The Further Adventures of the Coveys - More Food and More Driving

Thanks to everyone who followed our trip. I had such a good response, that I decided to keep posting about our travel and dining adventures. I will continue to post about food I've made at Susan Can Cook. Here, you'll get to see what we eat when we're out and about. We will continue to search out and enjoy Triple-D sites too.

Last weekend, we went to visit Madelyn and hear all about her fabulous European vacation. Here she is with her boy friend, Robb.

We decided to try Bette's Oceanview Diner. This was featured on Triple-D and they featured a puffy pancake souffle. We've been wanting to go here for a while, but it seems like every really good place in Berkeley either has a line out the door or a months long waiting list for reservations. This day, we bit the bullet and decided to shop while we waited an hour or so for our lunch. Here's Mr. Dwayne, waiting anxiously for his bockwurst and potato pancake feast. He was starving, but once we started eating, he admitted it was worth the wait.

I really wanted to try the pancake souffle, but I've also been on a corned beef hash quest for some time. I can't tell you how many times I've ordered the corned beef hash and had it come to my table fresh out of the can. I do like canned corned beef hash, and have made it for myself at home. But, if I look around your dining room and see some people eating a Reuben, and some other people eating hash browns with their eggs, DO NOT bring me corned beef hash from a can. There's just no excuse. Happily, my menu dilemma was resolved by the lovely Madelyn. She is one of my favorite eating partners because we both like to try lots of different things and we don't mind sharing. What you see above is half of the order of corned beef hash with poached eggs and sourdough toast. This hash was meaty and the potatoes inside were fluffy while the outer crust was super crispy. Yum! This hash is highly recommended!

Here is my half the the pancake souffle with yummy apple filling. The only weird thing is that they did not bring maple syrup for this, and it really needed it. It took a while to flag down our server and she brought some for us. They were extremely busy. Robb had Reuben with coleslaw and reported that it was very tasty.


We spent the afternoon looking at Mad's vacation photos, then decided to get some dinner before heading home. Madelyn suggested Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe. They usually offer great sweet potato fries, but were out on our visit. Check out their cool sign.

Their other claim to fame is a milk shake flavored with stout and espresso. I was skeptical, but this was delicious!

I'm playing catch-up with this post. This past Thursday evening, we were both hungry and I had an appointment at 7, so we decided to do something we haven't done in a long while - we went to Squeeze Inn. We haven't been able to eat there since they moved from their old location on Fruitridge. We can see that they've really expanded their business and have hired lots of new staff. However, we also saw some of our favorite old faces. Due to light eating earlier in the day, I didn't come out too much over my calorie limit for the day. What you see above is my hamburger with cheese. Believe it or not, this is a lot smaller than the squeeze with cheese.

Here is a peek inside Dwayne's squeeze with cheese. I don't know of many sandwiches where you have to have a strategy to eat it, but the presence of a cheese skirt necessitates this. Dwayne usually folds his skirt in and eats it with the burger. I usually eat about half of it by itself then fold the rest in. You have to do something to get at the burger!

Look Ma! No stains. I was very proud of myself because I'd had a spinach and beet salad for lunch and a squeeze burger for dinner, both with no mishaps. (If you've never had fresh beets with baby spinach, the stems of the spinach act as tiny catapults and can lob bright red globules of beet-stained salad dressing all over you. The little red heart on my shirt is a sticker that I awarded myself for giving a successful training session. We make our fun where we can!)

And now, here is the driving part of this post. My cousin, Genny, invited us on a fun run this weekend. She and her husband, Bob, have belonged to a Miata club and have planned lots of runs similar to this. I have to say that Genny has a great deal of organizational flair. Here I am, ready to enjoy. You can see Larry and Barbara behind us. We took a beautiful route to Indian Grinding Rock park. We each packed a picnic. As we ate, a large gathering of families near by serenaded us with beautiful singing. I think they were singing in Russian, but I'm not sure. There was beautiful harmony.

This structure provided shade for our lunch.


There are many enormous oak trees. A posted sign said that some of these are estimated to be about 400 years old.

See...it's a BIG tree.

Here's the gang walking on the nature path.

Genny, creating a photo-vortex with me.

Some of the fields were covered with fluffy purple flowers.

Here's the name sake of the park. It is a fascinating piece of history. We also had fun watching the lizards run around on top of it.

Here's my driver and some beautiful country side. After seeing a lot of the rest of the US, I appreciate the beauty and variety of California even more.

So much fun! Thanks Genny, Bob, Barbara and Larry!

Day 16 - Baltimore Day 2 or Are We Home Yet?

