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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Letting the words to come out!

Words and colors have always been my passion!This sunset has reminded me that I do have a lot of colors around me every day. Just have to keep my eyes open.

As for words... I realized I missed writing. A lot.The words are inside of my head and they need to come out! Otherwise my head will explode!Here you go!...



Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Arches National Park.

The very first afternoon we took off and went to visit the Arches National Park which was 10 minutes drive from the farm.
A line of arches.
Balancing Rock. When will if fall?
THE Arch! The famous one that is on all Utah state registered vehicles!
Building our own arches while waiting for the sun set. We were told the sunsets are the most spectacular in this part of the park.
How small the true arch is in comparison to what WE have built!
Evan and Mirek are a good building team too!
With the sun setting the colors of the red canyons are just getting so vividly red and simply awesome!

One of my inventions! Since I don't have a filter on lance of my camera, and with such bright sun the colors are distorted, I found out that taking a shot through my glasses (which are polarized) makes all the difference!
Two sisters.
Here you can see what a difference the polarization makes! Can you see my glasses?
And here is another one of my "masterpieces"!

Monday, June 27, 2011

Canning.

Four colored tomato salad. Heirloom yellow, red, pink and green zebra tomatoes. Yummy!
Preserve making in our Airstream kitchen.
Just a small fraction of what we had prepared to keep us happy in the winter!

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Creekside Lane Organics Farm.

Parked our "home away from home" under a tree with a beautiful view of the canyons and the farm.
The view of the farm.
An ocean of tomatoes!
Picking up peppers.

Harvesting onions.
With farmer Larry.
One of the helpers on the farm!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Our stay in Utah.

Utah is gorgeous! I just fell in love with this state! It has everything! Rivers, lakes, desert, mountains, forests, fields, canyons. Except for the sea...Well, there's got to be at least something missing. Nothing is perfect after all!

When I said we didn't want to leave Utah, I really meant it! We stayed there for 3 whole weeks and enjoyed every minute of it!

First of all, the farm we stayed at , Creekside Organics, was in full swing with the end of the year harvest! Oh, my! I have never seen a better variety of peppers and tomatoes! Then there were onions, and zucchinis, egg plants, carrots, arugula, basil, beets and squashes, to name a few. At this point there was no help needed with weeding or mulching (the two chores we had become such experts of!). The help was needed with picking and bringing the produce to the farmer's market and preparing the bags for the CSA members.

Larry, the farmer, was very nice and generous to us. We were welcome to use any of the veggies. And as much as we wanted. And when we were done with picking and helping Larry to make some preserves, we made preserves for ourselves. That was one of the reasons of my going "web dead". When we were not picking or exploring the canyons and visiting Arches National Park, we were busy canning! Our trailer was a few pounds heavier on the way back home and every time we opened a new jar of canned tomato lecho, or pickled juliets, or pickled beets and zucchinis, we sighed, overwhelmed by wonderful memories of us visiting Utah! Long, cold and snowy winter was so much nicer and cozier that way!

Another big news here. We got a puppy! It's a Golden Retriever. Neighbors on the farm had the litter of ten, and had a lot of male puppies to give away. We could have gotten as many as we wanted as they were free! The family that was giving them away just wanted the puppies to go to good homes. So, we thought we could provide a very good home for one of them! And guess what we named our puppy!.. It's UTAH! And we love him dearly!

And a few pictures will make you want to visit Utah! Start packing your bags! It should be one of the places to visit on your "bucket list"!

Friday, June 24, 2011

It's been awhile!

I kind of feel bad. I quit blogging last year and didn't complete the story about our wwoofing adventures. Apparently, I had a few faithful followers who had contacted me and expressed their concerns why I had disappeared. I apologize! I admit it wasn't very nice of me to drop "web dead" like that!

Not to go into too much of detailed explanation, I simply will say that I felt discouraged. When we found out that we had to end our travels last October and go back home to take care of a few things, I felt lost. I didn't want our travels to end and I didn't want to go home! I felt that we still had so much to see and learn and explore! But sometimes circumstances hold us back and there is little we can do about it! So, I have put on blogging and now I am coming back. First, I will write about our marvelous 3 weeks stay in Utah, then will give heads up on our wintering over and then update you about where we are now and what we are up to. So, stay tuned! Thanks for not giving up on me!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Four states in one day!

We started our day being still in California. That was "one".
Mohave Dessert.
More of Mohave Dessert.
Then we drove through Nevada. That was "two".
Arizona welcomed us for a very short drive that went through Virgin River Canyon Gorge. That was "three".

Winding and going up.
Too much sun.
Ahh... Utah!.. And that was "four".

When we took a picture of Utah's state border and saw what it says ("Utah, life elevated") we both gave each other a look and knew exactly what that meant. It meant pulling over onto the side of the road... and not for a potty break.

The overheating started around noon, when the outside temperature reached over 100 degrees F and the summits got steeper. The roadside markers showed elevation 6,000 ft; half an hour later 6,600 ft; another twenty five minutes -elevation 7,180 ft.

Obviously, the driving plan had to be adjusted. There was nothing we could do at that point about the radiator (we thought it needed a good power washing to clean the dust and dead bugs off). Also, we discovered that regular gasoline here had 85 octane rating (not 87 as what we were used to see) and, thus, giving the car less power.

So, we thought it would be wise to wait out for the worst heat of the day to subside and then drive when the air got a bit cooler.

We spent nice time relaxing on a rest area (here, in Utah, they are called "view point") and then continued, hoping the overheating would be a thing of the past for the day.
Because we entered a mountain time zone on Arizona border, the clocks went one hour forward, and that helped a lot. Even though, technically, we lost an hour of day time, but earlier sunset helped with bringing the temperature down.
A sight along the road was a forest fire. First, we noticed it from far away. A huge and thick cloud curling up on top of the mountains. As we were driving closer we could see the fires blazing in the distance and fire trucks lined along the highway. It was obvious that just a few hours ago the fires were all alongside the road as the charred smokey ground was the evidence of the natural calamity we had never seen before.
The night was setting in. First, we though we'd miss a lot of beautiful scenery. But the moon was shining brightly and the canyons had a spooky charm and still were phenomenal to look at.

Different shades and silhouettes on the night sky reminded us of real and imaginary creatures. We came up with a game to play. When I pointed to a canyon turtle "crouching" at a canyon alligator, or when a sleeping giant's face turned into a three humped camel right before our eyes, everybody got hooked on this fun time spending while traveling. It was too captivating.

When we reached the summit of 7,886 ft above the sea level and our car didn't overheat, we knew we had made the right decision of not driving in the heat of the day, but to catch up at night.

It was 700 miles since we had left Anore's ranch in California. Our farm in Utah is at arms reach...