John's been denied critical medical test!

Family and friends, please read and heed!

While some are so busy raving about Obamacare and how no one can be denied coverage (even illegals,) maybe it’s time to really think about assessing its merits, about exactly what 'coverage' you will get, especially when its effects hit this close to home!  Insurance companies aren’t going to sit idly by and lose billions of dollars over Obamacare, and are finding new ways to absorb these tremendous extra costs.  Ever hear of death panels?  They are real, folks!  Emails have been going around for quite a while detailing various American’s dilemmas with being denied life-saving procedures or surgeries because of their age, etc.  Now it has come home to John.  That’s right, John, who has been having this annual test for five years since his three heart-attacks and five stints.

John called his cardiologist’s office to set up his annual physical and nuclear stress test and was informed that it is now disallowed by Arizona Blue Cross/Blue Shield, as well as any other insurance company that they are aware of, stating this is directly due to Obamacare . . . the insurance companies are cutting costs by denying more and more life-saving tests/procedures.  The nuclear stress test is so critical because it is the one diagnostic test that definitively shows potential blockages going into and out of the heart . . . and can thereby prevent a heart attack, and it is the test that is directly responsible for John being alive and well today.  They shoot the nuclear material in his vein before he steps on the treadmill, and they take a detailed picture before the stress test, during and after the heart has rested when the test is over.  If they find damage or blockage (which they have in the past because a few years ago John was clogging up faster than the kitchen sink) then they call for further tests, mainly an Angiogram.  Because of the combined benefit from these tests, the resulting stints and medicines John was put on, he is fine and has passed every annual test with flying colors.  But that doesn’t mean his situation couldn't change.  So in a nutshell what the insurance company is saying is: So sorry, not allowing this preventative diagnostic test, John . . . and what they are really hoping for is that John will just drop over with a heart attack and die . . . save them any additional expense.   

This test, now that we are forced to pay for it out of pocket, is outrageously expensive!  And THIS after we already pay $1,000 a month for a personal group insurance major medical policy with a $5,000 deductible each, and after we received a notice three months ago from Az. Blue Cross/Blue Shield that, exclusive of the annual birthday threshold increase and annual cost basis adjustment they make, they were raising the whole groups' rate per month to cover ‘Recent unforeseen cost expenditures.’  Our added monthly premium amounted to $300.00. About a 40% hike in our rates out of the blue.  We jumped from $700.00 a month to $1,000.00.  Now we’re being denied a vitally important test which would alert John’s cardiologist if John needs further care to prevent another heart-attack. 

Frankly, John and I are livid.  You should be, too.  So please, friends and family, before you offer support or praise for Obamacare, ask yourself how you would feel if this were to happen to you personally, your spouse or your children!     John says, “Well, I've survived three heart attacks, so I guess we’ll just have to see if I can survive a fourth.”  We’ll see.

CREEPY IS AS CREEPY DOES!

Hello all:  

During a recent family conversation a subject was brought up that I wanted to share with you . . . a story . . . well, an experience my family had some years ago.  Despite everything that has happened to us as a family which could be labeled 'paranormal,' no experience has been as flat-out, Twilight Zone creepy/scary as this.  Even during this most recent discussion, my hubby, the girls and I were still scratching our heads and giving a little shudder over the experience, wondering just what the hell happened that one afternoon while we were four-wheeling?

We were camping at Alamo Lake in Arizona for the weekend, which is located in Southwestern Arizona.  The lake is surrounded by gently rolling hills which are covered in low profile desert vegetation.   These multitude of hills are crisscrossed with dirt roads from years of mining exploration and off-road exploring, or four-wheeling as Arizonans call it. Having gotten our fill of fishing for the day, we struck out in our Suzuki Samari late that afternoon to go explore the area.  We were fairly avid rock hounds with a long history of four-wheeling the Arizona back roads, and though the girls weren't overly excited about bouncing up and down on dirt roads in the Samari (very similar to a jeep with the stiffest of shock absorbers,) they were even less excited about the prospect of more fishing, so off we went.   

