Ignoring the Law
I still get ads and info from Qatar sources. Living in Doha was such a vivid experience; experiencing the life of a country going from a sleepy little village to a mecca of skyscrapers was an astounding experience.
Qatar was full of contradictions, and the treatment of domestic workers, all imported from mostly Asian countries, was abysmal. While some few families treated their servants well, most did not. Contracts were not honored. Few had any time-off, most were on call 24 hours a day.
So this new law from the Ministry of Labor is . . . interesting. I find myself cynically wondering if this legislation will have any impact on how Qataris treat their servants, or if it is just national window dressing?
Not to be hitting unfairly on Qatar, it brings to mind the Florida Sunshine Laws. Florida passed some truly progressive laws suggesting that citizens of Florida had a right to know what their elected officials were doing, and how they made their decisions. I know – amazing stuff, even in a democracy. Florida took a lot of pride in those laws, and for many years, those laws were, to a great extent, observed and enforced.
Fast forward to Florida in the times of COVID and there is not a mention of the Florida Sunshine Laws. Some of the Sunshine Laws have been amended, to protect Law Enforcement and court officials. Most of the Sunshine Laws are now just ignored.
How does this manifest? How about the governor telling the Health Department not to publish health statistics, and telling them not to count people from out-of-state who come here and catch COVID. How about not allowing them to collect all the statistics, just every other week? How about not publishing the transmission rate on a daily or even weekly basis?
How about concealing how Universities recruit and select college presidents?
Publishing laws that look good on paper is one thing. Writing the laws so that they have teeth, and can be enforced, is another. Having a police force on the city and county level which will enforce laws as written is another. Having courts that will support the enforcement of the laws as written is another.
Having an independent legislature is another critical factor, we have to ask if the intention is for them to represent our will as citizens or if they exist to rubber-stamp gubernatorial stage-craft?
One of my friends at church mentioned yesterday that the state of Florida now has a holiday, Juneteenth, the explanation for which is not legally allowed to be taught in Florida schools, where any acknowledgment of the history and damages of enslavement might make young white school children uncomfortable.
When people behave badly towards one another, whether in Qatar or in the USA, maybe feeling uncomfortable is appropriate.
Back in Kuwait
No, No don’t get excited. It’s a metaphor.
When I lived in Kuwait, I would tell my friends it was a lot like living in Alaska, and I loved the look on their faces. Then I would explain – in Alaska, people wait eagerly for good weather, and when it comes, they can’t get enough of it. We are outdoor people.
For much of the year, Alaskans are trapped inside, and have to be good at finding things to do to keep themselves from going crazy.
In Pensacola, as it was in Kuwait, the temperatures are very hot. Kuwait was mostly very dry, and had sandstorms, unlike Pensacola, but shared having a long coastline, and heat with humidity in the summers.
So now, as in Kuwait, I am up early, to get to the pool and swim my laps, so lovely and cool. If I need to grocery shop, I try to shop on the way home, so as not to have to venture out again as the day heats up. I get home, and tend to the Little Free Library while it is still in the shade. Most of the rest of the day I spend inside, except for picking up grandchildren at their camps.
It is a great time to do some quilting. I am just about to start when Ragnar, my helper, comes in to join me. (Also, AdventureMan is outside weed-eating and edging, which is of endless amusement and torment to Ragnar, who forgets he was once a feral, outdoor cat, and was lucky to survive.)
I do a couple more things to set up, hoping Ragnar will take the hint and move off to find something more interesting. He doesn’t. In the end, I have to lift him (lovingly) and place him in another room on a blanket we call Blue Mama, because Ragnar particularly loves sleeping on this blanket.
He doesn’t come back, and I spend the morning “back in Kuwait,” enjoying my confinement by working with fabrics and colors I love, patterns I would never wear but enjoy the challenge of working them into quilts.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Breckenridge, 2 Perspectives
We love The Lodge at Breckenridge, and we love the beautiful room overlooking the valley where Spring is clearly coming.
We decide to dine at the Lodge restaurant. We have a wedding anniversary coming up in June and we might as well start celebrating now 🙂
We share a charcuterie board to start.
