thevcblog: California Day 7 - Exploring Lancaster Some More

Lancaster has a meadery! It's a couple doors down from a Tractor Supply in a dying shopping strip near the interstate. Not exactly a glamour spot.

They make small batches in association with a wine maker and brewery called Two Tracks. The mead is quite tasty.

I tried three varieties, this was my favorite. It's the special Christmas Mead.

They also had a peach/pineapple and a strawberry with lime.

All three had an interesting and unique earthy flavor, which I suspect comes from the local honey which is based on nectar from the abundant sagebrush.

Sadly, Two Tracks is closing at the end of the month. This may put an end to the mead operation, which piggybacks on the winery.

Two Tracks doesn't sell any food beyond nachos, and I needed more for dinner than that, so I popped in to the Vallarta Mexican Grocery on my way back. Also to top off the snack bag because I am back on the bike touring tomorrow.

THE MEXICAN GROCERY IS AMAZING THEY SELL FRESH TAMALES HOT FROM INSTAPOT STEAMERS!!!!!

This is so good. And I got Mexican pastries to go with my coffee tomorrow and apples for the snack bag.

I want a Mexican grocery that sells tamales in Elkridge. Somebody please make this happen. OMG SO GOOD. I mean it's right up there with the fried lake trout at the Green Valley Market hot bar. Seriously.

Lancaster has a stadium. I passed by it on the way to the meadery. It has an FA-18 Hornet jet fighter out front that NASA used to use as a chase plan for experimental test aircraft.

What Lancaster doesn't have any more is a baseball team. They used to have a Single A Desert League team, the Sound Breakers, but they folded years ago. A soccer team uses the stadium now.

I also passed by the neighborhood elementary school.

I have never seen so many portable classrooms in one place ever.

Is it a coincidence that Lancaster is crazy over ADUs? Maybe they should have spent some money building schools instead of a baseball stadium.

I went out to the Brooklyn Deli on the BLVD for lunch and had a corned beef sandwich. It was great. The deli owner appeared to be both Jewish and Mexican.

The highlight of the day, though, was visiting the Lancaster Museum Of Art and History (MOAH). This is a modest art museum on the BLVD.

But it's really good. Here are some of my favorite works.
This one is by Nathan Huff.

My thoughts on this are that pillows are comfortable for people, but these pillows are not comfortable for the tree, and if you don't respect the tree, you aren't going to get comfortable pillows in the end.

This one is called "Burn Pile/All Kinds of Murmuring Here and There", by Bachrun Lomele.

The artist solicited anonymous statements from his neighbors. These are randomly scrolled through red LED displays at the bottom of the piece. They are like embers.

This one is by Vojislav Radovanovic.

My cell camera cannot capture the intensity of the colors of this work. The violet and green of the bird are completely lost. The bird is eating a berry from the bush he sitting in. But the berries are eyes. Like his own eye.

There are also interesting things up on the roof, but I didn't record the artists.

There is a door with a window, for access to some machinery in a shed on the roof.

But if you look close, the window is actually a painting of an imprisoned girl looking through a screen.

It's hard not to think of the ever-growing horrors of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal with this.

There is a bench, with a mural on the base of roadside construction workers.

I like how whimsical this is. I hope the art we get at our new Elkridge Community Center is in this spirit.

And the architecture of the MOAH roof complements the view of the modern apartment buildings across the BLVD very nicely.