We found our first dirt road easy enough and followed it several miles to the crest of a long hill, and there it dead-ended.  We turned the Samari around and took a long appreciative look at the panorama of the lake below us in the far distance. The dirt road had a soft, almost sand-like composition and the tracks made by our SUV cut deep and clean in the dirt.  Our tracks should've been easy to follow back . . . except that when hubby made the u-turn and headed back down the same road following our tracks, about three miles down the road they abruptly disappeared, and a few hundred feet further the road dead-ended . . . again.  Okay, this was weird, but at this point we were only shaking our heads, confused.  We took a look at our position in respect to the lake. Yes, no doubt this was the road we'd come in on, so why didn't it go back to the main highway?  We u-turned a second time and . . . a few hundred feet back once again there were no tracks, on the same road we'd been on all this time.  And our u-turns were very tight, we weren't meandering around in long loops.

We all exclaimed in unison, "What happened to our tire tracks?  Where'd they go?"  as we progressed along the road.  We finally got up to the same crest of the hill, still with no tracks before us, and this time the road kept going out into the desert wilderness.  Now what had happened to the dead-end?  By this time it was getting a little too close to sundown and we were all getting a little too nervous.

"There's the damn lake right there- we can see it," my hubby gestured at our front window as once again we turned around along the crest of the hill.  We weren't venturing a foot further into Alamo's eerie Bermuda Triangle.  "So help me, if I have to I'm heading straight out through this desert towards the lake!  I'll get us to that main highway!  To hell with these bizarre roads!"  I asked him to please not do that, not yet, because there were too many moguls and bushes which made it unsafe in my opinion to just strike out through the desert.  Without a dirt road we wouldn't be able to tell what kind of drop-off might be over the next ridge.  I could tell my hubby wasn't giving deference to my request for long, especially when he snapped back with, "I'm not gettin' us stuck out here in the dark in this Twilight Zone!"  The girls had started whining from the back seat, obviously I was getting more out-voted with each passing minute.  

Halfway back down this same main dirt road, which, by the way, did show our prior tire tracks this time, there was a suddenly a road branching off where there had been no other side road before.  Hubby took that road . . . and there were our tire tracks!  Aarrrgh!  Now our family unit was getting seriously creeped out.  We took that road off in a direction paralleling the crest of the hill and . . . it dead-ended!  We u-turned around again, following our tracks to the main road and turned right, back towards the lake.  Several hundred yards further and we found another off-shoot road that also hadn't been there before, so we took it next . . . all the way to where it dead-ended.  By now our whole family had a case of the jitters as we watched the sun slide behind the mountain and the landscape grow sinister with creeping shadows.  I stole a sideways glance at hubby's expression and I knew we were going four-wheeling for real.  We turned around in a u-turn one more time and followed our tracks back to what should have been the junction with the main dirt road, but there was no junction.  No junction! This time this small secondary road went all the way back to the main highway! WTF????????

My hubby let out a string of expletives which my girls are still fond of using to this day!  We have no explanation for what happened out there in that desert; what kind of phenomena we bumped into.  Some kind of energy vortex?  It felt like a parallel universe.  Your guess is as good as ours.  There were no other tracks besides ours on those roads to have misled us.  There wasn't one second of this hour-long tour de farce where we weren't absolutely sure of our location and the road we were on.  We could see the lake and our position to it at all times, for Pete's sake, which is what made the experience so frustrating.  And scary. Our tire tracks just kept doing a frightening slight of hand- now you see  'em, now you don't.  Roads kept changing under our tires, appearing and disappearing seemingly at will.

So, my friends, if you ever decide to venture out anywhere near Alamo Lake, take a compass, water, and a video camera!  You'll want to document your experience if you happen upon Arizona's Bermuda Triangle!  And tell someone where you're going . . . so they can send out a rescue party if you disappear!  Later, friends.   

MERMAIDS? INTRIGUING . . .

Hello all:  We have returned home from our vacation and it was wonderful, if for nothing else than the fact that hubby's internal parts held together just fine through the trip and there were no emergencies to contend with, other than losing our kitty along the way to kitty AIDS. That cut deeply, but the trip was so much more than that one heartache.  It was the best trip we've had in a long time.  Spent treasured time with family and went on many new adventures, including finding the final resting place to pay my respects to some of my relatives I  never knew. Now I'm home and settled in for five minutes,  and though slightly embarrassed to admit it, tuning into a show that sounded completely far-fetched. While making sure I was alone in the living room last night I watched a documentary on the Discovery Channel about mermaids.  Seriously.  I'm still shaking my head.  A show claiming to have had actual remains of a mermaid as well as capturing one.  Notice I used the word had.