Howdy folks! After yesterday's review, you may be surprised to know that we had breakfast at Bob Evans. Well, we didn't have too many options, and I reasoned that they may be like Denney's where their regular food is so so, but they do breakfast fine. This was the case. They actually had lots of choices and were cheaper than Denney's. We had to turn in the rental car by 9 AM, so we needed to get up, get breakfast and get the rental car to the drop off spot at the airport. Dwayne had a biscuit bowl. He enjoyed it and I had a bite with some biscuit and gravy and it tasted pretty good. I like biscuits as much as the next guy. Using them as a bread bowl, while calorically insane, is a tasty idea.
I went for broke and had this breakfast with two eggs, bacon, potatoes and a blueberry crepe. Everything was well done. Strangely, the potatoes were not at all crispy, but they tasted very good. I wonder if the seasoning on them included MSG because they tasted a little addictive. One nice touch is that they offered me a cup of coffee to go.
After turning in the car we found our way to the light rail station and headed into Baltimore for the day. It was actually a very pretty ride through lots of greenery. We disembarked a little south of Inner Harbor so that we could check out a book store and comic book store Dwayne found in the phone book. After some browsing, he sat down to figure out our course. I saw him sitting in front of this historic fire house and just had to get a picture.
Note the message on the bench.
Here's the view from the fire house towards downtown.
Here's another wooden ship.
Another bird who was kind enough to pose for me and to sing a song.


The good news is that we found two Triple D sites in Fells Point, the neighborhood east of the Inner Harbor. The bad news is that we didn't get to actually eat at either of them. We found Blue Moon while looking for a lunch place. The food looked fabulous, but it was very crowded, with a long wait. Also, we had already eaten a big breakfast type meal, and that is their specialty. I'll just have to try making Cap'n Crunch french toast at home.
While walking on in search of lunch, I spotted this helpful building. I don't think it was functioning as advertised, but I was tickled to see this historic public restroom.
Here is where we ended up for lunch. Alexander's Tavern. They had lots of historical pictures of Baltimore, including a few from the big fire of 1904. I didn't know anything about this, but it looked pretty devastating. The photos reminded me of those I've seen after the SF earthquake of 1906. So many of the eastern cities seem to be made of brick and this photo showed mountains of crumbled bricks where buildings used to be. For lunch we had a slider platter with tater tots. The sliders had crab cakes, cheeseburgers, pulled pork and roast beef.
This is the second Triple D site and we came across it by accident after our lunch. Sigh. Our mission of eating at Triple D sites was not thoroughly accomplished. Sometimes we just sat down and ate what we could when we could.
This is an old building that was used to film Homicide. One funny side story: there is a water taxi station right next to this building and we didn't know it because it wasn't indicated on the map. We walked about a mile to another neighborhood to catch the water taxi, which promptly came back to this site to transfer us to another water taxi for our destination.
While walking through historic Fells Point, we discovered another comic book store. A good day for Dwayne!

I saw baby geese on our long walk to the water taxi. We've seen tons of Canadian geese all over the east, but these are the first babies I've seen. They were very cute, but I was a little sad because this bay water is absolutely putrid. I'm very thankful for our clean(ish) rivers, especially the American. The Sacramento never thought of being this dirty on it's worst day. It is the color burnt umber. No kidding. Not even close to being a color water should be. Also, there is trash everywhere. In fact, they actually had a water drain explode because it got plugged up with trash. There are plastic bits and bottles floating everywhere. There were people kayaking and renting paddle boats. Yuck! I would not want a child to touch that water.
Here's Dwayne on the water taxi. The crew was very friendly and gave us lots of directions.
Our intrepid captain.
Happy but tired. After the water taxi, we headed for the light rail so we could go back to the hotel. Dwayne used his navigational skills to help us get off the light rail early (before the airport) and we took a walk to our hotel on a lovely bike trail that runs around the airport grounds. We saw an adult rabbit, a baby rabbit and a wood chuck! I also saw these beautiful flowers. I wasn't fast enough to get photos of the little mammals, but it was fun to see them.


Tonight's dinner was from the Quizno's next to the hotel and we spent the evening relaxing and packing. It will be a challenge to keep our luggage in proportion because we've done a bit of shopping. This was a big trip for books and Dwayne's suitcase got most of them. Tomorrow we have to get up at 4 AM to catch the 5 AM shuttle so we can catch our flight at 7 AM. Due to the time zones, we'll get home about noon. We're both ready to resume our regularly scheduled life, already in progress.

Day 15 - Heading Back West via Baltimore.