I have the Caesar salad for my main course – and I am delighted when it arrives with a real anchovy on top. I haven’t seen an anchovy on a Caesar salad since Doha.
AdventureMan has the Elk Tenderloin, and generously shares a slice or two with me – it is delicious.
I’m pretty sure we shared a dessert, too, but I can’t remember. I had a local port, AdventureMan had a Bordeaux and we floated to our room.
The next morning, we slept in a little – and awoke to five inches of snow. We could hear other doors onto balconies opening and people saying “Snow!”
We got through the mountain pass, and safely into Colorado Springs where we had a wonderful visit with my youngest sister and her husband in their mountain eyrie. We watched episodes of Joe Pickett (we didn’t even know the series, however short-lived, existed) and then they introduced us to Longmire. Her husband played some blues and boogie for us, and we all belted out “The Train They Call the City of New Orleans.” It was a great visit.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Our Last Day in Moab
Today is a day purely for leisure and having fun; we head into Moab for the Moab Arts Fest. It is very family-oriented, with games and entertainment and food, and booths with hand crafted items. I find a fiber artist and a great gift for my sister, a spidery light bright red wrap with silk fibres pressed into it. It is stunning. I can easily imagine it on my stylish sister.
We decide to have lunch at Singha Thai because we so thoroughly enjoyed their food our first night in Moab. This food was equally impressive.
So much food, the veggies crisp-cooked and delicious! AdventureMan had the basil chicken with lots of broccoli, and I had the ginger chicken, more sweet red peppers and spring onions. We couldn’t begin to eat it all, so we packed it up and had it on our Trail’s End veranda for our own sunset dinner.
Chasing Petroglyphs: The Sunset Grill
It has been a lighter day, for us, and we spend the afternoon reading and napping (AdventureMan), packing (both) and writing up the adventures and organizing photos (me). We also know we have dinner planned, dinner at a Moab classic, the Sunset Grill.
The Sunset Hill has pride of place in it’s position, high over Moab. They have parking, and overflow parking, and a large van that picks up tourists around Moab who want to eat at the Sunset Grill. They don’t take reservations. People are lined up at 4:30, before most of the wait-staff have even arrived. There is a garden where they can sit and look over the city while they wait to be seated.
Once you are invited inside, there is plenty of seating, all with fabulous views.
The wait staff is polite, helpful, and efficient. All the music is Frank Sinatra, and the decor is pure 1950s. The menu is pure 1950s, with choices of steaks, salmon, chicken, shrimp, and pastas. It’s a real experience. Not my favorite era so once was enough.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Needles Canyonland Overlook
I don’t know what I would do without Google Maps; I use them to plan trips, I use them to calculate time and distance, I use them to find exactly where to make my turn, etc. And now and then Google Maps gets eccentric on me.
On our last trip in France, driving from Domme to Salers, Google maps had us on treacherous mountain tracks that were single lane, and timber trucks were coming at us. At one point, Adventureman said “stick to the paper map and major roads, no matter what Google Maps says” and he was right.
This time, taking the road to Needles Overlook, the Google lady kept telling us we had arrived and to turn around, the road had ended, when we could see it, paved and smooth, right in front of us. Weird.
We were so glad we persisted. The Needles Overlook is one of the most spectacular viewpoints we have ever seen. All told, you can probably see nearly 300°; not from one point but by following the paths to the different viewpoints. Just when you think it can’t get any better, it does.
OK, this is indelicate, but travelers know, take advantage of every opportunity because you never know when the next opportunity will appear. I told AdventureMan I was going to check the convenience, and he said “I hope they have toilet paper” and when I got inside, I just laughed. I’ve never seen so much toilet paper in one loo.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Newspaper Rock, Needles and Canyonland
As AdventureMan reads through these posts, he delights in how much he has already forgotten, and he looks forward to reading about what he called “one of our light days.”
I look at him in astonishment. As occasionally happens, I remember things very differently,
“We got a relaxed start,” I begin, which in our language means we did not hit the road at the crack of dawn, but maybe around 0830, “but we were on the road until about 2:00! And it was some tough driving! No place to stop for lunch, we just had apples and oranges by the side of the road.” And water. Lots and lots of water. It was again in the 90’s, and very dry, and there are signs everywhere warning us to drink water.
