Food stash in prepping for train trip

Prepping for train trip of 3 days and 2 nights on the train.  Insulated food bag stuffed in the freezer, along with the below items mostly just made a few hours ago.

 

From the left:  

corn flour biscuits made yesterday and half already eaten :(

Planning to make more in the a.m.

Beet hummus with cashews and not much chick peas.  I was just running the food processor from one item to the next without hassling with undoing the food processor container, washing it, etc. 

I started with the original hummus to the right of the beet concoction, then proceeded to the mixed herbs hummus sorta cheese-less pesto, then proceeded to the beet mix.  To the right of the green mixed herbs mix is my usual choco treat, made with soaked dates and soaked cashews with a dash of cinnamon and agave syrup or maple syrup along with two tbl of organic cocoa powder. Last on the right is a small tub of olives and one remaining stuffed grape leaf.  Behind, resting on the front of the food processor are 3 Larabars, one for each day.  The dregs of the beet mix are in the food processor to which I intend to add the rest of the herb leaves (basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme - Ha ha) in the a.m. with some more lemon juice, already juiced into a peanut butter jar. To the left in the second row is the large bowl, put out to motivate me to get more biscuits done early in the a.m., maybe with rosemary leaves tossed in.

Then to mow early before it heats up. 

The biscuits with the dried rosemary leaves were very delicious.

Today's flowers in the garden.

Today's flowers in my garden.  Some past prime, like the white daisies, which were abundant this year. But now they are brown pods of stalks mostly.
Some of the flowers are at prime, like the cone flowers, which are bigger this year, purple ones and white ones.

Some in between prime and past prime, like the peach hued lilies and the small purple puffs of alum and the brilliant red of the bee balm.

 Some barely beginning to come into prime like the Rose of Sharon bush.

 See if you can find the black and white striped butterfly in the middle of one of the photos. Hint, in this photo.
As always, click on the image to get a bigger version, but do not copy without asking me first. To do so violates copyright law, as noted at the top of the blog.

Signs of fracking in Colorado - cream painted tanks most likely filled with waste and/or oil

What happened to the ancient Puebloans in southwest Colorado?

During my trip to Colorado earlier this year, my host took me to the Colorado National Monument We hiked along the trails, aiming for a waterfall sourced from snow melt high up in the mountains.  Other amazing sites within the Mesa County area suitable for hiking include the The Little Bookcliffs and the regular Book Cliffs which are mostly shades of grey, extend into Utah, the same Book Cliffs that's targeted for increased drilling and mining, and give the appearance of constantly disintegrating from what seems to be sand running down the sides of the cliffs.

But I hear that's not so, as the soil on the sides is quite firm and sticks to the rocks.  Even so, it does not attract me the way the CNM attracts. And of course there's Arches

and Canyonlands but those are in Utah, about 2 hours away by fast highway.

On another trip it would be nice to go see the Little Book Cliffs as they seem less steep than the Book Cliffs and to see the wild horses there.  The Book Cliffs seem way too steep for my limited hiking skills and non-existence rock climbing abilities.

Also in the area around or near Grand Junction is the Grand Mesa and further to the southwest is Mesa Verde.
I did go snowshoeing in the national forest on the Grand Mesa

as it's so much higher and thus still had snow in April/May.

Getting to the spot where we got out to snowshoe involved a long drive up a very steep height

but even so we got only half way up, I was told, where we stopped and parked.
A few miles down the hill from where we went snowshoeing/hiking is the famous Powder Horn ski

resort or as they now label themselves the Powder Horn mountain resort, to include summer activities presumably. But there's lots to enjoy when there's snow still on the ground.

This is just one glimpse of the view on the way down the hill up to the forest.

Going to Mesa Verde would involve much more complication because of it being a a greater distance from Grand Junction than the other sites, along with more extensive hiking, climbing and exploring, and at greater heights, as entering and exiting ancient cliff dwellings come into play, including climbing up skinny ladders and climbing into holes in the floor to climb down ladders, presumably in the dark.

This photo is from the Mesa Verde FaceBook page for the National Parks Department, taken by one of the rangers there.

Much is said about the alleged mystery of the disappearance of the ancient Pueblo people who used to inhabit the cliffs dwelling.  For the first time, today, I encountered a theory of population collapse overburden in an article in Wall Street OTC which makes sense to me as an explanation for why the ancient Pueblo people left the area. Native American population collapse  There were too many inhabitants and they ran out of space and food, and most likely water.