We are laughing at ourselves for this!

We are laughing at ourselves for this!  Our Tesla Model X was due for service, and on Wednesday morning we made the 90 minute drive down to Salt Lake City to drop it off.  We made an appointment early in the morning (8 am) to maximize our chances of getting a Model S as a loaner (we knew they'd be keeping our car for a day or two).  We didn't get the Model S – they'd all been taken already.  So we got a rental: an Audi A6.

At any point in our lives prior to buying the Model X, we'd have been astounded at getting an A6 as a loaner.  By any conventional measure, it's a very nice car.  Plenty of power, handles very nicely, lots of modern conveniences, etc., etc.

But we are Model X owners.  We've driving 36,000 miles in our Model X.  We're spoiled rotten by the experience.  Now the A6 looks like a miserable POS to us.  We hate it...

Some thoughts on giving back...

Some thoughts on giving back...  Nothing profound here, just some thoughts about our experiences...

Anyone who knows Debbie and I well will be unsurprised to learn that much of our giving back is aimed at animals.  Not all of it, by any means, but quite a bit.

For many years we gave modest amounts to carefully selected animal-related charities.  Over and over we learned to our chagrin that the beneficiaries of our largess were anything from outright frauds (ouch!) to high-overhead operations where too much (often most) of our contribution went to paying the officer's salaries.  We got fed up with this, and searched for a better way. 

Today we're making three regular animal-related contributions.  Two of these are through small, local organizations that we know personally.  Obviously we could still get surprised by these, but I think it's much less likely than with the contributions we've made to the larger organizations that actually market for contributions.  The third is one that we started about six months ago.  We met with the owners of a local veterinary clinic – people whom we know and trust – and arranged to create a fund that helps people with animals who need veterinary care that they cannot afford.  This was our idea, though we discovered when we talked with the clinic's owners that they already had a poorly funded version of a similar idea going.  The money involved is quite modest, but it has direct impact on local animals in need – and, of course, on their owners.  We make these contributions anonymously, but we learn about the animals (and owners) that have been helped.  It's been very satisfying to have direct knowledge of the impact of our contribution, and comforting to personally know those people who are (in effect) administering our contributions.  We like this general pattern much better than sending a check to a large, opaque organization and never knowing what they did with money.

We've also found a few ways to follow the same general pattern to help some local people in need.  I'm not going to get into the details on these, as in some cases these are done anonymously and we'd like to keep it that way.  The important bit, for us, is the combination of direct knowledge of how the contributions get used, and a trusted intermediary to administer them.

After a bit of fumbling with ways to do achieve this pattern of contributing back to our community, we've learned to be a little creative and a lot careful – and we really like the results...

Moved pipes this morning...

Moved pipes this morning ... in our alfalfa field, just north of our house.  I started before sunrise, finished just as the sun was peeking up over the Wasatch Mountains to our east.  In the middle of this effort, there was a moment when the eastern sky was bright along the Wasatch silhouettes, and the puffy clouds were all lit up against a gorgeous blue sky.  In the mountain foothills, the spray of dozens of irrigation systems was all backlit by the bright sky, jewels against the dark green carpets of alfalfa, oats, and other grains.  A light breeze rustled the leaves of willows, cottonwoods, and box elders along the irrigation canal 100 feet east of where I was standing.  Several hawks circled overhead, while dozens of other birds greeted the morning with a nonstop chorus.  I heard a few rooster crows, and a couple of our neighbor's dogs barked at who knows what.  What a beautiful morning in the 'hood!

Yes, I'm happy...

Yes, I'm happy ... with Trump's selection of Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the nominee to replace the retiring Justice Kennedy.  Very happy, actually.  And yes, overall I'm still unhappy and frightened by Trump's performance as President.

Why on earth is it so difficult for people to understand how both of those statements can be true at the same time?  Must we either love or hate any politician 100% of the time?

We're baaaaack!

