Thanksgiving Wine Suggestions

With Thanksgiving only days away, one may wonder what goes best with a turkey dinner. Some, like me, have their favorites. 

JJ Buckley Fine Wines recommends the following:

What kind of wine goes best with turkey?

Wine and turkey pairings

• Pinot Noir. You cannot go wrong with this choice when served alongside a classic, roasted turkey with a side of gravy. ...
• Chardonnay. Another obvious choice for wine pairing with turkey, Chardonnay is ideal for a classic roasted bird. ...
• Champagne. ...
• Riesling. ...
• Beaujolais. ...
• Sangiovese. ...
• Zinfandel. 

Yosemite Crowded With No Reservation System

Above, no long lines at a Yosemite entrance gate in the off-season. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There is one big reason why I prefer visiting national parks during the off-season: no crowds!

It seems that in recent years (during and since the pandemic), more people are heading off to "get away from it all" at a national park with hordes of others. It is even worse during holiday weekends.

At least during the off-season, while there are people present, there isn't hordes of them. I had an enjoyable time in Yosemite National Park in April 2016. I made camping reservations months before and there were no crowds when I got there.

Above, no crowded viewpoint parking areas in Yosemite during the off-season. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Unfortunately, as there is no reservation system in place to enter Yosemite, massive crowds and lines of cars were the result.

This presented a problem recently during the Juneteenth holiday weekend. Either people had to wait four hours to enter Yosemite and/or being turned away at the entrance gate.

From SFGATE: 

When friends and family visit John Stone and his wife, Sandy, at their home in Groveland, a gateway town about a 30-minute drive from Yosemite National Park, they like to bring their guests into the park. They’ve been doing this for upward of 40 years, and it’s always been enjoyable, Stone said, but all that changed over the Juneteenth holiday weekend.

Stone’s cousin and nephew were in town, and when the group tried to enter the park Saturday morning at 10 a.m., they couldn’t get in.

“It was stop and go, stop and go, stop and go,” Stone says of the wait at the Big Oak Flat entrance along Highway 120. “And finally, the cars coming back down the hill were waving at us, telling us that we had to turn around, that they were turning around people at the gate. So we didn’t stay in line any longer.”

 To read more, go here.

RV Life's Guide To Holiday Moochdocking

Above, The Beast at my cousin's in Wildomar, California. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Christmas is just around the corner. This means visiting family or friends are their homes with the old reliable recreational vehicle in their driveway.

According to RV Life, this is called "moochdocking". They have posted a guide to holiday moochdocking.

They begin with:

Moochdocking means camping in a friend’s or relative’s driveway in your own RV.

In its purest form, moochdocking is driveway camping, but you don’t necessarily have to camp in the driveway to moochdock. You could moochdock anywhere on a friend’s or relative’s property.   

Moochdocking resembles boondocking, with one key difference that sets it apart. When you are moochdocking, you still get access to water, power, and Wi-Fi, whereas boondocking requires your RV to be self-sustaining.  

In rare instances, your moochdocking host might even have a sewer inlet available for you to use while you camp. A lot of times, moochdockers shower and do laundry in their host’s home.  

RVers have their own rolling guesthouse that they can bring to their host. This is particularly handy over the holiday season, when everyone wants to enjoy family time together. The family that is hosting the holiday celebrations may already have a lot on their plate without also having to find additional room for guests. For this reason, guests with RVs are usually more than welcome.   

To read more, go here. 

Using The RV As A Guest Room For Holiday Guests

Holiday season is almost upon us and that sometimes means that guests (family or friends) will be arriving. 

The question arises on where to put them up for the nights they are with you. RV Travel has an idea on making one's RV an accommodation for them.

The start off with:

It won’t be long now. Soon, out-of-town relatives and friends will descend on your home for the holidays. It’s expensive to put them up in nearby hotels, but if you don’t really have space for them inside your sticks-and-bricks home, it’s time to put that RV to an alternative use! Use your RV to accommodate your out-of-town guests. You can take it to a nearby campground or park it in your driveway. Either way, your guests will have a place to “escape,” and you can find downtime inside your home, as well! Face it, holidays are stressful enough without having to worry about extra folks underfoot 24/7. Let your RV come to the rescue!

