For the beginning of our Southwest Tour, start here: Arches National Park

(I’ve been delaying on posting this one, mostly because I knew it was going to be painful picking only a small fraction of photos to share.)

We came back to the Air BnB and got ready for our big expedition of the day: Grand Canyon National Park! It’s about a 1.5 hour drive north from where we were staying in Flagstaff. The visitor center was only open until 4:00 so we thought we’d arrive around 3:00 and make a plan from there. Nice drive, sunny weather – a little on the cool side, but we dressed appropriately (it was around 52 degrees and windy).

We went to the Visitor Center and stamped our two booklets and decided we’d walk out to Mather Point Overlook, a 0.3 mile hike from the center. First glimpse of the canyon! It’s definitely awesome in the truest sense of the word. The overlook had plenty of railings lending the illusion of safety. Ha ha!

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We took some photos and enjoyed the view. A couple of young women noticed the fancy camera that Kris was carrying and asked him if he could take a photo of them with it and send it to them. Good grief! Kris assured them that their phones took excellent photos and his camera could do no better. They seemed dubious “Really?” but accepted the fact that Kris wasn’t going to comply with their request.

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From there we took the 0.7 hike over to Yavapai Overlook, to the west. It wasn’t a bad hike but because of the elevation, it still had me a bit out of breath. More photos, more ooh-ing and ahh-ing. One of the informational boards there told of a walking bridge for hikers that you could apparently see from where we were. It was circled on the photo shown, but I never found it. We went into the little museum which also had a nice view from the windows.

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We decided to make only two stops along the road: The Grandview Lookout and Lipan Lookout. We wanted to be at Lipan around sunset (7:00 p.m.) for good photography. The Grandview Lookout was some 10 miles down the road from the center, so the views were a little bit different, also a little higher in elevation, I think.

Kris found a little path that went down a ways and had a nice rock like a bench for sitting so I joined him there with a little coaxing. It was actually the beginning of a hiking trail that took you to someplace with the word Horseshoe in it. I really should have the map with me while I’m doing this. We sat for awhile just enjoying the view, taking a photo or two.

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There weren’t that many people around – this was a great time of year to do our sightseeing! We talked a little bit about the narrative of the National Park, that the great canyon was formed over billions of years by the river, carving away at the rock little by little. It seems so much more plausible to acknowledge that water receding from a great flood was the driving force to cutting through all that stone. Occam’s razor and all that.

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Onward to Lipan Lookout. The last part of the drive there (probably another 10 miles?) wound steadily uphill in a short switchback. It was a little more crowded there, but we found prime parking facing the canyon and the soon to be setting sun. But oh, was it cold! There was a bitter wind blowing much more fiercely than down below. We got out and looked around – I took a couple short videos to demonstrate the windiness of it all.

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The opposite edge of the canyon was 8 miles across from us – unbelievable. It was a little hazy and it didn’t seem as though the sunset would produce anything but a very dark silhouette of the canyon. We ate our crackers and cheese at 6:00 and talked about whether or not to stick it out for the true sunset. I noticed some cloud banks directly west behind which the sun would sink in about 10 minutes and suggested we stay at least until then, sure that there would be some glorious views with the sun partly obscured. And lo, it came to pass.

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Once behind the clouds, the sun cast long hazy rays over the whole canyon – we got a lot of photos. But it was so cold and windy that we just kept going back to the car, waiting for different shadows and light from the setting sun and then going out again to take a few more photos and admire the view.

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I had discovered a setting on my camera with a special effect called “vivid” that I’d been playing with. It really created some spectacular photos with the setting sun, especially off to the north where the canyon and hills were darkening – it made them all sorts of shades of blue. Ooh!

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So in the end, we stuck it out until just before the actual sunset, having taken probably 100 photos between us and sensing that we’d seen the best of it.

The drive home was mostly in the dark and we listened to chapter 12 of the first book of the Fellowship of the Ring: The Flight to the Ford. The darkness around us was appropriate to the mood.

Only one more national park to go! Next: Zion National Park

I’ll probably throw this into the deep deep Blog Canyon in the morning.

