Land of Camping Enchantment

Recently, we took a little trip out West to attend a  family wedding. Because it had been eons since Turtle and I had gone backpacking, we decided to prove we weren’t too old to camp along the way…two nights at least, maybe three. So we packed. The trunk was stuffed with gear, mainly because Turtle is a “gear junkie”. (Whatever the hobby, he wants to have the right equipment. I think it’s a guy thing.) 




We had arctic sleeping bags, an enclosed tent with a floor—like a zippered bubble—and a tri-cornered tarp for those who wanted to sleep in real, rugged man style—practically out of doors. Turtle also took fly-fishing equipment and wore his New Mexico license around his neck with those little clippers for setting the fish free once you have proved your superior intellect and perseverance by snagging them.





That first night saw us in a canyon state park called Villa Nueva.





There were adobe shelters for picnic tables and a little stream ran nearby. (It was the Pecos River after two years of drought.) Even more importantly, restrooms were close at hand and the park managers were parked within hailing distance should a cougar decide to visit us all. I suggested setting up the tent inside the shelter, but Turtle considered that too prissy, so we found a spot of hard ground and cleared the rocks.
I hardly slept all night. I know, running water is supposed to induce slumber, but somehow it just made me feel cold. The Arctic sleeping bag didn’t warm me. (It’s a good thing we tried it, before we took it to the Klondike). Somewhere, way up on top of the canyon, a big cat was screeching, and I could hear every footstep that crunched on the dry ground outside. Speaking of ground, well it didn’t have much give to it and my one inch of mattress didn’t dull the sensation of stones against my bones. At four o’clock I asked Turtle to accompany me to the bathrooms. It was so warm inside the building, I almost opted to move my sleeping bag into the dressing room, but the thought of camper-stalkers deterred me. At five o’clock, Rocky Mountain time, the birds started screaming for the sun to come up. Grudgingly, it obliged.

Turtle used his Irish Kelly Kettle to heat a pot of boiling water. We added instant coffee, ate granola bars and briefly grilled a can of what turned out to be a generic variety of Vienna sausages. Yum. Turtle went fishing while I re-arranged the luggage in the trunk. (Car camping is great; it gives you a huge secure, portable locker for stowing gear. Now that I think of it, the back seat would have been more comfortable too...but hardly sporting of me...)

 

We hiked up the mountain trail to the top of the canyon. It was a wonderful climb. The trail was clearly marked and the view out over the valley exhilarating. Fresh air! Sage! No grass! No poison ivy!

 
We took lots of pictures and a few breaks to recover our altitude-challenged oxygen levels.












Along the way, we hiked past a hundred swallow nests stuck tightly to the underside of an overhanging bit of rockface.

 Far below, we could see our tiny campsite next to the faithful gray automobile/camping locker. The sun was bright; the breeze cool enough, and we only stumbled a few times on the way down.

As we loaded the equipment, I made a strategic decision: all camping gear went into the trunk; the luggage, we packed on the back seat. That way it would be handy when we reached the hotel at Santa Fe that evening. Yes. Hotel. I needed some real sleep and decided that one night of “roughing it” was enough to prove we were still young.

Grandchildren Play Piano--Mim, Zaya, and Blaze

I'm so glad my children are encouraging their children to practice their piano. I know. I know. I was the one who never practiced piano and can't really play today...but I'm thrilled that my grandchildren do. Here's Mim, then Zay, and last of all little Blaze--who does his best to introduce the song like his cousins do.

Mim is seven years old.

Zaya is nine

And Blaze is seven months old; he needed a little encouragement from Dad.

Quite the Characters

Well, it all started with Alice...and the white rabbit.

but there were whispers about another character possibly showing up...a Mad Hatter.

I went as the dormouse, with a straight pen sword. Turtle, trying to be true to his blog name, went as the mock turtle. We didn't try to stuff him into the skin-tight, lime green body suit, because we had a little sympathy for the sensibilities of our fellow guests. He did occasionally wear the calf head though.

The Mad Hatter was accompanied by the white queen, who was hard to recognize as a cafeteria manager.  The red queen kept screaming "Off with his head!" and ordering the knave of hearts to attend her.

A pack of very obedient cards served our dessert--first--just to mix things up a little.

Then we ate gourmet burgers with all the trimmings. I stole a little cheese from off the trimmings table, just to keep from nibbling on the candy.

while the March Hare yelled--principally about the lateness of his meal. Being the dormouse, I just kept falling asleep on the table.

Tweedle Dee and the Cheshire Cat superintended this crazy experiment in Hilarity.

