Bill and Richard

We hadn’t seen each other for 36 years, but we picked up right where we'd left off. I made this photo of the two of them at dinner, at place called Los Poblanos, where I had the best meal of my life. I don’t usually care enough about food to mention it, but this was mind-blowing.  A drink of ginger, lemon, honey, and tonic. Goat cheese and mushroom agnolotti with sushito peppers, and for dessert an apple caramel tart served next to a dollop of rosemary ice cream resting on roasted and lightly salted pistachio nuts.

We started the day at Boca Negra Canyon (Extras 1 and 2), in Petroglyph National Monument, where there are over 6000 symbolic marks left by Puebloan people from around the year 1300. We enjoyed a 20-minute documentary that gives some background on the geography and the meanings of the petrogylphs. I asked a Native American man working in the visitor center if there is a book with pictures of the petroglyphs. He answered, “We don’t really want to sell books of pictures of them. They are sacred to us, messages from our ancestors, and we don’t feel it’s right for anyone to make money from them. Also we don’t want to see those messages on T-shirts, or used for other people’s purposes. You’re welcome to make photos yourself, but they are not something we feel we should sell to others.” (I do love alternatives to capitalist thinking.)

While climbing around on black rocks in glaring sunlight, we saw some beautiful (very quick-moving) blue-tailed lizards and then we retreated to Old Town for iced coffee in a cafe with art created by a friend of theirs  (Extra 3). After a splendid nap, we went to Los Poblanos, which is a working farm as well as an inn and spa, and as we were eating, a couple of sandhill cranes flew overhead making their primeval wet chortle. Some of the ones we see on Sauvie Island fly south to winter in a reserve in southern New Mexico.