We don’t have to start from Moab, we just reach SR 191 and turn south. The first thing we come across is Wilson’s Arch:
And another place called Hole in the Wall, but I can’t tell if it is a famous Hole in the Wall or an adventure outfitting place. There is an ATV perched precariously on the top of the cliff.
We turned off 191 to go to Canyonlands, and soon came to Newspaper Rock.
Early on, I mentioned how fragile and transient petroglyphs can be. We don’t really know who made them. We know that many of the earliest petroglyphs incised were written over, improved, by later early peoples. And then, modern day man, who had done the most damage of all – carving his initials over ancient glyphs, removing glyphs, defacing glyphs, rubbing glyphs (thus eroding their edges and making them more vulnerable to weathering elements), chalking glyphs to make them more visible, even touching glyphs leaves chemicals that damage the quality of the glyphs.
When we got to Newspaper Rock, we parked at the wrong end of the parking lot and ended up on a trail going entirely the wrong way. AdventureMan kept saying he thought we needed to go back, but the further along we got, the more I thought we were on the right track – until the track ended. We walked back, and just at the other end of the parking lot was the Newspaper Rock – near the road and protected by a large grill.
The thing is – I saw others, too, nearby. I am so thankful they protected Newspaper Rock, because through the years many of the incisions have been defaced. I am hoping that the others are being protected by the very lack of trails and signage, by the lack of publicity. It’s a pity we should have to protect the petroglyphs from our own citizens.
I think of Newspaper Rock as a kind of scratch pad. Even Leonardo da Vinci, the great inventor, engineer and artist, made sketches before he executed a masterpiece. I can see traces of the Fremont peoples, and I can see scraps of petroglyphs we have viewed in Vernal.
AdventureMan found Newspaper Rock a very emotional experience. He felt connected to these early people. When I look at these footprints of all sizes dancing around, I feel their joy. And look at the hand – that is almost modern in it’s representation of a human hand; and I think back to the petroglyphs at White Mountain which may have represented the human hand or may have represented the terror of a bear claw. These feet are so happy, and, interestingly, so similar in form. I wonder how they were formed?
I’ve broken the wall into different panels with photographs; taken in total, it is overwhelming.
Much more modern era; we see horses introduced
Those lines – snakes? Rivers? Directions? A life?
I would guess this central figure is a shaman, with what coming off his headdress? Some kind of special decoration on his legs? The target symbol, as opposed to the spiral? The smaller horned man? All those animals – prayers for a good hunt? Celebration of a good hunt?
This one intrigues me – a scorpion? It is just weird!
A dancing bison? Look at the feet and . . . um . . . feet; they are very hoof like. An elk with a magnificent rack and maybe a spear in it’s side?
These last two are not with the others. I believe some well-meaning guide has chalked them so that visitors can see the faint traces.
And this is what the Newspaper Rock looks like in total.
We were no longer alone. Visitors from all over the world were coming, looking and photographing.
We drove to the end of the drivable-without-dire-warnings road. The scenery was increasingly arid and bleak, with it’s own terrible beauty. At one point, we were about to hike out to an old dwelling cave, and we looked at each other. It was noon, and signs everywhere were saying “do not hike in the hottest hours” and it was HOT. We drank some water, ate some oranges, got back in the car, reluctant to pass on an adventure, but happy to pass on potential disaster.
There was actually a ranch out here, and this was the last water we saw. It’s still Spring.
Just a half mile there, and a half mile back . . . we passed.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Arches National Park and Moab
I love that Arches NP has gone to a reservation system during the busy months. Everyone has an equal shot; you can book a time a couple months in advance. We love the morning light, so we have booked a 7:00 a.m. slot and it is a gorgeous day. There is no line at the entrance booth. There are no crowds at the various arches. It is all so relaxed!
The morning is crisp, cool, and magnificent with a bright deep blue sky.
Please forgive me, I am besotted with the textures and colors and the shapes of the rock and I have yet to show you a single arch.
Our preference, at Arches, is to drive to the very end, to Devil’s Garden, and hike while it is still cool, and then stop at the other arches on our way back. But we always have to stop at the one on the way.