Unfortunately the flash on my camera isn't working so I relied on the "professionals" once again...Julie B and Roshelle W.

The Ride

Oddly enough, how one arrives at the banquet has assumed disproportionate importance. A simple car is not enough to impress. Around here one tries for an old classic. It's equivalent to a limousine.

 But a really old pick-up is just as good, something your great-grandfather drove to Texas on Route 66.









Of course if you don't have something old you can go with shiny, new, expensive wheels...

or, speaking of expensive, drive your date to the banquet in the cab of a really large piece of farm
machinery that's worth a house...and of course you must be willing to put in the time to scrub and polish it a little. At any rate, it will be ready for the season.
Every year they seem to get bigger...and for farmers' sons, big is no problem. Cotton strippers or combines, these large, green carriages get everyone's attention.

but I think my favorite ride was the one chosen by Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.
It's somehow perfect for the Topsy-Turvey world inside... and I think I'll show you pictures of the other characters in my next blog post. I don't have time to let them all load tonight.







(I didn't take these pictures. They were taken by Julie B.)

Alice

Now that school is officially out for the summer, I think I might have time to tell you about the all-school STUCO banquet, which is our "prom" type activity. Everyone is invited, including the teachers and staff. Even though I'm not the student council sponsor, I helped with the decorations on the center table, because, in a small school like ours, people appreciate volunteers.This year the theme was Alice in Wonderland, so the teachers decided to dress up. It was...um...well... interesting.

 There was  also a considerable amount of whimsy.

Decorations were random--piled stacks of china, a casserole dish with water and a turtle inside, odd flower vases with unmatched flowers. The cake-plate centerpiece contained two slices of very burned toast and a couple of hard-fried, rubbery eggs. Why? I don't know, but you have to admit, it is unusual. The English teacher actually wanted to put a mouse on the tray so an unsuspecting guest who lifted the cover would get a surprise. I refused, thinking someone would be likely to turn over a table and I didn't want my china to be broken.

An eclectic arrangement of said china ran down the middle of the faculty table, where strange unmatched chairs drove orderly, symmetrical minds to distraction--namely mine. Rosalind, one of the seventh-grade students, shared my dread of lopsidedness, and we managed to shift things around, bringing balance to the madness.

There were murals, lights, clocks, and other out-of-place attractions, such as a paper mache tree, which began on the ground and rose through the white draped roof.

The walls were covered with black plastic, posters of quotes from the book and  a long, spring mural.

Props for pictures sat conveniently near a photo spot.















The student council members and their sponsors put in a lot of time on table decorations, arranging stacks of teacups and card castles with hot glue finesse.  They found several boxes of random glasses that had been left over from former banquets. Since this theme didn't call for anything matching, they were able to use them all, painting them inside and out and putting them into service as place cards.

One end of the gym was set up with carnival type games and a table full of stacked Oreos stood bravely in the middle.This decoration was near the signing wall--a graffiti area for doodles.

The gym was transformed.
Perfectly imperfect.
All ready for the guests.
I'll save that for my next post.
It's curiouser.

Proverb Dyslexia

My sister "Polly" has a classical case of proverb dyslexia. She's constantly mixing her proverbs.
I guess you could also call her metaphorically challenged.
Whatever the diagnosis, it brings a lot of chuckles from the rest of us.

Sometimes she doesn't have a "thin cent" or a "red dime" and at other times she thinks rolling stones shouldn't dwell in glass houses. (At least they wouldn't have mossy walls to mend.)
Anyway, I finally convinced her to start writing some of these little jewels down so I could share them with the internet world. Here are some recent ones.

• "Stark" and "Polly" watching the end of a Western:
  

  Polly:  Well, she fixed HIS goose!
  (appropriate period of time for Stark to chuckle and Polly to realize that something is wrong.)
  Stark: I think that's easier than cooking his wagon anyway.
  
  
  
  
  
• Polly: I was driving through Sonic this afternoon, and had planned to go at the cheap time. However, I left work too late, and missed it. I was lamenting to "Mariel" (on the phone):
  Oh phooey! I thought that I was going to get here for Happy Time! It felt sort of wrong, but I thought, "Oh well, something's wrong there, but she knows what I mean."
  Mariel: "It's party hour!"
  
  
• Mariel  Today she was pretending to fight me,  put up her fists and said "Put 'em up, Duke!"
  

  Carina:  John Wayne would be proud.
  
  
• Polly:  Trying to describe some type of music that I wouldn't necessarily dislike:
  

  It wouldn't necessarily be something that I'd turn my nose down on.
  Aurgh.
  
