FROG JUMP FAIR AND MONSTER GRASS.

The County Fair is symbolic as a place to have fun. My youngest daughter had a horse, a couple of hogs, and multiple dairy goats at this fair. She worked the fair in high school cleaning horribly gross restrooms for FFA and decided she’d never come back after graduating high school.

But she did. Her two boys loved the unique experience of jumping a frog. The frog is placed on the lily pad. You can slap your hands, scratch the mat behind it or holler at it but you can’t touch it.

The monitors measure the distance of the three jumps and a collector (probably a kid from FFA) gathers up the frog and sends it back to the frog hotel. Ahhh! So it goes, for 4 days until the finals on Sunday. A $1,000 prize is offered for the longest jump.

I went with a friend who has bad asthma and can’t walk very much in the spring. We stayed atop the hillside and sat on the grass and listened to music and peeked into the buildings that had booths for aroma therapy, jewelry made from bullets, leather shoes and buckles.  We didn’t see anything we couldn’t live without.

My goal was to find some purple earrings and eat junk food. The garlic fries with Parmesan cheese and parsley were excellent. I tasted Karen’s and  ate a huge polish sausage with lots of onions and bell pepper, mustard and ketchup. Yum!

The carnival looked like fun, but you have to walk back up that hill and it wouldn’t due for Karen. The hay filled barns and rodeo dust were off-limits, too.  I didn’t mind. There will be another fair next year. I was glad to get away and spend the day in the sunshine and wear my trashy biker clothes and earrings. I looked for a one-day-only tattoo and couldn’t find where I hid them. And, I actually didn’t have any leathers, but I pretended.  I didn’t find any purple earrings to buy. I’ve got my eye on a funnel cake for next year. It takes two to eat one, but we watched a young girl polish one off. (Shouda took a pic.)

I came home to “grass power.”  These beautiful grasses are California native bunch grasses. They don’t need water summer or winter, but this winter they got plenty of water and showed how powerful they can be.

You can barely see my chicken coop. They have overpowered my yard and have managed to spread everywhere on my three acres. I absolutely love them. I bought 5 different bunch grasses for their special attributes but only two actually liked my property. Normally, I wait until they dry and go to seed, then have them mowed or use the weed eater. But not this year.

My lower gate is blocked and I can’t open but about 8 inches,  just to squeeze through. This is a driveway. So, today, the mulching machine is coming to chew them up. Even when they are young plants, the roots are so strong you can’t pull them up. And that is what I wanted. I’m Certified Wildlife Habitat and I don’t ever spray or poison things. And when I walk my property, I feel the loamy, soft, rich soil. I walk through a wonderland of lady bugs and ear wigs and other beneficial insects.  I have bees buzzing about, huge lizards, a couple of toads and birds nesting. All is good and healthy and it makes me feel wonderful to have saved a patch of native grasses that once kept California a green state. The native grasses were long ago overcome by Spanish grasses that migrated with cattle coming from Mexico.  A few patches were rescued from cemeteries and other hilly areas where cattle didn’t graze.

The grasses have strong roots; they hold the soil; they are fire resistant. They make good forage for grass-eating animals. What’s not to like?
The mulcher will do in two days what would take me a month with a machete to do. The birds and the bees and the bats are making babies and feel welcome and safe here. I love it.

A CRUISE THROUGH TEXAS.