A wealth of arches!
Because I can’t resist a good mountain 🙂
We hit the visitors center at Arches, then headed into Moab for lunch. It was around 11, so we were the first seated at Pasta Jay’s, where AdventureMan had a Caprese salad and Saturnalia pizza and I had a pizza Rustica, which was a garlic pizza base and Caesar salad on top. We split a Tiramisu, delicious.
When we picked up our Thai food last night, we could smell the pizzas from Pasta Jay’s, so we really had no problem choosing where we would go for lunch. Pasta Jays!
The heat in Moab is so dry that it is still cool enough to sit outside to eat. The setting is delightful, but oh! The noise! The Main street of Moab is full of trucks with heavy rumbling loads, squealing breaks and loud engines. There are Vans pulling ATVs, trailers full of kayaks and canoes, a constant, endless flow of noisy traffic.
But the food is delicious.
We are thoroughly satisfied with our lunch, and we are delighted also to head back to the peacefulness of our cabin.
So this is not like FaceBook, this is the real world. In the real world, not everything is perfect. We are really happy to have a beautiful, quiet cabin because with all the driving and hiking, AdventureMan’s back is acting up. It’s been tender a couple days. He insists that the hiking in Arches was actually good for his back, but when I bring up canceling our activity for tomorrow, he only resists for a while.
To me, it made sense to cancel, even though it was something we had really wanted to do, hike the Canyon of the Ancients in search of more petroglyphs. It would have meant a two-and-a-half-hour drive down, four hours of hiking, and a two-and-a-half-hour drive back. To me, that did not make sense with a tender back. Life is short. We can do the hike another year, hopefully find a cabin down in the Four Corner area where we can stay and do a more thorough exploration of several nearby areas. Once we canceled, we both felt relieved.
We also had dinner plans, a totally tourist thing, a Sunset Boat Cruise with Canyonlands, and included Cowboy Dinner. All we had to do was show up. It turned out to be really fun, and the dinner, all kinds of BBQ, was surprisingly good. Canyonlands guide Brandon was entertaining and full of good information, he showed us more petroglyphs and arches, and got us back in time for dinner.
A great ending to a great day.
Chasing Petroglyphs: On to Trails End, and Moab
The drive from Vernal to Moab was pretty boring, but we had a memorable stop at the Outlaw Cafe in some small town, where we had surprisingly good salads.
We got to the cabin at about three, keys were waiting for us, and the cabin is quirky but had a lot of things we really like. Lots of space, a beautiful deck with a wide expanse of view, and although the temperatures in Moab are in the 80’s heading toward 90’s, the breezes in the Pack Creek Valley keep things relatively cool. The king-size bed is generous and firm.
The rules focus on quiet and mutual respect. We took a look at the pool and hot tub and had no interest. We loved the quiet of the cabin.
I’m a worrier. I love planning trips, and sometimes it feels like a high wire act. Will I be able to get the dates I want for the property I want? Will I be able to fly on the dates we need to fly on? And when I chose this cabin to stay in for five days, I worried that it wouldn’t be as good as the photos. Maybe it was too far from town?
The internet didn’t work, which was a good thing. We were so busy that we didn’t even worry about getting it fixed for the first three days, and that was a lovely blessing. And in the midst of “busy,” we had this lovely, incredibly quiet, beautiful retreat in the middle of our vacation. This was not a luxurious place, unless you consider privacy, simplicity and quiet a luxury – and we do.
You can see our food box on the table – everything we need except for fresh milk for my cereal, which I mix myself and bring with us. We will pick up milk later, at the grocery store in Moab, along with our dinner. There is a stove and oven, a full size refrigerator, a microwave, a coffee maker. There is a large sink, all the dishes, pots, pans, containers we might need.
Although the temperatures are in the 90’s, the cool winds keep us comfortable and we never have to turn on the air conditioning. I need to wash a couple things; I wash them in the sink, hang them on hangers on this porch, and within a couple hours they are completely dry. Sheer luxury.
Although I am not much for sunning, lying out on the bench to dry my hair was another luxury, the breezes faster than a hair dryer.
