Bixby Bridge in Big Sur

We’re often asked where is our favorite place that we’ve visited.  It’s always hard to pin that one down as it’s an ever moving target. We start talking about how we love Burlington, Vermont in the summer and the same goes for Colorado. But then, the Southwest is nice for winter. I mean, really, how do you decide? But, I can say for sure that Central Coast in California is one of the most beautiful areas I have seen. It has two of my favorite features in a landscape; hills and rocky coast. And I love the juxtaposition of these two so close to each other. You can be frolicking in soft hills in the morning and drive over to coast to have lunch on a rocky point in the afternoon. That’s a good day in my book.

Toro County Park in Salinas

Huge Calla Lilies in Carmel

We drove this strip of California’s legendary Highway 1 five years ago on an anniversary trip. We started in San Luis Obispo with a stay at the fun and famous Madonna Inn and made out way north through San Simeon, Big Sur (one of our favorite places on Earth), Monterey, and into San Francisco where we flew back to our sticks and bricks on the other coast. We loved every minute of that trip and couldn’t wait to get back.

California poppies on the Old Coast Road behind Bixby Bridge. It’s suitable for 2-wheel drive unless it’s wet.

Brandon near Big Sur

This time, our trip would be a little different. We had more than a week to make the drive and would be able to stay longer in places, although not as many of them. We skipped a few spots like San Simeon and we chose not to drive through Big Sur with the motorhome, which actually gave us a chance to see more of those beautiful rolling hills. Our Central Coast time would culminate in Brandon’s diving adventures in Monterey. He was not a scuba diver when we had visited before or when we lived in California and it was his mission to dive the coral reefs of Monterey.

Morro Rock

We stayed in Morro Bay while Brandon used the San Luis Obispo airport for a work trip. It was March and hills were lush and verdant doing their best impression of Ireland. Morro Rock looked magnificent and the short cliffs above the beaches were carpeted with spring flowers. It was really a great time to be in the area. Best of all, on our previous trip we really wanted to see otters, but had only seen one. This time, after we settled in at the RV park, we went down to Morro Rock and there were a dozen otters wrapped up in the kelp sleeping. Being spring, there were also mothers carrying around their babies on their stomachs. It was perfect!

A mother and baby sea otter

A photo posted by Kerensa & Brandon (@drivedivedevour) on Mar 24, 2016 at 5:49pm PDT

We went directly from Morro Bay to Monterey/Carmel and stayed for a month. Brandon was going to get all the diving in that he could. Between diving, we explored the dry land. We took a trip to Salinas and visited the National Steinbeck Center. There we picked up a copy of Travels with Charlie on audio, so we could listen to it as drove around the area and around the rest of the country. It’s amazing how relevant this book still is. It is a time capsule of the era while at the same time shows people have not really changed that much and still hold the same views.

Monastery Beach in Monterey

Wildflowers in Toro County Park in Salinas

Steinbeck had Charley, I have Travels with Lucy. #rvlife #steinbeck #visitcalifornia

A photo posted by Kerensa & Brandon (@drivedivedevour) on Apr 16, 2016 at 3:21pm PDT

We also made a couple visits to Big Sur. We must have visited during the week years ago because it had been quiet and easy to shoot Bixby bridge with no traffic. This time, we chose to go on a Saturday (mistake!) and there were so many people around the bridge, I couldn’t get a shot without someone or something in it. We gave up and drove into Big Sur. As we made our way south, the fog rolled in enveloping the rocky coast and McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. It may have blocked out some scenery, but it was nonetheless beautiful.

Bixby Bridge

McWay Falls-  Pro-tip: Make sure your tires are off the road when parking to see this waterfall. Ask us how we know.

The fog rolling in on the coast in Big Sur

After our stay in Monterey and Carmel, we headed back south a little to meet up with some friends and stay at a BLM campground just north of Paso Robles. All of the beautiful green hills we had seen along the 101 going up were now beautiful gold hills. It’s amazing the difference that a month can make! And this was still spring, mind you. We hadn’t reached the dry summer period yet. The hills around the campground were covered in trees, so looked they greener. But driving through the farms, wineries, and ranches on the way, you could see they were already yellow.

Williams Hill BLM area

The gold hills around Williams Hill

From our perch on a hill, we headed inland for a bit and then left Central Coast and headed north leaving behind the hills for a different kind of beauty. This area will always be on my list of places to visit again.

Have you been to the Central Coast? I’d love to hear your thoughts, leave a comment below.