I have to say after watching the two hour special, some of their evidence is compelling, no doubt.  And mermaids seem to be woven through our cultural depictions all the way back to caveman walls. Could another parallel species of humans have evolved under our oceans?  Isn't that intriguing to imagine.  Why not?  If so, then the next question I would have to ask is are they thriving, or struggling?  I would guess the latter, because man is delving further and further into the domain of the deep, making it harder for anything to continue its existence undiscovered.

The documentary made a plausible hypothesis of how man and mermaid could have split apart on the evolutionary chain, one taking to land, the other finding their best chance for survival under the waves.  I studied the antique photographs they had depicting large whales and sharks pulled from the ocean with intricate spears sticking out of them of unknown origin. I watched the videos highlighted in the show; a boat of fishermen in some South American country (I think it was South America) dragging up a web-handed creature in their net and so shocked they dropped the net back into the sea; a video showing South African officials raiding the scientists' office and carting off all evidence; a sonar blip of a webbed hand slapping against the lens, and finally the cell phone video taken by a boy on the beach here in the U.S. showing a beached and trapped mermaid lunging at the boy as he poked at it with a stick.  Pretty awesome looking stuff . . . and yet . . .

  

My skeptical side lumps this in with Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster.  Even with the impressive videos and build up of facts given by those interviewed in the documentary, I find myself drawing the same conclusions . . . why is it that with all documentaries of this sort, physical evidence is nonexistent?  Either there never was any to begin with, or it has been lost, confiscated or destroyed, so all you are left with is a convincing video and some scientist or intrepid explorer swearing on camera that what they experienced was real to the max. Some argue that a video is physical evidence.  I'm sorry.  Perhaps I lived in the 'show-me' state of Missouri in a past life, because even with all that's happened to me I still have to see things with my own eyes to fully suspend disbelief.  I am much more comfortable with concrete evidence.

These compelling videos make me gasp for a flash point of time and exclaim, "Hell, yeah!" until I remember that  Hollywood has made Superman fly, E.T. phone home and Thor make my heart go pitter-pat in triple time.  Making a seemingly irrefutable video?  Yeah, totally within their capabilities.   But if there really are mermaids coexisting with us on this largely unexplored earth, would I want one captured just to satisfy everyone's curiosity and my own skeptical nature?  Positively not. If by some miracle they do exist below the deep blue they need to be left alone to just . . . be.  The same right every human counterpart on land wants.  If they are there, I will paraphrase Tiny Tim's famous line; God bless them all, each and every one.  May they stay safe and untouched by mankind's destructive tendencies until if or when we are evolved enough to share our planet with them in peace.   Later, all!  

'Shawshank' Prison, aka The Ohio State Reformatory! WOW!!!

Hello, friends!  I had a stellar tingle travel up my spine as I stood at the outside perimeter fence of the Ohio State Reformatory, the filming location for ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ some scenes from ‘Air Force One’ and ‘Tango and Cash,’ and of course the boys from TAPS on ‘Ghost Hunters.’   This structure just can’t be captured in all its formidable beauty in pictures.  It was one of the most contradictory pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen; beautiful but barbaric, grim to the point of menacing but luring me in.  It was closed to tours (we missed the tour season by four days, aaarrrgghh) and yet one worker stopped at the front gate, radioing in to a guard to let him pass through; the gate opened and it was all I could do not to hop, skip and jump in behind him, camera and sis Deb in tow.  The only thing that kept me planted in my spot was wondering how we’d ever get OUT. 

