Suits my outdoor nature for sure, but so does the entire south. SE Georgia is nice. I was just outside of Savannah for 3 years but deployed for 2.5 of them...You will come to learn that there is nothing sweeter than a Georgia peach. Nothing. The only advice I could add of value is when driving at night, look out for armadillos in the road. Nothing soils the britches quite like hitting a speed bump at 65. No one says the freeways with "the" before the freeway. Like take the 5 north. They don't do that there. Actually, I don't think they do that anywhere....but here.
California is an amazing place to visit. That way you can pick and choose. The Sierras, the Cascades, the PCH, the Mohave are all fabulous country. Even the cities are good when you can pick and choose for short intervals. San Francisco is a damned fun town if you like food and music and observing eccentrics. They have low-lifes, high-lifes, and gay-lifes all blended in. They not only have hotel doormen dressed up like Sir Walter Raleigh, but a public fountain with a stature of Yoda, with tons of old hippies and even old beatniks dressed like it was the 50's or 60's, Daddy-O. Los Angeles can be fun as long as you have a vehicle, some money to spend, and a ticket out of town. I can have a $4 lunch at my favorite Taquiero in East L.A. and be out of there before the Cholos steal my truck. And the money I save will help pay for the scandalously overpriced abalone in Newport Beach trying to impress Kimberly from Chino.
True. The Mojave Desert is not for everyone. I would recommend Hermosa or Huntington Beach instead. That yoda fountain is pretty stupid unless you are a major star wars geek. I wouldn't wasted the effort to get there. The Presidio has other more interesting things IMO. The best thing in the City is the food. Try the Fairfax District and go to Canter's Deli for a change. And you can't claim a real LA experience unless you eat at Tommy's on Beverly Blvd at midnight.
When you live in the forested flatlands, backroading in the Mohave is great fun. Cedar Canyon off the old Mohave Trail was a great spot. Again, when you live in a place where the only statues are granite confederate soldiers, drag queens shooting selfies with Yoda is something you don't see every day. The food is always good . . . I eat at a different Chinese restaurant every time I'm in Chinatown. You really can't get away with bad Chinese food in California. Is that the burger joint? I ate a chili burger for breakfast there once. The burger is good, but the chili sucked.
True. And if it wasn't for the Mojave, So Cal wouldn't get those Santa Ana winds that keep us in the 80's through November. I suppose not. Funny....in late October, I left the left coast nutjobs and thoroughly enjoyed the granite confines of Chickamauga. Sure you can. My daughter is convinced that Panda Express is awesome Chinese food. SMH. The best Chinese is in the bigger cities like LA and SF (Chinese folks in SF love to eat Chinese at the buffet-style restaurants). Ironically, the best Mexican food is in smaller communities where the illegals have stopped and set up shop. There is a family-owned place near me and their menu is very traditional Mexican, lots of seafood and occasional strange proteins. They came here legally over 30 years ago. Their ability to say in business really depends on the locals. That's why I said "experience". Kind of a right of passage as a student....go to Tommy's at midnight in your PJ's.
The last time I was at Chickamauga I traced the paths of two of my great-grandfathers who fought there by hiking the battlefield with an old map and following the monuments and position markers of each regiment. Interestingly, all eight of my great grandfathers and great-great grandfathers who were of military age in the Civil War fought in confederate regiments. Fast food always sucks, I suppose. But I have rarely eaten at a Chinese sit-down in California that wasn't good. I grew up eating Tex-Mex and found that the Mexican food in California can be quite different, especially down in Baja.
Over the last few years and with some time in the area, I have come to view the Civil War a little differently. That is some special family history you have. I appreciate it. Very different. It's a matter of taste buds I suppose but I prefer the variety I get around here, what I would consider Baja traditional.
My favorite Mexican food is fajitas. Then I find out that fajitas aren't even Mexican Fajita is a Tex-Mex, Texan-Mexican American or Tejano, diminutive term for little meat (beef) strips. Founded in South Texas, Rio Grande Valley. The wordfajita is not known to have appeared in print until 1971, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The exact time in which the dish was named fajita means little belt.[3] The word faja is Spanish for "strip", "band", "sash", or "belt". The first culinary evidence of the fajitas with the cut of meat, the cooking style (directly on a campfire or on a grill), and the Spanish nickname going back as far as the 1930s in the ranch lands of South and West Texas. During cattle roundups, beef were butchered regularly to feed the hands. Throwaway items such as the hide, the head, the entrails, and meat trimmings such as skirt were given to the Mexican cowboys called vaqueros as part of their pay. Hearty border dishes like barbacoa de cabeza (head barbecue), menudo (tripe stew), andfajitas or arracheras (grilled skirt steak) have their roots in this practice. Considering the limited number of skirts per carcass and the fact the meat wasn't available commercially, the fajita tradition remained regional and relatively obscure for many years, probably only familiar to vaqueros, butchers, and their families.[2] The food became popular in Tex-Mex restaurants in Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. In southern Arizona, the term was unknown except as a cut of meat until the 1990s, when Mexican fast food restaurants started using the word in their marketing. In recent years, fajitas have become popular at American casual dining restaurants as well as in home cooking
Yea, for me fajitas are just a steamy tableside show that stink up the restaurant. The taste is okay but nothing to write home about. This, you can't beat....
Looks like fajitas with avocado. What kind of meat is that and what are those gooey things on the right that look like ears?