I love a parade (and a reunion)

Yesterday Jim and I went to my 45th high school reunion of the Wellington, Ohio, High School class of 1969.

Jim, who went to high school in Yakima, Washington, was a good sport about meeting and talking with a bunch of folks he didn't know. Everyone was warm and welcoming; it was good get together.

Today we went to the Wellington Cheese Festival. Click here to read a post I did last year about the festival, which celebrates Wellington's one-time position as the nation's largest cheese producer. This year we also got to watch the parade.  Main event:  20 pieces of farm equipment courtesy of Wellington Implement Company, which is celebrating its 85th year in business.

Twenty-seven of the 100+ people I graduated with attended our reunion.  Photo courtesy of Mickey (top row, third from left) whose spouse must have taken the pic. Mickey and his committee did a good job of planning the event, which was held at the Wellington Reservation, a local county park. I'm in the front row, second from the left.

Turns out that using a "water color" setting on my camera (like I discussed in my last post) is not a good idea with a large group.  My former classmates and I all look like cartoon characters. Note to self:  use the water color setting only for close ups of individuals and scenery.

A Case tractor leads Wellington Implement equipment in today's Wellington Cheese Festival parade.  Wellington Implement sells tractors, combines and other big machines plus smaller equipment like riding mowers. 

The local 4-H band makes an appearance at the parade.

No cheese festival parade is complete without cheese heads on horse back...

...and you also apparently need a mini guy driving a mini John Deere.

Water Colors

After I apparently left my point-and-shoot on an airplane plane in March, I started looking for a replacement camera.  I wanted a light-weight one with a strong zoom lens I could use while Jim and I kayak.  

I did some research and purchased a Sony Cybershot DX HX50V.  It's a little heavier than my old point-and-shoot, but its 30X zoom is great. My Mom's neighbors (here in Wellington, Ohio, where I'm visiting) have mules, and I took a photo of the mules that looks like I was ten feet a way. In reality, the neighbors live about an eighth of a mile away.  Mom said I should share the photo with the neighbors, but I was concerned doing so would also announce "Hey, I can take close ups of everything at your place!" (Neighbors: I was just practicing and won't aim my lens at you again. PS: Your mules are darn cute.)

At the moment I'm experimenting with camera settings I didn't realize were on my Cybershot when bought it.  These settings make photos look like oil paintings, water colors, illustrations, and more. I'm getting rather addicted to the water color setting. Some examples are below. 

This photo of me and my Wellington, Ohio, high school friend Sally is one of the first photos I took with my water color setting.  We're having our 45th year high school reunion tomorrow; when I posted this photo on Facebook some of my class mates said "Bring your camera to the reunion -- we'll look  like the youngest 45th year group ever."  It does smooth out the lines. (Sally looks this good with or without the water color effect.)

Son Paul (who lives in Lakewood, Ohio) and me.

View from Mom's back yard.  Ohio has beautiful clouds.

Another shot taken from Mom's back yard.

Visitors Center at the Wellington Reservation, which is part of the Lorain County, Ohio, Metro Parks System and where my high school class will hold its 45th reunion.

Another shot at the Wellington Reservation.

Two mourning doves in Mom's lilac bush.

Baskets of hanging petunias on the town square in Wellington, Ohio, where Mom lives and where I grew up.

Japanese beetle is the new thistle

Last summer when I visited my Mom in Wellington, Ohio, I pulled about 1,500 thistles from her yard.  This year the thistle population is down -- having more to do with a springtime "weed and feed" application than my attempt at thistle dismissal, I imagine -- but her property is infested with Japanese Beetles. Hundreds of of them. Maybe thousands.

Mom tells me since she moved to the farm in 1945 she has never seen this particular bug. I've never seen a Japanese Beetle before, either (they haven't made it west of the Mississippi so we don't  have them in Utah -- yet) and at first couldn't identify the clumsy pests whizzing around my head, flying into the side of the house, and then seeming to almost accidentally land on plants. I thought "Gee, these bugs are actually kind of pretty," as they have iridescent copper bodies and green heads.  But good thoughts quickly evaporated when I realized how voraciously they were chowing down on Mom’s plants.  The larvae live in lawns and eat the roots of grass, so they kill lawns, too. 

After some research I put up two pheromone-baited traps; some claim pheromone traps make the problem worse by attracting even more insects, but we thought we'd give them a try.  I’ve also been hand picking bugs and sprayed the rose and some low-hanging tree leaves with an insecticide. I hate insecticides and have never used them on my own plants, but the bugs are so thick I felt compelled to make a careful application.

My Ohio brother and sister-in-law tell me the best way to knock these pests in the head is to treat the lawn with milky spore, which will kill the larvae -- but that can't be done until next spring.

In the meantime, I’m catching beetles. I’d rather pull thistles.

Damage to my Mom's ornamental plum tree after just three days of beetle chomping. The miniature lilac bush to the immediate right is completely unscathed as Japanese beetles only eat certain plants.

A threesome (in more than one sense of the word, it appears) of Japanese beetles on my Mom's linden tree. So far they are eating the leaves of her ornamental purple plums, a rose bush, and this linden.  Supposedly the beetles like hibiscus too,  but we're hoping they don't touch Mom's beautiful Kopper King.

Eating bird poop is not good for you

This post has the above title because it's one of the things I told my grandchildren at Capital Reef National Park.  In this particular instance, 2-year-old Marshall wanted to lick a picnic table that -- no matter how many times I wiped it off -- was not going to be guano free.  

In other words, instead of full timing in our motor home, doing what we want when we want, we had the grandkids with us.  We started our with 4-year-old Mia, who traveled with us in the “school bus,” as she calls our rig, from SLC, to the park near Torrey, Utah.  Then our daughter, SIL and Marshall joined us a couple days later.

Capital Reef is in south central Utah in the middle of the beautiful red-rock country.  It’s full of cliffs, canyons, arches, monoliths, and other wonderful geologic features in a huge wrinkle of the earth called the Waterpocket Fold.  The canyon running through the park is green, lush and home to a Cottonwood-tree filled campground surrounded by pioneer-planted orchards.

We love Capital Reef.  It’s our favorite of Utah’s five national parks and it was fun to share it with our family. One of the rangers told us that at Capital Reef you feel as if you are part of the park, and not just peering into it.  We agree.

This was our tenth visit to Capital Reef. I hope we make it back there again soon.

Granddaughter Mia near Capital Reef's Fruita campground.  The campground has 71 spots (no water/electric/sewer at the sites, but there is a dump site and  water available) and was almost always full by late afternoon.

Mia and Grandpa walking from the campground to buy homemade pie for breakfast at the Gifford House -- a museum/store that was originally the home of a polygamous Mormon family.  The third residents of the house -- the Giffords -- lived there 41 years until they sold the house to the National Park Service in 1969.  

I took this photo from our rig. The tree to the left is a mulberry, and the deer obviously like the fruit. The folks in the fifth wheel are full-timers from Colorado Springs who loaned us sidewalk chalk and a ball from their stash of grandkid toys.

Mia on the Grand Wash Trail. Grand Wash is one of our two favorite Capital Reef hiking trails.

Ranger intern Cinnamin (who told us her parents named her for the Neil Young song "Cinnamon Girl) and Mia at Capital Reef's Ripple Rock Nature Center.  Cinnamin, who doesn't look much older than Mia in this photo,  did a presentation for kids on the ecosystem. Mia also saw presentations on the animals of Capital Reef and how mountains are formed.  

Horses near the campground.

A campground apple orchard.  The area near the campground has 2,700 fruit trees.  During fruit harvest you can pick as much as you can eat for free, or pay a fee and take some fruit with you.

RVs barely visible in the trees of the Fruita Campground.

Marshall on the Capital Reef's Grand Wash Trail.

Mia, SIL Shad, Marshall and daughter Ashley on the Grand Wash Trail.

Mia follows her dad up a crack in the rocks on the Cohab Canyon Trail.  This is another of our favorite hikes with a trail head right across the road from the campground. The trail starts out steep, then turns a corner into a breath taking canyon. 

What we've been up to

We're in Salt Lake City on a road-trip-hiatus.  Our daughter, SIL, and two grand children live in our house while we are on the road, and all six of us live here when we are home in Salt Lake. Jim and my days are filled with doing whatever we want/need, and our evenings are somewhat chaotic (well, more chaotic than we are used to) with two small kids in the house.

We've done a lot since we got back to Salt Lake one month ago today, including meeting up with friends and "field trips" with the grand kids -- like Mia's and my day-long excursion to the brand new Salt Lake Aquarium followed by the 3-D Lego movie.

We've taken our two cars (our tow car plus a car we leave in SLC while on the road) and our rig in for check ups and gotten a lot of work done -- transmissions flushes, brake jobs, etc.  The vehicles should be in good shape mechanically when we get back on the road.  We also ordered a new window blind for our rig, as the one near the dinette finally broke and we're not of the mind or patience to re-string it. And Jim got a Direct TV satellite set up for the rig that he'll be experimenting with very soon.

On Sunday, daughter Ashley, SIL Shad, our two grand children and I marched in the local Pride parade.  Good friend Debbie is manager of the Salt Lake City Library (the most beautiful building in SLC -- get a peek at it here) and asked if we wanted to march in the library's entry.  We said sure! Ash and Shad pushed Mia and Marshall in their stroller as we walked the probably mile-and-a-half parade route.  I hadn't been in a parade since Memorial Day 1969 when I marched from my high school to a cemetery while playing my trombone. 

When we first got back to SLC, we had peacocks in our yard.  The peacocks moved on, but now we have baby grosbeaks just feet away from our back door.

Another event since we've been home was SIL Shad receiving his Master in Public Health. From L to R:  Daughter, Ashley, Marshall and Shad.

Mia on her field trip day with Grandma.

A photo I took while walking in the Salt Lake City Pride parade.  I could not believe how many people were cheering along the sidelines.  Amazing.  I heard there were 150 entries in the parade, but the one bad thing about being in the parade is that you don't see many other entries.

My friend, Debbie, who manages the Salt Lake City Main Library, me, fellow marcher/book group member Sue, and Sue's mom.  

Marshall and Mia with one of the signs Mia and her mom carried at the Pride parade.  Another library sign read "This parade brought to you by the letters L, G, B and T." Music from a library van played "Reading Rainbow."