Great French restaurant where?

This is the review I posted on Tripadvisor.

Cafe Michel

5 stars are not enough

There may be French restaurants in New York or DC that have fancier digs and fancier prices, but they wouldn't have better food. The escargots were served naked in a dish, with garlic and butter, of course, and parsley and chopped mushrooms. Delicious! The waitress said they were Mary Jean style, but I can't find that on the internet, and I've not seen them served this way before. The Caesar salad was the best ever. We both had the seafood platter, the presentation was superb and the taste outstanding. Michel came and talked to us after the meal. We're full-time RVers, and he said his dream was to tour the country in an RV, with someone to drive for him, and he would ride his bike. I said he could come with us, and I would drive if he cooked.

Omni Cascades

I played the best "you can play" in Virginia today, the Omni Homestead Resort Cascades course.  This is for you, Scott.

This is where Sam Snead grew up, and had his first job as a pro.

The course was designed in 1923 by William S. Flynn.  It has hosted 7 USGA events, a Curtis Cup and an NCAA championship.

The course has a number of blind shots

and I didn't always drive up to the top of the hill to see what I needed to know.  There's plenty of local knowledge to be had.  If you look closely at that last one you can see a bulls-eye up in the trees, which is where you would aim from the left side of the fairway, if you knew on the tee that you were supposed to hit to the left side of the fairway.

The scenery is beautiful.  I was struck this week, driving though Virginia, as I have been other times in other places during our travels, with how many trees there are in our great country.  Even in a state like Virginia, which is pretty densely populated as states go, there are great forests and hills and meadows of open spaces.

If you go to this resort, DO NOT use route 606, aka Sulfur Springs Rd., aka McGraw Gap Rd.  Our GPS sent me this way, and would have done so even in "RV mode", even though this road is marked by a small sign to be impassable by vehicles more than 25 feet long.  The truck is only 22 feet, so I was able to negotiate the hairpin turns on the switchbacks, with nobody coming the other way, but those were the easy parts.  On the wide spots, the road is not more than 16 feet, and the truck is 8 feet wide in its dually "hips".  Some sections looked to me to be about the same size as most interstate highway lanes, so the truck took up more than 2/3 of the pavement width.  There are lots of blind turns, with very short straight sections between them, a cliff wall on one side, and a sheer dropoff on the other.  And the speed limit is 55.  I encountered only a few vehicles coming the other way, thankfully not on sections we couldn't get by each other, and not at speeds that wouldn't allow for adjustments, although some of the little cars were going too fast to have survived a closer encounter.

The Homestead bills itself as the oldest resort in America, founded in 1766 (I don't think it was in the Omni group at the time;)

I guess in those days the first resort would be in the mountains, because "home" was at the beach, they didn't need a resort there.  The town is Hot Springs, so I suppose the healing vapors were the attraction.

The cicadas were out in force.  One tried to fly into my shirt.

Hear the cicadas.

There are indeed cascades on the course.

Very soothing.

Does this tee shot remind you of anything?

I was having success moving the ball from right to left, after a tip from Hank Haney seems to have finally sunk in.  So I figured this was the perfect time to really let it go.  I aimed at the tree on the right, through the fairway, and pull-hooked it across the stream, into the woods.

There's a graveyard next to the 8th tee, just in case a bad score on #7 makes you want to cash in.

My score wasn't great, I'm still working on swing changes, but I did birdie the 17th with 3 really good shots and a 20-footer.

The clubhouse, from the 17th fairway

More pictures.

I will post Kiawah and Pinehurst next.  Soon.

RV fire

An amazing true story.  We met David and Brenda here in Fountain Hills last year.  This is an extreme example, but characteristic of the relationship that RVers automatically have with each other, even before they know each others' names.

http://www.outsideourbubble.com/rv-fire-a-dogs-tale-an-act-of-rver-heroism

Department of Redundancy Department

Heard at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship:  "I'm going to hit a provisional ... just in case."

*For the non-golfers, a provisional ball is a second ball that is hit ... just in case ... the first one turns out to be lost or out of bounds.

Charles Schwab Cup

I kept score for Michael Allen today.  He’s a nice guy, lives in Paradise Valley.  Shot even par, 1 bogey 1 birdie, on 15.  One of the amateurs had two birdies before that, and ended up with three, all on par 3’s.  Michael is chatty, and mentioned his failure to contribute several times along the way.

He’s not a long hitter, by tour standards.  He was trying a new driver, Taylor Made M1, 12 degrees.  It worked good, he liked it.  He got it to hit the ball higher, so he could go over the bunker on the 3rd hole.  He hit it 12 times, and every single one went as straight as a laser, not a foot of draw or fade.  It was amazing.  It has two adjusting weights, set at right angles.  He had both of them all the way in one direction, for higher ball flight.

Mike and his caddy Steve have been together two years.  Steve has been caddying on Tour for 44 years.  He’s worked for Nicklaus, Norman, and some other big names.  They get along well, lots of joking together.  On 17, a downhill, downwind par 4, Mike told his teammates how last year he had completely missed his drive, into the bushes in front of the tee.  Steve was across the tee and didn’t hear, and as Mike addressed the ball Steve reminded him “248 to clear the junk” – an outcropping of rocks in the middle of the fairway.  Mike said “What junk?”.  After the shot, which flew maybe 249, he gave Steve a little razzing, and I said “At least he didn’t say ‘75 to clear the bushes’”.   

This is the only gallery we saw all day.

 

 

The weather was awful, cloudy and cold and windy, with passing episodes of precipitation.  Flagstaff got record snow today.  The only thunder and lightning was off to the East, and moving away from us.  When the hail started, we took out our umbrellas.  I didn’t bring my golf umbrella, because with the radio and the headset and the handheld computer, fanny pack, pencils, and scorecard, I was out of hands and pockets to carry stuff, so I brought the little one that folds up to the size of a “big unit” hot dog, and it has a loop on the handle that I could thread the fanny pack belt through, and hang it behind me.  So as Mike opened his gigantic Nike golf umbrella, he said to me “Nice umbrella ... sweetheart.”

I got a better picture of my favorite cactus, a magnificent specimen of the rare crested saguaro.

 

 

And after we waited out a rain squall on 18, there was a huge double rainbow.

 

 

The sun will come out tomorrow.

Two minutes of economics

A two-minute video on some of the taboos in economics.

Best of ... pictures

We've been a lot of places in three years, and have a few pretty good pictures that I use as wallpaper on the PC, in slideshow mode.  And here they are.