Tamales!

On Sunday we visited the annual Tamale Festival in Indio.   It was a warm and sunny day; the required apparel included shorts, sandals, and sunscreen.

This should be an annual "must attend". Next year we will go early on Saturday before the vendors start running out of some of their wares.

Nana Chuy's won a trophy in competition this year.  We shared one beef/pork combo and one chicken tamale.  They were well-made and tasty, but a little smaller and more of a high-volume consistency.

At Tia Juana's we tried out a shrimp tamale (small baja shrimp, extra spicy) and a chorizo tamale.   Tom is not always a chorizo fan, thinking it "too greasy", but these were done with small potato cubes which moderated that.  We bought a half-dozen more to take with us.

And by the way, why were we never informed about all the flavors of desert tamales?

The festival is more than just food.  Traditional dancers, music venues, a carnival.

Vintage cars.

The larger, more commercial stands did not offer samples.  Many of the smaller ones did, leading us to take home a couple of chicken in red sauce from this local establishment.

"Gourmet" tamales.   We took a couple of Barbecue chicken home which we tried out Sunday evening.   A little heavy on the masa and light on the filling.   Yes, I could be a tamale snob. We have one each of the dessert tamales still in the freezer.  I'll let you know how those are.

And for those who have eaten too many tamales there is one more booth on your way out.

Komments by KADY! Issue #6

Well fans I think we found somewhere else we live for a long time now because we've been here five weeks already and we're not packing up to go anywhere yet.  It's ok because it's a pretty good place for us dogs.

Most of the time it is warm and sunny but sometimes it gets really windy.

There are neighbors and there is lots of interesting stuff going on in the neighborhood.  People have little yards that they work in a lot.

When we first got here my back was hurting but mom went to the vet here that I went to before and got me more metacam.  I like metacam.   It makes me happy.

So I spent a lot of time resting and getting better.  

I help mom work.  She worked a bunch this month which was kind of boring for us dogs.

Sometimes I have to turn out the lights for myself because mom and dad won't turn off the tv and go to bed.

Usually mom and us dogs go to bed before dad and I can have his pillow.

Dora has something to tell you about.

Mom took Dora to the vet that I went to in Desert Hot Springs.  She was gone for a whole day.

And when she came back she had a bad haircut and a zipper.  I told her that it would be ok and all of us girls have zippers.  The Greedy Grandma Alice has had three zippers and even mom had a zipper last year and we give each other therapy.  So Dora got to have some good drugs and she didn't feel like playing either.

I went back to the vet one day last week but I only got a rabies shot for my dog license so that was ok.

And now Dora is all better and I am feeling much better and we can play again.

There is a pretty good dog yard here with toys and room to run and play Dora-bowling and there are sticks to eat.

And sometimes we just lay around outside in our pen.

 

This is a pretty good place to live.  There are lots of other dogs here.  There are a whole bunch of bulldogs and one really fat one rides in a stroller and there is a big German Shepherd that wears a muzzle and tried to fence fight with me and Dora and he is scary we don't like him. There is a black chow mix that visits across the street and next door but we don't play with it. There is a big wolfhound down by the dumpster and I was scared of him at first but he doesn't say anything just looks at us.  And there is even a Pembroke named Baby who lives on our walk between the dog yard and the dumpster and we talk to her.  She is lonesome because her mom only has one corgi and that isn't enough.  And our cousin Teddy lives here with our human grandma too.

I'll write again when something funner happens.

Southwest Skies

We've been working entirely too much: that's the answer.  You can tell that I've had little time to blog in the last month.  I'm going to take a break and get caught up before the news and views get any older.

We were able to take one morning while we were in New Mexico and hit the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta: almost at the end of the Fiesta and almost at the end of the day's flight.

The picture above and below were actually taken from Interstate 25 as we headed north toward the balloon park.  As we drew closer you could see more and more "freckles" in the sky.

Much of our viewing was from the jeep which spent a long time stopped in traffic as balloons were landing around us.

One of my favorites was the Dragon you see below.

The truck two in front of us transporting a gondola back to the park.

A ground crew wrestling the balloon to the ground and walking it to the vehicle.

We also visited the Balloon Museum which was totally worth it.

For our next visit, we will try to stay on the grounds where we can be up early enough to see the ascension.

We had planned to spend longer in New Mexico, but had an appointment to get our slide fixed in Mesa on October 15th.  We made a reservation at Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction for the night before and after the repair was scheduled.  On our way south, Tom thought to call and make sure that the parts had been received.

The answer was, of course, "no".  Yes, they had three weeks.  Let's just say that the person at Thor who was handling it forgot.  The parts were shipped overnight on Wednesday, received on Thursday, and the repair was done on Thursday and Friday, so we were only a couple of days late.

As we were going to need additional (and different) days at Lost Dutchman, our reserved space was not available after the first night.  The hosts and rangers at the park were great: we were given a pull through which is normally a host spot, but was not currently used.

It had a great view of the Superstition Mountains through the windshield.

And this was fine until it was time to come back to the park Friday evening.  We got there and . . . they had accidentally rented our temporarily vacated spot to someone else.  We had paid for it, but being a host site it was not on the normal reservation system.

And the people they had rented it to were not being very nice about choosing another site.

We were offered a refund if we would agree to move to a back-in site the next up the hill (from 18 to 20).   We would have been pleased with a one-night refund for the night we weren't actually using the space (Thursday).  What they gave us was FIVE nights free (!)   

It turns out that 20 was even better than 18 for privacy with the dogs, and for the views.   

We had our own cactus garden, and spent a lot of time taking sunset pictures.

Home sweet (fixed) home.

We decided to stay on at Lost Dutchman for the full two weeks allowed.  Not having reservations, it required a couple of moves, first down to site 58, then back up to 24.

