Zion National Park, Awesome Angel's Landing Hike, Fu-Fu Bathrooms, and The Best Hiking Day Ever!

We entered Salt Lake City in mid-autumn, and when we left, we drove through 3 hours of a winter snowstorm, only to arrive in Zion back in early autumn! It's strange business chasing the seasons south.

We got to Zion National Park just as the sun was setting and were given a beautiful welcome hug in the form of the sun setting on the huge reddish cliff across from the place we were having dinner. There were 4 of us smartphone people and a couple of just plain people taking in the sight. We were already wishing we'd have booked more time here.

The Desert Pearl is the most spendy accommodation on our whole migration and worth every penny. It's situated up against one of the standard Zion multi-colored cliffs and has the Virgin River just yards from the deck. In addition to all the creature comforts, the fridge was in a quiet box, there was no clock to light the room, and there were no blinking LED lights. Ahhhhhhhh! You know you're in a really fancy place when they have one of those special little basins next to the toilet. You know, the kind everyone thinks is cool but doesn't know how to use without making a mess. So we had a very soft landing in Zion.

The park itself is 15 miles long and about a half a mile deep. Everywhere you look you are surrounded by giant red and tan colored sandstone walls. Gwen would say it's more a terra cotta/mauvey color than red, but we agreed on the tan. The Virgin River running through the canyon has helped shape this glorious place. We waited till 10 AM when the visitor center opened and the sun got high enough to warm the valley.

Because we have arrived late in the tourist season, we were not required to take a shuttle into the park. Apparently, in the thick of the season, there are 5000 visitors a day and only 450 parking places. The shuttle is the only way to access the place. We felt lucky driving in for the comfort and having our gear and food with us. It helped a lot when making a last minute trail decision.

When talking with the ranger at the visitor center, I don't know if it was our age or that we said the last time we were in the park was twenty years ago, but she suggested some easy, bottom of the canyon loop hikes. We left pondering that advice, only to discover the routes were still in the shade and cold. So we screwed up our courage and headed to Angles Landing.

Angel's Landing hike is indeed a butt kicker at any age. It takes a couple hours of sweaty, heart pounding, effort to climb the 1500 feet to reach the top at about 5800 feet. But that is really the easy part. There is a long trail, mostly up, with long and short switch backs just to get to the real hike. The last part of the hike is why people come.

The last third or so of the hike is across breathtakingly narrow saddles, scampering across side faces, and moving up almost vertical ascents, with thousand foot dropoffs on either side. There are chains that have been put in place for this last part of the climb, but somehow they almost make it worse by exaggerating the danger, if that's even possible. This photo shows one of a few, maybe eight foot wide crossings

I was doing pretty well for an old dude of 70, feeling good about myself and keeping up with Gwen and the general flow of hikers. It's when I was near the top and passed by an 85 year old woman coming down that my fitness bubble burst. Clearly I have some fitness work to do if I'm going to be doing these hikes in 15 years!

We spent a glorious hour in the sun at the top. It really is one of the best vistas in the park. The sense of accomplishment, being there with Gwen, the sunshine, seeing the beauty and colors of the park stretched out before me, a little lunch, and pretty much putting off all thoughts of the descent, all combined into one of the best hours of the whole trip.

It's strange how going down seemed more difficult. Maybe because sandstone is, in fact, slippery, or the fact that I was tired, legs were a little wobbly, and was now actually looking down at bottomless drop offs. Trust me, there is no way I can communicate that kind of excitement in words. You can find a lot of pictures of the hike at this link. They just begin to give you a sense of the precariousness of this climb. In the end, we both really loved it and were glad it was our choice for the day.

A soak in the hot tub, an easy dinner out, and crashing early ended the day. Tomorrow we'll head to Phoenix via the Glen Canyon Dam and Flagstaff. The next day we'll be 3 hours from our Tucson home. That's when the flurry of activities to move in starts in earnest. There may be one more final post, but if not, thanks again for the eyeballs and your interest. Hope you had fun coming along on the ride.

Earl and Gwen

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Custer, Presidents, Buffalo History, Needles Highway, and Osso Bucco

The State Game Lodge, in Custer State Park, was lovingly crafted in 1921. It was a stone and log beauty. Sadly, the place promptly burned down 72 days after it opened! What you see there today was rebuilt on the same foundations and is still a grand old structure.

