Turtles

We finally took a hike out to the new Harmony Headlands state park on Sunday. It's a very nice, not very strenuous 3 mile round trip walk. While the ocean is pretty, the coast there looks like much of the surrounding coastline. The hike out, in my opinion, is more interesting. You walk through a very nice valley with some large, dramatic - albeit dead - trees. There was an almost dried up lakebed, and some really picturesque hills.

At the very beginning of the hike is an very old stone bridge you walk over. The water underneath is completely covered with some type of plant (which you can see in the picture - click to enlarge.) As we were looking, we noticed all the turtles. You can see about five in this picture. A few had already made their way out for a swim before we took this. I've never seen a turtle around here before and didn't even know we had any!

More blooms

The campus rose garden is pretty much in full swing right now and it looks great. But you know what's better than how it looks? How it smells, of course!
Via BlackBerry

A bit of history

I know some of you have been to the Morro Bay aquarium. It's a fair stretch calling it an "aquarium." Sea side curiosity show is maybe more like it. Anyway, it's a strangle little place. There was a short article about the owners of it in today's paper which I thought you might find interesting. My favorite tidbit: there used to be a restaurant in Morro Bay called the "Chat and Chew." Ahh, the good old days.

Aquarium Story

Hump day

Well, I'm a bit overdue, I think. Nothing terribly important to report. We are still waiting to get the circuit board for the hot tub back. It *should* be here this week. Let me tell you - we have been missing the tub! It's generally used five or so days a week and since we've had to go cold turkey, well, let's just say we'll be happy when it's fixed!

The weather has gotten warm again. It's going to be in the 80's all week in SLO and the 70's on the coast. We are headed up to wine country on Saturday and it's supposed to be in the mid 90's. The weather this spring seems to be really erratic. 

We are both just about over our colds. But, compounding that, our allergies have been worse this year than ever.  I've been using one of these and really like it. I haven't gotten Jeff to try it yet, but I'm  working on it. Maybe it's all in my head, but it really seems to make a difference.

Any guesses?

I saw these on my lunchtime walk today. They look like giant Legos made out of compressed straw. They were stacked near the Architecture building so I suppose they could be building related?
Via BlackBerry

Oysters

I don't think this is the traditional way to spend May day, but what the heck. After talking about this with friends for a while, we decided to order some oysters and have a little feast. By we, I mean me - not Jeff. He was on a flying trip, which was perfect timing because he doesn't like oysters. Not to mention the smoked salmon we had. Still, we missed his company and like to think he missed ours ;-)

You have to order them in five dozen increments, so this is five dozen Snow Creek oysters. I've had this variety before and like them a lot. They are a bit on the smaller side and lean toward the "briny" rather than the "creamy," which I prefer. They are harvested one day and you receive them the next, not to bad for $15 in shipping.

Surprisingly, they were very easy to shuck. Once you got the hang of where to put the oyster knife, it was easy. The shells on these are really beautiful and have a fair amount of scalloping on the edges. The only downside was the shells are somewhat fragile so we did end up with some little bits of shell to pick out.

We had the classic mignonette to put on them along with some grapefruit granita with lemon thyme and pepper that I made. Personally, that was my favorite, although I do love the classic mignonette too.

There only ended up being four of us, so that's 15 oysters each which is a lot. We didn't even get to the salad and bread! We had three different white wines, with the standouts being (at least for me) the Tangent Pino Gris and a French Muscadet. I have to get the bottle of Muscadet out of the recycler to see what winery it was. Both were crisp and delicious.

Anyway, thought you might like to see some of the pictures. It was a really fun and tasty way to spend an evening centered around food. Time to think up the next event!