All I Want For Christmas...

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. Then came the shopping mayhem days: Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Today's Giving Tuesday, a day to make a difference.

And, though you're surely inundated by pleas from this great organization and that terrific non-profit, let me tug a little at your heartstrings.

Since sometime in the last century, more than 18 years if you really want to know, I've worked at a small awesome unique tuition-free ballet school. In a nutshell (though we don't put on a Nutcracker), we audition kids in the NYC public schools, and we teach them to dance. And, so that training is frictionless, we have an on-site public school for our students, we help them with transportation, we provide an after school program for working families, and did I mention that there's no tuition for the ballet program? If I may say so myself, we do great work.

In order to conduct auditions, we rent cars - lots of Zipcars - and send teams of people out to the elementary schools. Over the course of a year, we'll audition about 30,000 kids - kids who would never otherwise get a chance to dance. Crunching down the numbers, it ends up costing us just under $13 for each kid that we audition.

Do you have $13 to spare? If so, we'll put it to good use.

Here's a link. It's really fast and easy.



Think of all the people who ask you to sponsor them in walk-a-thons or the like. This is my walk-a-thon. Thank you. Really, thank you so much.

Game, Set, Match

Setting: Our car, at the outset of a two hour drive, the day after Thanksgiving.

Husband: "I can't believe you didn't swap your iPod over to all Christmas music."

I reach for the radio, and he says "how do you know you're going to find any Christmas music?" I push the on button, it launches into the usual last-listened-to NPR. I hit the station search button, and 94.3 locks in, in the middle of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.

How it is that my husband did not know that the FM dial is littered with all-Christmas-all-the-time at this time of the year is beyond me.

Point to the Magpie.

Alice Shook Her Head

It wasn't until I got to work this morning that I remembered about the tattoo.

"Is that a real tattoo?"
"What does it say?"

No, it's a temporary, and it's because months ago I signed onto a goofy Kickstarter where for a bit of pocket change, I got a temporary tattoo with a line out of Through The Looking Glass. The company doing this carved up both Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass into around 5000 unique sentences/phrases, and issued them as one-offs. My job was to apply the tattoo, and upload a picture to their website.

So I did.

Of course it's on my neck. It says "Alice shook her head". But the most entertaining part might be that people in my office actually thought it could be a real tattoo. As if.

Squash Bread #2

I love this bread. It's lovely toasted, it smells a little like Zwieback (which, unhappily, Nabisco discontinued), and it makes me feel virtuous because it's laced with puréed squash. The original recipe includes walnuts, raisins and cranberries and has a long rise in the fridge. I wanted a more versatile loaf, so I leave out all of the nuts & berries, and I start it in the bread machine, but I bake it in the oven.

Yeasted Squash Bread (adapted from Baking With Julia)

Wet stuff

1 egg
1 cup squash purée
2 T. warm water
5 T. butter (at room temperature)

Dry stuff

2 2/3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 t. cinnamon
½ t. freshly grated nutmeg
½ t. salt
2 t. active dry yeast

1) Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a loaf pan.
2) Add ingredients to the bread machine in the order listed - that is, wet stuff at the bottom, dry on top. Set it for "dough" and come back when it beeps.
3) Sprinkle some flour on your countertop, dump the dough out of the bread machine bowl, squish it into a rectangle and fold it into a log. Seam side down, put it in a greased loaf pan. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rise in a warm spot for a couple of hours.
4) Bake until done - about 45 minutes - I usually take it out of the pan after about 30 minutes and put it back on the oven rack for the last 15 minutes.
5) Cool on a rack.

[If you want to do this by hand, you are on your own - but dumping everything in a bowl, mixing it together, and then turning it out to knead sounds about right.]

Squash Bread #1

There are hundreds of dozens of recipes for pumpkin bread on the web. I'm posting this mostly because I finally tweaked one just so, and I want to remember it, damn it. It's good.

