On the Road Again

Fall is approaching here in Leelanau County, Michigan and it's time for us to pull up stakes and join the annual snowbird southern migration. 

Here we are, all hooked up and ready to pullout tomorrow morning, Sunday August 31. We will spend tomorrow night parked in the driveway of our good friends Dan & Pat Martenson in Escanaba, MI. Then, Monday we will continue on to our former home town, Appleton, Wisconsin where we will spend a few days visiting "old" friends (smile) and our son and daughter-in-law. After we leave Appleton we will travel west to our 'legal home of record', Sioux Falls, SD where we have to spend a night at a hotel in Sioux Falls in order to satisfy residency requirements so that we can register to vote in the upcoming November election(s). Leaving Sioux Falls, we will then continue on westward and plan on staying for a month in a lovely park in Pahrump, Nevada. Then in mid October we will head for Lake Havasu City, Arizona to join up with our many snowbird friends at Havasu Falls RV Resort. Between now and then I'm not sure what internet connections we will be able to connect to, so this blog might be silent for a few weeks. :-(

Till then....

Larry & Teddy (traveling America in order to help the "big oil companies" remain solvent)

Final update on my arm

These photos chronicle the healing progress of my left arm from April to present. I am slowly gaining more momentum to the point that I can now bend my elbow enough to reach my face. I'm told that it might take up to a year before it stops improving. I cannot yet close my hand all the way and my little finger is semi paralyzed, but I don't need my little finger except to dig earwax from the inside of my ear and my elbow still doesn't bend enough for that anyway. I can close the other three fingers enough to comfortably grasp the truck steering wheel so driving is no longer a problem. Teddy is relieved that she will not have to drive the rig back to our winter digs in Arizona.

Clafouti

Clafouti
Originally uploaded by .Larry Page

Today Teddy, made this delicious Clafouti (kla-foo-TEE), a traditional dessert from the Limousin region of France. During the peak cherry season it is often served as a breakfast dish. In France, the dish is often made without pitting the cherries because the pits are thought to enhance the flavor of the batter with a perfume faintly reminiscent of almonds. Whole cherries are also less likely to bleed into the batter.
When other kinds of fruit, such as plums, prunes, apples, cranberries or blackberries are used instead of cherries, the dish is more properly called a "flognarde".

The Birth of a Monarch

Teddy went out looking for monarch caterpillars feeding on milkweed leaves and bought six of them back to the trailer so that we could observe them metamorphose into adult butterflies. The Monarch is a common poisonous butterfly that eats poisonous milkweed in its larval stage and lays its eggs on the milkweed plant. Animals that eat a Monarch get very sick and vomit (but generally do not die). These animals remember that this brightly-colored butterfly made them very sick and will avoid all Monarchs in the future. The monarch gets its poison (cardenolide glycosides) when it is a caterpillar, from eating the poisonous milkweed plant (genus Asclepias) while in its larval (caterpillar) stage. The poisonous Monarch is mimicked by the non-poisonous North American Viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus), which has a similar shape, coloration and patterns. Predators who have learned to avoid the Monarch will also avoid the similar-looking Viceroy.
Some groups of Monarchs migrate for over 2,000 miles during August-October, flying from Canada and the USA to overwinter in coastal southern California to the transvolcanic mountains of central Mexico; this was determined by the Canadian scientist Dr. Fred A. Urquhart in 1975. Females lay their eggs along the migratory route. This migration takes up to three generations of Monarchs to complete.
Other Monarchs stay in one area their entire lives. The life span of the adult Monarch varies, depending on the season in which it emerged from the pupa and whether or not it belongs to a migratory group of Monarchs. Adults that emerged in early summer have the shortest life spans and live for about two to five weeks. Those that emerged in late summer survive over the winter months. The migratory Monarchs, which emerge from the pupa in late summer and then migrate south, live a much longer life, about 8-9 months.

I took this series of photographs of the metamorphic process.

(click on picture for a larger image)

CLASSIFICATION
Order: Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths)
Family: Nymphalidae (over 5,000 species of butterflies with dwarfed front legs)
Subfamily: Danaidae (milkweed butterflies)
Genus and species: Danaus plexippus

Breakfast

I just love breakfast, it’s my favorite meal. Eggs, bacon, ham, spam, grits, breakfast steak, toast, biscuits & gravy, sausage, French toast, waffles or pancakes in any combination. All washed down with strong black coffee and a side of V-8 juice. However, unlike Jerry Seinfeld I rarely eat breakfast cereal & milk. Just not a cereal guy.Here is my breakfast from this morning. French toast, bacon & coffee with maple syrup and PB. Spread a generous amount of PB on the FT and then mix in maple syrup to a gooey consistency. Mmmmmm! I can’t eat like this very often though or I’d blow up like a balloon.

Here are some other breakfasts that I have enjoyed in the past.



Spam 'n eggs









Boiled egg, toast & coffee













Soft boiled egg in an egg cup & coffee














Fried egg, bacon, toast & coffee.















Hard boiled egg, tomato slice, banana & coffee