The lodge is famous for being the Summer White House of President Calvin Coolidge in late 1927, and was also visited by President Eisenhower in the 1953. I do love history and historic places, but we opted out of the Presidential rooms at $300/night and, instead took the late-season rate in the attached and wholly adequate motel rooms.

Speaking of history, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to a couple of Black Hills ranchers. Pete Dupree is the guy who saved 5 buffalo calves from the last big hunt in 1881. James "Scotty" Philip got the calves from Pete and grew them into a herd of a thousand. Part of that herd is now roaming free in Custer State Park as living history. We never saw them on our afternoon wildlife hike and assumed they were at some kind of bison happy hour somewhere. The photo is what we would have seen had the big guys not been away.

The next morning, while the sun was in the East, we drove two scenic loops in the park. The first was the Iron Mountain Road. The road itself is a seventeen mile, curvy work of art. It ever so gently takes you through the park at a relaxing, twenty mile per hour pace. The jewels of the road are 3 tunnels carved through granite. Two of them were built to perfectly frame the Presidential faces on nearby Mt. Rushmore. The road also boasts what are known as pigtail bridges which corkscrew your vehicle down in spirals. Amazing construction. Here are some great pictures of the road.

The second loop was the Needles Highway, which took us literally through the towering and often pointy (geological term) rock formations. I hate to put it this simply, but there were big, grand vistas around every (sharp) turn. The rock spires seemed to actually be lit up in the morning sun. In this picture, Gwen is the very small "spire" in the lower foreground. More pictures of the Needles Highway at this link. It was a cold and windy morning and we were only dressed for driving or we'd have struck out on a hike. But we did hear the call to action!

We went back to the lodge, changed clothes, got out our hiking poles, and headed out from the lodge on a three hour loop hike called Lover's Leap. It was a really steep start for two people who been sitting for days and now found themselves at five thousand feet. When I finally got my heart back in my chest, we crested at yet another grand rocky view point. It was that kind of day! (See more tidbits from the hike at the end of the post.) The trail then wound back down to a rocky canyon and paralleled a small mountain stream for about an hour. When we got back to the lodge we realized we had accomplished the three-hour hike in two hours!

In honor of our hiking victory and the first phase of our trip, we splurged on a 'fancy' meal in the old lodge dining room. The lodge was closing the next day, and we literally had the dining room to ourselves. Felt oddly Presidential, as though the Secret Service guys were just around the corner. Gwen had Elk Osso Buco (Italian specialty made with elk shank stewed in stock and deep red wine, and seasonal vegetables), served with risotto. Earl had Bison Tenderloin and bacon infused mashed potatoes (not really fu-fu). We had a nice McManus Petite Sirah with dinner. Gwen's meal was the best, but we were both really winners. The beauty, the hike, fresh air, the meal and wine, I was sleeping by 9:30.

In closing this post about a truly wonderful day, we will leave you (just below) with the message we came across on the trail, and a moment of Zen from the hike!

Tomorrow we're off to visit friends and family in Salt Lake City. The next you'll hear from us will be from Zion National Park in Utah.

Blessings to all, and onward!

Earl and Gwen

And for those of you who need a little taste of that kind of serenity, here's a short clip from the hike.

If this clip doesn't show up use this link.

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The Good Badlands, Big Vistas, Sheep, Fossils, and Impermanence

After 50 years, Gwen finally got her wish to return to a place she had seen as a child on a family road trip through the Badlands with her parents. As a 10 year-old kid from Minnesota, they could have taken her anywhere and told it was the Badlands, but she swears they wouldn't do that. The good news is the scenery hasn't changed much in those fifty years. FYI, this is our first attempt at a selfie using our new, bluetooth, selfie stick!

The place was named the Badlands because it could not be crossed by westward migrating families with the rugged terrain and lack of water. Of course, the local Souix Indians had known this for a couple hundred years, and named the place Mako Sica, or literally, land bad. Like so much about the travelling across the country, the white man had to find out the hard way. Another reason for the name of the park is all the sheep. Get it? Baaaaad-lands. Sorry, I promise never to do that again. After years of not seeing mountain sheep, we actually pulled up to them right next to the road. This dude was like, "yeah, these are my girls and you should just keep moving!"

