Desert flowers

There weren't a lot of blooming plants on this trip but we did find this small cactus:

Also a desert primrose!

Fossils and Pictographs

In the north part of the San Rafael swell, we found a dinosaur track:

(Someone at the Castle Dale ward told us where it was and how to find it.)
We also saw petroglyphs:

And we saw pictographs.

Petroglyphs are pecked into the rock;
pictographs are painted on.
These were part of the Buckhorn Wash panel.

OAC group photos in LWH

I planned a great group photo for the OAC in Little Wild Horse Canyon.
Here it is:

However, only half the group were present because half of them had gone up the wrong side of the loop (the Bell canyon side to the west). So a couple of the speedy energetic folks ran off and zipped through a couple of miles of canyon, collected our missing folks, and we had another picture.

Of course by this time we were in a different spot and it was hard to herd them to a good picture place. This is not as good a composition as the other, but all 15 of them are in the photo!

Little Wild Horse!

Friday I was sore after the Ding & Dang hike so I only went a little way up Little Wild Horse canyon, very slowly.
Then I went back to camp and took a nap.
But Saturday I hiked the ENTIRE Little Wild Horse/Bell Canyon loop, all 8.5 miles of it!
(It took me 7 hours, but that's okay, I planned for that.)
And I did it All By Myself with practically no help.
The OAC folks went along with me for awhile so that I could get a group picture but then they zipped off at their speedy speed and I went round the loop at my own pace.
Here I am in the narrows of this spectacular canyon:

That Dang Canyon

I went camping for 5 days down in the San Rafael Swell with the OAC.
The first day we arrived, Thursday, they wanted to go hike a slot canyon.
I was Keen to see a Real Slot Canyon so I went with.
The loop hike was called Ding and Dang canyon and it was 4 1/2 miles long.
The students romped about on the rocks and I took gazillions of pictures.
Going up Ding was fun...
but coming down that Dang canyon was HARD.
There were steep spots and they had to teach me some canyoneering techniques like chimneying and they had to help spot me down the tricky climbs.
But I made it!
I am so proud of myself!
It was my first technical canyon, as well as my first slot canyon... but hopefully not my last!

Consolation

So I know that consolation eating is a Bad Idea, but how can avocado spring rolls like this NOT cheer one up?
It was even more cheering to be out with Emily after the funeral, and to have her support and to talk to her.

My former father in law with his granddaughter

I would have liked to have gotten a family photo of the Vaughans but they were circulating a lot and the moment didn't seem right to ask.
I didn't get pictures of Vivien or Lorien (both of whom look great, considering the circumstances) but I did get three of Macey with his granddaughter, who is 3.
She is very cute, but was shy of strangers.

Macey looks quite a bit older, probably the effects both of grief and years.
He and Vivien were very gracious though, as always.

Daffodil hill

The daffodils at Red Butte gardens were particularly splendid:
hills and hills full of them.

Flowers at the Funeral

Adam's memorial service was held at Red Butte Gardens, at the University of Utah.
It was really gorgeous there.
Emily took a couple of pictures of me and I took several of the blossoms.

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

Here is an engagement picture of Adam and me in fall 1993.
I didn't use this in the wedding announcement because my front teeth protrude too much, but I always did like this one of Adam.
Look at the way he is looking at me.

Just over seven years later, Christmas time 2000, here we are in the back yard of his parents' house in Sand Diego.
The insincere camera smile, the pulling away... body language says it all, though the actual separation wasn't to occur for another seven or eight months, and the divorce wasn't formally granted until January 2003.

My blog readers all probably know that Adam died on Sunday April 13, of a brain hemorrhage due to acute leukemia. I will be going to a memorial service for him on Wednesday April 23 (he was cremated last week, so this is not a funeral per se) and visiting with his family and giving them a CD of pictures. I have about 200 pictures of him from conventional film negatives which I am photoshopping to clean up nicks, scratches, discoloration, etc. So I have been looking at lots of pictures of Adam lately.
It isn't just in pictures with me; in a lot of pictures in our last year or two he hardly smiles, and the light seems to have gone out of his face.
It makes me sad.

Grand View!

Sneaky Lizards

Can you see the lizard on this rock?
He is really well camouflaged.

When we approached, he scuttled into this crack where we could still see him pretty well:

There's something odd about his tail.
Perhaps he lost it and it was regrowing.
He was a big lizard, too, about the size of a good sized iguana (minus the tail length of an iguana).

Snow Canyon

This is what we woke up to at the Snow Canyon campground!!

Balloons over Snow Canyon

This is from the weekend campout with the OAC down in Snow Canyon, near St. George.
(Despite the name, it was very pleasant weather down there in mid April!)

As we were making breakfast about 8 am, a couple of balloon outfits set up in a parking lot down the road and we got to watch them inflate their balloons and float off over Snow Canyon!

Kitchen Treats and Talk

Kathleen chops fresh pineapple in the kitchen

Benjamin munches a pineapple 'popsicle'

Cheryl visits with Kathleen

Jesse's Party

Jesse is leaving soon on his mission, and tonight was his open house-get-together with his friend Evan Witt, who is also going on a mission (to Arizona).

Here's Jesse and Kyle hoisting Evan up and all pulling very characteristic faces.

Cooking for Leftovers

So I have lots and lots of leftover turkey.
There's turkey noodle soup (which I am making) but the Thanksgiving 101 book has a recipe for Turkey & Black Bean Tamale Pie that looks intriguing.
So I decided to make a big pan of it and freeze it into individual portions (which I can take for lunches to school in my new crocodile insulated bag, hooray!)
It's basically a turkey, canned black bean, corn mixture in a spicy tomato sauce spread out in a pan and covered with corn meal mush and baked at 350 for 30 minutes.

The ingrediments:

Sauteeing chopped onion, adding a couple of finely chopped chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (my idea) and some flour to thicken the base:

Once you've added some chicken/turkey stock and canned tomato sauce, you cook it until it's thick and then add the turkey, canned beans, canned corn, and stir it all together, like so: