Flowers, Anyone?

As we are finishing up our first couple of weeks in Logan, we have discovered that these people love their summers, and they cram as much as possible into them.  Winter is great for skiing, snowmobiling, snow shoeing, etc, but it is also long, extremely cold, and a majority of time is spent indoors.  Thus, the Visitor's Center puts out a weekly calendar of 'events'. the number of which is unbelievable for a town of 50,000.  There are often multiple things happening on the same day.  The events are things like  symphony performances, plays, operas, concerts, improv comedy, art shows, farmer's markets, and flower shows.  The first flower showing of the summer was showcased this weekend at the First Presbyterian Church:  The Iris Show.  This kind of stuff just hits my sweet spot.  

We walked into the Presbyterian version of the fellowship hall to find hundreds of iris.  They were displayed singly as well as in arrangements.  We met a delightful woman (Joan) who divides her time between Indiana and Logan, Utah.  She's got iris in both places.  In Indiana she has over 100 varieties in her garden, and she was also showing in the Logan Iris Show a really gorgeous arrangement using a variety of containers.  She was an enthusiastic teacher explaining that there are thousands of varieties of iris.  They do 'come up' each spring without having to be replanted, but they don't divide and multiply each year like lilies.  They bloom from late March/early April until late June.  The  earliest bloomers are the dwarfs, with the ones of medium height next, and finally the tall boys.  Iris are judged on several criteria including having a 'terminal bud' (a flower at the top of the stem), how straight the stem is, and whether or not there are multiple buds on a stem.  We saw little ones, giant ones, two toned, single color, iris that were almost black, and ones that were actually a pearl gray.  

However, why talk about flowers when you can see flowers.  Here are the pictures:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012UtahIrisFlowerShow?authkey=Gv1sRgCPXtisjDtrezkgE#
   

The Birding Lesson

We made a second trip to the Bear River Bird Migratory Refuge, but this time we didn't go alone.  Our new next door neighbors, Jim and Connie, who are also here Summer Citizening for the first time, are big time bird people.  I knew they were pretty savvy when they could identify birds by their song without even seeing them!  It turns out that they have been birding for many years all over the country.  They confided that Texas is one of their favorite places to go birding because of the diversity of both birds and terrain.

I shared that Drake had bought me a set of birding binoculars for Christmas, and I would appreciate a birding lesson.  We set our plans to go the the Logan wetlands which fell through because when we arrived at the wetlands, the fire department was doing controlled burns and there were little tongues of fire everywhere we wanted to go.  What the heck!  We decided to hit the migratory refuge.  This trip was altogether different when accompanied by experts.

We were so impressed with their encyclopedic knowledge of the birds we saw.  I learned the correct way to use my binoculars - to enhance my ability to FIND the birds and actually see them.  I discovered what I THOUGHT was a warbler.........is in fact a yellow headed black bird.

We also saw avocets, which according to Jim is somewhat of a rare sighting - you only see them in certain locales.  Plus, we caught this couple in a courting ritual.

I discovered that there are 'super birders' - which seems to mean people who are obsessed with seeing birds, finding birds, and who actively seek out birds they haven't seen.  I laughed  when Connie told me, "I have too much imagination to be a good birder."  Later, she explained that the super birder types know exactly what bird they are going to see in a specific location, and any suggestion or voicing that it might be a different bird than expected is met with a distinctly chilly reception and outright disdain - hence, her comment of 'having too much imagination'.

We saw several different types of ducks :  Cinnamon Heads (yes, their heads are cinnamon colored), and a  funny looking duck with a bright blue bill.  The most fun sighting of the day was the grebe with her chicks.  It turns out that this is common; a mom grebe carrying a baby on her back as she swims around.  it was a great sight. 

Examples of going 'birding' with someone who actually has some knowledge:  Seeing a snowy egret (there are two types - difference is size and leg/feet color), but understanding that the bird is in 'mating plummage' - the ruffles around it's head.  Also, we spotted a Great Blue Heron with a twisted up neck - indicative of the bird getting ready to 'strike' a fish under the water.             

