Potted Frog

August 2 was our first full day at Bryce Canyon National Park. We awoke to a temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That was reason enough to be there in August!

That morning we did “The World’s Greatest 3-Mile Hike” which is the combination of two shorter trails. One trail is the “Queen’s Garden Trail” and the other is “Navajo Loop.” We could not do longer hikes on this trip because of my ankle problems and because 4 miles is about the limit of our 5-year-old.

Here are the pictures. Most will enlarge if clicked.

This is near the beginning of our hike that started at Sunrise Point.

A view of the Bryce Amphitheater between two hoodoos.

The redness comes from iron.

The family on the trail.

This is why it is the "Queen's Garden Trail." The hoodoo formation on the left is said to look like a profile of Queen Victoria on her throne. (I'm not sure why it could not be any queen.) My daughters thought the formation just to the right of it, a little lower, looked like the head of a dragon. (This impressed them more than the queen.)

This was the first experience my daughters had with cairns. They loved it, and the oldest one got into putting a stone on any one she could find--usually doing something difficult to balance. These cairns were in the bottom of the canyon.

The trail in the bottom was all-but-deserted, and quite different scenery than the top.

The trees in the bottom had some terrific shapes for framing the stone parts of the canyon.

This little area enchanted me. I loved the way the hoodoos and trees, similarly-shaped, were all together in a garden of sorts.

I think this is "Wall Street." So named because not much sky could be seen through this part of the hike.

This is near the top of the path out. This is QUITE a climb. Thankfully the scenery is spectacular, so it's fine to stop frequently to take pictures (rest). I think the hike would be easier to enter this way (Navajo Loop) and leave the way we came in (Queen's Garden). People were going down in this place in flip flops. I would not recommend that.

We made it out! One 5-year-old was very, very tired! She walked most of the way herself, even the last, uphill part.

This is actually part of the rim trail between Sunset and Sunrise point. This hiker, with bad ankles, was limping a bit by this point.

If you are interested in last week’s Bryce Canyon (which is not technically a Canyon, but I will address that later if I have space) episode, go here.

My World is a weekly meme in which participants are virtual tour guides. Go check it out and see the worlds of others. Or better yet, take a look at the guidelines, and do your own My World Post!

Kitty would make something like this for Don if she could.

If you have never been to his place, GO. NOW! He lives near San Francisco and is one of my very favorite photographers. He gets great images from the city, and many more from surrounding areas. My favorites are usually his captures of wildflowers, but he makes art of anything.  Worth the visit. Tell him Happy Birthday, and send him some virtual cookies!

For some randomness, I first need to clarify two things from this post. First, Chic is 7. I said she was 8. She will be 8 in a few months. I am not even sure what made me think she was 8 when I was typing, except that all the cousins  “her age” are already 8.

The second thing is that the picture of the bike wreck was a re-enactment without Chicklet in the trailer. I actually had my camera with me when the crash occurred. (I am lucky it did not get banged up.) But when my dramatic, overreacting girl is silent and not moving after a potentially bad accident, a camera is not what I am thinking about. So when I decided to tell the story, I tipped over the trailer after a later bike ride–after Chicklet was out–to get a picture. (She was all too happy to not actually be in it when I did that.)

And thanks for all of your kind wishes. For something so bad, it really was fine.

My last piece of randomness today is about tomatoes. I love home-grown tomatoes, and I grow them every year. My climate is not conducive to this, and the last two years I have not gotten any to speak of until mid-August. This is just wrong, but I continue because I need them, if only for a short while. And by now–only two weeks later, the nights are getting cool enough that they are already slowing production. I barely get enough to use for ourselves, definitely not enough to can, and rarely enough to give away. BUT… I LOVE to give away tomatoes. It makes people happy, and that makes me happy.  So I thought you might like to see this.

Since I do not have that many to give away, only 4-6 at a time (plus a couple of handfuls of cherry tomatoes), I decided to put them in cute bags. I made a bunch of these so when I have tomatoes, they are ready to go. This makes me even happier.

Now about a different me. This was me a while back.

I have been getting more and more tired of my long hair. I love it when I do something with it, but it takes more and more work to do that. Drying time if I style it is 45 minutes – 1 hour. (If I do not style it? Pretty much all day to dry.)  Needless to say, my schedule does not accommodate this regularly, so usually I just let it go. Some days are better than others, but the low humidity that makes every day a good hair day when I style it makes most days bad hair days when I do not. So for a while I have been thinking about cutting it off. But it was long enough that I wanted to make sure I could donate what was cut, and I was not sure it was QUITE long enough for that, so I was waiting.

