Gulfarium in Fort Walton Beach
It’s going to be a rainy morning, but not a problem – we’re going to the Gulfarium in Fort Walton Beach. It’s expensive – even with our senior discount our tickets are $18.95 EACH! But the happy toddler is under three, so he goes in free.
Feeding the Manta Rays:
Feeding the penguins:
Feeding the Turtle:
Gulfarium Bayou Area:
Heron:
After visiting the Gulfarium we left, just as the clouds broke open and deluged us. We took refuge at Big Daddy’s BBQ and Thai Food which serves a large and happy population at Hurlburt Field and Eglin AFB. We had seen the funky looking place every time we take Highway 98, but this is our first time stopping there. It was a great stop on a very rainy day – the food was hot and tasty; the restaurant low key, and fine with children. They had lots to choose from, a buffet or you could order off the menu.
We get back to our beach place just in time for naps – all of us! Taking care of a 2 1/2 year old is exhausting! By the time we get up, the sun is shining, the surf is up and it’s beach time!
Taco Rock in Pensacola
AdventureMan has been talking about the Taco Rock for months, and for some reason, we just haven’t made it there until today. I laughed when I first saw it, bright yellow, clearly a family-owned place, the kind of place we love.
“Hey! It’s Taco Buffet Day!” AdventureMan said gleefully. There wasn’t a self-serve buffet set up, that’s not how it works, you tell them what you want, like I said chicken and beef. AdventureMan wanted Al Pastor.
No one hurried us to make our choices. They have a hand printed menu above where you order, and some photos over to the right. The two gals at the order counter were pouring over a couple catalogs. When we were ready to order, they were ready to take our order, but they didn’t hurry us.
Then the cooks went into business; we could see them. They have some of the foods prepped, and then they heat the tortillas, crisp the tostada shells, everything comes hot and fresh to the table.
We saw a lot of customers taking out, there are about 20 seats at small tables inside, and room for maybe 20 more outside. The food is individually prepared. This is not your chain kind of place; it’s a real people kind of place, just where Palafox forks away from Pensacola Highway. Not fancy. No tablecloths. Great authentic tacos, burritos, tamales made and served by people who take pride in their work. 🙂
I could hear AdventureMan laughing when we got home.
“What’s so funny?” I called from my office to his.
“I’m reading the reviews for Taco Rock,” he laughed, “and they are all positive except for one, and it says ‘Horrible atmosphere. Felt like I was in Mexico.'”
We were dying, we were laughing so hard.
One Man Woman
Thank you, Hayfa, this is hilarious:
McGuire’s For Lunch
“I just have a yen for a steak,” I said to AdventureMan, and since it is my turn to choose, he grins and says “I could use a steak, too.” We don’t even feel guilty. The last steak we had was New Year’s Day this year, also at McGruires. Two steaks a year, not so bad.
It’s a gloomy day, and we are hoping it’s not so crowded we have to wait. We are seated immediately, but upon looking around, AdventureMan said “Does anyone in here know that the economy is suffering? Do they know we are in a downturn?”
McGuires is PACKED. It’s not just old retired folk and tourists, either, it’s young Pensacola families and their children, generations meeting up for a Saturday lunch. The bar is packed, the tables are full throughout and as we leave, there is a line waiting.
The steaks – we like the Molly filet – were fabulous. Erin A, our excellent waitress, warned us that some people find the pepper coating too peppery, and we assured her we like a pepper coating to be very peppery; when our steaks came, they were VERY peppery, and we were very happy. They also had fresh asparagus, perfectly cooked, still just a little crisp. We were really bad, we also had the bleu cheese dressing on our salads. It was a wonderful meal, altogether, and Erin A was attentive without being intrusive. Erin kept our glasses full, swept used dishes away as soon as they were finished, and kept her eye on our table in case we had any needs. Her service added to our enjoyment of the meal. Isn’t that the best?
There are other steak houses in town, where you can get a steak almost as good for a lot less. You can’t beat McGuires for the overall experience, though, and when you only have steak every few months, why not have the best?
