Together Time

Friday before Mother's Day Lorie and I went for a ride in the swell. We really enjoy doing this but we don't get much of a chance. I told her to get a lunch and we would go see some part of the swell that we haven't seen yet. As it turned out we really got a late start and got to the trail head about 1:15 pm. The San Rafael Swell is a geologic wonder land full of land forms and wonderful sites. Most of you won't care but a small geologic description has to be told as it is really a trip through time.

We start off in the Carmel Formation which is mid Jurassic in age (approximately 161-175 million years ago). It is a sequence of marine strata formed by an inland sea. It covered large sand dunes of the Navajo Sandstone as seen in the first picture Lorie took. This is a large sand dune that formed 190 million years ago. Dune structures can still be seen in the rock forming the canyon walls and in out crops along the trail. From these structures the ancient wind direction is from the northwest to the southeast. This area that extends from southern Wyoming into Utah and terminates in north central Arizona had a climate similar to that of the Sahara in northern Africa. This formation as it weathers forms spectacular land forms; wind erosion of this sandstone forms arches.

















Lorie got a picture of an newly forming arch that we saw as we road the Eva Connover trail.

This picture shows mass wasting and this formation makes for a fine picture.

This is a very cool cottonwood tree. I can picture a person hanging for horse theft or Butch Cassidy galloping past on the way to one of his many hideouts. It was a fun afternoon even though we did get separated and Lorie thought I was dead somewhere along the trail.

Mopani Worms

For all of you blog followers, this is the begining of a series of stories or adverntures I had in Botswana. I wasn't able to write blogs because my laptop is secure, I can't figure out which buttons to turn on to allow me to add phots to my blogs, so I saved them and decided to write about them later. This first story should grab your guts as well as maybe cause them to turn. I did not take the photos but I did find them and these are the Mopani worms that I ate.

I had a new adventure this evening at supper. I already told mom about it but since she distributes these to everybody I thought I would write it up. First of all you need to look up Mopani Worms on the internet and yes with words like worms and supper you guessed it I ate a couple of the Zimbabwean delicacy Mopani Worms. They weren't bad really, like eating jerky. Remigiyo one of my Zimbabwean friends was asked to bring back some Mopani Worms by one of the South African Africaners, so he brought back about a pound of them when he returned from Zim this week end. I saw them in the sack earlier today and Neville (he is the one who asked for them) ate one right then. I don't know why he asked for them as he didn't seem to like them very much. Any way Remigiyo gave him the whole sack. I did not have one at that time as I wanted to take a picture of them so that you could all see Dad eat a worm.

Now if you have not yet looked them up on the internet I will tell you about them. If you remember the movie Quigley Down Under when Tom Selleck and whats her name were eating the white grubs that were moving, it was a bit like that except they were dried. Yes, the Mopani worms were about that big but they squeeze the guts out of them when they pick them and then dry them and smoke them like you would jerky or a salmon. No, not smoke them as in tobacco. They keep longer that way.

They then cook them in chilli sause and onions and then eat them. The Botswana people cook them also but not to the Zimbabwean liking. They ate them tonight but weren't happy about the way they were cooked. We barbaqued or Braii (South African term for BBQ) Tbones (not hereford or black angus) yes, we had a Brama T bone. They are larger and tougher than the good ole hereford and black angus. One thing I will definately enjoy when I get home. We had mashed potatoes, a tomatoe onion sause, spoon full of beans, spoon full of coleslaw (cabage and carrots with some sort of dressing), half of a butternut squash cooked in the coals (what they call a butter nut squash, a long oblong pear shaped squash), and a Tbone steak the size of the plate, which sat on top of all of my other food. I still don't know where everyone found room to put a spoon full of Mopani Worms. I finished my food and went in to get my spoon full and darn the luck there were only about two to three worms left in the pan. So, I took two thinking it would be very impolite to take the last one or two so I just took two and put them on my plate. Everyone was going to think this non beer drinking american was really weird not eating a sensible food like Mopani Worms.

I went out side where the cool people eat -- I haven't eaten under a roof since I have been here -- we have a pic-nick for breakfast and supper. Now as I tell and describe this next part you have to remember that I have just cleaned my plate and had a nice brama steak, in-other-words I am hoping that it stays put in my stomach and make a real show infront of everyone at the dinner table. They would never let me try anything else new again. Well, I stuck it with my fork and as I was sticking it in my mouth, Malvyn, another Zimbabwean told me that they are good but the are prickally as you chew them. He was right, it was like the hair of a dried catapillar and the catapillar was like jerky or leather. It had a smoky flavor (not something that will leave the pallet soon after the meal. I chewed it real good as I didn't want my nice dinner to come out like Mount St. Helens. It was not too bad, soggy bread is definately worse and had it had that sort of texture, it probably would have come crawling back out. I then ate the other one on my plate as I couldn't be snobbish and just try one. That just wouldn't be neighborly would it?

They really weren't too bad and I must say that I would rather eat a Mopani Worm than a grasshopper or something else. I can still think of a lot worse things to eat. That said and the Mopani worms eaten, I still agree with Crockadile Dundee when he was asked if he was going to eat the eguana he was cooking, "sure you can live on it, but it tastes like sh8^%" and then he proceed to open a can of something. I could get use to them if I had to but I am 49 and I am not starving as of yet. It was fun though.

I went to visit the pan area in north central Botswana and on the way home there were many people selling Mopani Worms along the highway. They had buckets and gunny sacks full of them. I thought about buying some and bringing them home for Lorie and the girls, but we didn't have time to stop as we were trying to get back to camp.