 This was a delightful trip with new friends.  And to top the day off, everyone knows how obsessed I am about knowing what kind of vegetation I'm seeing in my new locale, well, I had seen a bush/tree at the refuge which I had never seen before.  Obligingly, Jim explained that it was a Tamarisk, an Australian import to fight river bank erosion which was a poorly thought out import - it's a water hog and it crowds out native plants.  Sure is pretty in  bloom, though. 

What a great day with new friends.

A Blog in Pictures: The Wind Cave Trail, Logan Canyon, Utah

The scenery around Logan is really spectacular, and in fact, there's a National Scenic Byway down into the Logan Canyon that starts right in town.  As you wind through the canyon, following the Logan River, there are numerous opportunities for hikes.  Today, we started the scenic drive, but paused to do the most well known hike along the byway:  The Wind Cave Hike is 4 miles round trip with a 1000 foot gain in elevation.  It's a series of steep switchbacks up the mountain, and I'm proud I made it to the top and back down.  ('Back down' is just a difficult and more painful for me.)  However, the scenery certainly took my mind off my aches and pains.  Here's the hike in pictures:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012UtahBearRiverScenicDrAndWindCaveHike?authkey=Gv1sRgCN3J04ae1em7Sg#

Golden Spike National Monument

OK, readers, it's time for a small, hopefully interesting USA history lesson.  Let's see a show of hands:  Who knows what the Golden Spike is?  No, it's not a new rapper or basketball player's nickname.  The Golden Spike was an actual gold spike that was driven into the railroad tie that joined the United States together with a railroad line.  Sort of seems archaic, doesn't it?  In actuality, the symbolic act of driving in the Golden Spike can be seen as the event that closed the American Frontier, the death knell of the Native American Plains culture, and the symbolic birth of America's coming reliance on technology - that's what railroads were in the 19th century - cutting edge technology.  

The rails were actually built by two privately held railroad companies with subsidies from the US government.  The Union Pacific started in Omaha, Nebraska and the Central Pacific started in Sacramento, California.  They met at Promontory Summit in northwestern Utah.  (The owner of the California railroad was Leland Stanford - who founded Stanford University.)  Today, the Golden Spike National Monument is close to the actual site of the summit - and the auto tour is actually on portions of the unused grade that was leveled in 1869 in preparation for rails to be laid.  The two companies actually graded 250 more miles than necessary while Congress wrangled over the site of the rails' meeting place.  

There were actually four 'golden spikes' - all which were commemorative, and one of which was made out of silver.  The actual 'golden spike' that was driven into the wooden rail isn't at the national monument - Leland Stanford took that right back to California at the end of the ceremony and it's housed today at Stanford University.   The Golden Spike Monument location does have two locomotives that stoke up their steam and approach one another three times a day during the summer months as they must have done on May 10th of 1869.  They are really lovely examples of 19th century craftsmanship.

Another amusing nugget of information:  The term 'hell on wheels' originated as a result of the building of the Union Pacific line (that's the one that was built east to west).  It referred to the gamblers, whores, saloons and other  dubious businesses that 'followed' the building of the tracks in wagons.  Even then, all work and no play makes Paddy the track worker QUIT.  Interestingly, the rails were built east to west by Irish immigrants and mustered out Union soldiers, some of whom were probably suffering from PTSD as a result of the Civil War. Hiring on to build rail lines allowed them to flee the home they returned to when they couldn't resettle into civilian life.  However the workers building the rails from west to east ultimately turned out to be Chinese.  There was a labor shortage to start with in the West.  Add gold and silver fever, and the Central Pacific couldn't find enough workers, so they imported Chinese laborers who they paid less than their white compatriots, and weren't even offered  food (which was part of the pay of the white track workers).  At the Golden Spike National Monument, there's a natural arch formation which is called "The Chinese Arch" to commemorate the Chinese labor contribution to this monumental task.

Overall, the Golden Spike National Monument seems ho hum today.  It's hard for us to grasp the symbolic and actual importance of two small iron rails laid across wooden ties and fixed in place with iron spikes.  Perhaps you can think of it with reference to the world wide web.  The world is tied together so much more intimately than it ever was before the advent of the Internet.  The United States became tied together in the same way because of those two little rails meeting in the middle of nowhere, Utah.  They were the start of knitting together the United States into one country and allowing all the resources of the entire country to be utilized.

