Birds, Copper, Bison

 After Denver, I was headed for Rocky Mountain National Park. On the day I was going to go there, they got three feet of snow. Nope, change of plans – too much snow for me. My next stop was going to be the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. It turns out that it was too early in the season for any RV parks to be open. Again – change of plans. I looked at a map, closed my eyes, pointed my little finger at the map and decided that Salt Lake City was where I was going. 

Pike's Peak Or Bust

 Anytime you take off in the camper and the camper has been stored away for a winter, there will always be issues. You come to expect it but you cross your fingers and hope that it is nothing major. Well my first issue, I came to discover, was bordering on the major. 

Port, Chocolate and Rose Wine

 Porto, like most other cities, has several museums. There were a few that caught my eye, actually there were a few that I felt that there was no way I was going to miss them. To get to them, I had to cross the Douro River on the double-decker Dom Luis I Bridge. This bridge is 600 feet high and one of the premier tourist attractions in Porto.

A New Country For Me

 Food Tour is over – Farewells have been said. 

 A friend had said to me – you are only a couple of hours away from Portugal – go!  So I went. I got up before the crack of dawn to catch a bus to Porto, the 2^nd largest city in Portugal. My hotel, the Porto A.S. 1829 is located right in the center of the historical district. I got a corner room, overlooking a square and right above where the street musicians would play. They played from about ten in the morning until about ten at night and they all had amplifiers. I think they were an organized group, each would play about an hour, leave and then the next musician would set up. Some of the musicians were fabulous, some were ok. Nobody was horrible. So, it was a treat.

The Epitome of Fine Dining

 

Today is a special day. It is our last day on our Galician food tour and we are going to commemorate it by dining at a Michelin two star restaurant. The restaurant has also been awarded a green star for sustainability. This is going to be a treat. 

Just A Really Nice Day!

 We loaded up into our trusty bus which took us to a rocky area of coastline. We were going barnacle hunting. We were rather late getting there so the tide was starting to come in which made it a little more dangerous. Most of the professional barnacle hunters had already quit for the day, but we soldiered on. Some of us ventured down onto the rocks to collect the barnacles, while the rest of us perched up on the rocks watching. When we wandered back toward the bus, we found that they had laid out a picnic cloth. We sat down for some vermouth and another sea food pie. The highlight,though, was that the barnacle hunter guide cooked up, in a steamer in the back of his car, all of the barnacles that were harvested.

Conger Eels

 

Today was going to be a big activity day. We were off to the “Coast of Death” where stone crosses on the shore mark lost ships. First though, we visited an establishment in Muxo that was the last traditional Conger Eel dryer in the world. The European Union had decided, in their infinite wisdom, that the many centuries' way of drying eels was not healthy.