The stone walls and iron bars are obviously still here, but so are 215 of the 154,000 who passed through OSR in its 94 years as a prison. Some sent to Mansfield have never left, resting (or not) in the graveyard just outside the fence.  There are numbered markers there, laid out row after row.  No names.  Most died from diseases like tuberculosis or influenza, but some perished from unnatural causes . . . from violence, which was all-too-common inside this prison.  And the worst of it occurred well away from the main cell block, which is six stories high and still remains intact to this day.  Apparently because there were so many witnesses in the cell blocks, the worst violence took place in their solitary confinement area deep underground, also known as ‘the hole.’  Away from prying eyes.   At least one inmate somehow hung himself deep in the bowels of the hole, another set himself on fire, and two men who were confined together in a single cell in the hole were kept together too long.  Only one came out alive, stuffing the other prisoner’s body beneath a bunk.

Since its closure, many swear that the spirits of tortured inmates who died in the prison fill the halls, unable to escape the prison's bars.  Even now, when those halls are empty and mostly in ruin, the overwhelming consensus is that something still walks here, restless and enraged.  Maybe it’s the spirits of those from the hole or the cells, but just maybe it’s Warden Glattke or his wife Helen.

The paranormal activity in the administration wing where Warden Glattke and his wife Helen resided is well documented.   Helen, while supposedly reaching for something in a closet, knocked a gun off the shelf close by and it hit the floor, causing it to fire a bullet into her chest.  How convenient. She died at Mansfield General Hospital from her injuries.  Rumors were aplenty that Warden Glattke actually killed his wife, but there was never enough proof to substantiate it.  Ten years later Glattke suffered a heart attack and died at the same hospital where Helen died.   Former employees attest that their bodies may have died in the hospital, but their spirits are still around the prison.

 

Today the reformatory is being slowly and meticulously restored.  A lot of work is going on there to keep this monumental structure intact for future generations to experience.  The Mansfield Reformatory Organization is working diligently to prevent any future deterioration, and they have plenty more information on the prison's history if you're interested.

BTW, if you feel particularly brave and are of a mind for travel in the next month, the last few days before Halloween they will reopen for 'ghost tours' - the mother of all haunted houses!  They are busy recruiting right now for ghouls and prop/make-up/costume help.  I would SO volunteer for this if I were going to be in the area!  But to go through the tour?  I'm afraid my ticker wouldn't stand it!  Later, friends!

Go, OHIO!

Hello all:  I've been enjoying spending several days in Wooster, Ohio with my close family.  Remember my sadness and frustration seeing the decay through parts of America while on this trip?  Well, hometown America is alive and thriving here in Ohio!  

Wow, the fields, the farms, the amber waves of grain, the . . . Amish? How cute it is to see their families out and about in their horse and buggy.  I've never encountered a friendlier group of people in all my travels. And no wonder.  They get up each morning, work hard and accomplish much, then go to bed saying to themselves, 'Sufficient Unto the Day.'

They don't worry about Democrat versus Republican, Obama versus Romney, gas prices or the state of the Middle East conflict.  Could I live that life?  Probably not.  But as I stare at their sunny warm, content faces as I pass by in my 21st century mode of transportation, I find myself thinking that, while America may not have been better off in the simpler era in some aspects, she certainly was more at peace.

As are these people, and I'm not just speaking of the Amish. Thank you, sis and hubby, for taking us around to see this blissful slice of beautiful America that soothes my saddened heart for the other parts that are so besieged.  The countryside exudes a quieter time and place and it puts me at peace.  Love to you both.  Later, friends.

THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD

Hello all:  We're cruisin' along the Great Lakes, first Lake Superior and now Lake Michigan, and I can't help humming the tune to Gordon Lightfoot's song; "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald."  When you start to see the scope of these lakes, the waves crashing to the beaches, no land as far as the horizon line on the opposite side, their sheer size makes Roosevelt Lake in Arizona look like a mud hole.  It suddenly becomes very believable that so many unfortunate ships like the Edmund Fitzgerald didn't make it across.  The pics below were shot at the very northern tip of Lake Michigan.  Can you hear the melancholy notes now?

  "The legend lives on from the Chippawa on down, 

of the big lake they called Gitche-gumee.

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead 

when the skies of November turn gloomy.

With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more 

than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.

That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed 

when the gales of November came early."

"The ship was the pride of the American side 

coming back from some mill in Wisconsin.

As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most, 

with a crew and good captain well seasoned.

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms 

when they left fully loaded for Cleveland.

And later that night when the ship's bell rang, 

could it be that north wind they'd been feelin'?"