This was a technology day all around.  We saw state of the art 19th century technology, but we also saw state of the art 20th century technology.  As we were driving toward the monument park, there was another sign saying:  Rocket Display.  It turns out that the industry of northwest Utah is space and defense manufacturers.  Morton Thiokoll (of infamous Challenger "o" ring fame) has decorated their Utah facility with facsimiles of the rockets and boosters they build.  Drake was really, really excited to see the Space Shuttle Booster up close and personal.  It was pretty impressive.  I also liked some of the other stuff they were displaying including one motor that really looks like an alien life form in a 1957 scifi movie.  

Finally, we saw some impressive scenery today including the Bonneville Salt Flats, which are actually a prehistoric lake bed.  To check out all the pix, click on the following link:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012UtahGoldenSpikeNationalMt?authkey=Gv1sRgCIautrrPmse8qQE#        

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

Today, we went to a bird refuge.  It's along one of the northern fingers of the Great Salt Lake.  The purpose of the trip was to see birds, (DUH), but mostly to try out one of my Christmas presents.  Drake gave me birding binoculars for Christmas.  He knows how much I like to look at birds, and he decided that we could use these on our travels.  To be truthful, I was sort of caught off guard by the gift.  I didn't ask for it, and I privately thought it was one of Drake's out of the box gifts which he like to buy.  Those unthought of, and sometimes even downright bizarre gifts have a way of being wonderful.  The binoculars were no exception.

The drive to the refuge was gorgeous.  Northern Utah is very scenic with large mountain peaks, some of which are still wearing snow, flanked by rolling hills covered with juniper (what we call 'cedar' in Texas) as well as deciduous trees.  While driving, you wind up climbing for miles and coasting downhill for miles.

I knew the birding trip would be fun, but I didn't expect spectacular.  The binoculars showed me birds (which were EVERYWHERE) in a way I'd never seen them before.  This pair of binoculars are designed to be used by people without as well as those WITH glasses.  A rarity, let me tell you.  I've struggled for years to use binoculars, and they just never really 'worked' because of my glasses and my crappy eyesight.  These are delightful. 

As we took the 'auto tour' - driving 12 miles on top of dikes criss/crossing the fingerlets of water, we saw an amazing cross section of birds - songbirds, waterbirds, ducks, geese, grebes, gulls, pelicans, and more, more, more. 

As always, pictures are worth gold on a tour like this one.  Enjoy.

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012UtahBearRiverMigratoryBirdRefuge#

There She Is: Miss America

I'm sure all my Texas com padres have been to a beauty contest.........in point of fact, probably some of you have 'competed'.  Beauty pageants all have one bedrock thing in common:  Their aim is to pick the prettiest.  Oh, lots of them dress it up with talent events and social activism, but at heart it's all about which girl is judged the prettiest.  Why else do you see swim suits and ball gowns?  Let's just say that you never see a short, chubby, glasses wearing girl who sings opera and founded a non-profit organization to save wayward teens ever win a pageant.

It was quite refreshing to see  the horse version of the beauty pageant:  The beauty event of a horse show is the Halter Competition at a horse show.  In a halter event there are no saddles and no riders, no galloping, walking, reversing, cantering, trotting or anything that involves a human being judged.  In this beauty pageant there were no also swimsuits, no ballgowns, and, thank the heavens above, no piano players, no opera singers, no ballet dancers, no tap dancers, and no 'twirlers'.  (For the uninitiated:  a 'twirler' is a girl in tights who twirls a baton as well as throws it up in the air and catches it on it's downward flight.  The real talent is throwing and catching multiple FLAMING batons.  When you see that, people say, "Ooooooh" when she catches the fiery things - especially if it's behind her back.)  There's none of that in a horse beauty pageant.

To be specific:  We attended the Region VII Arabian Horse Show in Scottsdale, Arizona where we had a family member in competition.  Her name is Arbinae, and she is a young Arabian filly from championship bloodlines.  She's owned by the Five Diamonds Ranch, AKA "Dee", Drake's sister.  This was Arbinae's  first beauty pageant, and while she didn't win, she certainly didn't disgrace herself either.  All of the powers that be in the horsey world agree that she's got a bright future in the pageant circuit.  