As I walked around taking photos, it’s a good thing I didn’t know about rattlesnakes. There was one coiled right by the back deck which slithered away while Adventureman stepped out on the deck. He took it in stride. I didn’t grow up with snakes; I might have had a different reaction.
The pool was lovely and we are happy enough in our little cabin and on our little deck.
We head into Moab to pick up dinner; it is Monday, and as is true through out the United States, many places are closed. AdventureMan picks a Thai restaurant, Singha Thai, and we order vegetable rolls, sate and Thai salad. We pick it up and stop at a grocery store for milk. The grocery store is disconcerting; we hear German, we hear French, it is packed with Moab tourists from all over the world looking for something for dinner. We buy our milk and hit the road; it is 20 minutes to our cabin, Trail’s End, at Pack Creek Ranch. We are at the foot of the La Sal mountains.
At sunset, AdventureMan sees twirling lights on a nearby hill. Like the petroglyphs, it is a mystery. We can see vans on the crest of the hill, we can see a human twirling (juggling?) something (flashlights? those balls with lights inside?) as the sun goes down and we can hear singing, but we can’t hear the words. We imagine it is some sort of sunset ritual.
The sunset is full of bird sounds; owl, turtledove, others which shriek a little, and the soft gurgling of Pack Creek. Once the sun is set, there is a stunning quiet, so quiet that your ears might ring with the silence.
The night sky is brilliant with stars.
The next morning, the light paints the distant rock hills with color.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Tour of the Tilted Rocks
We leave the Wall of Bones to go back to the visitor center to pick up our car and hit The Tour of the Tilted Rocks.
Most of the visitors in this late May time frame seemed to be people in our demographic, 60s and older, people out exploring our country as singles and couples. We saw a couple of groups, and a couple of tours, but most of the people we saw looked a lot like us – retired, with the luxury of time to go exploring.
Most of these people were, like us, physically fit enough to climb the uneven trails, climb a few slippery rocks and hike straight uphill to view the petroglyphs.
Leaving the Quarry Hall “Wall of Bones,” we got into our car for the “Tour of the Tilted Rocks” and spent the next couple of hours engaging with the spectacular scenery, helped along by both the brochure and the frequent guideposts along the way. We visited four separate petroglyph sites and countless sites of geological and paleontological interest.
A wealth of petroglyphs! I can see similarities in these glyphs to the Fremont glyphs we saw yesterday, but these are more on the level of scratch sheets, practice for the advanced figures we saw at the McConkie ranch. You can see some elementary necklaces. I overheard in a passing group a person say that square heads are men and more rounded heads are women. I’m not sure that is true, but now I have more to evaluate.
Yet another site; love this . . . headdress? Or is it a jug with flowers – and legs?
The shoulder – waist proportion appears to be still evolving here. I can see a crescent moon and indications that some figures are probably men. Or maybe fertile women, with the moon?
So does the round head mean this is a woman? Her body seems more elaborately patterned than others. She appears to be waving. In some cultures, the spiral indicates long life, but maybe it can also mean a trail of life or a giver of life? More questions than answers 🙂
As the day heats up, these climbs seem more aggressive. We have hats, we have water and the dry heat sucks the moisture out of us.
So, a square head with elaborate patterning, maybe slaying a deer? So no, elaborate patterning is not a female thing.
This site has a lot of lizards
I would love to know what this is about. An altar, with celestial bodies above? I wish I had a clue.
On the way back to Vernal, we had lunch at the Naples Country Cafe. I ordered the Naples Country Breakfast, and thank God for a helpful waitress who asked me what kind of gravy I wanted over it all. I hadn’t read it very carefully, just saw that it had a couple of eggs. She advised me to get the Junior version of it, and I asked for no gravy, no cheese. What arrived at the table was two eggs over easy on a plate full of hash brown potatoes, with a sausage, a slice of bacon and a piece of ham, and two slices of sourdough bread with homemade boysenberry jam. I was picky about what I allowed myself to eat, but I did eat all the jam, on half a slice of bread, because it was so irresistibly delicious.
We got back to our room mid-afternoon to rest or nap a little, and to pack up for our drive tomorrow down to our cabin outside of Moab, Trail’s End at Pack Creek, which we hope will provide four nights of spectacular night sky viewing.
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