We're baaaaack!  Our friends Jim and Michelle B. have, sadly, departed for their home in the high tax, underfunded pension headquarters also knows as Southern California.  As always, we had a wonderful time during their visit.  They were only here for a week this time, and that time seemed to just fly by – seems like we were waving goodbye the day after they got here.  Next year they're going to try to make it up at the end of August, and see Paradise's Trout & Berry Days.  This year they watched the Fourth of July fireworks at Hyrum with us, and it was just as good as it was last year.  We had lots of good talk, good food, and good times together.  Maybe they'll escape California someday and join us up here...

Jim and I built two (of seven) drawers for the grill cabinet while they were here.  The photo at right shows a nearly finished drawer, lacking only the handle and the spar varnish I'll finish it with.  There are an amazing number of parts in that drawer: 16 pieces of framing wood (poplar), 4 pieces of trim wood (also poplar), 1 piece of 1/2" birch plywood (bottom), 4 pieces of 1/4" birch plywood (sides), 3 pieces of cedar (front), 40 pocket screws, 2 slides, 20 wood screws (to hold the slides in place), 1 handle, 2 handle screws.  When you add all that up, that's 93 parts –  for one drawer, and I'm making 7 of them.  That's 651 parts in all!  Some of the steps in building the drawers involved gluing and clamping; a couple shots of those below:

Here's a nice sunset we shared with Jim and Michelle, enjoying it from our deck.  The weather here was hot every day they were here, except for one morning when we had a few scattered showers.  Every morning Jim and I went out at just after 6 am and moved irrigation pipes, along with our neighbor Nick S.  This is something I've been doing here for years, usually just Tim D. and I.  This year, as I've written before, he's unable to do it – it's a privilege to be able to help him, but I miss his company while we do it...

We got our new grill installed just a couple of days before Jim and Michelle arrived, but we used it several times during our visit.  Jim and Michelle have lots of experience grilling, and Debbie thoroughly enjoyed having the chance to get some tips and instruction from them.  I thoroughly enjoyed the results, such as the steak and grilled vegetables meal at right.  Yum!

Two days before Jim and Michelle got here, we had our once-every-two-years driveway resealing done.  We used Statewide Paving for the work, and this makes twice that I've been very pleased with the job they did.  The owner's son (Andrew) both supervises and participates in the work, and everyone works their butt off to get the job done.  Their attention to detail beats any paving contractor I've ever seen at work.  This time, for example, they found a place in my driveway where there were a couple hundred square feet with embedded soil (from where we had piled dirt during construction).  Rather than just coat over it, they took an extra two hours to power-wash that part off – and charged me nothing extra for that work.  If you need a driveway resealed, you can get Andrew at 208-317-4418.  Highly recommended.  Here's a few shots of them working away...

Another thing that happened this past week: our roofing contractor showed up to finish up some work started almost a year ago (seriously!), and to put gutters up on my barn.  The barn has 82' long eaves, so they bent up two 82' long gutters – quite a big piece of sheet metal to carry around and install!  The photo at right shows the metal as it came out of their automated gutter bending machine.

The contractor who works on my lawn, sprinklers, etc. came out with an aerating machine – a “core aerator”.  This is possibly the most evil looking machine I've ever seen.  Dave M. is guiding this beast in the photo at left.  The front end of this machine has dozens of “teeth” that dig down about 3" into the ground and pop out a round “plug”, leaving a little hole in the ground.  It also left my lawn covered with thousands of what look like small dog turds.  :)  Those, I'm assured, will disappear after a few waterings.  We'll see.