There is an upside to downsizing. My cousin Debbie collects postcards and while going through my stuff I found a scrapbook of a trip to Texas. I grabbed some pages and put them in a box to mail, thinking explanatory stuff might interest her. But, oh the memories.  Dallas/Fort Worth really does have more shops than New York, more music than Nashville and more thrills than Disneyland. We went to the stockyards and saw a cattle drive that was a life-sized sculpture of long horns crossing a river. Museums, art galleries, the Hard Rock Cafe, the White Elephant Saloon, a cooling water walk, Assyrian treasures at Kimball, Cavanaugh Flight Museum, a sewing machine museum, the H.W. Perry Homestead.  We followed the footsteps of Kennedy's assassin at Dealy Plaza and the grassy knoll.  We could easily have spent three weeks there, so much to see and do.
Our method suited both my husband's and my personality. He would write for tourist information, we'd fly into the major airport, rent a car and do as much as we could during a 3 to 4 week period. In Houston, the Sam Houston Museum, the Astrodome, LBJ Space Center, San Jacinto Battlefield,  Missons. We toured the Battleship Texas, and the Funeral Services Museum. We really did go to Billy Bob's  Honky Tonk, (disappointing) and  Ruth's Chris steak house, but we didn't order steaks the size of a roast. George wanted to go to the Millionaires Club, just for a peek, but realized you need to be a millionaire.
We drove to Galveston and visited the historic Moody Mansion, The Texas Seaport Museum where I got my art fix watching Anthony Blackman draw. The old downtown area is quite small and interesting. A Mardi Gras Museum,  History of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. The best estimate of life lost was six thousand perished, one of the worst disasters in our nation's history. We took pictures of a mansion with a two  foot picket fence. The other four feet were covered in mud and the owners never rebuilt. They chose to live in what was the top two floors of the mansion.  I loved Galveston.
We drove to San Antonio to see the Alamo. Texans didn't set aside land around the Alamo. It sits on a city block with businesses surrounding it, smaller than you'd think.  The missions- magnificent edifices in stone, a cool place rest. The Arts are the heart of San Antonio at La Villita with glass blowers, candle making, stained glass, weavers, jewelry, etc. And, every where we ate Tex Mex, different from California Mex. The best River Walk in Texas, on the San Antonio River right through the middle of town. Cooling, breathtaking.
Then to Austin, to visit the State Capital building, the Governor's Mansion, LBJ Library, the amazing Bishops Palace resembles Chateau of France. George didn't want to see a bunch of bats, but I'd heard about Mexican bats living under a bridge in Austin and I worked to convince him. It helped to have a nearby journalism  museum.  We sat on the grassy banks of the river. When it got dark, the bats flowed out in waves of millions swooping up and down the river, wave, after wave, after wave.
Once we got home, the thing that impressed him the most of our entire trip was the bats. I enjoyed his enthusiasm for the bats, as he told everyone we met about them.
My favorite experiences from that trip? The bats, the funeral museum and the San Antonio river walk. American diversity, every state a marvel.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF MAMMOUTH CAVE, KENTUCKY

Yesterday, we visited and took pictures in Mammouth Cave..


.I mentioned that I took a drop of water on my lens.


The drop of water came early in the cave. Be warned, it is very wet at the traditional entrance. They have 27 entrances now, I cannot speak for the others.


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A flash photo looking up into a hole from above.


In some pictures, I was able to crop the smudge.


From a long distance and no flash, this is a cluster of bats. The ceiling in one place was bristling with those giant crickets but when the guide would shine the flashlight on them so you could see them, they would immediately scurry into a crack.

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This was a very dark area of the cave. Lighting is very subtle.


This is a closer shot with the flash.  I took three flash pictures. I was amazed at what color came from the light when I unloaded my pictures.

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A hole in the ceiling worked through the heavy limestone cover above and water pours through this hole. You can't see the water.  It is a thin but forceful steady stream.


This particular tour is named for this formation called Frozen Niagara Falls. To the left you can see railings where those who can go down 49 steps and back up can look up at the falls.


This is a view down into the "fall room" from the top of the steps.

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The falls is the end of this tour, then you can photograph what you missed on the way back.


These last two photos are repeats from a different angle. I don't miss much.


I enjoyed this cave. I don't fear the dark or unknown or earthquakes or rocks falling  that others on the tour expressed. But there are some people who absolutely love them and can't wait to get back under. They can easily spend weeks in a cave. I heard people say, all caves are alike, and I can certainly acknowledge their similarity. But, there is something unique about each one, too.