But it kept bugging me. I finally decided to do it this fall. I was getting my hair trimmed last week. I would talk to the hair dresser about it and hopefully plan to do the big chop at my next visit.

But I went in for the trim, and my hairdresser, whose hair has been similar to mine since I met her, had CUT HER HAIR! While waiting I squirmed in my chair. I LONGED to have mine cut. But I had made no preparations. It might not be long enough. I did not have ponytail holders. Maybe I should wait and try to do it somewhat publicly to raise awareness and money for the cause?

So I sat in her chair and she said, “The usual trim?” I spilled my story, culminating with HER hair. She said she was SURE mine was long enough to donate. (10 inches for one place, 12 inches for another.) I asked if she had ponytail holders. She’s a hairdresser, of course she did!

So she made two ponytails and braided them. Just to be sure she measured them. TWELVE INCHES! Then she cut them off.

This is me now.

I did this 1-1/2 weeks a go. A few people who know me in real life might be surprised to see this. The crazy thing? I hate attention… HATE. IT. I sort of like being noticed, but hate attention. (How whacked is that?) So cutting twelve inches off my hair is a sure way to avoid attention, right? The only thing I really regret is that since this was on a whim, I did not have a chance to take a good picture of my hair from the back. If I started today, it would take about five years to get it back to the length it was. The braids were in the mail to Locks of Love the next morning. It is in my past. I am happy.

When I met Prince Charming, my hair was about the same length as it was before I cut it. We lived a long way from each other and only saw each other about once a month. After a few months I cut it quite similarly to how it is now and did not tell him. It was a test of sorts–to see if he would flip out because so many shallow men demand “their women” have long hair. He passed the test. In fact, he loved it. I obviously did not tell him it was happening this time, either, since I did not know myself. But he loved it again. He’s a keeper.

This arch is really two hoodoos that are next to one another.

Hoodoos are formed when arches break in places where the rock is fragile like in Bryce Canyon National Park. Thus they were probably both arches at one time. (And they will both likely eventually be standing straighter with nothing going horizontally.)

This shot was captured during “the World’s Best 3-Mile Hike” of which you can see more next Monday for My World Tuesday.

click photo to enlarge

To see LOTS more terrific sky pictures or to find out how to participate in this meme, head to the SkyWatch blog.

The Good:

Yesterday was crazy, but the craziest part was the part spent in the jury assembly room for a federal district court near downtown Albuquerque.

My summons came quite some time ago. I begged off for having two children and no daytime childcare. No one cared, but I never got called to appear… until yesterday. I begged again, saying I would have to bring my 5-year-old with me. No one cared.

So yesterday after doing some of my weekly work at my church which I normally do on Wednesday, Chicklet and I went to the jury assembly room. Chicklet had a backpack stocked full of necessary items for surviving an undetermined amount of time quietly. Lots of small toys, coloring books, food and most importantly, her “home blanket.” Chicklet had also been made to understand very clearly about quietness and sitting still and in the courtroom she would have to be dead silent.

After checking in, we happily found a sofa where we spent the next two hours. Probably 45 minutes of that two hours was a very nice, very polite man doing an orientation for us. He was truly a jewel of a man because all but a couple of the questions people asked were the type that had I been in his place, I might have snapped, “Did you not listen to what I have been saying for the last 15 minutes?” or “Did you read ANYTHING we sent to you and gave you today?” I must say this man and his staff were efficient and friendly. (Quite an unusual thing for my part of the country, actually.)

I had a feeling once we got to the court room they would let us leave because there were strict rules prohibiting things that caused distractions–things like gum-chewing. I was thinking Chicklet could be a much bigger distraction than the rudest of gum chewers. But she was being SO good. I knew she could not be that good for a whole trial as she would get too tired to behave properly, but she was so good yesterday, I began to fear they might not send us home.

A lady (friendly and efficient) came in and said they were getting ready to go, but she needed to see two potential jurors first. I was one of them. They dismissed me before the courtroom! We had been there two hours, but got to leave and were home in time to get a quick nap in before going back to school to pick up Chic. When we left Chicklet almost threw a fit was a bit disappointed because I had prepared her for the courtroom and we never got to go, but all in all, this was GOOD!