We also love it that our out-of-town guests LOVE McGuires, for the overall experience as well as for the food. Live entertainment at night, lots of old Irish ballads. 🙂
As we left, we had to run between the raindrops to get to our car. Big heavy voluminous clouds over Pensacola, and a daily humidity factor of around 100%.
The Cheesecake Factory in Alpharetta, GA
“You’ve never been to a Cheesecake Factory?” my Kuwait friend would ask me (more than once) in astonishment. She loved the Cheesecake factory. She could describe the dishes on the menu at length, fondly, nostalgically, and all the desserts, how delicious each was, how big they all are, how she would love one right now! In all these years, I just haven’t been in the same area as a Cheesecake Factory restaurant, which I understand is a chain.
We were visiting Alpharetta, GA, visiting old friends from our time living in Qatar, and they invited us to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Wooo HOOO! Now’s my time to find out what it’s all about, but before I go, I go online and check the menu, and wooo HOOO again, now they have a Skinnylicious menu. I had dreaded that everything on the menu was huge portions and like three days worth of caloric count and a week’s worth of glycemic index count, but no, now they have a Skinnylicious menu!
We had a wonderful time. First, you know, anyplace is special when you are with people and the conversation flows fast and furious. These were people you could talk about the important things with, like how we live our lives, what we want, what place compassion plays in our lives – you know, the important stuff. It’s all good when you are together with people that share your vision.
Now – the restaurant. It is clearly THE place to dine in Alpharetta, GA. They don’t take reservations, and we waited about 45 minutes to get in. When we left, around 9:30 pm, there was still a waiting line, maybe 30 minutes instead of 45, but the place was teeming with customers.
When we got seated, AdventureMan was up at one end with his friend, talking business, and I was at the other, and I think we had more fun 🙂 My end of the table was Skinnylicious!
Even though my Chinese Chicken Salad was Skinnylicious, I couldn’t eat it all, there was so much, so I took it home and had the rest the next day.
Skinnylicious Grilled Salmon:
Skinnylicious Pasta:
Club Sandwich:
Sirloin Steak
The Skinnylicious End of the table all carried food home, LOL!
We had carrot cake for dessert, two pieces and 6 forks, but we still couldn’t eat it all, and I am sorry, it was so good and I didn’t even take a photo. They have a lot of really really good desserts. They also do take-out cheesecakes.
Good friends, good conversations, good food! It was a very fun evening with people we like.
Petroglyphs in the Petrified Forest
So here we segue back to the Petrified Forest, and it may not seem logical in a linear, chronological sense, like time-as-pearls-strung-together-on-a-string sort of thing, but in terms of like things, the next chronological entry is going to be on 700 years of culture, the Ancestral Puebloans who used to be called the Anasazi, but before I go there, I want to show you some petroglyphs.
(I’m putting in a lot of links in case you are as big a petroglyph nerd as I am, and want to read more)
I always imagine the problems with being early man. Imagine they are smart, and spend a lot of their days figuring things out, most important being 1. What are we going to eat? 2. How are we going to keep dry/warm? 3. How do we protect ourselves from our enemies? They have the same problems we have, only on a much more basic level, and with fewer resources.
Have you ever thought about how easy it is to get information now? (The hard part being sifting through so you get the most reliable, most relevant information). Imagine a world where you have to figure it out for yourself, every day.
Early civilizations fascinate me. I am always interested in little tiny things that can be very important, like how did they fasten skins together to keep themselves warm? How do you poke a hole in a sharp bone so you can use it as a needle? How do you make a button, or make strips that can be used to tie clothing together?
How do you fasten a spear head onto a spear, or an arrowhead onto an arrow?
Early man was a problem solver, and I am fascinated by petroglyphs, which are either early attempts at documentation, or early attempts at communication, or maybe both? The first petroglyphs and cave paintings I ever visited were the Font de Gaume Caves near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, and they took my breath away. I didn’t even hesitate because it was a cave, I wanted to see them so badly.