When I got out of the cave, it was the strangest feeling, like this sunny world is unnatural  and less rich compared to what we had just seen. It only lasted for seconds. I guess the eyes couldn't make the switch quickly enough. Fleetingly, it occurred to me, the feeling of let down people get when they come up, may be what inspires those to become addicted to caving.


We lunched at their cafeteria. Great vegetarian choices made it tough to choose. I'm now hungering for the spicy black bean burger I didn't choose over this spinach wrap humus and veggies with mango and passion fruit dressing.  Yum!

MAMMOUTH CAVE NATIONAL PARK, KENTUCKY

Mammouth Cave is without a doubt the biggest cave in the world, covering 73,000 acres and 400 miles of underground territory. That figure may grow as cave explorers continue to map and explore to find the end of this massive underground water-formed labyrinth. The cave isn't the only mammoth thing, the cave cricket above is from two to three inches in length. It doesn't make sounds like our above ground crickets.


We arrived at the visitors center one hour before our reservation. That hour was nicely filled by a film and the displays. Because of my difficulty to do stairs, we signed on for a short tour that only has 12 steps and an optional 98. The tours are many and varied; you will have a lot of choices.  Mammouth has tours for every adventurous spirit. I took pictures of one of the films figuring it would have much we will not see on our tour, such as this altar rock.


When the cave was in private hands, people were invited to get married in the cave along with their guests.


Through a hole in the limestone roof, water cascades into the cave from a sinkhole above that captures water during heavy rains.


The cave system was occupied by various indigenous people at least 7,000 years ago. Their rush torches undecayed on a rock; evidence of their fires at the bottom of the cave from the discovery  entrance. While we don't know much about current cave mappers/explorers, we do know a bit about the old timers.


Stephen Bishop, a self-educated enslaved person became a legendary guide and explorer. He began guiding visitors at the age of 17 in 1838. He was the first to get by the daunting "deep hole" and opened up many miles of the cave. (Not pictured.)


An amateur explorer, Floyd Collins, died in the cave in 1925, trapped under a boulder in a sand cave. No one was able to rescue him. Sensational news coverage spurred the government to make it a National Park in 1926.


From an original seven miles of cave, Mammouth has grown, and grown. In 1993, it was a 370 mile cave. The current mappers/explorers continue to push deeper and deeper into unknown areas, often crawling like ants in a tube to discover new "rooms". The explorer above has an inflated roof to keep water from dropping on him and his stuff while he sleeps and eats.


The film had photos of several different types of bats in the cave. These are only as big as your thumb.


Caves are losing millions of their bats to a disease called white nose. It started in the East and is moving west. It has reached Mammouth in a part of the cave where no visitors travel. So, they figure the disease was brought in by the bats. But, as a precaution, you walk across a haz-mat to clean your shoes when leaving the cave, and they ask you to clean before you enter if you've visited a cave or a mine within the last five years.  It is a critical disease probably brought from another country on someones feet.


We know we won't be going on the underground river tour, but isn't that an exciting idea?  I swam across an underground river in a cave,  hanging onto a rope,  in Cave City located in Mountain Ranch in  Calaveras County, CA. where I live. It was an amazing experience.


A plant that grows in the cave. The connection to the outside, bats, birds, insects, fish, salamanders, all play their part in this unique eco-system. Fascinating.


This colorful fall of eroded limestone is golden and beautiful. I'll post my own pictures from the cave tomorrow, since we have washday and other chores today. I'm bummed because early in the tour, a drop of liquid fell on my head, and, unbeknownst to me, one drop hit my camera lens. Most of my pictures are smudged. Lighting is such and the ability to learn quickly how to take photos in a dark cave, means my pictures are disappointing.  In this little tour, you don't find the fans and the bacon and multiple colors I've seen in other caves. A woman on the tour complained, "Carlsbad is much prettier. I wasn't impressed with this cave."  Considering how little she saw of Mammouth, I feel lucky to be here, at this point in time, in a cave of great significance and renown the world over. Millions of people go through this park every year and find beauty here, as we did.