We spent most of the winter in the desert and heard about the area’s famous date shakes. I began looking for them soon after. Somehow, they eluded me for the first couple of months. We never had the chance to visit the date farm in Yuma. We missed the place recommended to us on the way to our next stop. And I somehow forgot to turn left out of our camp in Quartzsite and visit the purveyor down the street. But I was still determined and when we made it to Death Valley, I knew it was time.

After one of our day trips into the park, we stopped in Furnace Creek for dinner. I did a quick peek online and saw dates shakes listed under the casual cafe. But we when sat down, they were not on the menu. I asked the server anyway who happily said they did make date shakes. Yay! It arrived in a super cold, tall metal container and I took my first sip of a date shake. It tasted like warm vanilla with caramel overtones, essentially delicious. Months after my search began, I was not disappointed.

My date shake experience didn’t end there, though. After Death Valley, we headed to a nearby Harvest Host, China Ranch Date Farm. It was a desert oasis with date palms filling up the valley floor. Their store had everything date you ever wanted. We tasted a variety of dates grown on the premises and sampled date bread and date cookies. Then we stepped up to the counter to order a date shake. The lady asked if we had tried one before and declared theirs superior to the Death Valley concoction. And even though they offered many versions (chocolate, peanut butter, etc.), we should start with a plain date shake to get the true taste. Their shake consists only of softened vanilla ice cream and dates, but the dates themselves make it special. Instead of using one variety, they take all the fruit considered seconds (not pretty enough to sell whole) and grind it up into a purée. I find this comparable to the end of the season apple cider when you have lots of apple varieties in one press making it all the better. It was truly delicious.

I purchased a small container of date purée and I have used it to make the date shakes below. If you wish, you can order this from them directly over the phone, but you can also use whatever dates you can find. The shake lady told to add enough liquid to the purée to make it mashed potato consistency. If you’re using whole dates, remove the pit and roughly chop them before blending them with a little milk and then add the rest of the ingredients. The rest of the ingredients are very simple. For the dairy version, all you need is ice cream and milk. If you have very soft ice cream, you could probably skip the milk like China Ranch does. For the non-dairy version, you use a frozen banana instead of ice cream. Have you tried this before? It’s pretty amazing that a frozen banana blends up into the consistency of ice cream. Sometimes I prefer it to the real thing.

Another thing to note about the date shake is that it’s a great base for other flavors. You can add just about anything you would to a typical milkshake; chocolate syrup, cookies, etc. One variation I like is adding 1/4 tsp each of cinnamon and nutmeg to create something that tastes like a horchata or rice pudding. Yum!

Have you tried a date shake before? What did you think ?

4.7 from 3 reviews

Delicious Date Shake (Dairy)

 

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A classic version of a date shake made with ice cream and milk.

Author: Kerensa Durr - Drive Dive Devour

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Ingredients

• ¼ cup milk
• 3 big scoops of vanilla ice cream
• 1 heaping Tablespoon of pureed dates or a handful (5-6 dates) of whole dates

Instructions

1. If using whole dates, first pit and roughly chop them. Add them to a blender with the milk and blend until the dates are finely chopped. Add the ice cream and blend until smooth.
2. If using pureed dates, mix in a little water or milk to the puree to get it to mashed potato consistency. The add the milk, dates, and ice cream to the blender and whirl until smooth.

Notes

You can make many variations on this shake by adding chocolate syrup, cookies, almond butter, etc.
Use ¼ teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg to mimic the flavors of rice pudding.

3.5.3208

4.7 from 3 reviews

Delicious Date Shake (Vegan)

 

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A vegan version of a date shake using bananas.

Author: Kerensa Durr - Drive Dive Devour

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Ingredients

• ⅓ cup soy or nut milk
• 1 banana, cut into chunks and frozen for at least 3 hours
• 1 heaping Tablespoon of date puree or a handful (5-6) of whole dates

Instructions

1. If using whole dates, first pit and roughly chop them. Add them to a blender with the milk and blend until the dates are finely chopped. Add the banana and blend until smooth.
2. If using pureed dates, mix in a little water or milk to the puree to get it to mashed potato consistency. The add the milk, dates, and banana to the blender and whirl until smooth.

Notes

You can make many variations on this shake by adding chocolate syrup, cookies, almond butter, etc.
Use ¼ teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg to mimic the flavors of rice pudding.

3.5.3208

You’ve probably seen the stories and photos circulating about the Death Valley super bloom. We had, too, and thought we shouldn’t let the opportunity pass to see this once-in-a-decade phenomenon. The timing was perfect as we planned to head out to the California desert during the beginning of March and it was primed to be peak viewing of the flowers. Our friends from JenEric Ramblings camped with us to make it even more special.