"Badlands" is plural for a reason. The Badlands National Park contains many areas each with a different look in the shapes and colors of the formations. The trip through the park consisted of a couple of hours slow driving on very curvy roads. There were lots of pull-outs each with a new grand vista.

As it says in the AAA Tour Guide, "Beneath the Badlands lies one of the world's finest Oligocene fossil beds of mammals which flourished 27-34 million years ago." When we were in the visitor's center we did see some weird looking fake animals from way back when. There was this ancient camel, with no hump, and which was only about three feet tall. I'm guessing he was mostly lunch for the big guys.

For me the park is less about the Oligocene critters and more about the enormous scale of time. The big picture takeaway for me is how our couple hundred years of history is represented by about a quarter of an inch of strata in the 69 million years of history I was looking at in the rock formations. Really folks, our being here at all is just a very temporary burp in the history of the planet. Hope that thought helps put your problems in perspective.

. . . time frozen in rock.

I guess time frozen in rock means if you want to see the Badlands there is really no rush. We learned the formations are eroding at the miserly rate of an inch a year. That's about four and a half feet since Gwen first saw it. Still awesome and will be for some time to come. Here is a cool panorama you can manipulate to get another view of the place.

I know I promised Custer State Park information also, but that will have to be the next post. Thinking in terms of millions of years, and our likely brief history on the planet, I don't see why we need to be in any rush.

Onward, but with all this time, let's just ease on down the road!

Earl and Gwen

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Open Spaces and A Little Advice from Road Warriors

Day 2 of the trip had us heading straight west on I-90 across South Dakota. When leaving Minnesota by car and heading to the southwest, for any way you go, the front end of the journey always has to include the Vast and Open Spaces of the Dakotas, Iowa, Kansas or Nebraska. For an urban guy, it's really breathtaking, like looking at the ocean everyday. It takes a while for your eyes to get used to not having much to settle on. In some areas, it's so wide open that a billboard, distant windmills or even roadkill are cause for a little excitement. On this day, we had pale blue sky, cool dry air, good road, and for most of the trip, golden fields of corn or the wide open prairies of South Dakota.

In honor of all this open space and car time, I thought I'd take a break from the scenery reporting and share just a little about us as road warriors. I'll tell you about the Badlands and Custer State Park in the next post. With this being trip thirty-four across the country, we've paid some serious road dues and learned some things you might find interesting and maybe even useful. For us, like the wagon train pioneers, it's mostly about the vehicle, the sights, and then a good night's sleep.

The Vehicle: Our highway cars have been upgraded over the years. A four-cylinder Subaru didn't do it in the mountains so we went to a six. After 10 years of that, this year we went to a much bigger SUV. This guy floats down the road, doesn't mind the big winds, loves mountains, and even has a Bluetooth connection that lets us swear at a human voice when things don't work. The Bluetooth also makes for hands free phone calls and access to Pandora, Public Radio, and TED talks in the middle of "Come to Jezz-us Contrie" radio. Big, floaty, and entertaining is best on the open road.

Because it's mostly fast-food places at the gas stops during the day, we provision the car with healthy snacks. I also like beef jerky for protein and sunflower seeds to help pass the time. Along with our digital toys, we carry a real laptop with a car charger. We have a dreaming/planning document that we work on along the way. The open spaces are the perfect time for talking about how the last season went, and how we want to live together, with others, and where to go in the next few years. Being us, we connect that document to a budget, so we have the opportunity for heated discussions about priorities. Yup, 5-8 hours a day, day after day, sitting side by side and talking about the sometimes hard stuff IS asking for some heat, even if it's a big floaty car.

For gas stops, we like the freeway truck stops, like the Flying Js, Love's, and the poorly named Kum and Go. They are lively places with everything the over-the-road person could ever need. I love the diesel smell outside, the vibrations of all the big trucks at idle, all the vehicle gear in the shops, the graffiti in the bathrooms, and hearing the numbers being called for trucker showers. Plenty of bad snacks, too. Seeing a trucker carrying a burrito, a bag of doughnuts, and a quart of coke to the cab of his gazillion pound truck gives me pause knowing this guy is driving the same highway!