But it is even better. Usually I am not home on Wednesdays. That meant that this week I would not be home TWO days which totally wreaks havoc on my schedule since I am always busy and working on something. But everything I usually do on Wednesday got moved to Tuesday this week. Usually that would have been an inconvenience, but after being gone all day yesterday, it is so lovely that I am home today! I choose to believe that God was looking out for me. (Yes, I believe in God. If you do not, that is fine. Call it the Universe or something.)

The Bad:

I need to lose weight. OK, a lot of people do. And I am not the poster child for obesity, but I am also not skinny, or thin, or even close these days. In fact, I weigh my all-time high–which I have only weighed once before after some very specific circumstances. The bottom line is that I like to eat and for the past two years, exercise has been sporadic due to bronchitis, ankle injuries, bronchitis, more ankle injuries and more bronchitis. But the past summer has been good. My aerobic activity is exclusively biking now (does not do further damage to my ankles) and I made Chic start biking on her own so I did not have to pull her in the bike trailer. (She more than doubles the weight of just Chicklet.) The goal was to prepare Chic to be able to ride her bike to school while I go along with Chicklet in the trailer.

We have yet to ride to school since school has started, and we only got to do one trial run before it started. This means I am not getting enough exercise. (But I am eating as if I am!)

So last Friday, we were set to bike to school. First, Chic’s bike had a flat tire. (We Prince Charming had not changed her tubes to the self-sealing kind which are necessary for this trip.) So I decided to do it anyway with Chic in the bike trailer–it’s only half the 11 miles since I drop her off. We were headed out early, and Chic started talking politics. (She’s 8.) I got so engrossed in this conversation (trying to explain things without clouding her opinions with my own) that I missed the turn to where we park to start biking. I did not realize this until about a mile later. It was too late to go all the way back, or we would be late to school, so I thought of a place we could park closer. When I turned, Chic realized she did not have her backpack. I had no choice but to go home. THAT was a disaster. The school traffic near our home is horrendous. (The last two mornings it has taken me 13 minutes to go half-a-mile. I live about 8 miles from Chic’s school, and the drive is 40 minutes.) I knew we would be late if we came back that way, so I went another way–hoping to save time so I could just go back home and bike with Chicklet. Traffic the other way was horrible, too. I nearly witnessed 4 separate accidents. (People here are not known for polite driving.) There was unexpected construction, and it was just a mess. I was wondering if God was trying to tell me not to bike that day. (I decided, possibly stubbornly, that it was something more evil that did not want me to exercise.)

Late to school. Late home, but I decided to bike anyway–even though Fridays are extremely busy days, and that one was worse because we were having guests for dinner the next day. We got loaded up and headed out. I was a big ball of stress, and when I was rounding a corner early in the ride, I almost wrecked. I did not know what was wrong, but my bike was sliding. I got off, and saw this:

The trailer had caught the edge of a curb and flipped over, and I dragged it through the rocks. Chicklet was not moving or making a sound. I could see rocks inside the trailer by her head which had to hit the ground. This was a BAD accident. Someone who had seen it driving by stopped to help. But all was well. No major damage. Not a scratch on Chicklet who is the type to screech at the top of her lungs for the slightest thing. So the bad turned out good.

The Beautiful:

Recently I got gifts from two separate blog friends.

First is from Leia of We Love Luna and Bonjour Luxumbourg. I love ALL this stuff. I love that it is cute and is in French. There is even a little book in French to read to my girls.  Can I read French? No, but I’ll learn enough to read that book about that cat. Go visit her. Luna is a gorgeous cat, and Leia is all kindness.

Also, Fishing Guy sent me this beautiful example of his photography, in the nice frame. He even printed something else in case I wanted to change it. (Why would I, but how nice is that?) Go visit him, too. His blog has always got something different on it.

And the rest of you just make me happy with your nice comments and generous visits. You are all beautiful.

On August 1 we embarked on our annual trip to Salt Lake City where I go to a Convention each summer. Since moving to the desert Southwest, we have always made this trip as a family and spent some time in interesting places–usually a National Park, but sometimes a National Monument, and often both.

This year we spent 2-1/2 days in Bryce Canyon National Park. It did not disappoint, and like all such places we have been, we only want to go back. Will there be enough time in our life to do what we want in all of them? We can only try.

We arrived in the evening, but since our time was short, we wanted to take a peek right away. Not knowing anything at all about the park, we decided to go to Sunset Point since it was right about sunset. This might not be my choice in the future because it seemed like everyone else in the park was doing the same thing, and I am not really enthused with crowds.  But it was beautiful and definitely worth the view.