"The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound 

and a wave broke over the railing.

And every man knew, as the Captain did too, 

twas the witch of November come stealin.'

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait 

as the gales of November came slashin.'

When afternoon came it was freezin' rain 

in the face of a hurricane west wind."

"When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck 

sayin,' Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.'

At seven p.m. a main hatchway caved in, 

he said, Fellas, it's been good to know ya.'

The captain wired in he had water coming in, 

and the good ship and crew was in peril.

And later that night when his lights went outta' sight 

came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes 

when the waves turn the minutes to hours.

The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay 

if they'd put fifteen more miles behind her.

They might have split up or they might have capsized, 

they may have broke deep and took water.

And all that remains are the faces and the names 

of the wives, the sons and the daughters."

"Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings 

in the rooms of her ice-water mansion.

Old Michigan steams, like a young man's dreams; 

the islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario 

takes in what Lake Erie can send her,

and the iron boats go as the mariners all know, 

with the gales of November remembered."

"In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed, 

in the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.

The church bell chimed 'till it rang twenty-nine times 

for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippawa on down, 

of the big lake they called "Gitche-Gumee."

Superior, they said, never gives up her dead, 

when the gales of November come early."

          Written by Gordon Lightfoot

The difference between life and death on the lakes can hang by a real short thread up here when Mother Nature gets in one of her moods.  Later, friends.

SICA HOLLOW, SOUTH DAKOTA

Hello all:  Hubby and I walked the one trail in Sica Hollow called 'Trail of the Spirits' and it was stunning, but short.  The entire State Park is very small, but much of it is taken up with hiking/horseback riding trails, not roads to drive through.  There are two small cemeteries there, out in the middle of nowhere. Sica Hollow is a conjunction of two prairies that many millennia ago crashed into each other and formed a deep ravine area of forest, streams and some unusual phenomena.  

It is this unusual, though completely natural phenomena that 'spooked' the original Sioux inhabitants into believing this area was haunted.  The streams carry a heavy mineral/iron content and at certain times the streams run almost blood red, which prompted the early Sioux to proclaim that the stream carried the spilled blood of their ancestors.  There's also heavy phosphorus content in the area which makes the tree trunks glow in the dark at their bases.  And the streams and swamp gasses make loud echoing, gurgling noises, all-in-all unusual surroundings that would make the imaginations of the jumpy and superstitious run on overtime. 

When the first Native Americans visited the location, they named it "Sica," (pronounced she-cha) meaning evil or bad place.  And several numerous Sioux legends recall mysterious happenings here.  The first white man to be recorded in history as making his home near what would one day become Sica Hollow State Park was named Robert Roi, who inhabited the area in the 1840s. Finding the location to be ideal for hunting because of the abundant game, some of which we saw as we drove the one road through the park, he soon made his home in a deep ravine.  The local Native Americans thought Roi crazy for living in an area that they wouldn't dare set foot in.  

A few years later, solders from Browns Valley set out to find Mr. Roi with the intent of collecting information on the frontier.  It took them days just to get down into the wooded ravine where he lived.  After they'd visited with Roi, the soldiers left, agreeing with the local natives that the man was probably crazy for living in such a place.

As the years passed, more settlers came to the area and the mythical stories about Sica Hollow grew.  It was later believed that some sort of beast or "Big Foot" type man inhabited the dense woods.  This fear apparently came to a boiling point when several people disappeared at Sica Hollow in the 1970s.  Of the many people who joined the hunting parties for the missing persons, several who participated openly admitted they were probably looking for some sort of beast.  Such a wild idea was actually supported by recent local sightings of something fitting that description.  

Others thought there might be a bear loose in Sica Hollow, but neither beast nor bear nor any of the missing persons have been found.

A wild tale, but all we saw was a beautiful forest area with lots of hawks and deer.  Of course, it was mid-morning, since I  couldn't convince hubby to go there at around sunset, not  even to let me walk the trails alone with a flashlight.  I really  wanted a photo of glowing tree trunks, but alas, it wasn't  meant to be.  Included are some photos I did take, and if you're  ever in the area I would recommend camping in their  beautiful but primitive campgrounds.  Those who have braved  it frequently speak of hearing the sound of drums and war- whoops of the departed spirits in the area once the moon rises,  and even a few have reported sightings of ghostly Sioux  braves.   But don't go walking off path, especially in the dark.   There are bogs and strange areas of quicksand that may have  actually been responsible for more than one of those people  disappearing in the Hollow . . . forever.  Later, friends!