On the day that Jim and Michelle got here, I finished a couple of projects on my gas pumps that I shelved last year when it got too cold to work outside.  One was to replace one of the filter cups – that took just a few minutes.  The other was a bit more challenging: installing an electronic lock on the “gas station” door.  That's what you see in the photo at right.  It actually wasn't very hard at all to install, once I figured out the directions – they were harder for me to understand than such directions usually are, despite being written by a native English speaker (so far as I could tell).  One part I found challenging was that the directions were divided up into “panels” for each of the 10 steps they identified.  The panels were numbered, but the number wasn't particularly prominent.  The physical layout of the panels on a single large sheet of paper was really odd – they started about 1/3 of the way down the left side of the paper, went across to the right, then back to the left margin and down – and subsequently over three vertical columns.  Why would anyone lay out directions in such a confusing way?  Things like that really puzzle me.  Anyway, eventually I found the numbers on the panels and was able to do the steps in the right order, which turns out to be critical for success.  When I got all done, everything worked on the first try – even programming in my own codes.  Now our gas station has a lock, and (much more relevantly in our area) a latch to keep it shut when the wind blows.  Hooray!

All is fine, folks...

All is fine, folks...  We have not disappeared from the face of the earth. :)  Things have just been a bit hectic.  Here's a quick update; more on everything mentioned here later...

Most important event: Tim is ever so much better!  He was in the hospital for a few days this week, and it made an enormous difference to him.  He's eating (though food still doesn't taste good to him), his important blood indicators are being monitored carefully, and he's under treatment for all the issues they found (worst problem: blood calcium levels spiked way up).  His sense of humor is back, as is his color, and he's walking around without having to stop every five feet to rest.  He came over to visit us for an hour or so this afternoon, and ... we had the old Tim back.  It was so wonderful to see him looking so much better!

The granite folks were back on Friday to finish the granite installation on our grill cabinet, and we hooked everything up on Saturday.  Debbie cooked some salmon on it – and it was great!  The cabinet looks wonderful  When we get the drawers done, we'll have a real showpiece there...

On Friday my new mower was delivered, and what a magnificent beast it is!  It's by far the nicest mowing machine I've ever used – soft, sprung-and-shock-absorbed seat, smooth controls, flawless cutting.  It's also built like the proverbial tank.  Before I had two hours of use on it, I got a flat tire.  Hyrum Tire fixed that for me today for $12.97. 

Our lawn guys were here today with an infernal machine called a “core aerator”.  Basically it drills holes in our yard about ever 6", and spits the dirt “cores” out on the top.  It's supposed to improve the health of our grass, but it looks more like a grass torture machine to me...

On Saturday we had our driveway resealed, an all-day operation by a three man crew.  In order for them to do that, I had to clear everything off our pavement on Friday – and that took me the entire day.  I was exhausted by the time I was finished.

And momentarily our friends Jim and Michelle B. shall arrive for a week-long visit.  We can hardly wait!  Because of their visit, my posting will be intermittent again...

Days 8 and 9...

Days 8 and 9...  We left our lodging in Brunswick before 9 am, and traveled up the coast to Belfast, stopping here and there for art galleries.  It was really hard, but we drove right past Young's Lobster Pound without stopping, as we had a big dinner promised to us by my brother Mark and his wife Gina, so we needed to remain hungry.  We spotted this driftwood horse at a gallery near Rockport – it's distinctly inferior to one that my brother Scott is building now.  After that we made our way on back roads to the Tesla Supercharger at Brewer, Maine (just outside Bangor), and then north to Long Pond near Lincoln, Maine.  We got off the I-95 at Old Town and went the rest of the way on SR2.  We pulled into my brother's “camp” early in the afternoon.

