Growing Fish

This cylinder contains 4000 rainbow trout eggs approaching hatch time.

Having done a quick walk through of several fish hatcheries over the years, I wasn't overly excited about visiting another one.  But, it was nearby, we were (mildly) curious, didn't have anything more exciting to do, so off we went.  And we were delighted we did.

Recently hatched rainbow trout.

The Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery is huge, quite sophisticated, appears to be well managed, and has a knowledgeable staff who did a fine job of explaining the operation.

This is the inside part of the operation, where eggs are hatched.  The newly-hatched minnows pictured above are fed every 30 minutes.

The outdoor facility has dozens of tanks, aka raceways, that contain rainbow trout in various sizes.  The whole area is covered with chicken wire to keep hungry birds at bay.  A huge volume of river water is constantly circulating through the tanks.

Link to more info and pix: https://www.fws.gov/southwest/fisheries/willow_beach/

Christmas Camping

On Christmas morning, stockings emptied and presents unwrapped, off we went to Willow Beach Campground, with Cougar in tow.  WB, part of the Lake Mead NRA, is about 8 miles south of Hoover Dam on the AZ side of the Colorado River.  Ah, but is it really a river?  Technically, it's a lake - Lake Mohave - which extends from Hoover Dam on the north, to Davis Dam on the south.
We're here with another LHC couple, David and Elaine, who join us for short RV forays from time to time.

There's a large marina with dozens of rental boats and kayaks, plus several converted military inflatables used for sightseeing tours.  Large striped bass have been caught in this stretch ofwater, including the Nevada state record holder at 62 pounds.

Willow Beach is a misnomer.  There's no beach worthy of the name, nor did I see any willows.

Interesting rock formations uphill from our campground.

The steps lead up to tent campsites.

We visited a large fish hatchery near the marina, details in next post.

Celtic Christmas

Last night during dinner we listened to Celtic Christmas, one of our Pandora stations.  What Child is This? was one of the tunes.  It's also known as Greensleeves, same tune, different words.  I commented, "I've always loved that song. I wonder who composed it?"

Off went Trish to get her cell phone.  She googled it.  We were both amazed when we discovered who allegedly wrote the tune: King Henry VIII (for the Roman numeral challenged, VIII = 8).  I couldn't believe it.  That randy, ruthless, and thoroughly despicable despot sat his fat ass down and composed beautiful music?*  Nah.  No way!

Turns out I was right.  It's just a myth and now it's busted.  It was actually composed several years after the King went to hell, mourned by few, if any.  Four composers attempted to take credit for the composition in 1580, the most persistent of which was Richard Jones.  I'm gonna go with Mr Jones.  It's logical, given the family name; Richard Jones was surely an ancestor of It's Not Unusual Jones,

Some of the songs played on Celtic Christmas were in Gaelic.  Gaelic is pleasing to the ear but written Gaelic has an uncanny similarity to alphabet soup.  Take a spoonful of soup, jot down the letters in that spoonful in any order you please.  Now select a word at random, one that has no connection whatsoever with how those letters are pronounced in any known language.  Take more spoonfuls, write a complete sentence.  What the hell, go to Costco, buy a pallet of the stuff, write an entire dictionary!

Try this Gaelic sentence on for size: Saolaítear na daoine uile saor agus comhionann ina ndínit agus ina gcearta.  Got it figured out?  Need a little more time, say a decade or two?  Give it up, not gonna happen. Here's the translation: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. 

Spoken French is also melodic and pleasing, but has weird pronunciation.  Try to pronounce the words on a French restaurant menu and you'll wish you'd stayed home and opened a can of beans.  Still, you can guess the meaning of many French words because they're similar to English words.  Not so with Gaelic.  Pass the soup.

*Actually, Horny Hank was said to be an accomplished musician, played the lute and organ, maybe wrote a few tunes as well.

Some Settling May Occur

'Some settling may occur.'  We've all seen this statement on boxes of cereal, bags of potato chips and several other products.  We've all opened those boxes and bags and discovered that - by golly, they were right - some settling did in fact occur.  We've all looked askance into those newly-opened containers, the contents thereof fully settled and blissfully calm, and thought settling, my ass! 

Bet you don't know what it's called, though.  Here it is.  You heard it here first: The Museli Effect!  No bull.  That's the official name of the sneaky, stealthy and downright despicable act of settling.

Some things that are subject to The Museli Effect don't come with a 'may occur' notice.  Human beings for instance.  No, humans have to work it out for themselves.  And when they do, it's quite a shock.  We settle 1/4" to 1/2" every decade after age 40.  By age 70, women have Museli-ed about 2", men about 1.5."

If it's any consolation - and it's damned little, if you ask me - the Museli-ed portion of your body isn't actually gone.  No, not all.  It just migrated down to your feet.  It's pretty much a 1:1 ratio.  Again, starting at age 40, some people's feet increase half a shoe size every decade.  Okay, there is a little consolation: the bigger the base, the more stable the structure, so when your feet finally fulfill their growth potential, you probably won't tip over as frequently as you used to.  Granted, one's tipability quotient is impacted by other factors that are difficult to quantify.  Alcohol comes to mind.