The Sights: Simply stated, I'm blessed with a partner who loves car trips. I swear she's like a reincarnated dog, which, if it was possible, would have her face out the window, ears and hair blowing back, and wet nose into the wind. I can honestly say that on each of our crossings, along with coaching from a friend who works at AAA and about 5 pounds of AAA Tour Guides, she has managed to find lots of interesting places along the way to visit. I've been to countless pioneer museums, pony express stations, Mormon trail exhibits, Oregon Trail sites, and lots of State and National Parks, just for starters. We always plan to be landed by three in the afternoon to stretch out, have time to see the sights, and let the temperature in the car come down a little. At least one 2-day stop some place interesting helps, too. Everyone should see the country this way, at least once, or thirty-four times if you have Gwen planning the trip.

A Good Night's Sleep: Accommodations can be a little tricky, and early on we were burned a few times with interesting sounding B&B ads and even good reviews. On arrival, we'd find the pictures often didn't match the ad, the hosts were lonely and needed to talk, and the promised breakfast to be flat out creepy. We suspect they did their own reviews or had their relatives do the deed. There have been some good ones, too, but mostly now, we go for the bland but predictable.

Predictable means places near the freeway with words like Americ, Lodge, Inn, Suites, or even Grand, as in last night's Grandstay Hotel. They are safe, boring, equipped with WiFi, a good bed, a chair and table, couch, flat-screen TV, small refrigerator, and usually a free breakfast, all for around $100. Even at this price, you have to be careful though. We've been rudely awakened at 5 AM by howling dogs in one hotel. We later realized we were in a pet (vs human) friendly hotel. Nothing like the idea that your bedspread has been the bedroom of a countless string of cats, dogs, lizards, snakes, or gawd knows whatever creatures people want to travel with these days. Always ask, especially if the room smells funny!

Then there is the matter of the alarm clock that glows red at night, and whose controls no one has ever figured out. That means it will likely go off in the middle of your deep sleep cycle, raising you abruptly from the dead. Add to that all the digital stuff in the room these days. Seems like everything electrical in a hotel room has a little LED indicator light. At night, a dozen of those little blinking eyes cast a rainbow of colors to softly light the room. Add to the disco ball lighting the nighttime conversation between the off and on running of the heating/cooling unit under the window that is randomly talking to the motor driving the little refrigerator! It can be a real party in there. I say unplug almost everything before bed, effectively sleeping in the 1950s.

Our trip through the Badlands was a beautiful end to a long driving day and we're settled into the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park. More about all that in the next post. We've had a nice meal, most everything is shut off or unplugged, and we're turning in early to be rested for a day of sight-seeing and hiking tomorrow.

Thanks for the use of your eyeballs and more soon...

Earl and Gwen

Corn, Pipes, Bison, and Cheese Wiz

Well, we're on the road again so I thought I'd revive this blog. This time we're again driving cross-country from Minneapolis to our winter digs in Tucson, AZ. This is trip number thirty four across the country and, thanks to Gwen, we've seen a lot along the way. We're not doing the most direct route this time in favor of visiting friends, family, and a couple remaining landmarks. I'm thinking this will result in 3-5 posts.

Our first day had us heading from Minneapolis to the southwest corner of Minnesota. The day was one of those deep grey days with spits of rain which Minnesota does so well. Once in the country, we drove past a small town about every twenty-five miles. Each town had a grain elevator next to the railroad tracks, a couple of churches (Lutheran and Catholic), sometimes a water tower, and a crumbling and almost deserted brick main street with a tavern or two holding things together. I don't think the pubs were divided along faith lines.

After about four small towns there would be a bigger town built around an Ethanol plant, maybe a feedlot, or chicken or turkey operation for a National Brand. The larger towns would have a more lively main street with some actual commerce going on. Their might be a movie theater (one older movie), a clothing store, a bank built from fancy stone, a grand old hotel (now rental apartments), sometimes an old train depot repurposed with a coffee shop, maybe a dinner with a woman's name. Near or often on the opposite side of the main highway you'd find the supperclub. The locals would say it was the only good place to eat dinner.

Between all the towns there were seeming endless oceans of cornfields. Most were shaved clean, leaving the post-harvest stubble on the very black earth. The results of the harvest were being delivered in big trucks to the grain elevators, or more frequently these days to the Ethanol plant. For the better part of three hours we drove through this scene, over and over again. Then we got to Pipestone.

The area around Pipestone, for hundreds of years, was considered a sacred gathering place by many Native America tribes. For generations, they came from all directions to mine, by hand, the beautiful and soft red stone found only there. With it they made the pipes that were, and still are, at the center of Native spirituality. Today, because of treaty rights, it's preserved as sacred ground within the Pipestone National Monument. Only approved Native tribes have access to the quarries and are allowed to mine in the area.

I may not have all of the history just right because I was really just expecting to see an interesting quarry with some important history. By the time we left, I realized I was surprised by the smallness of the quarries, amazed at the history, and a little overwhelmed by the spiritual story of the place.

As I learned, it's not just getting the red pipestone that's important. It's the spiritual journey associated with the creation and use of the pipe. It begins with the combination of the physical and spiritual approach to the land. The people would often fast and pray prior to even going to the area. Different tribes that may have been enemies knew that because of the sacredness of the place, no fighting could be tolerated. The pipestone area was a place of peace for all. Then came the very hard work of unearthing the pipestone, by hand, from beneath layers of hard Sioux Quartzite. The work would require many strong hands and often weeks just to get the raw stone. Then there were the many long hours of working the stone to create a pipe. This is a truly spiritual path to create a ceremonial object, which in its smoke will carry your prayers to Great Spirit.

Forgive me for the details I've missed. I'm still trying to get my head around a few hundred years of spiritual history from a people I had already held in a degree of awe. I'm so glad we made this stop. You can check out the National Park Service page and this page of Google images to get a sense of what we experienced.

Thanks to photographer Jim Brandenburg

With a rainy, 40 degree cold, 25 mile per hour wind blowing, we pretty much missed walking around in the prairie at Blue Mounds State Park. The "Mound" is basically a high cliff overlooking Luverne, Minnesota. The story is that to the settlers going west in the 1860s and 1870s, the cliff appeared blue. The park is home to a naturally evolving herd of wild bison today, but it's a tiny remnant of the huge herds that used to inhabit the area. There is a belief that the cliffs were used as a hunting tool for Native Americans. You get the herd running and then point them at the cliff.  Think about it, at the bottom of the cliff was a giant meat market, a gift of spirit to be shared!

We set up shop in Luverne at the Grandstay Hotel, and quickly headed out to a pretty typical rural supper club across the freeway for the $1 an ounce ribeye steak night. Kind of like the Pipestone quarry, the place and food were fine, but the real story is always in the theater of the people. I'm too tired now for the whole story, but here's a couple tidbits. The waitress spent about six minutes trying to explain to the old farmer in the booth behind me what made up a pulled pork, Cubano sandwich. After what I thought was a fairly dramatic description of all the somewhat unusual ingredients for this part of the world, and in spite of his wife's almost continuous encouragement, Opting for tradition, he asked for a BLT. On our way out of the place we walked past a blue-haired grandma table where all four women seemed to be talking at once. I was only able to catch, ". . . but with the sliced olives and cheeze wiz on the tater tots, it was a big hit."

Tomorrow it's 7 hours mostly straight west on I-90 to the edge of South Dakota. Gwen wants to see the Badlands and we plan a couple nights in Custer State Park. I should have the time to drop you a digital card from there.

Love to all and rolling, rolling, rolling!

Earl and Gwen

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Pre-Columbian Art, Textiles, Mescal, and Leaving Oaxaca

Of all the little treasures we found in Oaxaca, the Rufino Tamayo Museum of pre-Columbian art is at the top. The museum, which was opened in 1974, is housed in a 17th-century building with a long history of it's own. It sits tucked in between other old buildings on a side street of Oaxaca. The artist, Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), is one of Oaxaca's own, and he's famous across Mexico. Tamayo's purpose for collecting the objects was purely to keep them from falling into the hands of illegal artifact traders. Being an artist, he wanted his collection to be preserved as art, not science, and displayed for its beauty. The director of the museum is quoted as saying, “It’s about the expression of beauty, made by humans for humans.”

As a result of how and why the objects were collected, they came without provenance. However, most of them have been researched enough to be fairly accurately dated. The objects predate the Spanish conquest, and some even predate the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. We saw fierce looking warriors, people in ceremonial dress, musicians, ball players, women nursing babies, a whole case of dogs. Taken together, it's like a scrapbook with images of real human beings engaged in everyday life. For me, it was sufficient to simply see them as a glimpse into a world 2000 or more years ago, to try to imagine how these objects were used, and what the creators were trying to "say" in their art.

Below are just a few photos of what we saw, without description, pretty much the way we experienced them.