If you click the screenshot at left to embiggen it, you'll see a red star in the rough location of the camp.  It's a beautiful spot, though it's a lot different than my memories of the place from the '60s.  Back then there were far fewer camps on the pond's shores, and none at all on the entire north shore.  Furthermore, the camps were mostly fairly rude shacks – now they're real houses, complete with all the modern amenities.  Sweet Road, which provide the access to all the camps, was a rough dirt road back then – now it's paved and smooth.  There used to be more trees around most of the camps; now many are in spacious clearings.  All of these things combined make quite a change in the character of the place – and it's not so much that the changes are particularly good or bad, per se.  The fact that they're different than my many memories is inevitably jarring as hell for me.  The photos below are all taken at Mark and Gina's camp:

My mother called Long Pond her favorite place on earth; her experiences there filled her memory and her stories.  Most of all, I think, she loved her many friends in the area.  I was there part of about a dozen summers in my youth, and I remember how happy she was there.  The cabin that she first visited as a girl and every summer afterwards for close to fifty years is now gone.  It was falling apart, and was demolished a few years ago.  It was on a lot a hundred yards or so west of Mark and Gina's cabin, and they still own the lot.  They plan to build there, hoping to provide a place their kids and grandkids can enjoy as they do.

Of all my siblings, Mark is the one who comes closest to sharing my mother's love of Long Pond.  He also shares my mom's love of fishing, which explains why he's willing to be seen in slippers like those at right.  He and Gina are up there every year, and I suspect that Mark has been up here every year since he first came as a kid. 

One of the few requests my mom made in her will was that her ashes be scattered on Long Pond, specifically off the point where blueberries grow (the locals all know where that is).  I am the executor of her will, so the responsibility for getting that done was mine – a duty I was happy to perform.  We did something like this for my dad a few years ago, scattering his ashes amongst the blooming azaleas of Dolly Sods, West Virginia.  Mark kindly offered me the use of his boat, complete with a driver, to get out to the right spot.  Debbie and John M. (a close friend of my parents) wanted to go with me, so the four of us headed out in the morning of June 9th.  The day before was the second anniversary of my mom's death, a coincidence that somehow seemed appropriate.  That's me in the photo at left, caught in the act of scattering some of mom's ashes.  It's hard to find the words to describe how I felt at the moment.  Memories of mom were flooding in, partly triggered by being in a boat on Long Pond, a scenario I spent many hours of my youth in.  The fact that I was finally able to complete her wish was more satisfying than I'd have expected.  It wasn't at all an unhappy experience, and I'm positive that's what mom would have wanted.

After mom's ashes were scattered, we had a burger-and-dog meal outdoors, sitting near the lake.  Tillie B., another old friend of my mom's (and someone I remember from my hormone-filled youth as one hot mama) joined us, and there was much pleasant conversation including many memories of mom.   When we came into the house to reload our plates, Mark and Gina's two dogs (one of whom is at right) would get very attentive.  Obviously they were hoping a stray hot dog would fall off someone's plate! :)

Mark and Gina had told me I was welcome to wire into their camp's electrical panel to charge up our car.  I was all over that offer, and before we'd left Utah I bought all the parts required to do that.  I'm not sure Gina was thrilled with the redneck wiring job I did, but it all worked great in the end – our car was fully charged before we left, and I put their electrical panel back together again.  It even worked when I got done!

Day 7...

Day 7...  The Utahans make it to Maine!  We left Plymouth, New Hampshire bright and early and headed up the road a bit to the supercharger in Lincoln, New Hampshire.   Then we headed by back roads roughly straight line from Lincoln to Freeport, Maine (where another supercharger resides, behind the L.L. Bean “flagship” store).  This path took us through beautiful hilly scenery (the hills the locals call the Appalachian “Mountains”) that Debbie had never seen before.  An almost randomly selected scene is at right, for the purposes of illustrating the following discussion: how strange these eastern forests look to a western eye.  There are several things that stand out to us.  Foremost is the amazingly large quantity of greenery: an acre of this forest must have ten times the chlorophyll of an equivalent forest out west.  Then there's the number of species of trees.  Most western forests have just a few species; a forest with a dozen common species would be unusual.  Here we saw several dozen species while standing in one spot!  Next is the near absence of mature trees.  Nearly everywhere we traveled, we saw young forests like this, with most of the trees appearing to be roughly the same age.  I'm guessing this is the result of clear-cutting, though it might also be forest fires (though we didn't often spot evidence of them).  Also odd to us: the lack of obvious forest mix changes with altitude (mostly likely because there simply isn't much altitude change) or exposure.  The “mountains” here are blanketed with nearly uniform forests.  Out west, we'd see distinct and easily visible changes with altitude, on the north or south sides, and along ridges or in gullies.  The sum of all these effects makes these eastern forests look quite odd to us...

