One of the loveliest hikes anywhere in the world is of course, a hiker’s highway; Hidden Falls above Jenny Lake in the Grand Teton Range is serviced by a boat ride, including complimentary hiking sticks for the 1/2 mile hike to the Falls. How lucky to hike it twice; the first time with Steven, beyond Continue Reading »
Hats off to our National Park system, both Presidents Roosevelt, and to the first National Park Service Director Horace Albright. These men protected this land by: 1) founding the first National Park here (Pres. Teddy Roosevelt); 2) creating the first funded National Park Service, and outlining the NPS policy to make public enjoyment of the Continue Reading »
From afar it looks like a boy with a bad “butch” haircut due to the shrubs that grow on top. However, standing at its base, it is purely monumental. For Spielberg cinema lovers, it is iconic, yet there is no paraphernalia or mention of Spielberg’s “Strange Encounters of the Third Kind” shot here. We probably Continue Reading »
WOW! The corn and soybean fields and farming communities are gone, as is the humidity and flatness of the Midwest. We are in the West, Baby! Proof? “Mountain Time Zone”, and cracked, dry lips! This corner of South Dakota is filled with ponderosa pine, bison, prong-antlered antelope, elk, prairie dogs, and lovely Sylvan Lake, below. Continue Reading »
From a Stanford University lecture in 2000, “Corn: Species Hybridization”, I learned that corn surpasses all others for diversity within the species, except for…..dogs! Both travelled far north and south along the mountainous spine of North and South America, with such a variety of conditions like the number of daylight hours, that both had to Continue Reading »
To become the “Flour Milling Capital of the World”, you needed three things: grain, water/hydropower, and a way to ship the flour. Minneapolis sits aside the highest drop the Mighty Mississippi takes as it rolls to the Gulf. St. Anthony Falls provided the power to drive the mills, and the Midwest is filled with fields Continue Reading »
Being from the politically progressive San Francisco Bay Area, I had never attended a Labor Day Parade that wasn’t highly political, and with an international focus. The one here in Rapid City today had the whole town out, the kids catching thrown candy, the adults enjoying the drum corps. Only Labor organizations were represented: Sheet Continue Reading »
I have wanted to visit the “U.P.” since I started reading books by my favorite author, Jim Harrison. Many of his novels are set in the U.P. and center around his fondest topics: Food, Hunting, Sex, Fishing, and Drinking. My women’s book group didn’t really love him when I made them read, “Sundog”, so reasonable Continue Reading »
Thanks to Bob’s gift of a copy of, “The China Study” by T. Campbell almost five months ago, we have switched to a 90% vegan diet for its long term health enhancing benefits. That means we eat EVERYTHING our friends and family put before us without questions, and sample tastes of local animal specialties wherever Continue Reading »
Many of us residing near the University of California, Berkeley, CA like to think we are the center of the 1st Amendment universe due to the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio. However, I had to stop in Skokie, as at a memorial, in respect for the suffering of the residents of Skokie who felt Continue Reading »