The Arabian horse world is small and insulated.  It's composed of the same group of people as are in any narrow field of interest.   They all know one another.   They travel to shows and compete against one another, and they often own multiple horses for which they have paid terrifying sums of money.  I suppose in the horse world only thoroughbred racing is more exclusive and more expensive.  

Thus, the judging of these Halter Competitions tends to be a bit biased although the judges would argue vociferously that is not the case.  To get a grip on this world, think about judging figure skating or marching bands or a diving competition.  As we've seen over and over again in those venues, judging is pretty subjective with some criteria that is unspoken but definitely real.  You can't arrive with a three legged horse and expect to win; however, it's pretty hard to tell the difference between horse A who 'won' and horse B who almost won. 

Some of the spoken judging criteria for an Arabian Halter Competition are:  'breathing fire', 'flared nostrils', 'ears pricked', 'quivering with excitement' .  See what I mean?  There are other more obvious qualities that are judged such as conformation (are they perfectly representative of the breed), pacing (how they move), and even standing correctly.  Some of the unspoken criteria are:  How loud was the crowd cheering when the horse was being individually evaluated by the judges.  How experienced or well liked is the handler (person who holds the halter and runs the horse around the ring).  How well liked is the owner. 

At least my sister-in-law has the unspoken criteria down:  She's well liked, has a competent handler, and the attendance at the horse show was a mandated family event because she told us how important the cheering element of the judging was.  Our two year old family member (Benji) was especially good at the cheering part.  He can make a noise like a fire engine siren which is quite effective.  It was a great opportunity for a family outing, and we all got to sit in the owner's pavilion during the judging.

I've been part of the Smith family for over 40 years, and Dee has been horse crazy for as long as I've known her.  She loves horses and in the past five years has been able to finally have the stable she's always wanted.  Her ultimate goal is to be able to breed and sell horses.  That's the point of the horse beauty contest:  it's cash in the pocket when it's time for breeding.  Stud fees for contest winning horses are greater (just like race winners in the thoroughbred game) , and colts from contest winning mares are worth more money.  Arbinae has just gotten her feet wet in the arena which will help her achieve her ultimate purpose:  to produce a championship quality Arabian colt.

Now, that's the rationale for competing in the Arabian Halter Competition circuit, but, truthfully, it's because Drake's sister loves horses - the expensive ones and the plugs too.  She lavishes just as much time and attention on Pedro (a very nice, ordinary horse) as she does on Michael, her stallion, Belle (her first breeding mare) or Lightening - the ranch's first colt.  Arbinae is the newest member of the stable, and Dee has been more concerned that 'she's happy' than anything else.  I, personally, can not tell when a horse is happy, but apparently, Dee can.  She spends as many hours as possible in the barn doing a host of things which I would consider sheer drudgery.   You know you truly love something when you rearrange your life around it.  

I was glad to go to the horse show because it was a family event, and something we could all share from Drake's mom right down to Quinten who is less than 3 months old.  It wasn't until a week later that I really understood the importance of this beauty contest.  Dee wrote us a note thanking us for coming to the event.  In it she said that she had waited 32 years for that show.  Gosh, I'm so glad we were all there to share it with her.                   

Truckin'

Truckin', truckin', truckin', Drake and Jan are truckin'.  Rolling down the highway, Yee Haw! 

OK, now SING the opening of this post to the tune "Rawhide".)  For all of you who are too young to know "Rawhide", it is the theme song of a 1950's western TV series.  The song and the break out role of the young cowpuncher, Rowdy Yates, are what the show is remembered for.  If you want to know what actor played Yates and how the tune goes,  Google it on YouTube and someone will sing it badly for you.  Then you can carry it around in your head all day humming it.


