Skybird, hope you land long enough for some good food. Peanuts don't count for Thanksgiving.
I will be with good friends and one of the best health food cooks.
Happy turkey day every one.
KennyP

Among life's greatest treasures are the friendships we make along the way.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Barb

Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Skybird, and to all the other RMG'ers!!!

No company coming this year, and we are staying home, so it looks to be a quiet, laid back holiday. The kids helped me make some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread already this morning for tomorrow's breakfast. Now it's on to cookies, and then deviled eggs.

I am thankful for all of the wonderful food, a warm home, and a relatively healthy family. I am truly blessed!

Bonnie

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Happy Thanksgiving, Skybird, and Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!

We will have a simple feast of the traditional things. It worries me a little. DW expects me to kind of "come out of retirement" each year to prepare or help with this and that like I always have. Problem is, I'm getting really, really out-of-practice!

If she keeps me out of the kitchen on all but holidays - what can she expect?!? Maybe if I take a little something for dyspepsia tomorrow morning it will calm me down. Besides, I'll probably need it later!

Steve

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone as well. We are having game night Friday with salad out of the garden and lots of horticulture types attending.

:o)

Dan

Thanks for the good wishes, Skybird, and Happy Thanksgiving to you too! I hope all the RMGers have an abundant and happy holiday filled with good people and good food.

A very Happy Thanksgiving to each and everyone of you. :) I'm thankful to share this gardening passion with all of you good people.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Hope everyone has a good time and safe travelling mrecies if on the road. JaY

I'm down here on good old terra firma for Thanksgiving this year, Kenny. Just got back a little while ago from dinner at my best friend's house. Hope everyone else had as yummy a dinner as I did--and now to figure out how to loose the pounds I put on!

I know of a couple turkeys that I'm sure escaped the chopping block!

Gobble, gobble,
Skybird

SKYBIRD:
**Wild turkeys outside of my (vacation) cabin just south of Moab, Utah! **
Beautyfull. Have thought about AZ. but never considered Utah.
How cold are the winters there? Could a person have a garden year round. Is there enough water?
KennyP who is too old to move, but still likes to dream.

Boy, Kenny, I think water would be a real problem down in the areas where I gotho I canÂt imagine it being any worse than Arizona. I go to the National Parks down in the south end of UtahÂCanyonlands, Arches, Natural Bridges, and Capitol Reef this year. The land down there rates as: Barren, Barrener, and Barrenest! The "green" around the cabin in the turkey pic (itÂs at a ranch) is totally irrigated. I donÂt know if they have some sort of stream access or if they have deep wells, but they do a lot of irrigation.

And definitely no year around gardening! On the bottom I linked to the Canyonlands N. P. weather data, showing temperature averages and precipitation info. BUTÂif I ever HAD to move out of Denver/Colorado, I would definitely move to Southern Utah before IÂd move to Arizona! And I was in northwestern New Mexico on my vacation this year, and I wouldnÂt like living there either! Just not my kind of places, and I would REALLY miss having the four seasons!

Here are a couple more pics that show you what the land is like down there. ItÂs very dry and barren with mostly only things like rabbitbrush, sage (Artemisia tridentata, A. frigida, etc.), Mormon Tea (Ephedra), scrub oak, cactus, and a variety of drought loving grasses. Actually, there are a lot of different (xeric) perennials growing down there, but since I go in September, theyÂre not blooming. I recognize some of them from their leavesÂthere are lots of penstemonÂbut without the flowers I canÂt even hope to figure out which species they are. HereÂs the pics!

This oneÂs in Canyonlands (near Moab), but the terrain and vegetation outside of the Park is pretty much identical to the terrain and vegetation within the Park!

Actually, the turkey pic was taken at the Pack Creek Ranch which is at the base of the La Sal Mountains, and there is definitely more moisture in that areaÂrunoff I assumeÂbut hereÂs a pic of the road in front of the cabin, and even there you can see the drastic difference between the irrigated ranch land and the natural land across the road and in the distance.

This is the terrain west of Bluff, Utah, 25 miles south of Natural Bridges Natl. Monument.

And a couple hundred miles west of Natural Bridges at Torrey, Utah it looks like this!

All kinda starting to look the same, arenÂt they?

But actually, this is all Anasazi country in this area, so if THEY were growing corn and beans and squash down there, maybe you could too! (The first pic above was taken at Aztec Butte in CanyonlandsÂwhich I was hiking/climbing up to see the Anasazi granaries that are at the top!)

And........

HereÂs a pic of the Wolfe Ranch in Arches N. P.

HereÂs the inside of your new digs!

Hey! It has a window!

And you could use the "original house," where they lived for 10 YEARS, as a guest house for when you have company!

It doesnÂt have a window!