All along the route we took today we spotted rhododendrons (both horticultural varieties and apparently wild ones) and lupines.  I remember the rhododendrons from my childhood visits to Maine, but not the lupines!  Here are a few of the hundreds of beautiful spots we passed:

We arrived at Brunswick (where our next lodging was) with lots of time still left in the day.  After checking in, we headed up the coast toward Belfast (more on that place later) along what we remembered as a sort of “art district” from our last visit about 25 years ago.  At that point in time, we had little money to spend on art, though we did purchase a few pieces that we cherish – especially a beautiful photograph that hangs in our living room.  We saw a sculpture on that trip – a life size bronze of two deer being pursued by a mountain lion – that we told ourselves we'd try to get if we ever had enough money to consider it.  Well, we do have the wherewithal to do that now, so we were searching for that sculpture or something like it.  Sadly, we were in for a bit of a rude surprise.  First, the raw number of art galleries was far lower than we'd remembered.  Second, the art galleries were dominated by what I call “modern art” – stuff that looks like any idiot could have done it, and that looked to our eye more like junk than art.  There were some exceptions, but few and far between.  And nobody was showing traditional bronze sculpture.

I spoke with some of the galleries' staff about this, and was able to piece together what happened.  Fundamentally, the dot-com recession killed them all off.  Some of the galleries up and moved to more moneyed territory – primarily Boston and New York.  Others simply folded.  The galleries that remained were, for the most part, more marginal in their appeal – as one gallery owner put it to me, the ones who stayed were attracted by the low cost of running a business on the south Maine coast.  She told me candidly that she showed the work of local artists whose work tourists were willing to buy, not the work of artists she enjoyed.  One could almost feel her sorrow.

Our quest for the sculpture was a bust, but there's a happy ending on that story that I will tell another day.  I did find a couple of quite nice turned wooden bowls, made of glued together segments (dozens of them in one case).  The first photo below shows the two bowls, and the following two show details of the fancier one.  Both bowls were made by a local woodturner named Frances Farley.  All the local galleries knew him, liked him, and knew that he had recently died at a ripe old age.  I feel lucky to have stumbled across these.

While we were walking around the town of Camden, we happened across a couple roughly ten years older than us who was gawking at the same window we were.  We struck up a conversation, and during that I mentioned the two visits I'd made to Matinicus Island in my youth, one of them involving working on a lobster boat for two weeks.  That's when our new friend let us know that he was a lobsterman, out for the day with his wife!  He worked his lobster pots near the coast of Rockport, a few miles away.  We shared some memories of the old mail boats that were based in Rockport, and which provided our transportation to Matinicus back in those days.  I didn't really expect to see any locals in a town like Camden, but to run into a lobsterman was completely outside expectations.  That was fun!

After we'd finished our shopping, we headed for Belfast – the home of Young's Lobster Pound, the best place on earth to get lobster rolls or live lobsters.  My family knew about Young's Lobster Pound from my earliest memories of Maine, back in the late '50s.  I'm not sure how we first found out about it.  They started shipping lobsters on telephone orders back in the '90s, and ever since when we're in the mood for lobster, that's how we get it.  There was no way I was going to miss the chance to actually eat there!  The photos below were all taken at Young's, but the last one shows the important part: a lobster roll (never mind that it's not a traditional roll) and a bowl of seafood chowder.  Debbie had the identical meal.  Both were brains-fall-out-on-the-table good...

Bellies sated, after this we headed back to our lodging for a good nights sleep before the next day's adventures...

Helping a friend and neighbor...

