Phoenix, 02/21: hither and yon: handmade sausage, South Mountain and a Mystery Castle
February 22, 2009
Another day of touristy doings:
- A trip to an Arizona landmark: Schreiner's Fine Sausage to stock up on handmade sausage for the evening's Seafood Boil. Some of the best fresh sausage there is... and we each had a "Brown Bag" (sausage of your choice served on a bun with whatever condiments, chips and a soda; eaten outside sitting on a bright red bench). Four kinds of sausage and some of their homemade Teryaki beef jerky later, it was off to
- South Mountain Preserve to do the requisite tourist drive to the summit and gaze out over Phoenix, accompanied by at least a gazillion other people with the same idea. And then on to
- one of our favorite places to take people: Phoenix's own Mystery Castle. Not what you would expect. In the 1930's, Boyce Luther Gulley was living in Seattle where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He left his wife and daughter... abandoned them... and moved to Phoenix, where he built a very eclectic 18 room house out of whatever materials were lying around or that he could scavenge. No blueprints, no fancy design work: he just built whatever his mind came up with. Much of the house he designed with his daughter in mind. Ironically, he recovered from tuberculosis only to die of cancer in 1945, never reuniting with his family. Wife and daughter moved into the house the same year and the daughter, Mary Lou, still lives there.
The Mystery Castle moniker came from a Life Magazine January, 1948 Cover Story entitled "Life Visits a Mystery Castle: A Young Girl Rules Over the Strange Secrets of a Fairy Tale Dream House in the Arizona Desert." The cover photograph featured Mary Lou posing atop the cantilever staircase leading to the roof of the house.
When we first toured the house a bunch of years ago, Mary Lou led the tours; now she is too frail to do so, but she was sitting in one of the rooms on the tour and we spoke to her. So then
- Back to the house for a brief rest ("the Saturday afternoon nap") followed by one of our Seafood Boils: the aforementioned sausage, two kinds of crab, shrimp, potatoes, corn all boiled outside in large turkey fryers in water seasoned with Old Bay, onions, lemons, and beer; accompanied by coleslaw and preceded by fresh boiled artichokes.
- Dee and Mark finished off the evening in fine style when they brought out their respective guitars (Dee played the Baby Martin she brought with her all the way from North Carolina) and jammed into the night.
The house is built on the mountain and looking back up is Lions Head Rock