The pictures below are of Bryce Amphitheater from different angles–mostly taken at or near Sunset Point. Let it be noted that this is near the park entrance, where the altitude is the lowest–over 8000 feet. We were  little chilly as darkness came to the beautiful place. It really was never hot there at all during our stay.

A traditional view of the amphitheater. (Click photo to enlarge.)

A photographer getting a different view.

The same photographer is in this photo, but it gives an idea of perspective.

I loved the tenacity this tree growing in territory that should have been hostile to it. (Click photo to enlarge.)

The same tree is in this picture.

Bryce Amphitheater from near Sunset Point looking toward Inspiration Point. This is an enormous area. Several stops along the route will give a different view of this icon of Bryce Canyon. (Click photo to enlarge.)

To not overwhelm you with pictures (that may all look sort of alike), I will cover Bryce Canyon over several weeks.

My World is a weekly meme in which participants are virtual tour guides. Go check it out and see the worlds of others. Or better yet, take a look at the guidelines, and do your own My World Post!

This is from the first evening we were at Bryce Canyon National Park. We did not want to waste time, so we dumped our stuff in the hotel room then went for a little hike along the rim about sunset.  Why is this not a picture of the canyon itself with an incredible sky behind it? I just liked the color in this one. I will show you  Bryce Canyon in future My World Tuesday posts.

click photo to enlarge

To see LOTS more terrific sky pictures or to find out how to participate in this meme, head to the SkyWatch blog.

A few weeks ago I showed a picture (sorry, it’s at the bottom of the post if you want to go look) and said it was my second-ever lightning shot. It was my first intentional one, actually. But earlier, the same storm produced the scene for the shot below. I did not know I had captured lightning until I uploaded and viewed the photos. I like this picture better than the other one, but I am into orange and gold skies.

click photo to enlarge (I think it's worth it.)

Were it not for the signs of civilization, I almost think this could pass for Mars.

To see LOTS more terrific sky pictures or to find out how to participate in this meme, head to the SkyWatch blog.

This post is in response to a prompt from Kelly at *Weekly Anamnesis.*  I have not done this in a while, but I enjoy writing something that comes to mind from her word prompts. Today I am using this week’s word,  “Savor.”  Anyone is welcome to use her prompts.  Just go there and follow the instructions. I love to see what different people write about the same word prompt.

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One of the things I savor is good chocolate. This is a bit annoying to me because before I was pregnant with Chicklet, chocolate was not really my thing. Most of the time it still is not, but good chocolate candy is something to be savored. (Or inhaled.)

Another thing to savor is a perfect first kiss. It has been a very long time since I had a first kiss, but I believe the memory of a good one will last a lifetime. I have one such memory in my vault, and the memory seems almost like being there again. This is a good thing to savor.

But today I will talk about savoring the lake. I am a lake girl. This did not happen to me until I was in college because until then I never spent much time at the lake. But something inside of me always craved water. Although I have lived most of my life in very land-locked locations, the ocean has an unbelievable draw for me. I feel like I own it and it owns me. But the lake is a little different. I spent so little time at lakes as a child because my parents were poor, very poor. As my luck would have it, however, they gradually increased their wealth, then quickly increased it, so by the time I was in high school, they would have been considered rich by many. Let me tell you there is no better time than high school to have “rich” parents. This did not mean they showered me with material things (they did not), but they visited me a lot (I was in a boarding school) and took my friends and I out to eat when they did. Anywhere we wanted to go.

By college my parents had probably reached the peak of their wealth. (My dad is poor again, by the way. It is the way of owning one’s own business in an uncertain economy in an even more uncertain business market.) By this time their money had little affect on me other than that it helped foot the college bill. And they bought a boat.

The boat meant that we spent many weekends at the lake. It was a pontoon boat. Not glamorous, but in my estimation the perfect thing–floating dock to go park anywhere desired, then play from that. I never learned to water ski, but we did have many things we pulled behind that boat. I remember the first weekend at the lake, after school started, but when I was finished with college. HOW I savored the fact that I was on the water and not in a city six hours away getting an education!