Squash Bread (adapted from Simply Recipes)

Dry stuff

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup spelt
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 t. allspice

Wet stuff

2 eggs
1 cup squash purée*
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup melted coconut oil

Other stuff

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1) Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a normal sized loaf pan.
2) Mix all the dry ingredients together in a good sized bowl.
3) Crack the eggs into a medium bowl, and beat them up with a fork. Or a whisk. Add the squash and the water; stir to mix. Add the melted coconut oil.
4) Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and stir until just combined.
5) Add the walnuts. Oh, fine. Leave them out if you must.
6) Bake in that greased loaf pan until done - about 50 minutes - but check it with a cake tester to make sure it's done in the middle.
7) Cool on a rack for about 10 minutes, then remove from pan to finish cooling.



*I have no interest in eating winter squash, ever. I just don't like it. But I always seem to end up with an acorn squash or three butternuts - they're like the fall version of pass-along zucchini - and I don't like to waste. So I cut them in half, scoop out the seeds, and roast the squash cut side down on a silpat. When it's cool, I scoop the flesh out, buzz it in the food processor, and freeze it in 1 cup portions. It's good for quick breads or muffins, it gives body to a batch of chili, and I use it in a streamlined version of a pumpkin yeast bread from Baking With Julia (in which I leave out all of the crunchy bits and which I think I'll post later in the week).

The Eleventh Whale

The other day, I sent a text to my daughter:

Ask and ye shall receive:

Happy birthday, little goose.

Weekend Update

You know, it was kind of a nice weekend. I puttered around the house, and I caught up with an old friend while my kid was getting her hair cut. I passed along some Playmobil and Calico Critters, and I put my too-small hiking boots on eBay.

I took a picture of the Cimicifuga racemosa - which started opening its little flowers a week ago. It doesn't know that it's November?

I finished building the Lego Mini Cooper. The girl and I had started it a while ago, and then it got put away in a frantic house cleaning for something or another. I pulled it out this afternoon and had a delightful time snapping the rest of it together.

When I was done, we put a hamster in it. That's Ottilia, the docile hamster. Anastasia wanted no part of the Mini.

I love the Mini. I have made it abundantly clear that it is MY car, and that it is NOT to be cannibalized for other Lego creations. I may take it to my office, just for safekeeping.

In a not fun hour, I vacuumed up three million Nerds that a visiting child had strewn all over my house. Nerds are now off the Halloween candy list, and that child is never coming here again. Seriously, she opened all of the remaining boxes of Nerds and, I don't know, they were EVERYWHERE. We are going to be finding them when Easter rolls around. Nerds, by the way, are almost as annoying to step on in bare feet as Legos are.

I made 3 pints of potato and leek soup (two leeks, two potatoes, three cloves of garlic, a quart of chicken stock, a pinch of tarragon and a bit of salt) for my lunch for this week.

We had rice and stir-fried vegetables leftover in the fridge, so to amplify dinner, I tried out two new recipes, using miso, because I everywhere I turn, I see another recipe that includes miso. One was tofu with a maple miso glaze, the other was a salad dressing which I sort of improvised (a blob of miso, some apple cider vinegar, the last 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil, a tablespoon of safflower seed oil, a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a dribble of soy sauce, some lemon juice because I'd forgotten that I'd already added vinegar). The girl rejected the tofu, because I made the mistake of mentioning the maple, but ate the salad without complaint. She seems to think that sweet doesn't belong in savory dishes, and yet she douses everything in ketchup. Even rice. [I've spared you that picture.] I liked the tofu, and I can see adding miso to lots of things.

I did not lose my temper at the awful postal clerk, but as I was tossing out the receipt later, I noticed that there was a website and a request to "tell us about your recent postal experience". So I did. THAT was gratifying. Maybe they'll act on my feedback and move the awful clerk to the back room where there are no customers. I know people in town - my husband included - who will wait for the next clerk rather than deal with her.

