Street Eats

I've heard so much about food trucks and the diversity of the foods they serve that, when I heard there was a Food Truck Festival in Scottsdale I literally dragged Arch there. It was a beautiful day and he would rather be playing golf!

When we arrived, after a very long walk through a dusty parking area, we got in a huge line-up to pay $12 per person to get in:

Then we had to get in line buy tokens to use to purchase food from the food trucks. Not a good start. However we soldiered on. Most of the trucks had very long line-ups to buy food.

Except the one above. Guess catfish is not an Arizona favourite. In the south east there would be a huge line up here as well.

I have no idea what this truck featured the line-up was so long we could not get close enough to read the menu:

Thes BBQ truck was very popular:

In the US BBQ means the meat is smoked, then slathered with a special sauce and then grilled. The haziness in the photo above was from the smoke created by the wood grill the edge of which you can see on the right.

Other than that I noticed that the trucks with the simplest foods had the longest line-ups:

Pre-made Sweets

Picnic Treats

Hot Dogs and Sausages

Quesadillas

But the truck with the longest line-up of all was the Maine Lobster Lady:

We could not get close to it so I checked out her menu on line when we got home. Very extensive. Especially for a truck that is located in Phoenix - I wonder where the lobster comes from.  I think her main feature is lobster rolls.

Lobster rolls are a specialty of mine and I would have liked to try them but I am guessing the line up was at least an hour long.

Not our most successful festival so instead of sharing a recipe from one of the food trucks here's my lobster roll recipe:

 

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter
2 garlic cloves, crushed
6 soft-sided hot dog buns (the kind you have to pull apart)
1 lb lobster meat chopped
2 tbsp mayonnaise
¼ cup diced celery
salt and pepper
1 cup (about) shredded iceburg lettuce

Directions:
Melt the butter and add the garlic cloves. Let sit for a while so the garlic flavours the butter.
Brush the garlic butter on both sides of the hot dog buns and grill them on both sides. You could also brown them in a heavy frying pan on the stove top.
In a bowl mix the lobster meat, mayonnaise, celery and salt andpepper to taste. Open your grilled bun and line the bottom with iceberg lettuce than spoon the lobster mixture onto the center of the hot dog bun and serve.

Makes 6 servings

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Carefree, Arizona Indian Market and Cultural Festival

Who could resist an Indian Market and Cultural Festival in a town called Carefree. Not us.

Carefree is a small down just north of Scottsdale, AZ. As we started up the road to Carefree we noticed that the desert vegetation was much different than around Apache Junction. Greener with more trees:

The area also appeared to be very affluent. One clue was that the pavilion in the local park (actually a 4 acre botanical garden featuring many varieties of cactus) was sponsored by the local Lincoln dealer.  As was the festival. Not many small towns have a Lincoln dealer. 

When we arrived a world champion hoop dancer was preforming:

Spectacular dancers and spectacular handcrafted costumes:

This little one was a beginner dancer - she looked pretty expert to me:

We had a wonderful time admiring the art for sale - especially the jewellery. I hoped to purchase a piece but all that I liked were way beyond my budget. One turquoise necklace I admired was $12,000! The artist said he would definitely sell it before the festival was over. No pictures were allowed so I cannot show you any of the beautiful creations.

We also spent some time wandering around the town of Carefree.

Who could resist checking out Lucky Lane and Easy Street. However, as frequently happens, things were not always as they seem. Part way down Lucky Lane we came to the Spanish Village:

Looked like a neat little shopping area but once inside the arches it was totally empty:

It appears that even America's wealthiest towns are still recovering from the 2008 recession.

Then, as we drove north from the town we stumbled on the Mirabel Golf and Country Club. Ah Ha - here is the source of a lot of the town's wealth:

The entrance cactus garden

It was, of course, a gated community but after chatting to the gate guard for a few minutes he let us in to see the golf club. He also told us that no home in here was worth less than one million dollars.

drive into the golf club

I couldn't get a good picture of the golf club but here are a couple of the homes we passed by:

Truly beautiful homes designed to blend into the desert environment. As we drove around Carefree and area we discovered many spectacular homes built to blend in. You really had to look to see some of them.