When I was 30, I found myself single after being married. I lived next door to two very young, very hot police officers who took me under their wing.  That needs to be a post of its own, but they taught me more and gave me more inner strength through that time than anyone else ever could have. One of the things they did was get me back into the habit of going to the lake most weekends. They convinced me to borrow my dad’s pontoon boat and made me learn to drive it, and even it park it by myself in the very. narrow. slip. They had Sea Doos. They did not teach me to ride them, but to rip up the water with them. It was not long before my enthusiasm made my dad decide to purchase two Sea Doos of his own. My family went to the lake every three or four weeks, but I went nearly every weekend. My police officer friends made me pull the trailer with the Sea Doos and learn to efficiently back them into the water. I really hated that part because if I goofed at all, it took extra time, and people might be waiting, but they refused to do it for me.  (If those guys are not fathers already, they will make great ones someday! They remind me a lot of my dad, except they were a few years younger than me.)

Until this time in my life, I savored the lake, but I did not realize how much more there was to savor!  The three of us (and sometimes a cousin of mine and girls-of-the-week of theirs) would go to the lake early on  Sunday morning and not come back until dark. We had a specific  cove where we liked to park the pontoon boat, then we spent the day “tearing up the water” and just savoring life on the water. There was specific, savory food for these trips which included Wal Mart chicken (only good when spending a day on the lake, but ambrosia in that circumstance) and my homemade salsa. We played cards, read books, talked, napped, explored the lake and just looked at the beauty around us. Evening would  come. The lake would calm, and we would savor it all the more. Life is good on the lake… more than good. Sometimes we drove the boat/Sea Doos back across the lake in near-darkness and got home way too late, but it was worth every second.

My life-saving police officer boys moved away, and I lost all contact with them. Prince Charming (on the scene while they still lived near us) and I moved to New Mexico. There are not a lot of lakes here, but on Independence Day weekend, some friends took us to a wonderful lake three hours away. It was a time to be savored. There is just NOTHING like being on the lake.

So last week we were in Salt Lake City. I have been there many times due to my stamping conventions, but I had never seen the lake other than from the air when flying in. We went to Antelope Island in the lake to look around. I was prepared for an ugly, smelly lake. I was so wrong. It was indeed a bit smelly, but mostly just when we were on the causeway to the island. I have smelled worse things to be certain! But it was not ugly.

We hiked on a path that crested in a field of large boulders. (I will do at least one My World post on this.) My girls love to play in/on boulders.  I climbed the biggest one I could find. I did nothing more than savor the experience. The day was mostly cloudy, but warm. There was a breeze that was perfect. It was refreshing and blew the hair off my face, but did not whip it around into my face.  The shadows and the reflections were perfect. The water was an icy blue color. My husband asked if I needed to be in a lake to enjoy it. The answer was “no.” We never even made it to the beach. We sat and played on the boulders for an undetermined amount of time, and savored every second of the view. And now that I have been there? You bet I will go back the next time I am in town to stamp! Until then, I remember the gentle breeze and savor the memory.

click photo to enlarge

I know, I know. You are waiting for pictures of my recent trip. But we just got back last  night. I am in the throes of laundry and unpacking. I have not even glanced at half of my pictures yet. There is plenty of time. Today must be quick, so I thought if my Crepe Myrtle bush was this interesting to me, it might be to you.

click photo to enlarge

We bought it three or four years ago. I thought it was a deep, medium-pink like the pink in the picture above. But it has always been red. (Also like in the picture above.) When it first bloomed I was slightly disappointed because I had something that I did not plan on  having. But I soon  warmed up to it because I like things unusual and different, and I have never seen another one with red blooms.

But this year the bush decided to put on a different kind of display. The  blooms, both pink and red above, are from my bush. But the one below is as well. Some blooms are white. After three of four years of only red, I have no idea what would make this tinting and shading happen, but I find it intriguing and quite pretty. (If you have an idea what causes this, please enlighten me!)

lick photo to enlarge

My World is a weekly meme in which participants are virtual tour guides. Go check it out and see the worlds of others. Or better yet, take a look at the guidelines, and do your own My World Post!

When this post goes up, our family will be en route to Utah, Bryce Canyon to be exact.

Yearly I have a stamping convention in Salt Lake City. Since we moved to New Mexico, we have always driven to the convention, stopping at a National Park on the way (there are lots of them between here and there), and make a family vacation of it.

Every year it gets better, probably because the kids are getting older and remember more and enjoy more, but every person in our family is so happy and excited right now, it’s almost crazy!

I was going to schedule posts for

and  ,

but that would just take too much time. (I actually went to bed at a reasonable hour last night.) So I will “see you” when I get back. And hopefully I will have lots of new fodder for both of those memes and this blog in general when I return, in about ten days.

I will leave you with a photo of a volunteer sunflower from my back yard. (This could actually pass for both of those memes, I guess.)

click photo to enlarge