I made two loaves of bread - one a plain yeast bread for toast and sandwiches, the other a squash quick bread. Oh, you could call it pumpkin bread, but I used pureed butternut squash because that's what was in the freezer.

And I wrapped some presents for the girlie. Old road atlases are my new favorite wrapping paper.

How was your weekend?

Madness Lies This Way

I don't like loose ends. I hate it when things don't get resolved, I like everything in its place (although the clutter in my house might not lead you to think so). And when I respond to your PR pitch with a genuine question, I want an answer.

Last night, I was tidying up my email, in which "tidying up" equals "delete delete delete", as one does. In the morass I found a pitch from a PR company, flogging a GPS pet tracker, "that is perfect for your holiday or stocking stuffer gift guide" (like I have such a thing). If Fluffy runs out of the "safe zone", "you will receive an instant text message or email with a live-GPS tracking map to assist you finding your dog/pet immediately". Not only that, the thing acts like a combination FitBit/NannyCam for your dog: "this technology will showcase when your pet is getting exercise...and really let you know if your pet is getting enough exercise on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Also, if you have a dog walker--you can really monitor if your dog is getting enough exercise via this technology."

[Insert eyeroll]

I had, in September when I got this email, responded to the PR flack:

What happens to the GPS if the pet is eaten by a coyote? This a serious question, BTW. Lots of coyotes in my area.

And I have had no response to date.

I imagine that when the coyote (wolf, bear, lion) eats the tracked pet, the tracker ends up in the coyote (wolf, bear, lion). And then, we get a ping that the pet has crossed the line, so we start following the GPS tracking map on the trail of Fluffy, and OOPS, end up in the lion's den. Somehow, this seems like a misguided application of GPS technology. Or not, whatev.

But why didn't the PR flack answer my question?

In Which I Introduce My Child To Some Possibly Inappropriate Television

Despite a general feeling that I'd rather be reading a book, there are some TV shows that I've gotten sucked into. In the past year, I've watched all of House of Cards, all of Orange is the New Black, and all of Luther. In each case it's been in a not-binge, not-attenuated way like thirteen episodes in two weeks - not thirteen weeks, not thirty six hours.

A couple of months ago, I started on Call the Midwife, and I was hooked from the beginning. It's set in mid-century London, and the main characters are a group of lay and nun nurse-midwives, caring largely for poor working class families. Gripping explicit birth scenes punctuate a through-story of the interpersonal dynamics of the midwives, and a fascinating exploration of the life and times of post-war London. It's fabulous television (and my friend the midwife says the birth scenes are really well done).

One night, after I'd watched a few episodes, all by myself on the couch, enraptured, the girl child came downstairs to see what I was doing. Oh, watching TV, said I. Can I watch with you?

Around went the wheels in my head. Many of the pregnancies and births are difficult - babies die, a mother dies, a mother's been beaten, there's an illegal abortion, a teenage pregnancy, incest. I thought quickly, and said yes. (And then looked it up on Common Sense Media, which rates it 14 and up.) A week or so later, she came down and asked again. That time, I said let's start at the beginning, and we'll watch the whole series together.

We watched the first two seasons on Netflix, and switched to the DVR to watch the third season on PBS (it's since been added to Netflix). The girl was distinctly amused by the warning that came up on the PBS broadcast:

Call the Midwife is definitely not for every 10 year old. In fact, there are plenty of grown-ups who might be too squeamish for it. But for me and my girl, it was a wonderful TV experience. I paused it from time to time so we could talk about what was happening. Pre-eclampsia is still a very serious pregnancy complication. A rare few women have 25 pregnancies. Oh, that white woman had an affair with a black man - how's the mixed race baby going to go over? [Actually, that happened in two episodes, with radically different end results.] It's highly unlikely that a woman would give birth to triplets without having known there were multiples. No one should give birth alone. Sometimes babies die. Mostly babies come out head first; a breech birth is a hair-raising event. Wrap that baby in a blanket so it doesn't get cold! Placenta previa, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, polio, retained placenta and cancer all make appearances.

It so happened that her math teacher was pregnant while we were watching, which lead to a lively discussion about what would happen if said very pregnant math teacher went into labor in the classroom. I could deliver the baby, she said. I'd send all of the boys out to get clean towels and hot water, and I'd tell her 'little pants' and now 'a big push'. I suggested she might should run get the principal and have someone call an ambulance. She agreed. I don't think I want to see my math teacher's lady parts.

Rosie

Last month, we visited the FDR house in Hyde Park. In our exit through the gift shop, the girl picked out a Rosie the Riveter t-shirt, and announced that she wanted to be Rosie for Halloween.

Because I know this girl, I know that her choice was about 40% "let's make mom happy with a feminist icon" and 60% "ooh, i get to buy hair product and screaming red lipstick". I totally went along with it because it was a pretty easy costume to pull off, and um, We Can Do It!

She had the jeans, a belt and the boots. We got a blue oxford cloth shirt at the consignment store - it should have been denim, but oxford cloth is what we found, and it's good enough for jazz. I got the red/white polka dot fabric at a quilt shop and fashioned it into a head schmatte, and we found an image of the collar pin on the web, printed it on photo paper, and hot glued it to a pin-back button. Ta da!

[The electric drill is not historically accurate. Also, it did not go to school with her.]

And then, as one does, I posted the pictures on Facebook and a friend of mine from high school left a comment:

I am smiling because I think your mom would have loved it. It is genius. And intelligent. And historical. And NOT a princess or a sleazy outfit. Post this to your blog. Please.

And so, because Anne asked, and because my mother would indeed have loved it, here's my 10 year old Rosie.

Fierce.

Class of '94....1894, that is.

I was perusing the archives of my alma mater, as one does, looking for an image that had been used in a presentation that I'd been to over the weekend. The speaker had said it was from the 1894 yearbook, and happily, all of the yearbooks exist as pdfs on the college library's web page. I love the intertubes.

That 1894 yearbook turned out to be 317 pages long what with covers and endpapers and advertisements, and it is completely wonderful in an unexpectedly whimsical way. Oh sure, there are pages and pages of lists of names, but there was a banjo club! Complete with banjeurines and a factotum! And two members named Florence. The whole yearbook delighted me, actually.

One page was given over to a ditty about bananas:

I found the image I was looking for:

There's a whole riff on the Declaration of Independence, rendering it applicable to a graduating class:

A Declaration of Dependence.

WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a class to dissolve the bonds which have connected them with college life, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and their own opinion of their learning and importance entitle them, a decent respect to their Alma Mater requires that they should declare the grief which moves them at the separation.

Prudence, indeed, would dictate (this have we learned line upon line, precept upon precept, from our foster mother) that conditions long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of courses and matriculations, pursuing invariably the same object, has fulfilled its design of reducing us under an absolute sense of our profound ignorance, there is its beneficent task ended, and it is our right, our duty to throw off such conditions and to provide new fields for our future activity. The history of the present Faculty in its relations with the Class of '94 is a history of continued kindness and of repeated benefits (sometimes, we confess, these blessings were so disguised that we failed to recognize them), having in direct object that knowledge of folly which is wisdom, and that mild and submissive disposition which is the crown of womanly character. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have maintained, often against our will, laws the most wholesome, and the most necessary for the public good.

In every stage of our history we have petitioned in humble terms for that which seemed necessary and convenient for us; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated refusals. Thus has an overruling wisdom preserved us from error.

We, therefore, the representatives of the Class of '94, do, in the name of the class, solemnly publish and declare that this Class of '94 is not, and never can be, unmindful of these benefits; that nothing can absolve them from their allegiance to their Alma Mater; and that the affectionate connection between them and Wellesley College cannot now, or at any other time, be totally dissolved.

And near the beginning was this heart-stopping and ever true statement from Tennyson:

Just that, alone on a page. Wise words. Witty women. I'm so glad I stopped to read that 1894 yearbook.

What's Old Is New Again

In days of old, once upon a time, over the river and through the woods, an eon ago, you know, back when I was a kid, there was an Italian deli. It was on Main Street and it had sawdust on the floor. Its fragrant stock included wheels of Parmesan, tubs of olives and giardiniera, enormous wax covered provolone hanging from the ceiling, sturdy little cacciatorini, seeded semolina breads. Exotic but not, for it was the stuff of childhood. For cocktail party nibbles, my parents would buy cecis and favas - roasted salted chickpeas and fava beans - the cecis crumbly to the tooth, the favas requiring a good snap of your back jaw. The juxtaposition of textures chalky and smooth in that bowl of salted mixed not-nuts was what always kept you going back for more.

Recently, I got a pitch from a PR company touting roasted salted chickpeas as new "very unique" snack:

Health Conscious Friends Launch Perfect Crunchy Snack
Cooking "accident inspires new product, Chic-a-peas

I said, sure, send me a sample. But it wasn't until I tasted them that I realized that they really weren't anything new - they were a repackaging of the cecis of my childhood. That's not to say they aren't good - just not new.

Now what I need to do is find some favas to go with the cecis. And throw an old school cocktail party.

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Disclaimer: I didn't buy the Chic-a-peas, and I wasn't compensated for writing about them.

The Garment

It looks medieval. You look like a hippie. That garment could have been in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I love it! You made that?

My absolute favorite baby present - back almost 11 years ago - was a blanket made out of recycled felted wool sweaters. It's simple - six inch squares zig-zagged together, all shades of off white, dense and soft and subtle. It was made by Crispina, a woman who - back in the day - used to have a flourishing cottage industry making blankets out of sweaters. In recent years, though, she's scaled back the production and sales business, and now does workshops to teach other people how to repurpose clothing into other things. Because it was an itch I had to scratch, last spring I went to one of her all-day workshops, the sweater/sweatshirt chopshop. Crispina supplies everything you need, and by day's end, my garment was largely complete. It probably would have been finished that day had I not decided that it needed to be knee-length, but finally, after some more snipping and stitching, it's actually finished, six months later.

The schtick is that you cut up two sweatshirts so that you keep the neck/shoulders of one, and the shoulders/sleeves of another. Everything else flows from there. I cut the pieces for the "skirt" in a more-or-less trapezoid shape, so that when they were pieced together, they flared out a bit. The trim piece at the bottom is actually the bottom of two sweatshirts flipped upside down. It's all hand sewn, with six strand cotton embroidery thread, except for the hook & eye tape - that's too stiff to do by hand, so I took it to a costume shop and had them run a zigzag. I probably could have done that myself, except that my sewing machine is old and cranky. Besides, standing hip to hip at the worktable in the shop, figuring out the thread color and making sure the tape was pinned right, you get lines of dialogue like Let me just move that codpiece for you.

I'm so pleased with how it came out. And the funny thing is, people comment on it every time I wear it. Yeah, my 10 year old wishes I wouldn't leave the house in it, but everyone else loves it.

The Latin Lesson

While I've never taken a Latin class, I know my smattering of e pluribus unum and amo/amas/amat, post prandium and quod erat demonstrandum, caveat emptor and et cetera. And, I know that a male graduate of Harvard College is an alumnus, and a female graduate of Wellesley is an alumna, and a whole mess of graduates of some college are alumni, but the collective female graduates of Bryn Mawr are alumnae.

So, when I got a pitch from someone that used "alumni" incorrectly in the subject and four more times in the body copy,

National Cheeseburger Day is September 18, and NFL alumni / successful restaurant founder and CEO, Crawford Ker, is offering insider tips for creating the perfect cheeseburger so everyone can enjoy this national holiday deliciously! For more information or to arrange an interview with Mr. Ker, please contact me...