HereÂs the Wolfe Ranch Story:

Wolfe Ranch --- John Wesley Worfe settled here in the late 1800's with his oldest son Fred. A nagging leg injury from the Civil War prompted John to move west from Ohio, looking for a drier climate. He chose this tract of more than 100 acres along Salt Wash for its water and grassland -- enough for a few cattle. The Wolfes built a one-room cabin, a corral, and a small dam across Salt Wash. For more than a decade they lived alone on the remote ranch. In 1906 John's daughter, Flora Stanley, her husband, and their children moved to the ranch. Shocked at the primitive conditions, Flora convinced her father to build a new cabin with a wood floor -- the cabin you see today. The reunited family weathered a few more years in Utah and in 1910 returned to Ohio. John Wolfe died on October 22, 1913, in Etna, Ohio, at the age of 84.

IÂm TOTALLY fascinated and amazed when IÂm able to see things like this that show the conditions under which people lived back then, and how it was just "normal" for them. I suspect in a few hundred years people will look at the how we live nowÂand be amazed that we were ever able to survive it!

If you move down there, Kenny, IÂll come visit you next September,
Skybird

Wow! I never expected a master's theses. It sounds colder than I had hoped. Down to 0 and 63 days below 32.
So many thanks, even tho I was just dreaming.
KennyP, born and raised in dry-dry NE Colorado.

LOL! Well I thot if I found you somewhere to live down there you might actually decide to pack up and move! Hmmm! If you didnt like that house, how about this one? Its just outside of Capitol Reef N. P. near Torrey! A family of TEN lived in this one! ;-)

I think most of that area down around where I go is z6, but, yeah, it definitely gets cold! It was just funny that you mentioned even dreaming about living there, cause when I was there this year (around Torrey) I was thinking the same thing: Gee, it would be kinda nice to live around here! But, no, I wouldnt actually move there eitherbut it sure would be fun to be rich enough to have a "vacation home" around there! I, like you, will have to dream on!

Glad youre here in Colorful Colorado with us!
Skybird

I firmly believe that if you quit dreaming you might as well die. I am 80 with an ICD am not about to give it up. If I get back out to my farm, I will post a picture of the house I grew up in, in the dust bowl days. I was the last of 8 kids.
FWIW, History channel has story on dust bowl on Thursday night. I think 8:00 MST.
Colorado is mighty hard to beat. Do you people here realize that in my life time we have gone from zone 4 or colder to a zone 5?
KennyP, who just had pumpkin pie for breakfast-again

Skybird, is that pic 25 miles south of Bridges that road down to Valley of the Gods? Did you drive it?

For those that haven't been that-a-way, there is this lovely paved road headed west out of Blanding, a nice, paved intersection with a road headed down to Mexican Hat, and maybe, if I remember correctly, a small sign about not pulling trailers.

Bit further down, there's a sign, about the size of a large hay barn, with something like Warning!! No trailers beyond this point!!! This means YOU, Ya FOOL!!! and then the road drops off a cliff and hairpins down to the bottom.

Most years I do a week backpacking trip somewhere, and in the early '90s we hit Canyonlands in April just as the rains stopped. I'm pretty sure that trip will never be displaced from the Top 10. Sigh...Lovely pix thank you.

Dan

Right on, Kenny! NEVER stop dreaming! As a matter of fact, ever since I got back from this years vacation, Ive been planning for (dreaming of!) NEXT years vacation! I can hardly wait! And you dont need to actually move somewhere, but you can plan a trip down to Utahor Arizonaor somewhere to do some sight seeingand dream of staying there like I was doing this year! Besides the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a couple other National Parks, Utah has LOTS of National Parks and Monuments, and if youre looking for a warm place, New Mexico has several too. I went to Aztec Ruins and Chaco Canyon for the first time this year (cant wait to go back!), and theres Carlsbad Caverns WAY down in the south end of N. M. if you REALLY want warm! Youre never too old to be tooling around in the National Parks, and once you buy your $10 LIFETIME National Parks Senior Pass, everything is FREE and youre good to go! I dont have any implanted devicesyetbut when Im 80, in 14 years, I fully intend to still be doing my annual National Parks vacationscomplete with hikes! Actually, maybe/hopefully MORE than "annual" by then! The hikes might not be as "challenging" as some of the ones I do now, but Ill still be doing them! Heck, when I wind up driving a Hoveround to do things, Ill still be out enjoying the National Parks. Look out world! Crazy woman driver here!

Ive seen a couple Dust Bowl shows on PBS, but I wont be able to watch the one on History. I dont have cable! Since they keep rerunning their shows, maybe Ill get to see it on a layover sometime! I really like shows like that! REAL "reality" shows! Hey, has everybody seen the new Ken Burns series on the National Parks? Like all his stuff, its really good!