Before you think that bedding guests down in an RV is less than hospitable, there are ways you can make the RV space quite comfortable! Plus, it might be fun for your non-RVing guests to stay in their own house-on-wheels for a few days!

To read more, go here. 

RV Travel Trends Shaping The Holiday Season

Above, a dusting of snow at Red Rock Park Campground near Gallup, New Mexico. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Travel is expected to make a remarkable recovery during the holiday season this year and that includes RV travel.

According to TravelPulse:

Interest in RV travel remains high heading into the holiday season and appears poised to stay that way in 2022, according to the latest travel trends report from global online RV rental and outdoor travel marketplace Outdoorsy.

The annual report produced several intriguing findings after a year many travelers spent road tripping across the country, including the dates and destinations most RV travelers have circled in the final two months of 2021. For example, Thanksgiving topped Christmas and New Year's for the holiday with the most RV rental bookings this season, according to Outdoorsy, while top destinations for holiday travel are mostly warm-weather places such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Austin, San Francisco, Miami and Las Vegas.

The trips won't come to a halt as travel continues its recovery in 2022 either as 91 percent of survey respondents indicated that they are planning to take a road trip next year. What's more, 83 percent of travelers added that they would be either somewhat likely or very likely to vacation via RV or campervan if there were COVID surges in 2022, and cleanliness is a big reason for that. Eight in 10 survey respondents cited cleanliness as the deciding factor when considering renting an RV. Amenities such as a full kitchen (57 percent), full bathroom (57 percent) and an indoor shower (43 percent) are also important features.

To read more, go here. 

Don't Forget To Fly Your Flag Today!

Today, I am flying my U.S. and Gadsden flags.

Zion National Park: Worth Going To On Holiday Weekends?

Above, Zion's Checkerboard Mesa. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The first time I visited Zion National Park was in August 1969 (we heard the news bulletin about the Sharon Tate murders while there) and there weren't any crowds.

Today, there are nothing but crowds (especially on holiday weekends) at Zion National Park.

AZCentral asks the question, "Is it worth visiting on a holiday weekend?"

They begin with:

Zion National Park is crowded. Even more so on holiday weekends. Here are some facts from the Fourth of July 2019: 

• More than 94,000 people visited over the four-day holiday weekend, the park said on Facebook.
• Wait times were up to 90 minutes to board a park shuttle.
• Hikers waited up to four hours at the trailhead for Angels Landing.
• Zion's parking lot was full by 8:30 a.m. July 5 and 6.
• Parking in Springdale, Utah, just outside Zion's western entrance, was nearly full by 1 p.m. both days.

My preference for visiting national parks is during the off-season and not during holiday weekends. Who wants to join thousand of other people "wanting to get away from it all"?

To read more, go here.

Happy New Year!

If you're out and drinking, make sure you have a designated driver and stay safe!

"The True Story of Thanksgiving" by Rush Limbaugh

Above, the Mayflower at sea.

Happy Thanksgiving!

On this occasion, I will post (below) a link to a transcription of Rush Limbaugh's show from yesterday in which he gives the true story of Thanksgiving. It is in his book, See, I Told You So that came out in the 1990s.

He begins the true story of Thanksgiving, which could be titled, "The True Story of Thanksgiving and Why Socialism Never Works".

He begins with:

RUSH: Now, normally, ladies and gentlemen, I save the annual reading of the true story of Thanksgiving from my second book, See, I Told You So, to close the end of the third hour of the program today. I have found that I become so expansive and I begin to ad-lib and add various observations to the reading that I find myself in a hurried state trying to finish it. So I think I’m going to open this hour with the reading of the Real Story of Thanksgiving. It’s important to do it each and every year. 

When I discovered what it was when writing the book, I learned that even I as a young boy had not been told the entire truth of the first Thanksgiving, and the story I was told was somewhat mild. Over the years, it got worse and worse and worse. I could probably sum it up by saying that the story of Thanksgiving as generally taught in the American public school system was that a bunch of haggard people from Britain arrived at a desolate spot at a very cold time of the year and didn’t know what the hell they were doing and didn’t know where they were and had no idea how to live.