I want you to look at this photo of a fairly early dwelling in Les Eyzies de Tayac-Sireuil and hold it in your mind before we move on:
Later, living in Saudi Arabia, one of the most fun day trips ever was to a rock formation called Graffiti Rock, which had no protection, so very old petroglyphs mingled with modern carvings, but some of the older carvings were so interesting, so intriguing.
Coming across petroglyphs in the Petrified Forest was a delight.
Here is part of what the national parks website has to say about petroglyphs found in the Petrified Forest:
In 1977 a spiral petroglyph at Chaco Canyon National Monument was discovered which displayed a precise interaction with sunlight at the time of summer solstice by means of a narrow shaft of sunlight that moved down a shadowed rock face to bisect the center of a large spiral petroglyph. Subsequent observations found that on winter solstice and equinoxes there were intriguing interactions of sunlit shafts with the large spiral and a smaller spiral nearby. No other example of a sunlight interaction with prehistoric or historic petroglyphs was known at this time. However, there was a tradition of Pueblo sun watching in historic times, particularly of the varying sunrise and sunset positions throughout the year, to set the dates for ceremonies.
As a result of the Chaco Canyon find, Bob Preston initiated a research project to determine whether other petroglyph sites in the Southwest functioned as solar “observatories.” Over the last 16 years he has identified about 120 examples of similar solstice events at more than 50 petroglyph sites in Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah. Evidence indicates that the phenomenon may have been spread over as much as a 1000-km region. These findings show clearly that certain petroglyphs were used by early pueblo cultures to function as calendrical markers for the winter and summer solstices. Petrified Forest National Park contains the greatest known concentration of solar calendars, with 16 of the sites being in or immediately adjacent to the park, and has been key to understanding their nature.
Shadows and sunlit images are found to move across petroglyphs due to other rocks being in the path of the sun’s rays. As the sun’s path across the sky changes throughout the year, the positions of the shadows and sunlit images change on the petroglyph panels. In many cases the petroglyphs have been placed on the rock faces in just the right position so that specific interactions occur on the solstices. The most common types of petroglyphs on which solsitial interactions have been identified are spirals and circles. The key to determining that these were intended and not by chance is that interactions are seen from site to site, and occur on the solstices more frequently than on other days of the year. These consistent interactions may involve a point of sunlight or shadow piercing the center or tracing the edge of a spiral or circular petroglyph; or shadow lines may suddenly appear or disappear at the center or edges of the petroglyph; or they may move up to the center or edge and then retreat. It is not uncommon for a single petroglyph to display multiple interactions of this type, either on the same solstice or on each of the solstices. In fact, at one site, there are five circular and spiral petroglyphs that show 15 interactions on the both solstices.
An intriguing question is whether types of petroglyph images were involved with specific dates. In several cases similar sunlight and shadow interactions occur on spiral and circular petroglyphs on the equinox, and distinctive interactions occur with other petroglyphs on the solstices and other dates. Clearly much of the puzzle remains to be unraveled.
There was a WEALTH of petroglyphs. I’m just going to show you a few of those we found:
This one makes me laugh; it looks so much like our modern day stork-who-brings-babies (LOL, where did that legend/story start anyway??)
LOL, these feet are larger than life, or else they were made by giants!
Early people in widely separated parts of the world carved and painted on rock, probably for a number of reasons, maybe keeping track of solar activity and seasons, maybe magical/religious thinking for a good hunt or nostalgia for a good hunt, maybe just someone who, like today’s blogger, just has to document in some way . . . 😉
Lunch at Bright Angel Lodge
Bright Angel Lodge is next door to El Tovar Lodge, and we figure we will give it a try. We are glad we did, we met some fine people there, and had a great lunch. I know I keep showing you photos of fabulous food, but we really try hard to eat a lot of vegetables and fruits, so while the foods are sumptuous, we are doing OK in the clothes-still-fitting department 🙂
This is the casual family dining restaurant at the Bright Angel Lodge:
The Menu cover:
The Salsa and the chips were really good:
We both had salads, which were more filling than we had thought; we couldn’t eat them all:
It was just what we needed. We headed back to our hotel, took a 4:45 reservation (I know, I know, last night we could have gotten a 5:15!) for dinner, and went back to the room to snooze and pack for the next leg of our trip.