Helping a friend and neighbor...  I've written before about Tim D.'s health challenges.  One of the consequences of his current state is that he's no longer strong enough to move his irrigation pipes.  These are “hand line”: 3" diameter, 30' long pieces of aluminum pipe that weigh roughly 40 pounds each.  That weight is a little misleading, though, as generally when one goes to pick up a piece of pipe it's still full of water.  To empty it, you lift up one end – and that weight is more like 100 pounds.  Tim uses about 25 pieces of this hand line when irrigating.  It takes 6 days to complete a cycle of watering, each day moving the pipe to a new location in the fields.  Then after around four days of no watering, he starts the cycle of watering all over again.

So this is a non-trivial amount of work.  One adult, working alone, can move all the pipe in around two hours (including time for clearing clogged sprinklers, walking to the edges of the field to turn valves on and off, etc.).  During that two hours, you might walk a couple of miles in addition to all the weight lifting.  You'll also get soaked when fixing sprinklers, and your feet and jeans bottoms will be covered with mud. 

Tim can't do this, so what happens to his fields?  Nothing!  That's because his neighbors (including me) are moving his pipes for him – cheerfully, happy to be of service to Tim.  Three adults and a bevy of kids are doing it.  If we needed more, there would be a small army volunteering to help.  This is so heartening to see!  And I get great satisfaction from being a part of it...

Day 6...

Day 6...  AKA “Escape from New York!"”  We spent way too much time on the New York State Thruway, otherwise known as I-90.  The tolls on this road beggar belief.  If someone tried to do this in the Rocky Mountain States, I'm fairly certain the population's reaction would include as much high-velocity lead as was required to eliminate it.  In the Empire State, the sheepish population just pays...

We got off the Thruway at Utica, and made our way on back roads across the rest of New York, all of Vermont, and into Plymouth, New Hampshire where we checked into the delightful Tea Rose Inn.  At right was Debbie's favorite part of this B&B: the feline greeter.  :)  The scenery on our drive today was beautiful: the best of New England's rolling hills (which for some reason they call “mountains”), excessive amounts of chlorophyll, rushing streams, and lots of lakes and ponds.  This was Debbie's first time ever seeing the northern Appalachians.  I was a bit surprised by the relative poverty of most places we drove through – I guess the heyday of the Adirondacks is over.

We went to bed tired of being in the car, and preparing ourselves for tomorrow's descent upon the south Maine coast...

Some mixed granite news...

Some mixed granite news...  The granite folks showed up to install the granite on the cabinet that I built, right on time.  It was exciting to see them arrive – four guys in two trucks (at right), with our rock and all the tools they'd need to install it.  They unloaded the seven individual pieces of rock and carried them all over to my cabinet – and a few minutes later, we had set the grill components in place to test the fit.  It was perfect (photos below)!

Much to my relief, the installers found no problems with the cabinetry.  Even more to my relief, the grill components fit exactly as they were supposed to.  So why is the news mixed?

Take a gander at the photo at right.  The piece on the right is supposed to be about 1.5" longer, to match the rear edge of the piece at left.  The fabricators simply cut that piece too short.  The installers have saws, so if the piece had been too long they could have shortened it.  They did not, however, have a rock stretcher – so this means a do-over on that one piece, and that they couldn't actually complete the installation today.  They did leave enough of the rock in place so that we can get our gas installation completed tomorrow – and after that there's nothing stopping her from starting to grill again.  She's been waiting for this day for four years now.  I predict much grilled food in our immediate future!

Here's a gratuitous photo showing one end of the cabinet, before we moved it to the deck.  The spar varnish did a great job of making the color variations, grain, and knots “pop” visually.  I hope it's as durable as I was promised!

Day 5...

Day 5...  Niagara Falls!  Debbie had never seen the falls before, so I laid out our trip to give us a few hours there.  We drove most of the way from Ashtabula to Niagara Falls along the shore of Lake Erie, through a series of waterfront towns.  In Ashtabula itself, we drove over this really old-school draw bridge.  The controls have been updated to something a bit more modern, with computers and everything – but the mechanics are straight out of the start of the 20th century.