I’ve been thinking about my older sister, Leslie, who died 37 years ago today. Brain cancer. What a shock it was to get the diagnosis 6 months before that. I was five years younger than her and she was one of my best friends growing up. I’m sure I’ve written of her on this blog before and of the things we shared and enjoyed together. For one thing, we were obsessed with Dark Shadows, a creepy soap opera full of campy plots and bad acting. But we loved it. She and I used to play jacks together on the kitchen floor for hours. She had such nimble fingers! And with those nimble fingers, she was an excellent piano player as well. She took to it like a duck to water. She loved singing and was in a band for a time in her college years, which was so cool. A band! My sister was in a real live band that had gigs and everything! If you detect a little hero worship there, you’d be right. I looked up to her. She used to write the most interesting stories when she was in high school. We’d gather around and she’d read the next installment to us. As I recall, one of her stories was about a girl who got sucked into a strange subterranean world through the toilet. Ha ha!! Wish I could remember how that one ended. When she was babysitting, all camaraderie was put on hold. “You’re not the boss of me!” When I was in college and taking a ballroom dance class, Leslie helped me develop some new steps to the fox trot for the final exam, since my partner (a guy I didn’t know at all) refused to help me. We would sometimes laugh together over things until we cried. She had a wonderful sense of humor and wasn’t afraid to laugh at herself, too.

When I became a Christian in my early 20’s, it perplexed her, I think. This was something she didn’t understand, nor did she want to. Still, we were good friends, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, not at all.
Sometime during those six months between the diagnosis and her death, I wrote a poem to express some of the anguish I felt.

There is a word
Which stuns and shocks
And ruthlessly interrupts
The routine of life.
Nothing seems certain anymore,
Not today, nor tomorrow.

The future, with its
Careful plans,
And passionate dreams
Has been crushed
Beneath the weight of
That one cruel word:
Cancer.

Yet, hope is not extinguished
And faith is not in vain,
For where Christ lives,
Disease cannot triumph
And death cannot win.

Oh Leslie, let Him live
In your heart.

I never shared that poem with her. Why not? I don’t know – it was intensely private to me at the time and I probably feared her response. She knew the gospel but I don’t know if she ever responded to it. I’ll find out in eternity and until then, I am content with the knowledge that God is just, and He is merciful.

Leslie died at age 33. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been without her now much longer than I was with her.

I’m not ready to say goodbye to this post, not at all…

Remember Small Saul in the Big Bog? It has been some time since we’ve heard about him, but his story is being written and will be shared sometime soon. In the meantime, let me introduce you to two of Saul’s friends and acquaintances. I read that northern bog lemmings are often found in the same areas as masked shrews and meadow voles, all quite small critters. Sadly, one of the chief roles they play in the ecosystem is to serve as munchies for weasels, owls and hawks, sometimes even snakes. Let me ASSURE you that no such dastardly thing will happen in our story, although these predators may make a threatening appearance now and again to lend verisimilitude to life in the bog.

I am pleased to have you meet Tiggle, the masked shrew, and Henceforth, the meadow vole. Tiggle is smaller than Saul and is hungry nearly all the time, as is true of masked shrews in real life. He and his kind can only survive a few hours without food. He’s active day and night, year ‘round, so naturally that gives him quite an appetite. When he is resting (do they sleep?), his metabolism drops. Tiggle has been known to dig a tunnel or two in his day, but he’s also just as likely to use another animal’s tunnel. His friendship with Saul is fortuitous in that way, since Saul is an industrious fellow and a master tunnel maker.

Henceforth is what you might call “easily vexed” and not afraid to let others know it. But don’t let that alarm you. In a pinch, Henceforth is the right kind of friend to have around. He’s a little larger than Saul, but not by much. If you saw them running around the bog, you might not be able to tell the difference between them (one of the things that vexes Henceforth). He likes to dig burrows and store food for the winter, which keeps him fairly busy. He’s more active at night than during the day.

I’m looking forward to hearing about the adventures of these three creatures in the bog, aren’t you?

Gotta go – if I don’t eat in 5 minutes, this post will starve to death.

(To start at the beginning: Adventures in Italy Part 1)

Genova to Bordighera – August 2016

Our last morning at Il Borgo di Genova was pleasant; we had a nice long chat with Allesandra about the vagaries of operating a B&B.  She said they used to get more Americans there, but with the advent of Airbnb, more people were renting flats in town.  She was hoping the trend was reversing as people realized that you get what you pay for: no cleaning service and no breakfast with Airbnb.  We also said farewell to the American couple staying there, Richard and Annette, an older couple from California.  They were at the very end of a 3-week vacation in Europe.  We had quite enjoyed talking to them the previous morning.  Annette was quite chatty – reminded me of me, actually.  When she started in with talking about the parrot that they’d left behind, we realized we’d better start edging away, since we had a train to catch. 

We planned to take a train from our location to the main station in Genova to transfer to our train to Bordighera.  Once again, what looked so easy on paper turned out to be more complicated.  When Kris tried to buy the tickets, they were “non-sale-able.”  We’d allowed ourselves plenty of time, but still, this was concerning.  We went over to the ticket counter in hopes of talking to a human being.  Kris found a uniformed station employee standing around and asked him.  He looked at our tickets and uttered some words that were probably English, but we didn’t understand them.  We proceeded to get in line for the ticket counter, but the man said “No,” and repeated the words he’d said before, pointing outside the station.  If you’ve ever played Mad Gab, trying to figure out what he was saying was somewhat akin to that – the syllables were all there; it was just a matter of figuring out exactly what English phrase matched them.  Finally, it got through to us: news stand!  Kris asked him, “Metro or treno?” We didn’t really want to take the bus.  “Treno,” he assured him.  But why did we have to go out to the newsstand to buy the tickets?  Nevertheless, we went outside and across the busy street where Kris approached a man at the newsstand and was indeed sold tickets from Genova Brignole to Genova Principe.  The whole process was somewhat unnerving, but we have found that people are in general quite willing to help us even when there is a language barrier.  We made our connection to Bordighera in plenty of time and settled in for the 2-hour trip. About 60% of the trip was through tunnels, but the rest of it followed right along the Mediterranean coast, a feast for the eyes.

The train station in Bordighera was right next to “Bagni Kursaal,” the beach front property owned and operated by Sofia’s family.  If I haven’t explained this already, I met Sofia last October when she was an exchange student living with friends of ours in Indiana. We had planned this visit to Bordighera specifically to connect with her and meet her family and also to enjoy a nice relaxing day on the beach. 

Our hotel, Hotel Maligure, was about 3/4 of a mile west of the station, not too hard to find.  There’s only one main drag in Bordighera and everything is on it.  The lady at the desk didn’t speak any English, so our broken Italian is getting a little more of a workout. 

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After getting all our stuff put away, we put our suits on and headed back out to the beach, hoping to find a beach-side restaurant at which to have lunch.  As expected, the area is replete with one eating establishment after another.  San Marco’s it is!  After having a wonderful Greek salad (with almost no lettuce, mind you), we wanted to make our way back to Bagni Kursaal and see if we could connect with Sofia. 

Once we got there, I texted her and as we began looking over the price system for renting beach umbrellas and chairs for the day, she found us and introduced us to her mother, Ombretta, and some visiting friends.  Sofia speaks excellent English and Ombretta’s is pretty good as well, so we were in good hands.   Their friend, Simon (a young man of about 20), explained to us that in the 1990’s Italian schools started requiring English study, so people 30 and younger will tend to know English fairly well and those who are older don’t speak it at all.  Sofia’s mother learned it in a special school for language study, but Simon’s mother (who was also there) didn’t know any but the basics, which put us on equal footing with her. 

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The first order of business was to get the daily gelato and it turned out that they were all just headed to a gelato shop, so we tagged along.  Mission accomplished!

Once back at Bagni Kursaal, Sofia said that we would not be renting umbrellas or chairs since they had set a couple aside for our use during our stay, for which we were very grateful.  Sofia also gave us a couple towels to use and after a short chat, left us on our own.  She has to take some entrance exams for her fifth and final year of high school and needed to study and we were free to lounge, read, doze (in Kris’s case) and take a little dip in the ocean.  Swimming in the ocean was a new experience for me; the waves were really big and intimidating.  The water was actually not very cold, but still quite refreshing.  Ten minutes was all we needed. 

