The Grand Canyon behold in it's majesty!

The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in the state of Arizona. It is considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and has a depth of over a mile. This marvelous attraction is visited by thousands of people from all over the world who gather to marvel at the spectacle this giant canyon has to offer. After a three-hour trip from St. George we were lucky enough to capture this view forever on camera.

This is the view you should see from the Grand Canyon:

This is what I saw from the Grand Canyon:

After seeing this picture do you think the Grand Canyon is by far the biggest canyon in the world?

Halloween craft time with Kirk

I survived another Halloween. 

I wanted to show you how my Halloween project turned out for Halloween 2013!  

Previously in my blogs titled "I Love Halloween part 1, 2, and 3" I had constructed an old western toe-pincher coffin. I then acquired a heavy skeleton meant to teach an anatomy class about the human skeletal structure and planned to decorate it to look like a rotting corpse and live forever in my toe-pincher coffin. Here’s how it was completed.

First the eyes

I gorilla glued some real glass eyes into the ocular cavities of the skull. 

Then the face

After that I melted hot wax and molded it around the face to give it more of a fleshy texture.

Now color

Then I spray painted it all with a tan color with green undertones.

Final facial details

I tried to open the jaw to show the mouth open but I broke the springs holding it in place so I had to wire the jaw shut and settled for a closed mouth expression.

I blackened the teeth with acrylic paint

Mounting the corpse

close up: moss and cobwebs

Finally I bolted an “L” bracket at the head of the coffin, and wired the skull to it. That way I can either lay the coffin down, or stand it up and the body won’t slide around and fall out.

I stapled moss and cobwebs around the interior to add to the aged looking effect.

Now that's curb appeal

Final project on display

I got very few trick-or-treaters this year to admire my handy work. Hopefully that changes in the future. 

Any advice on where I can store this heavy Halloween decoration until next year? Please leave your comments below!

Getting lost in Mouse's Tank

A Paiute renegade named Little Mouse was notorious for looting nearby settlements around the 1890’s and was known to get crazy and violent when he was drunk. Rumor has it that he gunned down a few prospectors and because he was wanted for murder, a posse was rallied to bring him in. He was able to escape his pursuers by climbing around in what is now known as Petroglyph Canyon in the Valley of Fire in Nevada.

Petroglyph Canyon in the Valley of Fire

This canyon is narrow and tricky to navigate, so anyone who was not familiar with the landscape would have no idea where Little Mouse escaped. Legend has it that Little Mouse was able to hide out from his pursuers in that canyon for a long time because he knew where all the rain water collected in cisterns throughout that canyon. This picture is what is now famously known as Mouse’s Tank.

Mouse’s Tank

This tank is about a couple hundred yards back in this narrow canyon and, in my opinion, was not his main source of water since that water looks like it has been stagnant for millennia with all sorts of bacteria growing in it.  Mouse, the outlaw, was caught a few miles from the canyon by a spring, which today is called the Muddy River. The official story is that he was surrounded, refused to give up, and he was shot.

My experience with Mouse’s tank is as follows: When you enter the narrow canyon that leads you to Mouse’s Tank, you immediately notice the ancient petroglyphs carved in the sandstone canyon walls. If you are able to go quietly and alone (which is hard to do with all the tourists) some people say you can still hear the whisper in the canyon wind of what sounds like a man proclaiming his innocence. I was lucky this last visit to catch a ghostly figure of a mountain goat peering down at me from a nearby cliff. Then it disappeared into the landscape as supernaturally as it appeared. If only I had a telephoto lens.

Petroglyphs

The legendary story of Little Mouse is hard to research since he seems to have been just a local nuisance. If you know any more details about the legend of Mouse’s Tank would you please enlighten me in your comments below?

I love vacationing in the desert. How about you?

Facebook needs to go away (part 2)

Facebook has been getting stricter when it comes to enforcing people creating bogus profiles on their site. I have a friend who claimed to have encountered this problem when he tried to create an account for a made-up person. He claimed that once he had entered in all of the information to set up an account, the Facebook server sent him an automated message saying, “We think this may be a fake a person trying to start an account with us. To prove you are real give us your phone number.” Once you have given them your phone number it then says, “A numeric code has been texted to your phone. Please enter that code below to continue.” First of all, I feel Facebook is discriminating the older potential users of their network. It won’t allow anybody to enter the year of their birthday if they were born before 1920. It assumes that only baby-boomers and younger exist in the world. Also, what about people who don’t have cell phones or text options? That is downright rude.

