Paying Attention to This Miracle and Mount St. Helens

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

Paulo Coelho 

Ruby successfully made it through her black tank surgery.  Our wallet wasn't so fortunate. We're still waiting to hear from the powers that be at Roadtrek to see if the mysterious damage is covered under warranty,but it's not looking so good.  Oh well such is life and the joys of owning an RV. It's literally a house on wheels and instead of needing a new roof or furnace or water heater we needed a new holding tank. After sharing repair stories with fellow RV owners at the repair shop we feel pretty lucky that we walked away with the repair bill we had ! How convoluted is that ? And now we can get on with our travels.  One more trip left until we put Ruby into Winter Storage (we might try to sneak in a couple more trips if we can avoid snowy roads-we don't mind snow at the campground-just aren't looking forward to the challenge of  driving a 22 ft RV through it !).

I have been watching weather forecasts all over the Pacific Northwest.  Yes, it's a total waste of time because anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest knows that the weather changes in a heartbeat.  So do we head to the Coast where at least one of the three camping days is being forecast as sunny.  Or do we head inland where it will rain and maybe snow ?  I'm voting for the Coast.

Talk about the weather changing-these are some photos of a day trip we made last year to Mount St. Helens-another one of our favorite places in Washington.  The day started out with rain,thunder,fog and dark skies.  While we were there the storm disappeared, the skies turned to bright blue and as we stood in front of the volcano the clouds drifted softly away revealing the beauty of the mountain.

It's been amazing to watch Nature recover here.  Our first visit was almost twelve years after she erupted in 1980 and the area still looked like it had been bombed.  Everything was grey and black with only a few tufts of green speckled throughout the park.

But like the Paulo Coelho quote: " each day brings a miracle of it's own".  It's been inspiring to watch the change over the years at Mount St. Helens.  The elk are back with all the other animals and in the Spring flowers are peeking through everywhere.  It really gives one hope for this Planet.

Okay now for the serious stuff-Road Food for our upcoming trip !   We have a little picnic basket that sits on the floor between the two of us when we are on the road.  We usually fill it with gingersnaps (always good with the morning coffee),trail mix (for that sweet chocolate fix) and sunflower seeds (for that salty taste).  Sometimes I pack something special.  And since we will be camping over the Thanksgiving Holiday I decided it was time to pack something special-Fleur De Sel Caramels.

J loved the chocolate salted caramel cupcakes I made recently so I thought I would surprise him with these.  They are fairly easy to make and they also make fabulous Christmas gifts !  Try them, you will love them. You can find the recipe over at Pastry Affair by clicking here.  I love her blog,the photography is beautiful and she uses wonderful quotes that are pertinent to the recipe and post she is doing.

Instead of using the 9 x 13 pan she suggested I used my Wilton silicone pans that I have used for brownies and chocolate in the past. Perfect !  I easily  popped the squares of caramel out of each cavity and then sliced them in half;a time saver from having to cut a slab of caramel into 50 pieces.

Enjoy a few more photos, then go and make the caramels. Next time I think I will dip them in bittersweet chocolate -making them even more decadent than they already are !