Good Morning All,

I’m back from my mad dash halfway across the country for some high-altitude mushrooms, Palisades peaches, Pueblo chiles, Pueblo Jalapenos, and some assorted trinkets and touristy stuff. I had a wonderful, if brief time, in a state I had the pleasure of living in for 9 years. I visited a number of places and did things I wanted to do in a mad dash of nostalgia and reminiscence. I also checked on my rental property, so there was a business component to my trip as well. I learned a lot about modern travel tech, and I’ll share some insights soon.

Monday and Tuesday, I have some canning and roasting, and sauteeing to do. Yes, I’ll be posting about my kitchen adventures, and am grateful to John for providing much helpful info and technique to remind my rusty ass on proper canning.  I’m pulling my canning stuff from storage tomorrow morning, the jars are in the dishwasher awaiting the morning, and I’ll be briefly visiting Walmart for fresh lids and Fruit Fresh, then hitting the local international/ethnic supermarket for some fresh herbs, spices, shallots, garlic, sugar, vinegar, and ginger.

The drive – to and from – was also a grand adventure. Luckily, no bad weather or issues.  I hope next year to do something similar, though not so fast paced (I drove when the rains hit, and when I could squeeze some time away from things at home), and for a few more days. Perhaps we’ll do a meetup or two along my route so I can drive 8 hours a day instead of 12.

On that note, today we see some gorgeous photos of birds (and prairie!) in Kansas. I really enjoyed driving through the state going West, but my eastbound route was different, and I missed the western third of the state on I-70, so missing most of the topography and prairie that I so love. I didn’t see any birds of note beyond hawks and some wonderful songbirds singing at a rest stop in the Western part of the state. I really enjoyed the Kansas rest stops – they were not fancy, but the space, layout, green, and general atmosphere were just relaxing. They felt like an oasis.

I have a cool 4k dashcam and had it running for the drive out, but a) I did not realize the microSD card was only 128 GB and so I overwrote my drive after 6 hours, and b) even though I had some of that Western Kansas footage, when I went to swap memory cards the next morning, it somehow popped up and hit something plastic on my dash/console and bounced who-knows-where. I suspect it went into the ac vent. So for now, I have lost footage, literally.

I’m busy copying footage from other days and adventures and hope to have a few clips or stills from them to share to complement the photos I took with my iPhone. All dashcam videos and stills show the windshield and top of the hood, but the wide angle and high quality are neat, and I hope to be able to share some small clips of things I saw that caught my eye or deserve a share and a story. Since the early part of this week is about canning and cooking and food preservation, I don’t expect to have my photos and content until next week.

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

Read more