COSMOS MYSTERY AREA

Sorry, all:  (Spoiler alert . . . if you want to go to Cosmos Mystery Area without bias, don't read further.) Like the page boy's lone voice of dissent in 'The Emperor's New Clothes,' citing the Emperor was, in fact, naked, I have to be a lone voice of dissent when it comes to the Cosmos Mystery Area outside of Hill City, South Dakota.  This place was actually recommended to us as a 'must see!' attraction. "You won't believe it!  Nature just goes topsy-turvy there, trees bend unnaturally into each other, water flows uphill; you've got to go there!"  

Okay, great lead-in . . . we had to go there.  Except my hubby was being a little bit chicken.  He wouldn't go on the tour, citing 'Things aren't natural in this place.'  What did he think, the 'unnatural' forces of the area were going to make him shrink?  Get heavier?  We're both headed that direction without worrying about pinning it on some strange energy vortex.  A blog I read about the attraction said many people make a dash for the restroom either during or immediately after the tour from the wooziness of the area, so those of you who know me well and know I battled vertigo on and off for a few years can understand my reticence to go up that hill, but I decided I was going to brave probable severe nausea all by my lonesome to bring you the best scoop about this place.

Meh.  Not surprising my skeptical side kicked in within the first five minutes when they began touting the 'bent and twisted' trees.  Right. Um, we live in Northern Arizona and see saplings of oaks and pines doing this bending phenomenon all the time.  The phenomenon is called snow drifts and wind.  A storm blows in from one direction and dumps a bunch of snow on struggling saplings, they bend over from the weight of the snow accumulating on the one side.  Then later if a storm blows in from the opposite direction with loads of snow carried on its wind, I bet you can guess what happens.  After one experiment that actually did give me a little pause, knowing that it is some slight of hand but not quite able to figure it out, then we came to the cabin. They have two; the original cabin, then they decided they wanted to get more tours fitted in on a given day so they constructed another.  Below is a diagram I made of their cabin(s) . . . I should have taken a picture of the outside, but I was just too distracted/disgusted to think to click the camera. Having a little background in construction, engineering and a fairly healthy dose of common horse sense, it was immediately apparent how they were getting balls, water, etc. to roll uphill.

Looking at my pitiful sketch (sorry, I didn't have a felt-tip pen or ruler while on the road) you can probably see how they do it as well.  If you tilt your head to the side so the built up floor in the 2nd, interior sketch looks level, then you see how the other section of floor (A) looks like it's going uphill, when in fact it is still at a slightly downward angle so a tennis ball or water will still roll downward, but inside it appears to be going uphill as your sense of balance adjusts to actually standing somewhere around 30 degrees. They do their 'slight of hand' with a series of built-up floors, built up even more than the slant of the mountain.  They can even make a chair appear to hold steady on just it's back legs perched on a ledge, but it is all in the center of gravity.  They have to adjust the chair back and forth until they find that center of gravity and only then do they let go.  With our tour, the little girl sitting on the chair fell back about six inches and hit her head against the wall twice because the tour guide couldn't quite get that exact center.   Needless to say I never had a moment of vertigo or nausea, because all I had to do was look down at the floor and see exactly what was what.