If you want to see more (and I hope you do), here is the link for much more of the Tamayo collection.

In Oaxaca there were maybe a half-dozen small museums like the Tamayo. There was a textile museum constructed on what were previously the grounds of the Dominican convent of San Pablo. The two-story baroque Oaxacan mansion, built of the green quarry stones we saw all over the city, dates to the 18th century. In it we saw displays showcasing materials and approaches to weaving in general but with a focus on Mexican craft weaving, and collections of the work of famous weavers and textile artists. In another part of the San Pablo convent complex there was a series of displays showing the different ways cacao is harvested and used across the larger state of Oaxaca.

Then there was the Mescaloteca, a place dedicated "to the preservation and dissemination of traditional distilled agave mezcal." The Oaxacaquenos were always asking us if we had tried the beverage, mostly after meals. Like so many cultures around the world that have a strong, clear, and very high-alcohol beverage (49% and up), the people in Oaxaca were very proud of their mescal. We tried it a few times, but decided it's something of an acquired taste, and we were definitely not going to acquire a taste for it in two weeks. The video below is in Spanish, but it will give you a 9 minute short course in the many different kinds of agave used in the drink and a fun look at the traditional way mescal is made. You'll love the old-world ox grinder and the rooster in the background!

If this clip doesn't show up use this link.

In addition to the museums, all over the town of Oaxaca itself, the cultural arts were always on display. On the street, in the markets, and in shops, you could find many examples of the famous wood carvings and beautiful embroidery the place is known for. The kinds of crafts only people without the distractions of modern life have the time and patience to create.

The kinds of crafts only people
without the distractions of modern life
have the time and patience to create.

These are just some of the ways the people in this part of the world are sharing their long history and considerable cultural pride with us. More than once in both public and personal ways, when it was NOT about making money, it was made clear to us they want us to really know them. They want us to understand their lives. They want us to know some of their struggles, their proud history, to experience rather than just witness their culture. Above all, from people in shops, waiters in restaurants, taxi drivers, and the staff at our hotel, they made it clear they wanted us to leave Oaxaca with good memories. And that's just what happened on this trip.

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Thanks for coming along for the ride. If you're signed up for the travel blog, you'll be hearing back from us possibly on our cross-country trip back to Minnesota in the spring, or perhaps next fall. The words Spanish Pyrenees and Coast of Portugal have been whispered.

Blessings, and onward!

Earl and Gwen

A Responsible Tourism Adventure in Oaxaca

Saturday, while I chose some quiet downtime, Gwen headed off on a Responsible Tourism adventure. Her trip to the towns in the countryside around Oaxaca was put on by a local, three-year-old micro-finance organization. En Via (http://envia.org/) works with female artisans to help them turn their passion into a sustainable business through underwriting their efforts with differing levels of financial loans.

As I dropped Gwen off, I learned that as part of the En Via training, the women must attend workshops on managing money, goal setting, and even marketing their crafts. After the training, the women must form a group of 3 women, not necessarily all in the same business, to have access to funding beginning at 1300 pesos ($100). The funds are interest-free if they participate in the tours by telling their story to those passing by like Gwen. It's amazing to note they have a 99% payback rate.

Many of the En Via tour guides are volunteers pursuing some related professional experience like mirco-lending or sustainable tourism. Here's Gwen's description of her tour.

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On my tour, Anna and Kate, our two guides, both knew Spanish and Zapotec. As a result they were good at supporting the nervous artisans, and very helpful as mediators in purchases. Anna is herself starting a microbrewery business with partners in Mexico City, so she was well acquainted with the challenges these women could face starting businesses in Mexico.

I first met with a textile weaver and her mother. The mom was a whiz on making the tasty Oaxacan chocolate and made us all some of the sweet beverage. Her daughter showed us how she spun her own wool yarn, hand-dyed the yarn using natural ingredients (insects for red, lightened with lemon juice, for example), and then wove beautiful rugs, ponchos and shawls.

The next woman we visited started her own general mercantile shop in her small village. She began by first selling shoes from a catalog, and then she added to her product line by offering fresh eggs and other food products requested by her customers. She has plans for continued expansion into shelf stable items starting with a variety of soap products.