What got me started on this settling thing is: Trish and I measured our heights recently.  I'm not going to divulge the results but I'll tell you this much: we done been Muesli-ed!

Lizards, Reptiles and Amphibians

We watched a Geico commercial awhile back, a guy in a laboratory being consumed by a green glob of gunk.  Stupid, blah, yuk!  "I liked the lizard better." said I. "Geckos aren't lizards," Trish responded. Googled it: yup, they're lizards alright.  That got me wondering about the lizard family: who's included, who isn't, are the marine iguanas I saw in the Galapagos Islands lizards or amphibians? Here's the skinny, lizard lovers, amazing facts and statistics you always wanted to know but never realized until just now.

Geckos are the smallest of the lizards, which are a subset of the reptile family.  The largest lizard is the Komodo dragon which can weigh up to 300 pounds and reach 10' in length.  They're carnivores, are very quick and they do consume the occasional human, bones and all.  Grabbing one by the tail isn't really a good idea.

This might surprise you: modern scientists include birds in the reptile family.  When we visited Dinosaur National Monument last year, one of the rangers said, "Birds are dinosaurs."  Golly gee, Mister Science!

If you're cold-blooded, have overlapping scales and are not a snake, you're a lizard.  If you're a  cold-blooded vertebrate with dry, scaly skin and lay soft shelled eggs on land you're a reptile.  If you have both lungs and gills - like frogs, newts, turtles and salamanders - you're an amphibian.

Marine iguanas aren't amphibians but can stay underwater for up to 45 minutes, chowing down on algae, their favorite food.  Although not very photogenic, they love to pose for pictures, big grins on their faces.

Stylin'!

My recent attempt to inspire a new trend in Arizona footwear was unsuccessful.  Not a single one of my friends had the intestinal fortitude to follow in my avant garde, ground-breaking, sartorial footsteps.  What a bunch of wussies!

A few days ago I drove down to Casa Grande, met up with fraternity brother Tom, then headed on down to the Tucson area to visit Al, another fraternity brother.  I left LHC at 7:30 AM, freshly showered and shaved.  Stopped twice en route to CG for bladder breaks and a burger, arrived at Tom's shortly after noon.  We chatted awhile, had a brew and then I headed off to the guest bedroom for my daily nap.

I sat down on a chair and bent down to remove my sandals - and was flabbergasted at what I saw!  My right foot was encased in Keens, my left foot in one of the cheap-ass knockoffs I wear around home.  I laughed out loud.  Couldn't believe I'd left home without noticing that.  Couldn't believe I'd stopped twice and hadn't noticed.  Couldn't believe Trish hadn't noticed either.

After my nap, sandals back on my feet, I showed them to Tom and his wife, Martha.  They hadn't noticed the mismatch earlier, were quite delighted when I pointed it out.  And, later, so was Al.  We went out to dinner at Al's and again when Tom and I returned to CG.  My attempts to have everyone wear mismatched footwear out to dinner fell on deaf ears.  Guess they just aren't ready to embrace that level of senility.  I'm confident they will embrace it in due time, although, given my commanding lead, it's doubtful they'll ever catch up.

Strike 3

When we bought our LHC home, there was a tree living in a raised bed near the front entry, stood about 6' tall.  "What kind of tree was it?" you ask.  Not sure but quite likely a Ho-Humia Nondescriptus.  Borrrrring!  Certainly didn't merit a focal point position in front of the house.  Took one look at it and thought you're sooo outta here!  And so it came to pass.

Now then, what to replace it with?  An orange tree of course!  Citrus does well in Arizona if provided with adequate water and fertilizer, and I'm an excellent provider thereof if I do say so myself (especially fertilizer).  The orange tree flourished, beau coup oranges 3 years after planting.  But, nary a one fit to eat - all pulp, no juice. Turns out the variety I selected was racist, wouldn't consider cross-pollination in its wildest dreams.  So, it too bit the dust.

Okay, what next?  Hours of arduous research spent finding a plant of the right size and temperament resulted in the next selection, a pygmy date palm.  My neighbors have several, 5-6' tall, attractive (picture below), seemed like a no-brainer.  Bought one, stuck it in the ground, gave it lots of TLC.  To no avail: darn thing just sat there, never grew an inch.  Strike 3!  You're out!  Enough, already!  No more plants!*  How about colorful glazed pottery? 

I ripped out the palm and tossed it over the back fence to RIP with its predecessors.  Then I capped off the irrigation pipe to the planter and off we went in search of pottery.  We didn't find much, LHC not being the Mecca of fine yard art.  Trish was headed off to Santa Fe in a few weeks, and we knew she'd find a better selection there.  And indeed she did, bought a tall pot and a sphere.  We wanted a group of 3, found the third one at the local Lowe's.

So, here's the new look.  The gabion cube was a bonus.  When I ordered the parts for the mailbox, they screwed up, sent 6 extra 2X2 panels, so might as well put them to use.  I made the copper trellis several years ago, brought it from OR.  That thing on the far right in the picture below is a rain chain, much more attractive than a plain downspout.

*No more plants in just that one spot, still have 8 types of cacti and a century plant in other areas.