We spent the remainder of the day driving through the mountains around Scottsdale and enjoyed the usual, spectacular desert subset on the way home:

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A Day in the Superstition Mountains

Apache Junction, Arizona is situated at the base of the Superstition Mountains.

Sun setting on the Superstition Mountains

These mountains have long been a place of unexplained paranormal stories and thus the name. We set out to explore them as soon as I returned from Montreal. First stop was a museum that explained the history of the area. While there we met a couple who told us the best way to see the mountains was to take a 100 mile circular drive through the mountains with a side trip to see the world's largest copper mine. (We've learned that everything is the "worlds largest or best" here in the US).

 So off we went into the mountains:

First stop. The copper mine. The mining company was kind enough to provide a viewing area where we could get a good look into the mine and some information panels telling us about the mine.

Below is a panorama of the mine 

It was impossible to get a picture of of the complete mine with my camera. Below is a photo showing very large trucks working down in the mine. They are like the huge trucks used in the oil sands.

And this is a fly over photo of the mine from one of the panels:

It is large indeed!

We left the mine, and headed further into the mountains and the Tonto National Forest. There were a lot of mining operations along our drive:

And then we came to the Tonto National Monument. An area preserved by the Federal Government because it contains cliff dwellings occupied in the 13th, 14th and early 15th centuries. 

It looked like a long way up but worth the climb:

Cliff dwellings are at the red X in the upper left corner

So after reading these rules we were off:

Add caption

The saguaro cactus in this area are huge:

As we were at a pretty high altitude stopping for a lot of breaks was a must:

About half way up

Finally close to the top. The people on the trail in the lower right will give you some idea of the size of the cliffs.

You can see the rooms inside the cave

It was very impressive to see what the Salado did with so little.
Then we headed back down to the car:

And on to Roosevelt Lake. You can see the lake in the distance above. When we were driving across the Arizona desert towards Phoenix a truck pulling a fairly large boat passed us:

We couldn't help but wonder what they were going to do with a boat in the middle of the desert. Now we know:

Roosevelt Lake is located in the Tonto Basin and was created by the Roosevelt Dam:

A beautiful bridge spanned the entrance to the dam area. Its story is very interesting:

I hope you can read the information. Left click to enlarge. Or read more about it's construction here.

 My photo of the bridge:

We then crossed the bridge and headed back to Apache Junction - a beautiful drive through the mountains.

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Driving to Phoenix

It took us three days to drive from San Antonio to Phoenix - about 1000 miles across the desert, with a few mountains thrown in. Very much against our 4-4-2 driving rule (quit after 4 hours, 4 pm or 200 miles - whichever comes first) but I was anxious to get settled there and head for Montreal, so we did it.

As we left San Antonio we quickly got a feel for how big Texas really is:

Rolling hills and expansive views

The mountains you see in the distance are the Davis Mountains, which are north of Big Bend National Park.

As we entered the mountains there was a scenic look-off. We stopped to check out the scenery. The view point was actually at the top of a pretty high climb but I decided to hike up quickly and take a look. Did not realize we were at an elevation of about 4000 ft. and the air was getting thin - thought I was having a heart attack half way up - then it registered that we were at a higher elevation than we are accustomed to. So I slowed down and made it to the top. The view was worth it:

That is the Adventure Bus down in the pull off

On the other side of the Davis Mountains we entered the desert:

And eventually passed by El Paso:

Downtown El Paso

The only city or town of any size between San Antonio and Phoenix.

El Paso subdivision

And crossed into New Mexico:

We originally planned to spend two weeks in New Mexico but that was not to be. And that is probably a good thing - the elevation in New Mexico is high and it is cold there.  But beautiful. This is the  view from the RV park where we stopped on night 2:

 The next day we drove past many pecan farms:

Through a lot of desert landscape until we entered Arizona and more desert:

When we arrived in the Phoenix area Arch's nephew, Fraser, who spent several winters there, met us and showed us several RV parks. He had already put our names in to hold a site in La Hacienda RV Resort in Apache Junction.. Which turned out to be the best of the bunch - he has excellent taste - and we checked in there for the rest of January.

Another great RV resort - very nice people manage it and the people in the resort were great. Arch connected with fellow golfers and played a lot of golf while I was away. Note all the trees - very unusual in RV parks in this area.

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