There were a few profiles I caught that were created before they enforced this rule. Profiles like:

 Darth Vader

John Daker

Hank Hill

Everybody knows those profiles are fake and just plain funny. I want to know:  Do you think creating a bogus profile on a big social network is unlawful and unethical despite the fact that it is obviously fake and only there to get laughs?

If you answered yes to the first question, I want to ask you: Do you think the same about people logging onto other peoples profiles who are not them? I know four people in my family who are guilty of this. If the real person gave them permission is it okay then?

The top of the Rock

I am starting a new tradition, based off of a pattern that I have experienced throughout my travels in seeing many wonders of the world. Unfortunately, when my wife and I finally get to a high spot to see a spectacular view, for some reason we are unable to see a thing!

I am calling this new category of blogs “Censored Views of our World”

“The top of the Rock” Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres in New York City.  It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. This building is considered one of the tallest sky scrapers in New York City and is one of the few that still allows tourists to climb to the top of it and see the big city from way up above.

This is the view you should see from the top of the rock:

This is the view I saw from the top of the rock:

24-dollar view well spent. What do you think?

The evil child

I was labeled the evil child in my family. Yes, every family has one. If you ever get to see any of our corny family home videos from the 80’s and 90’s you would always see me doing something mischievous or saying something off-color followed by my father yelling at me to stop teasing my siblings. “There’s Kirk the Jerk!” you can still hear that in most of my family’s footage.

I am so different from my family. They are all quick to back down from any confrontation and I choose to cause drama. Because of my rowdiness (and constantly getting in trouble with my parents whenever something broke or someone got hurt physically or emotionally), I was always the first notorious suspect called in for interrogation and most of the time blamed for it even if I was innocent...which was seldom. 

Many years ago my dad recorded a movie off of television called The North Avenue Irregulars. The plot of this movie is irrelevant to this story except for the fact that there was a scene where a priest is kicked out of a underground gambling organization with no pants on and he has to pound on the door of the fake dry cleaning store in just his boxers and upper clothing.

This scene inspired my siblings so much that they had to reenact it. I was in the family room watching a bad movie on television when Fascott stormed in and told me that Fajon had wrestled his pants off of him and threw him out the front door. I wasn't really paying attention to him and just wanted him to leave so I could get back to my movie, so when he asked if he should do the same thing to him I said halfheartedly, “Sure why not.” He quickly left to find Fajon. Twenty minutes later, my livid mother yelled for me to come to the living room. All my brothers were sheepishly sitting on the couch. I said, “What the heck?” my mother then began her potent monologue: 

“Kirk, sit down, we need to talk! I just received a call from our neighbor, who lives across the street, who, might I remind you, is a cop and works with battered and abused families. She asked me why she saw Fajon locked outside and pounding on the front door with no pants on. I am very disappointed in you Kirk, how could you do that to poor Fajon? You are always picking on him. You are lucky that she hasn't come over here to arrest you.”

The image of Fajon outside in his whitey tighties cracked me up. I told my mom that I didn't do it. She said, "I don’t care, I know you had something to with it!" She then went on to lecture us on virtue and how we all need to have good visible public relationships. I wasn't really listening at this point. I mostly tuned her out because I believed I had nothing to do with it. I felt like Sadam Husein getting overthrown and hung after the 9/11 tragedy occurred.

True, growing up I was a scallywag, but I also added savor to the otherwise bland lives of the Baxter family.

Are you an evil child too? Or are you tormented by one?

(The names of the people in this story have been altered for privacy.)

Inspired by the blog: Everybody's Speshul

Cooking with Fanna and Falaina

Winter is coming on soon and one of Fanna and Falaina’s primitive instincts for surviving the coldest part of the year is to store an ample amount of freezer meals which they have proudly created. Aren't they silly?

Fanna is very persuasive and got me to help her. Falaina said, "Yeah! Help her or I’ll smash you!” Never argue with a hangry Falaina .(Hangry = hungry + angry)

The entire Friday and Saturday of my Labor Day weekend was spent chopping vegetables by hand, cramming treasures into a meat grinder, and finding creative ways to quickly freeze our creations in very limited freezer space. Some great philosophies taught to me by this wise pair are as follows:

1. If anyone complains about the taste of the meals, tell them they cooked or reheated them wrong. Never admit defeat and never apologize.
2. Expiration dates are only a figment of interpretation.
3. It may not taste like beef, it may not look like beef, but who cares? It was on sale by the pound.
4. Cooking with wine is not only oozing with culture but also highly recommended… feel free to sip a little.
5. Pepper can fix anything.
6. Nine times the recipe.
7. Stay up until one in the morning for optimal results.

 I would like to personally thank my dear friends, Fanna and Falaina, for constantly lending me their aid, strength, and wisdom.