Day 1: Badlands, Salt, and Flowers

Brandon and I went into the park one day to explore on our own and gather some first impressions. We both wanted to see the park and, admittedly, I was a little anxious to see the flowers. First, I must say that Death Valley is a huge park. We were there for hours and just scratched the surface. We came in on 190 and made our first stop at Zabriskie Point where you overlook some of the badlands in the park. Badlands are always interesting and being able to look down upon them is a nice point of view. After making a quick stop at the visitor center, we headed down Badwater Road on the search for wildflowers and to the see the lowest point in North America. Desert Gold flowers carpeted the edges of the roadways giving the land a yellow appearance.

We made a stop at the Devil’s Golf Course, an area of rock salt that has eroded into sharp spires so that “only the devil could play on such rough links.” The salt gives a false appearance as though it might crumble upon your touch, but trust me, those things are very hard and very sharp. There are even signs warning that a fall could cause serious injury. Next we made it to Badwater Basin, the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below sea level. The deepest dive Brandon has done is 130 feet in Lake Jocassee and this was a whopping 150 feet deeper without needing any scuba tanks or decompression! Badwater Basin is a vast salt flat and one of the busiest places in the park until night when everybody disappears. We went back out with Jeanette and Eric later in the week to the basin at night and found it quiet, relaxing, and desolate.

Day 2: Canyon Roads and more Flowers

We came back into the park a couple days later with Eric and Jeanette on the search for flowers and fun. We decided to run up some of the canyon roads that looked promising for more flowers and fewer people. Thankfully, they delivered on both accounts. The washes were filled with evening primrose, gravel ghost, notch-leaf phacelia, and many others. I know Jeanette and I probably drove the guys nuts with all the stopping to shoot flowers and just take in the color. We also made a quick run of the Twenty Mule Team Canyon Drive which is named for the famous symbol of borax soap mined here. They may have had 20 mules, but I still think we ran it faster.

Day 3: Super bloom, 4-wheeling, and Moving Rocks

Our final day in the park was an all-day adventure consisting of more bloom watching, 4-wheel drive canyon roads, and a trip to the playa to see moving rocks. We consulted the National Park website for the flower update before heading out. It promised Mud Canyon Road was becoming so thick with flowers that there was nowhere to pull off. We pointed our cars that direction and headed off. Indeed, the edges of the road were overgrown with flowers and we saw lots of variety. You really have to start looking to see everything. At first, you may see all gold or yellow, but as you look closer you start to see whites and purples mixed in. Then you start to notice the tiny flowers that are closer to the ground. It really is amazing what can grow in this land given the right conditions.

We made our loop of Mud Canyon and Beatty Cut-Off Road and headed back to the small town of Beatty, NV just outside the park to top off our gas. It was going to be a long day and we didn’t want to chance running out of gas on a back road with no cell service. On our way out, we spotted wild burros grazing  just off the road. We had seen signs for wild horses earlier, but hey, I’ll still take a wild burro sighting! We decided to make a quick stop in the ghost town of Rhyolite and were surprised to stumble upon the Goldwell Open Air Art Museum. We wandered the grounds for a bit before heading into town. After filling up, we headed back on Titus Canyon Road which turned out to be a great drive with desert washes leading to rocky hills, an abandoned mine town, narrow canyon twists, and, of course, flowers.

After all the super bloom sightings, we were on our way to a notably non-flower area, the dry lakebed or playa where rocks race each other leaving trails in their wake. The 27-mile road to get there was a rough washboard and we saw a couple of abandoned vehicles on the trail one of which had a broken drivetrain. The best thing along the drive was all the Joshua trees lining both sides of the road and topping the crests of the hills. After suffering through all the bumps, we made it to Racetrack playa. The first stop is the grandstand which is a large outcropping of quartz and monzonite, but we skipped this in the dying light to make it to the moving rocks. No one has actually seen the rocks move, but the trails they leave are evidence of their meandering ways. The theory is the right conditions of rain (about 1/2 inch) and strong winds (50 mph) allow the rocks to slide across the firm surface. It’s amusing to look at all of the tracks and imagine the rocks in some kind of race.

Our time in Death Valley was well-spent and I’m glad we were able to see this rare super bloom. But even if you miss it, I would recommend making a visit to Death Valley as it has a lot to offer. We’ll have to go back as there is still much we didn’t see. I just don’t plan to visit in July, how about you?