It is true; we have joined the ranks of the TRUCKERS.  We are on our virgin drive from Texas to Arizona in a 22 foot long, diesel guzzling, gear grinding, truck.  It's loaded with our storage unit contents.  Drake did his usual superb calcuations, and our 'stuff' just fits......barely.  The movers were surly when they realized they were going to have to WORK to get all the contents into this truck.  The stuff is in; it's padded, and it's strapped down.  The loading aspect of this project went smoothly; much more smoothly that the driving portion of this trip.  Here's the true inside story of what it's like to drive and ride in a BIG TRUCK:

First and foremost, it's NOISY.  You know when you are beside a truck at a stop light and when the light turns green, you hear those gear shifting noises as the truck creeps off from a stop light?  Well, it's twice as loud if you are inside the truck.  The noise is pretty constant.  We've had to talk in louder than normal voices just to hear one another from a distance of 3 feet apart inside the cab.

Second, these rental trucks are the last vehicles in America that still have a bench seat.  For the uninitiated, a bench seat is what bucket seats replaced.  The last bench seat I sat in was in 1967.  I thought they were relics of the past.  They definitely should be extinct relics because there's no support for your back, your shoulders or your neck.  Thus, we crawl down two high metal steps to exit the truck with our muscles aching, aching, aching.  Drake also has the challenge of wrestling this truck down the highway, and he's discovering that his arms and hands tingle long after he's climbed down from the driver's seat. 

When we started off, Drake actually said to me, "Don't you want to try and drive this?"  I looked at him like he had lost his mind.  He laughed, and said, "I know.  I know.  This is a boy job."  (Examples of other boy jobs are:  removing dead animals, climbing on the roof, killing large bugs, and getting wet/cold when going for the car to pick me up.)  I COULD drive this truck - it has automatic transmission and power steering, but why would I WANT to.  Drake, in true boy logic, has stated this is a 'wimp truck'.  It seems pretty macho to me.  We are sitting up the same height as the big boy truckers and have the same view of the landscape.  Here's Highway 180 approaching the Guadalupe Mountains.   

 Another reason I know this is a BIG TRUCK is that Drake has to 'climb it' to wash the windshield.  He's about 3 feet off the ground in this picture.   We are beginning to learn some truck tricks - wide turns so as to not run over the curb with the back wheels, being a road bully and just forcing our way into a lane when a car doesn't realize that we can't stop.  (It takes 4 times longer to stop this truck than it does a regular car.)   We also discovered early on that the truck functions as an impromptu pruning tool, especially on low hanging live oak tree boughs.  (Sorry, Jim!)  Today it was frightenly easy to visualize needing to use the 'runaway truck' ramp at the bottom of a long hill coming down from the El Paso Mountains.  Those steep grades make my heart speed up.  Today we improvised a bathroom stop at a Lowe's in El Paso - big parking lot.  Curiously, we realized it's more comfortable and less noisy to drive on state highways rather than the Interstate.  Our first day was all Interstate and we were both practically deaf and felt like quivering jello that had survived an earthquake when we ended the day. 

Today, we drove mostly on Highway 180 across West Texas, and it was more comfortable.  The scenery was classic West Texas: terra cotta soil and ice blue sky for as far as you can see in every direction.  The oldest houses can not be seen since they are completely covered by trees that arch over the roof all around the house.  New construction is so obvious - the trees are tiny.  I was surprised to see several pecan orchards amid the cotton fields.  We drove through Gaines County today.  This place produces the most cotton in the entire state of Texas.  We drove past the birth place of Quanah Parker, and the largest alkali lake in the United States.  The landscape is also interspersed with slow pumping oil wells, and we saw several natural gas wells.  The resurgence of the oil industry is very apparent in this part of Texas.  There were literally dozens of oil services companies, all very busy, along a 100 mile stretch of highway today.  As soon as you cross over into New Mexico, the cotton fields just end.  It's much more like desert in vegetation.  I speculated that perhaps that's a function of no aquifer.  We drove a 130 mile stretch today where there was nothing - no houses, no trees, no buildings, and almost no other vehicles.  It was one of the best parts of this trek. 

Tomorrow we reach Sun City, and by Friday afternoon all my furniture, boxes, tubs, and bags of clothes will be littered over the rooms of the new house.    As soon as I can get it straightened out, I will send out pix of the  new house.   Until then, we have one more day to savor the trucker's lifestyle.  I'm thinking of taking up 'chew' and drinking Red Bull so I can fit into this trucker culture.