Toward the end of the afternoon, Ombretta came back over with Sofia to set up a lunch date with us for the next day (today).  She said she would make it an early lunch, since Sofia had insisted to her that Americans don’t wait until mid-afternoon to eat lunch.  We’re on Italian time now and reassured her that it didn’t really matter to us; we hadn’t eaten lunch that day until 3:00 p.m.  However, she wanted to do what we were used to, so we set it up for 1:30 p.m. They had a dinner engagement and went on their way and it was starting to get late in the day and cooling off a bit, so we went back to the hotel to wash up and go out to find a place to eat supper.

That’s a wrap on Part 13! Next: Adventures in Italy Part 14

This blog is replete with deleting in the morning.

I’m still trying to organize the family history documents and photos chronologically. These are all things that my mom passed on to me well before she died, along with more things I came into possession of after she died.

Usually there are just the barest details known about some of the “ancient” antecedents – birth, death, children’s names, some military service records. Later on, a few photos begin to make their way into the narrative as the invention of cameras created a photography industry. It’s enough sometimes to imagine a story about these people who contributed to my gene pool. But mostly all I have is a small amount of data and a large amount of conjecture. I’m very good at conjecture, as it turns out.

Recently, however, I found my mom’s accumulation of information about my Grandpa’s older brother Harvey, who went by the nickname Red. (In a surprising surfeit of “Red’s” in the family, my grandpa later also went by the nickname Red – that’s how I knew him). Here’s a story I didn’t have to depend upon conjecture for – it was all written down by his wife, Lucille.

When Red and Lucille met, he was 28 going on 29 and she was 16 going on 17. They fell in love, but she was too young and he was in the army. They wrote letters to one another for a time, which are also in my possession (not the originals). In August of 1927, Lucille wrote to Red with the worst possible news for him to hear. I’ll share some excerpts:

Dear Red,
…Red, I’ve a terrible confession to make. Do you remember that nite? You asked me if I’d consider marrying and I said yes. I’ve decided that I’m too undecided. I want to work and go to college and help my folks.

Please forgive me and try to forget me Red, Dear. I know you love me. I thought I loved you, too, but I guess if I’m so undecided about it all, I really can’t love you like I should. Also, Dear, I couldn’t settle down. I’m too much for variety. You are older and ready to settle, therefore, you should find one more your type than I.

…Will I be a liar in your mind if I break my promise? You know people have always broken engagements.

I have no ring, therefore, it isn’t really binding. It is terribly hard to write this to you, but I’ve decided it is fairer than trying to make you believe I will someday be Mrs. Red.

…You can easily forget me. I’m a little devil anyway. …Red, Dear, you stop and think and you’ll decide you really would hate to know you had to live with me for God knows how many years.

…You go out with other girls and I’ll do the same with others. We can still be friends and a year from now, I may decide that you are absolutely my Man. If I do, really love you, I’ll come back and so will you. Don’t you think so? Answer this, if you wish, but I don’t suppose you’ll want to. I may regret this letter someday. Your unfaithful sweetheart.

P.S. Use lighter stationery cause I’ve had to pay postage on your letters and they tease the life out of me.

Lovingly, Lucille.

I don’t have Red’s reply, so I can only imagine the distress this missive may have caused him. Years later, when Lucille was very old, she decided to write the story of her life down, part of which I also have. The story picks up with her remembrances all those years later:

What a life. I was 17 years old, gainfully employed in a wonderful job, and I was rich, rich, finally rich!

And…I was in love. How much better can life get than it was for me in 1927? On September 2, a month before my 18th birthday, I married my love. My groom, Harvey (Red), was twelve years my senior and a veteran of the First World War…

Well! It appears that less than a month after Lucille sent that heartbreaking letter to Red, they got married! Red and Lucille drove to St. Louis, Missouri where he took a course in aviation and she found work in the office of the Universal Aviation Company. She got her first plane ride while there and said it was an “indescribable thrill.”

They drove from there to California and Red got a job as a mechanic, being unable to find a job in aviation. Lucille found work as a stenographer and wrote, “It was an exciting, educational and fulfilling life that I led.”

In June of 1930 they had their first baby, a boy named Patrick and ended up returning to Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Red traveled to southern Minnesota and bought an airplane, which he flew to Grand Rapids. However, when landing the plane at the fair grounds (no air strip available there yet), he hit the grandstand with one of the wings and severely damaged the plane, thus ending his career in aviation.

