Beaten by a 5 year old - again!

Every year our ward does this fantastic activity where we race zuchini's down a track. We even have an association called NAZCAR ( the Neighborhood Association of Zuchini Car Auto Racing) that promotes this event every year. Every year I try to come up with a car that will win the race --- and every year I fail. This year's model is a souped up off-road truck with a specially modified traditional zuchini. It was even equipped with flashing lights and authentic truck revving motor sounds.

At the start of the race, everything looked promising. My little vehicle revved and flashed its way down the track - only to hit a minor bump and flip over on its side, the ignominious flashing lights now looking more like hazardous warning flashers. Oh, the agony of defeat! And to think, I lost to a five year old. I thought surely that the sounds and lights would scare the other car off the track. My Phillips 66 pit boss shirt (Janene had a matching one) was sure-fire proof that our pit crew was eminently more qualified.

Last year I was beaten by little Trinity with her Barbie car. A BARBIE CAR! How humiliating!

Others lost too, however. The McKenna's unique two wheeler did pretty well, but ended up getting beat by a more conventional vehicle.
Ron Young's car suffered the same discouraging fate as it failed to even roll a few inches on his wife's hair rollers. In the end, we all had fun. None of us take this too seriously, but HA!, I already have my idea on next year's entry. It's sure to win next time. Maybe if I just put on bigger pipes this time. PIPES!!!

Garden Fun

Now is the fun time of gardening - the picking, and eating and canning and sharing. Lately we have been able to start using the the things from our garden. Last night, Janene spent the whole night (literally, getting up every 20 minutes to stir the pot) making 16 pints of her mom's chili sauce. First you start with 20 pounds of freshly picked vine-ripened tomatoes, and then you add all the other secret ingredients we grow in our garden.

Then you grind them all up in the food processor, add all the spices and put it all into two giant pots and cook it all down until it is the right consistency. The flavors and aromas that permeate the house during this process remind Janene of her young life with her mother making the same sauce. Then it is into the bottles, to be canned for saving and using throughout the year.

With all the peppers we have ripening right now, we decided to roast up a bunch of peppers so that we can have them all year long as well. We didn't grow any really hot peppers this year, but we got a lot of Poblanos (shown here on the grill) and Anaheims, Yellow Wax Peppers and two new varieties, the Marconi Giant Pepper and the Fiesta. Now all we have to do is figure out how we are going to make our one hundred some odd onions last the whole year. And just what are we supposed to do with our tomatillos? Any suggestions for recipes would be greatly appreciated.

An Evening with Annelise LeCheminant

We started out this evening without a plan. (Well, that is not quite true) - the plan was to to take our garden bounty and make Janene's (really Marie's) famous chili sauce. Then we got a call from our friends, Dave and Nannette Hansen. "Would you like to come to a concert in our yard?" So we packed up our lawn chairs and walked down to Hansen's house to listen to Annelise LeCheminant sing for us. She is a singer/songwriter from Los Angeles and recently Nashville who has three CD's out right now. She likes to do house concerts, because she does not like singing in bars.

She had a friend, Tom, who started out as a rocket scientist, but later moved to Nashville where he is a contract songwriter. He has written songs for George Strait and a recent one for a group called Due West that I was supposed to know, but didn't. He was a pretty talented performer in his own right and had some fun songs. My favorite, though, was a song he wrote about his grandparents titled "I know who she is" describing their life together through dating, the war, raising a family, and finally through her challenges with Alzheimer's. He said it will be released on an album later this year by a famous artist. They had a drummer named Aaron from Salt Lake with them who had never played with Tom before, but just made it up as he went. It sounded great.

As the sun set in the west (now there is a phrase from my grandfather's movie narratives - as if there was another direction the sun could set into), we were treated to an crimson sunset with huge blue streaks in the sky. It was a unique sight that stopped the concert for a few minutes while everyone gawked and took pictures.

At the end of the concert, everyone posed for pictures for us. Our only disappointment was that so few people were able to enjoy this experience with us. You should check Annelise out on her website at http://www.annelise.us I think she has some of her music for you to hear. You can even sign up to host a house concert yourself.

Torn between two loves

I think I must be going through a sort of midlife crisis. I feel like the person in that song (is it by Abba?) "Torn between two lovers". I have always been faithful to my first love, the High Uintas. I was introduced to her by my grandfather and my father in my 12th year. For years I have taken all my vacations here, taught my grandkids to fish here, and shown all my Boys Scouts how to care for the land here. A couple of weeks ago Janene and I even went on a hike all the way to the top of Granddaddy Pass above Heart Lake, just so I could take this picture of one of my favorite places.

Now I feel like I have cheated on my lifelong love and stepped out with a new one. I went with the Boy Scouts of our ward to the Bridger Wilderness in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. I expected to have fun, but thought this would just be a one night stand. I had no intention of letting this be a long term relationship. But now I dream of going back, exploring all the unknown country, and fishing new lakes. I caught the largest Brook Trout (21 inches) of my life here in a little puddle of a lake without even a name. This picture of Eklund Lake with the peaks of the Wind Rivers in the background is only a sample of the beauty I was able to see on this trip. Ah! What is a guy to do?

An Evening Stroll ( with a friend )

Janene and went for a little evening walk tonight in Holbrook Canyon. Little did we know that we would have a new walking partner.

The close-up is for Dan & Britt. Dan can tell us for sure what kind of tarantula this really is.

He (or she) is a lot darker than the ones we used to have in our yard. I couldn't get Janene to pick it up. Where is Chelane when you need her? Me pick it up? Not on your life!!

Cabin For Sale - sort of

On our way back from Steamboat Springs, Janene and I ran across this cabin for sale. It's located right next to Defa's Dude Ranch on the Duchesne River near the Hades canyon trailhead into the Granddaddy Lake area. It was in a nice little setting next to two other old cabins.

It was kind of small, but being located so close to river made us think twice about it. We called the owners, they said they would be up there this week, so we scheduled a little detour from cooking for the girls at camp to visit and take a tour.

Once we got there, it turned out they had run into Duchesne to pick up supplies and weren't there. While we waited for them, Janene got out the fishing pole and in three casts had a bite, the next cast catching a 12" rainbow. This the view of Janene fishing from the back of the cabin. It was looking pretty promising at this point, so we went next door to the saloon at Defa's to see what they knew about the place. They knew all about it and told us that it came with no land!

You had to rent the cabin site for $1000.00 per year. The Defa's kept the title to the property. That pretty much killed the deal for us. The cabin would have been $50,000 and that sounded OK if it had 1/4 acre lot. We turned around and went home without ever seeing the inside, but we look forward to going back there the next time we are in the area and dropping a line in the river. At least the fishing is good!