Learning How to Sweat Again Before you get too excited, let me start by saying that I have not reformed and started going to the gym or anything radical like that. What has happened is that the heat dome that has been hanging over the Southwestern states for over a week has extended its fringe over the mountains to our east and crept up our hillside ever so slightly. Let’s be clear, when you look…
RichFlix My son Thomas is a top notch video producer. It is what he does for a living, now on a freelance basis, but previously for Shake Shack and then for an advertising agency. Besides commercial work and promotional videos, he has also been hired to record and storytell for gatherings. He recently spent a week in Cabo San Lucas on the Mexican Baja at a corporate incentive meeting and filmed it with every piece…
Masculinity is a Prison That title was the t-shirt worn at the family gathering in Utah last week by Kim’s 6’6”, 300-pound rugby-playing nephew who literally wears size 16 shoes. His name is Josh and he and his 6’4”, 340-pound, also rugby-playing, brother, Will are either the last gasp of the Gen X crowd or the first entrants into the Millennial cohort, depending on how you slice the generational cake. Both of these guys are…
A Not-So-Happy Meal During our go-home day after a long 2,200-mile roadtrip with my daughter and her family and two granddaughters, all sitting amongst piled-up luggage and miscellaneous souvenirs (including one particularly sweet rusted metal armadillo with a bobble-head that was purchased in an old Route 66 way-station) in a rented dirty white church van that had served us well, Kim started out with a desperate cry for a stop at Starbucks. I had a…
Ghosting Ourselves The last day of our Wild West Tour starts at the Grand Canyon and heads west for 200 miles near Bullhead City to a little town in the Black Mountains called Oatman. Oatman is a small mining town that was only incorporated in 1915 after a small gold find by a couple of lucky prospectors. That means that this little town was not really a part of the original Wild West of the…
Cathedral Hopping When you purchase a high-end tour package or cruise these days, there are almost always pre-trip or post-trip add-ones that represent some logical and generally in-demand extensions to the baseline trip. These add-ons are usually driven by the location of the original trip. For instance, when we went to the Baltics a few years ago for a cruise, we were able to add-on a few days in Iceland, presumably getting a better deal…
So Long, Farewell This morning was our collective get-away moment, so naturally, there was one last opportunity for fun during breakfast at the Lodge at Red River Ranch. Whenever you get a large multi-generational group together for a few days of fun, there are bound to be a range of personal circadian habits on display. The group is made up of early birds and night owls. The night owls tend to be the ones that…
The Cowboy Olympiad Today was the last day of our family gathering here in Southern Utah and what a perfect western day it has been. Tomorrow we scatter to the four winds (literally) with people leaving as early as son Roger & Valene and son Tom heading out pre-dawn to drive to catch planes in Salt Lake City for points east (Delaware and Brooklyn respectively). Niece Nichole & Domenic with kids Ethan, Jackson and Parker…
Who Do the HooDoos? The landscape and topography of Southern Utah never ceases to amaze. I think that has to be one of the biggest reasons why this area has always attracted me, year after year. From one time to the next, I seem to both forget and remember its majesty. I remember how much I love the area, but I forget the feeling the visions invoke in me. I am reminded of William Wordsworth…
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch We’ve finished one of the four days we are here with our combined family groups. Here is Teasdale, Utah, right next to Torrey, Utah and Capital Reefs National Park with its magnificent red and white high bluffs set along the Fremont River, smack dab in the middle of Southern Utah and what is generally called Canyon Country. By the way, once I used the term “smack dab”, I wondered what…