Hot and Not-So-Hot Dogs

A girl and her dog.

So, it is one week and many hours since we set out for the west, all ready for our vacation on the road and throughout California.  That first day, somewhere in the middle of Utah, we decided to test our decision to cook on the engine.  Technically, it wouldn't really be cooking as we were really planning on heating up hot dogs (which are pre-cooked) on the engine.  We got them all wrapped in foil, decided to set them on the radiator hose, and discussed the time (or miles) we should let them cook, er, heat up.  After about 40 minutes, we pulled over, hungry and ready for some hot dogs.  Sad to say, the dogs were barely warm. However, they were pre-cooked, and warm dogs were good enough for us.  So we found a nice park, brought the luke-warm dogs, buns, and all the condiments to a picnic table, and set about having lunch under the Utah sky.  It was actually pretty good.  Topics discussed during lunch included various other safe engine locations we could heat food.  After all, we still had breakfast burritos ready to be heated the next morning.

The next day, we tried another engine location, this time placing our pre-cooked, but refrigerated breakfast burritos on the engine in another location.  We drove for about a half an hour, pulled over, and had nice, toasty burritos (partly scorched - perfect!) for breakfast.  Eureka!  And even driving over some bumpy roads didn't knock them off the engine.  Now we were cooking, so to speak.

So we made it through Utah on eight breakfast burritos and 12 hot dogs and lived to tell the tale.

PS - I have been without internet access for a week.  I know, right?  But we did survive, and vacation is just about half over. However, I've been unable to blog because of the lack of internet access (not to mention I'm totally on another planet news-wise and hope nothing drastic has happened). We're a week out on the road, currently somewhere near San Diego (Legoland tomorrow!), have wifi which seems to be working beautifully, and I'm trying to catch up on our vacation adventures.