As we passed by Erie, Pennsylvania on I-90, just east of the intersection with I-79, we spotted a cemetery that stood out for the flags that appeared to be on every grave, along with a profusion of fresh flowers.  We got off the freeway and found a road that would take us there, and we spent a half hour or so just walking around (photos below).  Something we've both noted in our travels (including a ridiculous amount of international business travel for me) is that different places have very different notions of how to honor or maintain graves, especially of military veterans or casualties.  Even different places in the U.S. differ greatly.  For example, in San Diego (where we used to live, and with a large military presence), the beautiful veteran's cemetery on Point Loma is meticulously maintained, but there's little evidence of visitors – every time I've visited I've been nearly on my own.  In much of Utah, the situation is virtually reversed: even the non-military cemeteries are well maintained, and a high proportion of graves have fresh flowers, carefully maintained greenery, and often a flag or other patriotic symbol.  Most of the U.S., in our experience, is somewhere in between – with urban areas tending toward the rarely visited side, and rural areas the opposite.  This was a veteran's cemetery, and it was obviously visited very often (we had trouble finding even one withered vase of flowers).  There was a relatively large and well-equipped staff there to tend it.  The oldest graves I found in my walking were from WW I veterans; some were just days old.  I find such places very moving, and all too rare (both here and in other countries).  Some big exceptions: Japan, South Korea, and Estonia.  I'm sure there are others, but those three I have quite a bit of experience in.

We settled into our B&B quite early in the afternoon, and set out to walk all around Niagara Falls.  This turned out to be about 3.5 miles of walking all together – more than Debbie has done in several years because of her knee injuries.  First up: some videos I made from three different viewing points:







Now the photos:

Walking around Niagara Falls – which I last visited nearly 50 years ago – was quite the shock for me.  The changes in the area are stunning, most especially on the Canadian side.  I was not prepared for the high-rise hotels, giant casinos, and the thousands of visitors.  Despite this, our viewing of the falls was actually better than it was all those years ago, because a ginormous platform has been built over the river that lets you walk to a perfect viewing position, high in the air.  It cost a whole $2.50 for the two of us to gain admission to that, and it was well worth the money.  The trails that lead around to the upper end of each of the falls are now paved and graded for wheelchairs – so walking to all of them wasn't much different than walking on a sidewalk in the big city.  There were crowds of visitors everywhere we went, even on the longest of the trails (which wasn't actually very long at all).  At a guess, I'd say two thirds of the visitors were foreign, dominated by Japanese and Chinese.

We ate dinner partway through our walking, at a restaurant called Savor.  It was just wonderful (photos of our meal below).  Debbie had two appetizers instead of an entree: a rather spectacular salad, and some excellent mussels.  I had a mixed seafood and pasta dish in an absolutely delightful sauce.  Our excellent and very entertaining waiter talked us into dessert even though we were both quite full – and we were very glad he did.  The chocolate cake with unsweetened whipped cream (whipped to the just-shy-of-butter point) was insanely good.  We departed with zero hunger, big smiles on our faces, and very, very happy tummies...

While walking around downtown, we spotted the little guy at right up in a tree (actually, just outside the restaurant's doors).  He's got a cupcake wrapper in his paws that he'd stolen from a (still occupied!) table nearby – the people at the table never saw him do it.  We don't have any squirrels or chipmunks in the valley where we live, and we miss their antics!

To my great surprise, Debbie wanted to walk some more after our dinner.  Some of our falls viewing was during this walk.  We also ran across some old monuments, one of which is at left.  There were probably a dozen or so in all the places we walked.  It is pleasant to see them in a location where so many people pass by, even if few people stop to look.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day.  We walked back, finally, to our B&B and went straight to bed – we have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow...