Cornering Consciousness

We're establishing a tradition in the family where upon graduation from college we take our now grad-student on a road trip to the Pacific Coast Highway, California's Highway 1, the greatest road in the world. You can see our last adventure for Katie here .  First stop, though, on this multi-purpose adventure was The International Culinary Center in Campbell, just outside of San Jose, Ashley's next stop on her academic journey. She spent the morning there on Monday attending a class and getting a feel for the institute. After we found a camp in Half Moon Bay, Mindy and I made it back to the Center for a tour, including extraordinary tastes of student prepared cuisine, and an orientation to how this is going to work for Ashley. This is her element, her portal to a long and successful career in the culinary arts.    We left the Center and made for the City for a quick visit with my nephew. He's been storing a box of family history, slides and 8mm film fro...

We decided our first excursion with our newly acquired kit would be to Tuweep or Toroweap campground, overlooking a 3000 foot drop to the Colorado River. We left St. George Saturday after Mindy's Spokes for Hope bike race, taking the Main Street route, BLM roads 1069 and 5 from St. George, about 90 miles to Toroweap, most of which is off-road. Our trip back was the Sunshine route, BLM 109 to Highway 389, a few miles east of Pipe Springs. We arrived late afternoon and established our camp. In about ten minutes we had it all up, including a shower/changing room. The roof-top tent goes up in seconds, along with the awning. The kitchen deploys with pedestals for stoves or coolers along with a canvas wash basin under a removable work surface. We didn't know what to do with ourselves having grown-up camping gear compared to what we pack on the motorcycles. One improvised item is a heavy-duty garden sprayer I converted to a shower by replacing the hose and spra...