I felt compelled to write back.

There's only one former NFL player involved, right? Alumnus is the singular.

And now I feel like I've made the world a better place. Because yesterday, I got a follow-up email, and she fixed it! She used "alumnus" correctly!

I am just following-up to see if I can provide further information regarding National Cheeseburger Day on September 18. NFL alumnus / successful restaurant founder and CEO, Crawford Ker, is offering insider tips for creating the perfect cheeseburger so everyone can enjoy this national holiday deliciously! For more information or to arrange an interview with Mr. Ker, please contact me...

Considering how much railing I do about things that are never going to be fixed, this was one gratifyingly simple pleasure.

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Incidentally, how do you pronounce "alumnae"? Mary Lefkowitz will tell you.

Road Trip: The Miscellaneous

If you get an ebook out of the library on your Kindle app and you never take the iPad off of Airplane Mode, you can take longer than two weeks to finish your book because the Kindle will not get the ping from the mothership that will delete the book. This is good when you are reading one of those 900 page books in the Outlander series.

One 12 ounce bottle of olive oil is good for two weeks of salads and sautéing, but 10 ounces of vinegar is twice as much as you need.

Elevation changes are well reflected in sealed plastic packages. These marshmallows were bought at 5627 feet and photographed at 8975 feet. See how the bag is inflated? Also, jumbo marshmallows are idiotic.

When you pack, you throw weird stuff in at the last minute, right? I loved having a couple of silicone twist ties and a few of those plastic coated metal clips, for sealing up all sorts of things, and holding other things in place.

If you are going to go to more than three National Parks in one year, get the pass. It’s $80, it’s good for a year, and it gets a carload of people into the park. And then when you happen to be driving by the FDR house in Hyde Park, you can go on a tour for free! We’re making the most of our park pass. I might even go to the Teddy Roosevelt house, which is a block away from my office and I’ve never set foot inside.

If you are going to be in Yellowstone for more than a couple of days and are going to be buying things like groceries and bear spray and souvenirs, join the Yellowstone Association. It’s $35, and gets you a 15% discount on purchases in the Park (except for gas and meals). And you get a quarterly magazine for the next year. And you get a door prize, which was a choice of a tote or a stuffed bear. Yes, of course, the 10yo picked the stuffed bear, and named it Fumarole.

I can't really explain why I was so amused to find spent cap gun ammo outside the office of the Butch Cassidy campground.

One family’s campsite in Madison included the oddest little tent: its footprint was about 4’ square, and it was taller than it was wide. We decided that it was the Tardis in disguise.

The way I solved the problem of the kid wanting to buy things at every single gift shop was by giving her an allowance. I didn’t give it to her in cash; I paid for things, and she said “take it off my tab”. On about the third day, she started working out what Monster High dreck she could buy with the leftover money when we got home, because I’d made the mistake of not stipulating that it was “vacation only, use it or lose it”. Next time. In the end, she did spend most of her allowance on the road – on postcards, a 3D wolf puzzle, two stuffed animals, an “opal” ring, and the Lego movie on the airplane ride home.

Do not ever buy the Walmart Mainstays Quick Drying Towels. They dry quickly because they do not absorb any water; I think they may have been treated with ScotchGuard.

A 10yo American girl who speaks no Dutch can have a wonderful few hours with a 10yo Dutch girl who speaks no English.

I got out of the car one day to take a picture, and saw signs for a Gutzon Borglum monument. Awesome name, right? He turned out to be the sculptor who carved Mount Rushmore. Maybe we'll go to Mount Rushmore next year.

I like a good didactic sign, but I like them better when they don't have grammatical errors.

The end.