Sadly, Red became ill with a kidney ailment he’d contracted during the war. He went to the Veteran’s Hospital at Fort Snelling for treatment. Red called Lucille from the hospital and begged her to come get him, so she took a bus down from Duluth, checked him out and they took a bus back to Duluth. As she said, “That trip was a harrowing, frightening experience. He was so very ill and I was so young, scared and inexperienced.”

He was admitted to the hospital in Duluth. I’ll let Lucille tell the story of what happened next:

I arrived at the hospital very early in the morning and went directly to Red’s room. The sign on the door stated, ‘No admittance. Inquire at desk.’ I waited patiently instead of inquiring immediately, assuming that the nurses were busy with him. …After a while, when no one came in or out of his room, I timidly checked with the nurse at the desk. Perhaps they had moved him during the night. The nurse looked up and tersely informed me in five short words, ‘The patient expired last night.’ What a terrible shock it was to hear those words. I was not yet twenty-one years old. I was a bride, a mother and a widow – and I was still only twenty…”

Poor Lucille. Although her life seemed to be over, she went on, got a job to provide for their son and eventually got remarried.

I got quite engrossed in this story; suddenly somebody from my past had come to life! At least for a short time. I only have one photo of Red and Lucille. It makes me think they knew how to have a good laugh and must have enjoyed their short married life very well.

I hope you enjoyed this journey into the past with me.

I’ll probably do something with this in the morning, but I’m leaving it up to conjecture.

When a robin goes a-bobbin’
In the shillow shallow seas
He splishes and he splashes
Until everyone agrees
That his fithers and his feathers
From his beak down to his toes
Are as squeaky peaky clean
As a newly watered rose

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I’ll prilly prolly delete this in the early pearly morn.

Yes, I’m still plodding away at the poinciana project. I’ve done two rough drafts with colored pencil and decided it was time to try a small watercolor before attempting to do a larger one.

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The jury is still out on whether or not to add color to the background. I have mixed feelings (more negative than positive) about how it looks with this one. I’d love to get your feedback!

If you want to see the previous post with the original photograph and rough drafts, here you go: Another Poinciana

I’ll poinciana delete this in the morning.

(To start at the beginning: Adventures in Italy Part 1)

Camogli August 2016

The beach was covered with beach umbrellas and lots of tanned bodies. There were a few other pale-skinned people like us, but not many.  🙂 We had seen an intriguing castle-like building on the other side of the beach that we wanted to explore, so we made our way over there.

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Kris went out on some craggy rocks so he could sit down and put his tootsies in the sea (a phrase that should be familiar to some of our children). I had to assess the danger value first; this is why I’m not much of an adventurous traveler and need someone else to lead the way. It looked like tricky climbing, but I eventually picked and crawled my way over to where he was and stuck my own tootsies briefly in the sea. As we sat there in the sun Kris felt something occasionally grazing against his leg in the water. Suddenly he realized that it was a little creature of some sort and yanked his feet out of the water to investigate. Sure enough, there was a little crab hiding in the rocks just under the water. He stuck a longish piece of grass in the crab hole trying to entice it out, but it just clipped off the end of the grass and stayed where it was. 

 We still hadn’t found the right approach to the castle (although we were directly under one side of it), so we went back and around to the other side and up the stairs.  It turned out that the castle had been in this place for hundreds of years – since 1130.  It was located on what used to be an island of sorts, called  “L’isola di Camogli.”  The castle itself was named “Castel Dragone,” named after a “savage Ottoman pirate…known as Dragut.”  The building served for a time as a prison and there were still bars over the windows.  There were also a couple cannons outside. 

 On our way back down, we realized that we were passing a large old church with a very grand interior, so we popped in for a quick look around and a photo.  Everything you see here makes you want to capture it on a camera.  I wonder if before the advent of photography, people were more naturally observant and better at retaining visual details. We don’t really look at things, we take pictures of them, which I can’t help but feel is a little bit different. 

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 We found a nice place to sit for a while and watch the world go by.  The buildings are of many different pastel colors and appear to be all brick siding.  As we sat there looking around, I began to observe that the building in front of us didn’t have the textured appearance you would expect from bricks.  I went over for a closer look and discovered that the bricks were painted on!  Cheaters!  It looked like a lot of trouble to go to for a brick appearance, but I have to admit the effect was quite striking.  (Note: later we read something about Camoglie and found out that the town is well-known for this type of art, called “trompe l’oeil.”  Go figure!)

