Friday, June 29, 2018

Making Ice Cream with Liquid Nitrogen

Beautiful day today. I got up around 7am and went for a run before it got too hot. After shower and breakfast, we went to the beach. I was mostly interested in snorkeling around the pier. The water was clear and warm--great for snorkeling. We also managed to set up towels and chairs near the pier building, so I was in the shade and the rest had sun (I'm not a fan of sitting in the sun).

Snorkeling around the pilings of the pier was really fun. There were large schools of small fish that would gather around you if you stayed still, but would part before you like magic if you reached out and swept your hand around.

There was one small barracuda hanging around out there. You could see its teeth, but it was not threatening at all.

There were numerous sting rays lying on the sandy bottom beneath the pier. Some were as much as 3 feet across where others were just a handspan in size. They kind of nestle into the sand for camouflage, but once you know what you're looking for, they're pretty easy to spot. This is just a stock photo from Google, but it pretty well captures what we were seeing, though perhaps even more buried in the sand:
The pier pilings themselves were encrusted with barnacles and other coral-like things. If you looked closely, there were a lot of different animals and plants living on the sides of the pilings.

After the beach, we had lunch and played Phase 10 down at the pool in the condo complex:
Rachel took this while I was still working on getting out my phone. She's a pro. She also won the game.

We ran a few errands and had dinner at an Olive Garden. Our waiter was interesting since he'd just returned from a vacation in Barcelona. He used to live in Spain and was excited to hear that we were heading there for a year starting Sunday.

We dropped a few things off at Rachel's house and went to ChilliN7 Nitrogen Ice Cream. We need one of these in Walla Walla. The idea is that they pour the ingredients for your ice cream into a mixer along with some liquid nitrogen. They "churn" the ingredients into ice cream in about 30 seconds. It is soooooo goooooooddddd!
Also, video:
Good day and great to just spend time together.

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