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Part 1, The Hut, is here.
Part 2, The Campsites, is here.
Part 3, On Food And Cooking, is here.
Part 4, The Assignment, is here.
Part 5, The Animals, is here.
Part 6, The Natural Sights, is here.
Part 7, The Built Environment, is here.

Road Trip: The Built Environment

While most of the trip was about the natural environment, I was delighted by and sought out plenty of human-built structures. Some of them were falling down candidates for Decay & Desuetude, but here are some other things that struck my fancy.

I loved stumbling upon the Ephraim, UT library, and discovering that it was a Carnegie library, built in 1914. It has great fenestration.

We were fascinated by the free damn tour of the Flaming Gorge hydroelectric dam (the tour guide used damn/dam as often as she could). Dedicated in 1964, it's an amazing piece of concrete work, though we can debate the pros and cons of a hydro dam from now 'til eternity.

I also liked the old-school dam on Jackson Lake. Gears!

Because we were in Utah, some of the sights were Mormon sites, like the temple in Salt Lake City.

And the Ephraim Co-op building, built in 1871 of local oolite limestone.

And another LDS temple, with the helpfully named Temple View motel right near by.

We also stopped to check out a fracking well, which had cows grazing alongside. The cows ran away when we got out of the car.

At the four corners of the main square in the center of Jackson, WY, there are huge arches made of antlers. I like the pattern. And this totally counts as "built environment" - you can see a screw head just off center.

The old Old Faithful Lodge is a wonderful pile, inside and out.

This hinge is on a side door at the Norris Geyser Basin Museum.

We made an art pilgrimage to the Spiral Jetty which meant 34 miles of gravel road in the middle of nowhere. (And the kid refused to get out of the car when we got there.)

I love that fans have built tiny spirals alongside the big one. (You can see them to the left of the base of the spiral in the picture above.

Actually, I'm not surprised that the girl didn't get of of the car, because we were driving the hut, and the hut didn't love the gravel road AT ALL. In fact, I was expecting a mutiny from both my husband and my child, but he decided to embrace the adventure when he realized that there was no turning back.

A sea of cuboid hay is a perhaps a stretch as far as the "built environment" is concerned, but it compelled me to take its picture, so here it is. Anyway, it's totally man-made.

And because I'm weird, I had to take a picture of a concrete light pole, in a suburban part of Salt Lake City. I just liked it.

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Part 1, The Hut, is here.
Part 2, The Campsites, is here.
Part 3, On Food And Cooking, is here.
Part 4, The Assignment, is here.
Part 5, The Animals, is here.
Part 6, The Natural Sights, is here.

Road Trip: The Natural Sights

The thing about a road trip through Utah and Wyoming is that every time you come around another bend, you gasp. It’s one incredible view after another. And even when it’s not slick-rock canyons or red-hued hoodoos or acres of siliceous sinter, it’s miles and miles and miles of sagebrush with a mountain in the distance. It’s a landscape like nothing in the Northeast.

We went to four National Parks (Bryce, Zion, Grand Teton and Yellowstone), and one National Historic Site (Golden Spike), and stayed in or traveled through at least six National Forests (Ashley, Bridger-Teton, Cache, Dixie, Targhee, Uinta-Wasatch). With each one I thought “This is why we pay taxes; I’m getting my tax dollars back in spades”. Great swaths of scenic land have been preserved so that you and I and a lot of elk can visit.

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon

Zion

Slick rock canyon, off Scenic By-Way 12

Moor (and cold child), off Scenic By-Way 12

Firehole Canyon, Flaming Gorge

Old Faithful

Excelsior Geyser

Thermal runoff into the Firehole River

Porcelain Basin

Gardner River

Gardner River (that green squiggle through the middle)

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Dead trees

Jenny Lake

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Part 1, The Hut, is here.
Part 2, The Campsites, is here.
Part 3, On Food And Cooking, is here.
Part 4, The Assignment, is here.
Part 5, The Animals, is here.