Thanksgiving weekend, Van closet

Thanksgiving and Adam's birthday were great. We went down to my (Liz's) parents' house in Benicia for the afternoon. Here's a pic of the backseat on the way down:

Good thing we weren't bringing any other people with us! 

Adam requested lemon meringue pie for his birthday (and thus it was our dessert for Thanksgiving). This was an area of major stress for me as meringue is notorious for being difficult to get right. I read up in the Joy of Cooking and was victorious!!! Happy Birthday, Adam!

The meringue was cooked through and nothing was runny or gooey. Very exciting for me and tasty for everyone. 

A week before Thanksgiving I made the cranberry sauce:

Looks amazing, doesn't it? (I'm not being humble on this one...) Well, since Thanksgiving was also Adam's birthday, and there was the stress of the meringue, and planning/packing for the trip we took right after Thanksgiving, plus I had a bad cold all week----I COMPLETELY forgot the cranberry sauce in Davis! When we were getting ready to serve dinner, my mom asked where the cranberry was....I nearly passed out, and I felt SO bad that I had left it at home! Needless to say we all survived Thanksgiving without cranberry. Still getting over that one. 

Well, after Thanksgiving we decided to go to Big Sur, Ventana Wilderness for an overnight backpacking trip to get out of Davis and get everyone some good exercise. We did 21.4 miles in two days. The first day was 14.6 miles. We backpacked from the Big Sur station to Barlow Camp (~7.4 miles in) and set up our tent. The camping area only had about 6 other groups, and no one was close to us so it was really quiet. We were right on the river. After setting up, we left our stuff at camp and hiked another 3.2 miles to Sykes Hot Springs. This area had more people around, but we did manage to get one of the pools to ourselves. 

Here's Adam at the springs and a picture of one of the pools. The pool wasn't really hot but it still felt great after the hiking we had done! 

Here's the view from the pool:

That's the Big Sur river and associated mixed coastal forest. Beautiful!

Here's part of the trail:

We were actually a little surprised about the trail--we had expected it would spend some time along the river, but the trail was high above the river the whole time until Sykes. We did go down and cross some side streams, which were really pretty. 

For dinner we were fancy (only one night, might as well carry heavy stuff)--we made poached salmon with mashed potatoes and butternut squash. I had pre-roasted the squash and froze it in cubes. The salmon was frozen when we left, and the potatoes were the flake kind. Chocolate pudding for dessert...YUM!!! After dinner I was exhausted (still was fighting the cold I've had for a week), and I fell asleep before 8pm and slept with only a few interruptions until 6:30--about 11 hours of sleep! Darn good for backpacking, I'd say. :)

NOW, FOR THE VAN:

Today Adam is working on the closet. Here is the first try of putting it in the van--it's not fitted perfectly yet but it looks fantastic!

Awesome, right?!

This is the prefinished maple. The two big openings are the clothes closet area (and that end piece is just temporary and not the right size). It's going to have 1 shelf in the middle, and the shelf will be covered with fabric to keep things from sliding around. There will probably be plastic bins for socks, underwear, etc (small things). The closet will have 2 sliding doors. The tall narrow area is the pantry and will have small (cans), medium (small snacks, rice mix, misc.) and large (cereal, pretzels, big stuff) boxes in it that will work like drawers but will be easy to remove. That way, if you need a couple of cans, you can just pull the box out and bring it to the cooking area or onto the counter to find what you need. Or, if you want a snack or cereal selection--just grab the big box. 

Adam will probably cut a cubby hole into the area below the closet for accessibility to the under-the-closet area. There may also be a cubby hole with a lid on the bottom shelf area of the closet, which would work great as a laundry basket area. 

I'm really proud of Adam--he works really hard on the van and I think it really shows!

Now, for some concluding dog pictures:

 That's Carex with her new collar.

 This time my pictures are Carex-biased..here's Carex with Adam, snuggling on the couch!

Ok, this isn't the dogs--but it was funny. Adam microwaved 2 eggs (I was not involved!) this morning and one exploded, shooting the yolk out of the white. Talk about a mess......