A Little Green Mystery

 
I almost forgot about this little guy. He was hopping around our campsite in Minnesota.

With the mask I thought he was a wood frog, since they have a lot of color variation. However, it seems green is not in the range. Pink to black, but not green.

He's less than two inches long, maybe a little more if the legs were stretched out.



He looks most like a couple of tree frogs, but the range of those is in the deep south. He doesn't have the sticky toe pads either.

I picked him up and the undersides of his legs aren't yellow. Not our common tree frog.

He sure was cute.

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Old Electronics, New Food Idea

 
This is a pretty scatterbrained post, but some days are like that.

I spent a good chunk of the day cleaning off my desk and some shelves next to it. Managed to increase the stack of paper to be recycled to about 8 inches. Not too bad, considering this is all paperwork that was considered important enough to keep the last time I went through it.

I also have stacked to give away or sell for a small price a large stack of stationery. I never was good at "real" letters anyway, and now it's just hopeless. Electronic messages just work for me. I'm keeping a small stack of note cards and some greeting cards. The rest are leaving!

Tucked in the back of a cubbyhole I found two electronic gadgets that are both dead, but I guess I was keeping them for some sentimental reason. Nope. They are leaving now.

Both had to do with hiking. The watch was quite the item. It was actually called an electronic wrist instrument. I really enjoyed it for as long as it worked. It did time and temperature and altitude. It didn't do temperature well because it was affected too much by being near one's body. It didn't do altitude well because it was based on air pressure and you were supposed to set it every day with a barometer. Right. So basically it was an expensive watch with several timing functions. But I did have a lot of fun with it.

The other little toy could be set to the scale of a map, then you ran the wheel along the line you wanted to follow and it would tell you the distance covered by the line. Sort of. It wasn't too accurate, and it poked holes in the map. Again, I had fun with it before it died.



On the side of new things, here's a recipe I made up. I love dill pickles, probably buying a big jar every month (peanut butter and pickle sandwiches are my lunch staple). But I hate throwing out all the juice. I drink some of it, but can't get it all down before I buy another jar. So, I tried something new.

I'd been hankering for some Jello. I made some sugar-free lime with pears in it. Wow! My tastes have changed- too sweet!

Here's what I tried. I took a packet of unflavored Knox gelatin. Sprinkled in into 1/2 cup cold pickle juice and let it dissolve. Boiled 1 cup pickle juice and added it. Then stirred in 1/2 cup plain yogurt. It's pretty good! If you can handle aspic-like things you could add other veggies. I'm not a fan of really crunchy things in gelatin. But it's good with cauliflower on the side.

A couple of spoonfuls help beat back the hungries without adding hardly a calorie.



There you have it... a scattered day. But one corner of my office is cleaner. Too bad it takes so long. I'll never focus long enough to get the whole room clean.

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Writer's Rendevouz

 
Yesterday was the first author event hosted by our local writing group. We piggybacked with a craft supply sale, and it went really well.



Here's the venue.

Here are two of our regular participants who were also selling books, Jeannie and Betsy.



I sold seven books- very good!

However, after it was all over and I got home I was falling asleep at 6:30, so I went to bed and slept 14 hours.

Did almost nothing today. Need to change that tomorrow.

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Ogichidaa - The Face in the Rock

 
On the way home Lyle and I accidentally managed to see something that I've been wanting to find. A friend in the UP told me about this, but I hadn't seen it.

There is no sign at the road. We just happened to pick this rest stop and discovered interpretive panels near the beach.

In 1820 a likeness of an Nishnaabe Indian was carved in the rock by a French Voyageur who was accompanying Lewis Cass on his exploration that eventually led him to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The Indian's name was Ogichidaa, Powers of the Air. He was one of the last of the Nishnaabe tribe that lived near here and on Grand Island.

This was the view from the sign. Wonder where the face is?



I scanned the rocks with the telephoto lens, but I didn't know what size of a carving I was looking for.

We decided to walk down the beach.



Can you see it now?



Aha! It is only a little over a foot high. Another sign had warned us it was badly eroded.


Here's what it probably looked like originally. This was on one of the signs.



There is a short book about the history of it all that I have seen, but I don't own it.

And soon I'll be off to work for the night. No sleep tomorrow because there is a local author event I'll be participating in.

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Saturday Sheyenne with Dan & Ruth

 
Saturday was the day almost everyone traveled by bus to the Sheyenne National Grassland in North Dakota. The eastern portion has low hills with more trees than the western part which is level prairie.



There were hikes of various lengths. I chose the 6.5 mile one because it had a special emphasis. You may or may not remember that I've had some other chances to hike with a couple who have been working on a section hike of the entire North Country Trail (see link at end). They were all but done a month ago, but saved this section so they could complete their trek at the conference.



They are such nice people that everyone was delighted to share this moment with them.



There was even champagne and cookies!



Part of the evening activities was my plug for long-distance hikes on the NCT, which included giving them their patches and certificates for finishing their End-to-End hikes.



After that, they gave a program about their 17-year journey.

They've become two of my closest trail friends. May the hiking never stop!

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