(Click for campground map for reference.)

We are scheduled for another two weeks at Lost Dutchman in December. We now know that the back in sites 20 through 30 are our favorites.  We were able to call and change our reservation from site 45 back to our favorite: site 20.  It will be like going home!

We are now at Two Springs in North Palm Springs until the end of November. The dogs and I are staying here while Tom is off on a trip to Northern California to take care of family matters.  He's also going to make an overnight "home" to Southern Oregon to take back extra things we brought and didn't need, bring back a few things which I've decided we did need (dog dryer, fabric crates, more rope lights), and retrieve our quarterly wine selection from Folin Cellars.

Komments by KADY! Issue #5

Hello again fans, it's me KADY! updating you with all of the fun and other stuff we've been doing.   We've been so many places and dog shows and we have seen our cousins and everything.

After we left St Vrain and all of the ponds in Colorado we traveled and we ended up in New Mexico.   We stayed overnight at Taos Valley RV Park  which dad said that he could tell was an old KOA.  It was nice and there was a part of it that was pull-throughs for bigger RV's who were just staying a little while.  There was really good dog walking: you can see it behind me down to the wood fence.

Me and my greedy grandma Alice walked on the paths down there.

And there was even bunnies there but we couldn't catch them or get a picture even.

Look, you can see our house up there.

And they even had lots of trash cans for poop down there but some people still didn't pick it up.  We saw one loose dog when we first got there but not the next day.  Maybe he did it and his dog-servant wasn't there to see it.

And then we went to a dog show.

Parking was pretty crowded.

We had our ex-pens set up. 

Here's what it looked like when we took our evening walk.

I forgot to show you these before.  When we went to the dog show last month in Washington Dodah's daddy my uncle Pie got a couple of ribbons.

Mom thought it was an Award of Merit, but Pie is so special that he has lots of Merits.

At the New Mexico dog show I was hoping to meet New Mexican dogs.  I thought maybe they would be New Chihuahuas or New Xolowhatsits but they mostly just looked like regular dogs lots and lots of cousins were there too.

Our uncle Chase was there and he won Best of Breed one day and some other ribbons all of the other days.   He came to visit at our house one day but he couldn't play as he had to go be a show dog.  And we have a cousin named Salsa and she is my cousin on both sides because my grandma Phoebe is her grandma Phoebe and my greedy grandma Alice is her great-grandma Alice.   You can see Chase and Salsa's pictures on aunt Penni's website.  And there were some other cousins there too who also had grandma Alice and there was Violet who is my niece because her daddy is my brother Cappy.

And our cousins who own aunt Traci were there and cousin Mia who I like was Best of Breed the last day and Traci was very excited 

and our other cousin whose grandpa is Pilot and whose other grandpa is Huxley was Winners Bitch too.

And mommy even got to judge a few dogs.  So she had to be in a picture and everything.  The wind was blowing really hard so she says you have to excuse the way she looks.

When the dog show ended the wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't go to the park that we were going to so we just went ten miles and stayed at Isleta Lakes RV Park which is across the street from a casino but we didn't go to the casino.  It was an ok park but the wind was blowing and blowing and there was places to walk but it said that dogs couldn't go in the lakes.  And there were nasty goathead stickers that got in Huxley's feets.  Boys must be too dumb to walk around them because he's always the one that gets them in his feets.

But it was a pretty good place anyway and we might stay there again when we go to Albuquerque or to Los Lunas.  

Then the next day we went to Homolovi State Park but we weren't there very long this time.  Mom needs to share some ore of the pictures she took last year. We were there right before nationals and then everything got really bad for mom and I had to give her therapy so we haven't looked at the pictures more.  When we were walking at Homolovi in the morning we saw a jack rabbit! and Dodah wanted to catch it and said it would feed the pack for a week.

Then we came to Lost Dutchman State Park and we've been here almost TWO WEEKS!  It is very beautiful and mom will share more pictures with you.

There is lots of good dog walking here but it is a little hot during the daytime so we have to drink lots of water.

But I haven't done too much walking because I strained my back again and mom is having to give me therapy now and she has given me some good drugs so I feel better.   You want to know what happened? Our house was broken and skinny for over THREE WEEKS.

Like this.  And it's only supposed to look like that when we are rolling on the road.

And see the closet where me and Dodah have our crates?  I was in the top and when I jumped out I had to kind of twist as mom caught me because the doors don't open all of the way.  We decided that was a bad idea and now I can't go up there anymore when the house is skinny.

And now our house is fixed and it looks like this again:

And there is so much room that me and Dodah can even play again now that I am feeling better.  Last night we played for a few minutes but I got tired and the Dodah stopped and sniffed my neck where it was hot and hurting and then she layed down with me instead.  Dodah might be smarter than people think she is.

In fact Dodah thinks that she is in charge of things now maybe because she's not fixed.  She thinks that she's in charge of telling mom when to feed us and when it's time for us to all go to bed.  The video is Dodah telling mom how hungry we are.

But KADY!  is the one who is in charge of telling mom and dad when the two dogs next door are running around without leashes on! Baddogs! Baddogs! Baddogs!

I usually like staying here because we get to go see our cousins at their house sometimes.   But when we went there this time I had to be on crate rest and it wasn't fun for me.

But Huxley and Dodah had fun and got to play in the yard and even in the wading pool and everything.

Today a man came and put something on the windows of our house.

We can still see through the windows really good from the inside.

But you can't see us all cute and everyting sitting on the dashboard from the outside! 

 Mom and Dad say it's to keep us all cooler here in the desert.

Hey fans, did you know that other dogs get to have blogs too?   Our friend Lynda sent us this link: http://roadtreking.com/dogs-life/   I'm going to look for more dog blogs so that I can share them with my friends.