Passover and Easter with Garcias

This was the weekends of falalalalas: Passover and Easter on the same weekend produced a ton of work for me in the kitchen, but also lots of fun.
I managed to cook my very first Passover dinner, including a matzo ball soup and gefilte fish and a kugel!!! All was kosher and all was yummy. It took most of Friday to prepare and definitely required a day off, which i didn't take, but just mulit-tasked. The fish takes 2 hours of cooking time, and the broth for soup alone takes 90 min, so next time i will complete some of this the day before to lighten the load. The seder plate was nice, i used endive for maror, cucumber for karpas, roaster beet for zroa, romaine lettuce for hazeret, and my egg was just boiled and not roasted. I did my best at conducting the sedar, although next time i would definitely print out a haggadah to help me along.

The next day we went to a second seder at the humanistic synagogue event and had a good time, although it wasn't structured enough for my taste, and unawareness of other participants was off-putting for me, they were very welcoming to Carlos, and that alone made the day enjoyable and nice.

For our easter we went to the zoo for the bunny spring fling. We missed most of the kid activities and just spent time walking around. We spotted a little baby orange monkey that was for me the star of the show. She was soooooo cute, and was jumping so very well, trying water with her finger and hanging on her mothers boob. She even caught and tried her mother's poop, which the crowd found charming. Later i bought a little toy for Sari that looked similar to the little monkey we saw. I am still unsure on how much she cared to have it, since she doesn't seem to be very much into animals or stuffed animals. But time will tell if that will change as her role playing skills develop further..
Yesterday i was also remembering last year's Easter, when we went downtown LA for an Easter event. I was remembering the jump house, the fabulous ceviche that we made at home and took with us, the sunny nice day, the chrysanthemum flowers someone gave to us, the playground where S played as C and i fought over absolutely nothing, but very vigorously.

Blooms in the Desert

Last weekend we headed out to Joshua Tree to see how Spring brought life and color to the usually barren landscape.  Like last Spring, we arrived the night before and headed to our hike in the morning.
Once again we stayed at the Super 8 on the north side of the park, because it was the most reliable choice closest to the park. Carlos advised me against booking anything on the south side of the park due to the meth towns there. Our evening was Del Taco, a few beers, and a nice conversation, and in the morning we promptly headed out, driving through the whole park to get to the south, making a couple of stops to take pictures along the way.

 Last year we covered 49 Palms trail and Lost Horse Trail, where we saw an old mine, and later a bed and a chimney. This time we went to the south part of the park and did the Lost Palm Canyon trail. Most of the landscape was pretty flat, so i would say that it was physically easier then the previous hikes, but longer in distance. Most of the flowers we encountered were in the first 1 mile of the hike. I still think that 49 Palms is probably the most colorful destination, with the most wild life. We did spot a smaller lizard and frogs in the water pools, but no one else.
It was weird walking on a flat plane not knowing how far we've gone and how much more we have to travel. I guess i am accustomed to the mountainous terrain where you can either see your destination, or surmise how far it is by watching landscape. Hiking flat surfaces is more like traveling blind ( i guess a GPS or a map and a compass would resolve that), but we were there for the whole day, not in a rush, and mainly for taking pictures. Toward the end of the trail we started to see some views, finally, and it became less monotonous and more beautiful, at least to my eyes.
When we finally arrived at the Lost Palms Canyon, the trail down was not very clearly defined, so we hopped down the best way we found. At the base, a large group of palms seemed inviting, but was occupied by a bunch of boy scouts, so we moved on following the canyon and encountered a number of smaller groups of Palms. We took a lunch break at the last palm collection, before heading back. Perhaps next time we would attempt to climb up to the upper oasis, which definitely has no trail and would require scrambling.
On the trail back we met a park ranger, an elderly lady who was eager to make conversation. She told us she was from Boston and she works as a campground host, living in the RV for several months with her husband. She enjoys the outdoors and is clearly living a dream retirement. After finding out Carlos was from Guatemala, she proceeded to share memories of her time volunteering with habitat for humanity there in Guatemala. Super fun and adventurous lady she was. Carlos and i talked about how much it would cost to be able to do what she does when we retire.

On the road back home, driving through the south road, we stopped for dinner in Cathedral City, finding these awesome Mexican restaurant on yelp. It didn't look much on the outside and was located next to a grocery store, or a dollar store, and some sketchy Chinese carry out place, but it exceeded our expectations by looking super cute and super busy on the inside. Although they were out of oysters, and substituted octopus for abalone on the menu without telling us, the food was actually very good, my cranberry margarita was nice.
The only difficulty was driving back home, because we were both super sleepy and tired, and it started raining. Thankfully Carlos managed to get us home safe.