 We had purchased round-trip tickets and knew that we could catch a train back to Genova just before 6:30 so we got to the station about 15 minutes early (after an exceptionally long walk up thousands and thousands of stairs; I’m not going to tell you the exaggeration factor – you just need to know that it seemed like thousands and thousands).

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The platform was already fairly crowded and as we stood there waiting, it filled up until we were a mass of humanity crammed together.  This didn’t bode well.  All those swimmers were going home, apparently.  The train came right on time and everyone swarmed en masse to the doors.  People were packed in tightly and it seemed hardly possibly any more could fit in each train car, but people pushed their way on.  This was looking like it was going to be a horribly uncomfortable trip, so we elected to wait for the next train, which, according to the schedule, would come by at 6:51. 

 Sure enough, at 6:51 a train came zipping up to the station and zipped right on by without stopping.  Uh oh.  We had apparently misunderstood something about the schedule so we went back in to study it to see if there was any clue as to why it hadn’t stopped. This was an important detail since there was to be another train at 7:24 and we began to be a little concerned that that train might not stop either, for reasons unknown to us and it was one of the last trains out.  We walked in and out of the station multiple times double checking the schedule, but the information window itself was closed and it appeared that station personnel had left for the day.  By God’s providence, the last time we went in to look at the schedule, an employee of the station came out of a locked door, presumably on her way home.  We enquired about the train that didn’t stop, counting on her to know enough English to understand us.  She did and pointed out a little teeny tiny notice at the bottom of the schedule for that train that said “festivi – Sabato.”   Relief flooded us as we realized that the 6:51 train only stopped in Camogli on Saturdays during particular holiday weekends.  She reassured us that the 7:24 train would stop and lo, it came to pass. 

 After we got back, we headed out on foot again to find a restaurant.  Giovanni had given us the names of a couple nearby that were open on Sundays; most restaurants are not.  We found one less than 10 minutes away and I’ll spare you this time of all the details involved in the menu, ordering and eating.  Suffice it to say that we got our daily pesto pasta fix and finished the meal again with tiramisu. 

To be continued! Adventures in Italy Part 13

The blog train will drop this post off in the morning.

This is a test of your imagination. Don’t feel bad if you fail it, like those 3-D illustrations that ran rampant some years ago.

Do you see the toad’s face in that set of rock formations? You do? Phew! His mouth is easy to see, but you have to squinch your eyes a bit to see his eyes. My impression – and this is completely up for debate – is that he’s a little on the curmudgeonly side.

The curmudgeonly toad
Protrudes from the rock
His eyes are crossed,
His mouth is locked.
If he could talk,
He’d probably grumble
”Why am I stuck here?
Mumble, mumble…”

By the way, I feel like “squinch” should be a word, but I am informed by my computer overlords that it is not.

I’ll probably mumble mumble this in the mumble.

For the beginning of our Southwest Tour, start here: Arches National Park

We left Sanders for the 30-minute drive to Petrified Forest National Park. We’re getting our money’s worth out of Kris’s lifetime membership card for seniors. PFNP was pretty cool – lots of painted desert stuff at the beginning (North Gate entrance) and the petrified wood towards the end (South Gate). Lots more photos and a few mini-hikes.

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We stopped at the Historic Inn and had the pleasure of getting some fun intel from the lady running the cash register. She was really a hoot – local color at its best.

She noticed me standing around looking at stuff and pointed out some tiles on the ceiling that were done in the style of Pueblo art. After giving me the background on them, she said, “But they were made in the 1930’s and have lead in them so you can’t lick them.” I thanked her for the warning and said, “I suppose when you looked at me you thought, there’s somebody whose first move after hearing about the tiles will be to jump up and try to lick them.” We had a nice chuckle over that – she had a fun sense of humor. The tiles were painted by CCC artisans, which surprised me. I had kind of thought that the CCC workers of the 1930’s were all doing basic construction jobs and grunt work.

She told us about the petroglyph of a coyote that was in the same room, pointing out that the coyote’s tail was abnormally angled over its back. Since coyotes keep their tails straight behind them when running (which this one was doing), she said her best guess as the why the tail was in that odd position was that the person making the petroglyph was trying to best utilize the space on the rock. Ha ha! That’s as good a guess as any, I suppose.