And then they met some Indians, some Native Americans, and the Indians saved them. The Indians showed them how to farm. The Indians showed them how to make warm coats. The Indians showed them how to make pumpkins and carve them. The Indians showed them how to go out and kill turkey — and, if it weren’t for the Indians, the Pilgrims would have starved and there never would have been an America, and then the Indians would have never been overrun, and then there wouldn’t be any Indian casinos. 

Well, there might have still have been Indian casino, but there would not have been an America. Therefore, we owe Indians everything. That’s essentially the story of Thanksgiving that people were taught. I’m exaggerating a bit. But that’s how it was taught. Even I, as I say, was taught a mild version of that, and it is nowhere near the truth. For the truth I found the journals of William Bradford, who was the original governor of the original Plymouth plantation, and one of the primary movers and shakers of putting together the journey on the Mayflower that brought these Pilgrims to the New World. 

So I wrote about it in my second book called See, I Told You So in Chapter 6: “Dead White Guys or What the History Books Never Told You, The True Story of Thanksgiving.” If I have time, I’m also gonna share with you excerpts of George Washington’s first Thanksgiving Proclamation. If you’re unfamiliar with that, it will startle you. “The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century,” the late 1600s.

He then reads the true story of Thanksgiving.

Here is just one excerpt:

This is what the traditional thanksgiving story is. The Pilgrims arrived, barely made it through the winter. Indians befriended them and saved them — and today, to this day, we give thanks to the Indians for having saved the Pilgrims. This could not be further from the truth. This is not to diminish the assistance, but this is not what Thanksgiving is about. “Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives,” but that’s not what it was. 

“Thanksgiving, in truth, my friends, is “a devout expression of gratitude” to God for their survival, which depending on a whole lot of things after they arrived — a whole lot of things besides assistance by the Indians. “Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into,” the Mayflower Compact, “with their merchant-sponsors in London…” They had no money. They had to have people help them here.

To read the rest of the story, go here. 

Happy New Year!

Have a safe and joyous New Year's Eve and Day! Drive safely!

Thanksgiving Day Trivia

Above, Abraham Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Originally, Thanksgiving Day wasn't a formal national holiday. States held Thanksgiving observances on different days.

However, to make it a national observance, a letter was written to President Abraham Lincoln and here's what transpired from it:

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving. 

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution." 

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale's request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book. George Washington was the first president to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, issuing his request on October 3, 1789, exactly 74 years before Lincoln's. 

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

To read the proclamation, go here. 

Tips On Handling Holiday Travel

Today is one of the busiest days for holiday travel.

To help you deal with it and to keep your sanity while on the road, Condé Nast Traveler has some tips for you. I have to drive 90 miles later today, so this is timely!

They begin with:

Holiday travel is a hassle from the get-go, but hours of car karaoke, incessant questioning, and backseat drivers only make matters worse. Now, with AAA predicting 90 percent of Americans will hit the highway for a holiday road trip, drivers’ frustration will be at an ultimate high. And while avoiding the busiest driving days of the season (December 23 and December 24, according to Waze) will certainly help keep most spirits bright, holiday stress comes for some no matter what day the road trip begins. In order to keep holiday cheer up for everyone involved, the great-great-grandson of the ultimate etiquette expert Emily Post, Daniel Post Senning, has a few tips to keep everyone—even the in-laws—sane.

To read more, go here. 

Is Valentine's Day Celebrated In Japan?

Above, Ginza's Mitsukoshi Dept. Store advertising Ginza
 Sweets Collection 2014. Photo courtesy of  AngloInfo Tokyo.

The other day, a friend asked me if Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan. I told her yes, but it is somewhat different than how we celebrate it.

According to Japan Travel Advice:

14 February 2014 

Event: Valentine’s Day 

Location: All over Japan 

The tradition in Japan is for the girls to give chocolates to the boys. The favour is returned to the girls on a special day called White Day, which is celebrated a month later on March 14th.

I thought this explanation was right to the point.

For more information on Japan's festivals and events in February, go here.