, steamed fresh green beans, Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and French's Crispy Fried Onions. Mix beans with the soup, mix in half the onions, bake for about 1/2 hour. Just before serving sprinkle the rest of the crispy onions over the bake.

a Sweet Potato Casserole, cook and mash the sweet potatoes, the topping is a brown sugar, flour, butter and pecan nut crumble.

a Pork Sausage and Apple Stuffing is baked separately from the turkey. The dried cubed bread is mixed with the cooked sausages and onion, the herbs and celery, grated apples and dried cranberries, fresh parsley and finally the stock before baking in a casserole dish.

Dessert is pecan pie and ice cream with the seasonal Ghirardelli Peppermint Bark Collection.

As a nod to all our South African roots we had a bobotie and green salad as a starter.

Meeting up around a turkey, Craig and Shawni with Tenille and Mike from Pittsburg.
Fred loved carving the bird which Mike had perfectly prepared.

As Tenille said it was a 'who would have thought moment' for her. She and Shawni were flat mates for many years in Cape Town during their university years, and here they are married, with children and having Thanksgiving dinner together in Granby, Colorado.  She and Mike have been in the US for 12 years and are so pleased to have Craig and Shawni move across to Seattle from New Zealand. 

It was a treat to have Tenille sharing her traditional Thanksgiving recipes and bringing a true sense of this special American holiday to all of us.

For Fred and I our first Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for and I appreciate being around this table at this moment in my life.

Monday, 25 November 2024

Driving a "11er rather than a 14er: Pikes Peak Highway

The start of the 19km to the summit
So plans do not always come together and today was one of those days. 

After the highlight of being in Utah at the Arches National Park other ideas for the weekend felt like slim pickings. 

Fred then mentioned Pikes Peak, Ian showing him the crazy race up this mountain in Colorado, donuts at 14000 ft and our plans were made.

Nowhere did we factor in snow. The weather forecast was good, the website confirmed that the Pikes Peak Highway was open. 

Our turning point

We arrived. Sure it's open but only to mile 13, the summit with its crazy switchbacks is closed for the winter, snowed in. 

The toll gate attendant mentioned that the summer queues to get up the highway stretch back for a mile. We almost had the highway to ourselves today and got a senior discount - this is called counting blessings.

We drove what we could, took in the splendour and managed the feeling of disappointment reasonably well. 

We got to an elevation of 11440 feet, the air was thin, it was really cold too - so we have done an 11er but have not joined the 14er club here in the Rockies!


And we could see why the Pikes Peak Highway was closed to the summit. This is a hairpin bend coming towards mile 12!

The drive is still impressive, en route up the Highway the views are endless.

Up above the treeline and into the raggedness of the southern Rocky's.


Sunday, 24 November 2024

America's Mountain: Pikes Peak, Colorado

Pikes Peak, known as America's Mountain is our destination for the weekend. We are based in Woodland Park and we are here to drive the 19 mile scenic route with an elevation gain of 8000 feet which is a unique experience for a mountain with a height above 14000 feet. 

Fred heard about this drive from our cousin Ian, who showed Fred a YouTube video of the annual epic automobile hillclimb to the summit - the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, also known as The Race to the Clouds.

A mountain that inspired Katherine Lee Bates' famous poem, America the Beautiful.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!


Pikes Peak looming ahead, about 40 kilometres away!


A dominant feature indeed.