  
• Polly:  Last night, on the way to graduation, Stark and I were chatting. We were discussing a situation (I can't remember which one), and different options. We did some "if this, then that" sort of scenarios, and I suddenly thought of one option that could make things go horribly wrong. I blurted, "Of course, if they did THAT, it would throw a screw into the whole mess!" Now, I DO have a sort of explanation to that. Of course, I was aiming for "throw a wrench into the works," because I've been trying to avoid expressions with the verb "to screw" in them. (because I'm not sure if they are vulgar or not.) So "screw it up" came to mind and I tried to fix it quickly. I ended up merging the wrench expression with "screw it up," and "mess up the whole thing."
  

  
  
• Carina: Well, throwing a screw into a bunch of gears would be equally detrimental.
  

  I had one of my own today. We were talking about food for something, and I said, "That would really throw a hamper on the whole thing."
  
  Hum. It would appear that this transliteration of aphorisms may have a genetic cause. At least it looks like the rotten apples don't fall far from their barrels.
  
  

Well Eight Miles in the Rain is Certainly No Stroll Down Broadway...but Safer Maybe

 Today was the day for my annual hike in Dogwood Hollow. It sounds like a forested adventure, but out in Western Oklahoma, it's more of a clamber over rocks. This morning it was a clamber over wet rocks, but thankfully, the misty, moisty morning quit drizzling after a mile or two and we enjoyed perfect hiking weather. This picture was taken toward the beginning of the hike when the fog was palpable.

 These are my energetic sophomores. They are great kids, fun to be with and not a speck of any trouble...well not usually anyway.

These two had suffered basketball-related ankle injuries earlier this season, so I wasn't sure they could make the whole hike. We planned to stop and turn around if they got tired. Fortunately, one of them just got braces yesterday and was on pain medicine, so nothing hurt. The other one was determined...so we actually made it through the entire hike, even finished ahead of the other group.

 To be fair, I'll have to explain that they took a few stops to play in the water and catch crawdads and frolic, running up and down the hills.

 And then...one of them ran into a cactus and the spines got him right through his tennis shoes. It took them a little time to clean those out.

 Unlike the last two years, there has been abundant water this year. Last week they got about six inches of rain. What a difference that made! There were little creeks and waterfalls everywhere. I had trouble recognizing the trail a few times and we had to climb up onto the mountain and scan the countryside for it.

 I had to take a picture of this little island. I don't know why. It just looked whimsical.

 And here is the old Civilian Conservation Corps Dam from the Depression Era. This time, though, it actually had water spilling over the side.

 Sometimes we climbed...no actually...lots of times we climbed. Only once did we collapse to catch our breath after a particularly hard climb.

One of my charges had never hiked before. She's from California and has been raised mostly in cities. "So this is a hike," she murmured softly after stepping in the first mud puddle and slipping off the first creek rock. Thankfully, she was the one on pain meds. for her new braces. There she is, peeking out from behind Tori.

Tori used to ride with me every morning to school...back when she was a boisterous seventh-grader. Sometimes she took the pictures I didn't have time to stop for. Today, she took her own, because the weather was perfect and the colors bright.  The grass was green, the water blue-gray, and the rocks as red as Oklahoma dirt.

 I really liked the look of this cactus mound, next to the cedar brush with the spiky bare branches of a winter tree in the background.

It was really even more beautiful there. Wish you had all been along for the day.

 We climbed and clambered and kept our cameras in hand. We enjoyed the scenery, but had to watch our feet too--lots of little rocks---and lots of big rocks too, come to think of it.

 Here are some flowers I captured for my granddaughter Mim's collection.

 And this one was taken while looking down from a forty-foot overlook onto a little creek far below.

 There were lots and lots of clear creeks like these. If it had been warmer, we would have cooled our toes, but it was not too tempting today.

 Even the fish and crawdads seemed to be hiding, and the snakes and lizards were snug in dens.
No frogs. No turtles. That's quite unusual for this time of the year, but the unseasonal cool weather may be the explanation for that.

We saw a few wild turkeys in the distance, and one lone goose in the water, a few buffalo, two deer, crossing the road right in front of us, a few long-horned cattle in a pasture, and a multitude of prairie dogs.  If you look at this picture, you can see the turkeys, right about the center, in that little clearing.

We ended the day by going to the "Holy City" for a picnic lunch. It's an interesting site where a permanent backdrop for a yearly Easter pageant makes another great place to stroll around. I climbed up a hill for a final look and took these last shots for the day.

Until next year...and next...and as many years as I'm able...I'll hike the hike...but right now, I'm just going to rest my feet.