The third visit was to another weaver who bought dyed yarns and specialized creating much bigger rugs, hand-embroidered tablecloths, and napkins. By this point I couldn't resist purchasing a rug with a very complex Zapotec design. It will fit perfectly in our Tucson home. She was happy to sell it to me for her asking price of 700 pesos or about fifty dollars.

The last woman we visited had a tortilla business in which she raised her own corn, had it ground by one of several local mills, and then prepared her own tortillas. She was making and selling at least 160 tortillas a day. A gracious host, she mixed and offered us a special corn and chocolate drink, but I can't recall the name. The flavor was vanilla and malt, and the beverage had the consistency of milk. It was delicious and refreshing on what was becoming a very hot day!

It was a great day in the small villages around Oaxaca. Seeing and supporting real artisans who were catching the entrepreneurial spirit felt good. I have to say for me, this was one of the highlight experiences on this trip.

If you want to support a solid group making a big difference in lives and communities, I recommend En Via. They are working on getting their U.S. not-for-profit status set up, but you can contact them at info@envia.org or through their website: http://envia.org/

The People's Markets, Moles, and The Chocolate Factory

I do love real markets. There are two very large and old markets here, and then more smaller ones in each of the many local neighborhoods around Oaxaca. You can think of the big ones, like the Benito Juarez market, as being like a Costco for people from the countryside.

They have just about everything but water needed for life in this part of the world. Freshly cut meats on display, beautiful vegtables, herbs for teas, clothing, CD's, toys for kids, all different kinds of spices, bags and piles of chili peppers, breads and other bakery goods, pastas, softball-sized balls of Oaxacan string cheese, a whole isle of nothing but fresh cut flowers, Fruit Loops, fresh-killed and marigold colored chickens, grasshoppers, fresh fish, tortillas, corn maize by the pound for tamales, and my favorite, moles and chocolate . . . just for a start. It's all crammed into small stalls and isles. The passageways are so small, if the stall owner is standing by the goods, only one person can pass. I'd say there are about two square blocks of this visual and fragrent chaos, all under one big roof. And that's just one market.

The moles are made in huge quantities and come in seven varieties in Oaxaca. You buy it in bulk by weight out of tubs or in small bags. The mole colors are the darkest of dark reds, browns, and even blacks, and it has the consistency of cookie dough. These moles tend to not be picante (hot) initially. That's IF you weren't raised on upper Midwest, white, Lutheran food! I've come to really like the Negro Mole with chicken and taking the "fire" on the side.

The chocolate is a whole other thing. I love going into the chocolate shop/factory and watching the cacao beans being ground. The fragrance is like smelling a room full of the darkest chocolate you can imagine. After the grinding process, the product goes a variety of different directions. Most get some sugar and some combination of ground almonds, vanilla, chili, or cinnimon. You can buy the nothing-added bitter chocolate, or put in an order for your favorite blend of ingredients. After getting a little stoned on watching the blending operation, it's wonderful to sit down to a hot cup of the stuff. They make it with either water or milk. I like the milk version, served all frothy after being whipped up with a molinillo or traditional hand beater. They serve it with bread for dipping. Deliciosa! We're bringing a variety of chocolates home along with the needed equipment.

Yes, indeed, three paragraphs back I did say grasshoppers. They're called Chapulines and they're a favorite here. I'm pretty brave, but I just couldn't bring myself to try them. These rust-colered creatures are served fried and seasoned with chilie, lime, garlic, onion, and salt. You can get them everywhere and at the market you can find them in big tubs being sold by older women. I guess it's a good protein, but for me, not so much.

One of the fun isles in the Benito Juarez market is the barbecue area. It is about a block long run of a meat stand with a grill about every 10 feet. I didn't get a good photo for the smoke in the room. The idea is that you get your veggies in the market, bring them to this room, pick your meat, and then they grill it up for you on the spot. The strange thing is that people were picking up their grilled food and then sitting down next to their griller and eating in the greasy fog. We skipped having lunch there, but it did look and smell great. If I was here much longer, I think I'd give it a try. Really!

Here is a great page just full of pictures from the Benito Juarez market.

All this talk about food has me almost ready to eat again! I'm feeling way under-exercised (life in a a city with bad exhaust fumes) and overfed, but with the mealtime creations made with all these exotic and fresh ingredients, I'll suffer along for a few more days . . . except for the grasshoppers!

Next time, pre-Columbian dog art, and shopping!

Love n Blessings,

Earl and Gwen