This is another day where the text will have to follow the pictures. I met the sun this morning at around 5:30 - that's 2:30 back home. Got to get some sleep. We have to turn the car in by 9 AM tomorrow, then we will head into Baltimore via light rail for the day. I'll miss the car and the Lady Box. The car has been our most consistent home for the last 15 days. But, we're both tired and are looking forward to returning to our own home on Sunday.
OK! I'm back. Here is the breakfast I had on the boardwalk at the Atlantic Stand. These eggs were large and fresh, and I just had to try scrapple. I know my Grammy used to make scrapple when she lived on a farm. I've had corn meal mush. This is kind of like that, but it has pork with sausage seasoning mixed into the cornmeal. I had it with syrup. It was pretty good.
The Atlantic Stand has been on the boardwalk since the 20's. It has a stand outside for people to walk up and a diner section in back.
We sat in the diner section.
This is what Maryland looks like from the highway, only there are farms and fields in cleared areas between the woods. It is really beautiful and green out here. I saw a deer grazing at the edge of one of these wooded areas.
We stopped at two farm stands. I got some black raspberry jam at one and we had lunch at this one. They had dozens of different pickles and relishes here. I was so tempted, but I fear broken pickles in the luggage, and they are too much liquid for carry on. I got lots of inspiration for future canning projects.
We had sandwiches - pulled chicken and sliced ham. The sandwiches were just competent, but this was a lovely setting across the street from a wheat field.

There's the wheat field.
Dwayne discovered Red Cream Soda. He really liked it, but apparently it is an East Coast thing.
We went to the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore. There are several ships set up as museums for visitors to explore. There are two wooden sailing ships, a submarine and several large military ships, including one that survived Pearl Harbor. We had fun viewing them, but didn't board any of them.
Baltimore has a helpful Visitor's Center that is manned by very enthusiastic senior volunteers. We got lots of help and maps here. This doggie part of their kinetic sculpture parade.
There are two sports stadiums right by the Inner Harbor - Camden Yards and M & T Stadium.
Right next to Camden Yards is the Geppi Entertainment Museum. This is owned by Stephen Geppi, the guy who owns Diamond Comic Distributors. Dwayne was thrilled to see this place.
Look! It's Action Comics #1! It's Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #1! and All American Comics #16, the origin of the Green Lantern! Woot!
This museum has all kinds of popular culture items. Here are games and toys from Buck Rogers.
Tarzan!
Tarzan again!
Dwayne liked this print because it has many of the characters from the Sunday morning line up.
Honey West - TV Private Eye Full!
We'd been seeing Bob Evan's restaurants all over the place. Dwayne looked it up and it seemed to have a good menu and be based on farm foods, so we decided to give it a try. I decided to try the meal advertised on the place mat. Here's what it said about this meal (copied from their web menu) "Two bone-in chicken breasts are spice-rubbed Memphis style, then oven-roasted to seal in the flavor. Served with our seasoned sweet potato fries, special recipe macaroni & cheese and freshly baked rolls." I just realized I never got the rolls. Oh well. The server (who was very nice) told me they were out of this chicken and brought me the menu. I really wanted to try their special recipe macaroni and cheese so I asked if I could have this meal with fried chicken as a substitute. "No problem." He said.
Here's what I got. Now, just because I'm going to criticize this meal, don't think I didn't enjoy it. I can only conclude that they don't actually do any cooking here. I'm sure the fries and chicken were frozen and dropped in the fryer. The thing that cracked me up is that the "special recipe" mac and cheese is Kraft Macaroni and Cheese! No kidding! Hilarious! I didn't end up eating it. Dwayne ate some of it and took a walk down memory lane. I used to make this a lot when Madelyn was a toddler, but I always put peas in it.
Dwayne had "Pot Roast Stroganoff." It was pretty tasty. Again, I really don't think they are roasting meat back there. I think they heated this up real good. We decided to give dessert a try. The server recommended the peach cobbler with ice cream. It was just OK. The peaches were not canned, which is a plus, but there was too much of the gooey stuff people seem to like in pie. (I hate that stuff!). Again, I'm guessing it came to this location frozen and was baked off on site.
This very picturesque barn was just across the street from the Bob Evans.
I poked around the wild area behind our hotel and found these berries. They look like the photos I've seen of red currants, but the leaves are different. I was really temped to try them, but know better. Considering this area is swarming with song birds (such beautiful music!) and they aren't eating them, I knew I better hold back. (I remember in 6th grade when my teacher accidentally ate poison oak and shared it with a student and they both ended up in the hospital! Talk about a lesson on nature.)
There are honeysuckles growing everywhere out here. They smell very sweet.