The Petrified Forest is the only park in our system of national parks that contains a section of Historic Route 66, by the way.

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When we stopped at the Puerco Pueblo and walked the short trail to see everything, I noticed that “Stay on the paved trail” signs were numerous. I told Kris, “I’m thinking about walking off the trail – do you think anyone would mind?” He got right into the spirit of things and replied, “I’m wondering when I visit you in prison if it will be an open room at a table or if you’ll be behind glass.” I answered, “I’m guessing that for the severity of the infraction, I’ll be behind glass.” That’s how we roll.

The Puerco Pueblo contained ruins from a large Pueblo compound that was probably inhabited 800-2000 years ago, so it was interesting to imagine people occupying those spaces that were just bare vestiges of the original homes. We also stopped at the “Newspaper Rock,” which contained a large fallen boulder of sandstone that had lots of petroglyphs carved into it. Very interesting! We saw small petroglyph markings in other places as well.

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We skipped the separate loop for the Blue Mesa area, figuring we could see all the blue mesas we wanted right from the road we were on. Kris posited that when we told people about our visit to the PF, someone would invariably say, “Did you take the Blue Mesa loop? It was BY FAR the best part of the park!”

Our next stop was the Jasper Forest, our first glimpse of the actual petrified wood of the petrified forest. Kris said, “When we get to the overlook, I’m going to make an announcement to the other tourists: ‘We’re all going to take a piece of petrified wood and not tell anyone else.’” He’s a fun traveling companion! We did not, however, make a secret pact with the other tourists (nor did we take any wood, I hasten to point out). More’s the pity.

Another display of petrified wood was called the Crystal Forest, a place where much of the inside matter in the wood had turned into quartz and sparkled in the sun.

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The final stop was the Rainbow Forest Museum and Gift Shop. The phrase “millions of years” was evidently required verbiage on every display.

We walked around a little loop that they had with plenty more petrified wood that you could actually touch and sit on. We did both. And took a selfie. Oh, and I spotted a little lizard that we each got nice close-ups of.

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On our way back to the car to eat lunch I spotted another little critter crawling along the sidewalk in a strange manner. I stopped and took a photo, but wasn’t quite close enough to figure out what it was.

I was thinking to myself how good I am at seeing things that others don’t see, patting myself on the proverbial back as it were. I walked slowly closer to the odd looking little critter and when I got close enough I saw that it was a scrap of black plastic from a bag that a breeze had been moving along on the sidewalk.

The good Lord always knows when I need a little humbling.

Next on our Southwest Tour: The Grand Canyon! Grand Canyon National Park

The vultures are circling this post – might not be here in the morning.

About thirty years ago, my mother discovered bread machines. It was a happy discovery for her – she was so thrilled with hers that she bought one for each of her six children as a way of sharing the joy. We promptly named ours “R2-D2” (Artoo-Detoo) for obvious reasons.

Mom also instructed us in the liturgy of the machine. There was a recipe for chocolate chip bread in the accompanying recipe booklet which instructed you to wait until the machine gave out a number of beeps after the second mixing, your cue to put in the chocolate chips. I don’t think Mom ever actually made the chocolate chip bread, but every time the machine uttered its programmed beeps, she would crow, “TIME TO PUT IN THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!” Yes, just like that in all caps. Soon, we were all saying it in a very liturgical manner:

“Beep beep beep beep beep”
“TIME TO PUT IN THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!”

We enjoyed our bread making robot and tried a lot of the recipes (probably even the chocolate chip bread because why not?). But the day came when one little loaf was not enough to feed our growing army of boys. I learned how to make five loaves of whole wheat bread at a time and we retired our beeping friend to the storeroom in the basement where it sat uncomplainingly while gathering dust.

We ran out of bread recently and I haven’t had time to make any. Today, my husband remembered R2-D2 and brought it back to a place of usefulness. It had not forgotten how to bake a tolerably good loaf of bread, and when the beeps started in, I blurted out “TIME TO PUT IN THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!”

Ah, bread is good; liturgy is good.

“The Lord be with you.”
“And also with you.”

Beep, beep, beep beep, beep
DELETE!