“Have You Slept in a Wigwam Lately?”
As we were leaving Holbrook, AdventureMan made a sudden left turn and said “if I had a blog, I would want to blog this.” It’s a running joke; he gives me ideas, I say “Get your own blog, AdventureMan.” Truth is, sometimes he has really good ideas, and we both loved this one:
There is room next to ‘your’ teepee to park your own car, next to the old timey classic car already parked in front:
Old Dog, New Tricks or I Greet New Technologies
About a year ago, I finally bought an iPhone. It could do so many things, it scared me, but when my little (then) 18 month old grandson fearlessly showed me how to play Tozzle, and Zombies in the Garden, and Angry Birds, I knew it was time for me to step up my game.
I don’t want my identity stolen, I don’t want Google tracking my searches, I don’t want targeted advertising, so I’ve been really careful about what I do. And then I though about the CIA. The CIA and NSA (aka No Such Agency) and several other highly technical services find themselves inundated with so much information these days that they have a harder time sorting it and then determining what is important and what is not. That gives me hope. I’m just not that important. Who would want to track me?
So, after a year, I finally synched my iPhone with my computer for the first time. Very scary. Then, when it didn’t work, I don’t know why, I restored the original settings, losing what little I had stored on the phone, but it wasn’t much.
Mostly, I like ringtones. I like for the people who call me regularly to have identifiable ring tones, and I have been really happy with the ones I have except for my daughter-in-law, I wanted an Edith Piaf song for her, and I never could find it.
Today, I girded my loins and bought a ring tone from a non-iTunes provider. Yes. Scary. And I thought it would magically go straight to my phone, but no, I had to download it, save it into iTunes, then synch my phone.
Earlier, I had taken another giant step and subscribed to “the Cloud” so, I thought, my computer, iPad and iPhone would all have the same music, but as it turns out, not everything goes to the cloud, like ringtones that you don’t buy from iTunes. So I had to risk everything and Synch again. It warned me that I could lose everything! I hesitated, then asked “what would I do if I were 11?” and pressed Synch. Woooo HOOOO, oh, the exhilaration!
There are some things I don’t want my devices to share, like financial information, etc. I don’t really want something like my iPhone, which gets carried everywhere and has the highest probability to get lost or stolen (although I have activated the Find My iPhone program, too). It’s a good think it’s not all-or-nothing, but it takes a longer time when you want some things but not others.
Now, I am all synched-up, and oh, I feel so dramatically technological, as I jump into last years technology. I know that my problem is over-thinking; the secret is to just jump in, just do it. I am just so thankful I have a son and a grandson to help me make the technology leaps.
Late Afternoon in DeLuna Park
One of the great joys of living in Pensacola is seeing our grandson often. Yesterday, we were picking him up and keeping him until dinner, so we decided to take him to run in the fountains, only to discover that the fountains stop at 5 on Mondays – Wednesdays, and run until 8 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. No problem – there is always something going on to thrill a two years old’s heart.
Yesterday, it was a tug-boat bringing in a huge dredger, with CRANES! Our two year old is all-boy. He loves car words, and truck words, and words like bulldozer, and pick-up, and CRANES. Watching the tugboat bring in the dredger thrilled his heart.
The crane lowers a cage onto the deck:
The pelicans are enthralled; the churning engines stir up fish and make finding supper easy pickings:
And then, chasing the pigeons! Where do they get the energy? A two-year-old can chase pigeons endlessly!
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Abou Tabblouleh on t… on Waiting for Snow Abou Tabbouleh on in… on Waiting for Snow intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 