Yeah, David, thats the Moki Dugway! In 07 and 08 I wasnt able to find any decent places to stay in Blandingor Monticello, so for this year I was sort of googling that area and I happened upon the Moki Dugway! Researched it a little bit more and decided it would be fun to do, so I looked for places to stay in Bluff, and found a little cabinbut it turned out to be just one in a row of cabins, facing a parking lot. It was nice inside, but not the kind of cabin I look forwont be staying there again next year! I was thinking of doing the Valley of the Gods road too, but when I researched that online, people were saying that that roadalmost 20 mileswas REALLY bad washboard road, so I took the "real road" (Utah 163) to the west end of Valley of the Gods road and backtracked a little ways into it. It really was BADwashboard AND washed out in spotsso I didnt go very far, and as far as I went, there wasnt that much to see. Maybe there would have been more if I had done the whole thing, but after seeing Bryce, Cedar Breaks, and the other Parks down in Utah, I wasnt at all impressed. So since I was starting in Bluff, going to Natural Bridges, I "did" the Moki Dugway "backwards!" I started at the bottom and went up it rather than down it! I didnt take any pictures of them, but there are several of "those" signson BOTH ends of it! This is the "regular" road sign at the bottom where the pavement ends. I admit, at that point I was wondering what I was getting myself into! [if you click on the pic to get to the Picasa viewwhich is bigger than what I have posted here, all my pics are captioned]

When I was "researching," I found out that the Moki Dugway was originally an Indian trail which was developed into it's present form by a mining company in 1958 so they could transport uranium ore to Mexican Hat at the base of Cedar Mesa. Maybe it's just because I've been in Colorado for so long, but the road wasn't half as bad as I was expecting from what I had found online! It's a very steep dropoff most of the way down, but it was surprisingly wide and really very well graded! I've been on way worse where you had to go really, really slowly around the blind curves in case somebody was coming the other direction!

When I was researching it, this is the pic you most often find online!

Here you can see a "loop" of the Dugway with paved Utah 261 in the valley, and the west end of the dirt Valley of the Gods road which goes past a building that used to be a B & B!

And this is a pic at the top (looking backwards for me) right where it starts the steep drop down into the valley.

If you havent done it before, I recommend it. Its a fun drive with some great views. Bet your kids would enjoy it! And, it sounds like youve been to Natural Bridges! Have you ever hiked the Horse Collar Ruins? Not the overlook, the ruins themselves. I recommend that too. You hike to the base of Sipapu and then about a mile down the canyon. This is it from the overlook.

And this is it up close and personaland how it got its name!

And, Dan, if youve been to Canyonlands, heres a couple pics for you! You must have seen some wonderful wildflowers if you were there in spring!

This is the only plant pic I took in Canyonlands! I was wondering what it waswhen I first saw it the foliage looked like Sedum album, but when I looked more closely, the stems were semi-woody! I showed the pic to a Ranger, who I was hoping could tell me what it was, but even after looking online, she couldnt. Since I got home its been identified by someone I used to work with in the green industry as some sort of a chenopod (Chenopodiaceae), and I spent a little bit of time looking further, but there are a kazillion of them, so I still dont know the species! If anybody can tell me more.........

Now heres the REAL pics!

SMALL part of the view from Grand View Point Overlook!

And this is one of the views from the Anasazi Granary trial which is under an overhang just below the very tippy-top of Aztec Butte!

If anybodys thinking of taking a vacation down this way and is interested in seeing more picturesincluding the WONDERFUL little cabins I found in Moab, Torrey, Vallecito Reservoir (near Durango), and Pagosa Springs, let me know and Ill send you the links. I dont want to put the links to the full albums here online! A couple times when Ive googled things, Ive come up with MY OWN pictures, and its kinda weird to think of all of them floating around out there in the ether!!!

Heres a tease! This is the ranch where I stayed in the Hideaway cabin in (23 miles northwest of) Pagosa!

And some of the fauna I was enjoying with my evening glass of wine!

~~~AND~~~

Ignore all of this if youre not interested! Im just hanging out at home right now with lots of time to kill!

National Parks Girl,
Skybird

Skybird, the last time I was over that way was about a year ago, picking and dropping off my son and his friends who do some winter backpacking down in the canyons off that road.

But this discussion reminds me of maybe 7-8 years ago, we had some friends invite self and then-5yr old daughter out in the fall to collect pinion nuts - there was some spectacular place of nut abundance off that road that we just had to see.

Well, it was a beautiful afternoon, and I sorta, well, dozed off under a tree, while DD was busy collecting pinion nuts. After about an hour, she brought me back, beaming with pride, two heaping buckets of dried, shrunken deer droppings.

ROFL! Did you roast them before you ate them?

;-)

Wonderful, pictures. Thank you. I lived in Tucson for quite a while and I love the desert so much (though I love Colorado even more I think).