There was only one set of 'experiments' they did that had me scratching my head.  They had two separate slabs of concrete on the ground which are parallel and about two feet apart which they prove are level by setting a contractor's level on them, then a tennis ball and also a water bottle on them at different points.  They also take the level and place it perpendicular to the slabs, bracing each end on either slab to show the slabs are also level to each other. These two slabs are about one foot by four foot each in size. The guide picked two people, each one to step onto the middle of each slab, facing each other.  We studied the height difference between the two people, then they changed places and there was at least a five inch difference in height.  Hmmm.  At the end of the tour they had a cement slab shaped like a capital T.  The entire slab was also shown to be level.  I was asked to stand at the bottom of the T, and two people were placed at opposite ends of the top of the T.  The guide asked me where my P.O.V. showed the top of the shorter person's head to fall on the gentleman opposite.  Then he had them change sides, sure enough the shorter person grew by five inches. I wasn't satisfied . . . I asked to have the two slowly walk towards each other to see what happened.  As they walked toward the middle their heights adjusted to almost exactly the same height.  I'm sure this was also some type of optical illusion, I just haven't figured out how they did it yet.  The guide was right; he told us we'd be saying 'That is so weird' by the end of the tour, and over those two experiments I did, but as for the rest . . .  If I seem a little bah-humbug, it's because I handed over almost ten dollars for a 'slight of hand' show.  But I will say, even knowing it was a hoax, it is still fun to see how all of us on tour reacted to our world suddenly being tilted off its asses . . . oops, axis.   

My point in this post is two-fold; to alert you to spend your money here only if you want the fun, but to me, it is this kind of bogus  trivializing of those elements of the earth we don't understand that make it more of an uphill battle to actually accept those things we don't understand.   I firmly and truly believe there are many things of this earth we haven't begun to scratch the surface of, so I keep looking and researching to expand my knowledge base.  Tomorrow we head for Sicca Hollow, a legendary forest the Sioux Indians of Dakota believe is haunted.  I will give you my impressions of this forest in the next couple of days. Later, friends.

GREAT BILLBOARD SIGN IN HILL CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA

We're on our annual vacation, trekking across the Country.  Saw this sign in Hill City, South Dakota!  Nowhere in all of our travels have we been made to feel more at home!  Are we in redneck country, or what?  

MT. RUSHMORE

Hello all:  We are on our annual motorhome vacation, and have arrived at Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.  I've posted some pictures of the stunning country but oh, the winding roads.  And beyond tackling the switchbacks we were also dodging pile after pile of buffalo pies.   Our doggies fared quite well, though, no yacks from the front or the back seat!  Below was our first look at Mt. Rushmore from afar, thirteen miles away.  Aren't the statues impressive?     

We came through New Mexico, then up through Colorado, paralleling I-25, the main highway that runs North and South through Denver.  We were on Hwy. 71 about 50/60 miles east of Highway 25, and it was mainly a two lane road, sometimes down to one lane with no divider markings.  That got a little nerve wracking.  Thank goodness for our Garmin or we would have been completely lost the way these roads zig and zag. 

But I wanted to share with you our observations along these country back roads.  It was very sad to see one after another tiny farming town along the way reduced to a ghost town.  Not a ghost town from the frontier gold rush days, but a town that, maybe as little as ten to twenty years ago was a viable little community.  Now buildings are crumbling, roofs are caving in, windows are missing and doors are boarded up. It was almost spooky to see how many ghost towns there were . . . and hubby and I were asking ourselves, 'Where did everybody go?' Obviously they're not farming anymore . . . we passed hundreds of miles of drought-ridden or completely dead crops.  Abandoned.  And the few corn crops we saw which had corn ripe for the picking, the cobs couldn't have been bigger than three inches at best.

No more so than on the rural  back roads will you find yourself asking, 'What's happening to our country?'  I'm sure farming hasn't been hit harder than many other industries, but it is real easy to see the end result here.  God bless our great country and may she live to see a new era in productivity with an upcoming generation that will be given the same opportunities as the generations before them, and like their predecessors won't be afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty in her soil.  To put in an honest days work for an honest days pay.

For now her amber waves of grain are brown and withered, but her soil is resting . . . she's waiting for the days to come; the time of rejuvenation.  America has seen tribulations before.  Her great Founding Fathers still look over the land as a reminder that she can be great once again.  Let us hope her people choose to continue the tradition of being so themselves.  

SAN DIEGO'S HAUNTED WHALEY HOUSE

The Haunted Whaley House

Hi all:  Ever heard of this place?  It's one of my favorite 'haunts' from when I was a kid.  It's reputed to be the most haunted house in the U.S., according to several sources. The United States Chamber of Commerce has declared the Whaley House as being genuinely haunted. It also happens to hold the distinction of being the oldest brick structure in southern California. The house has all of the signs of being haunted. Apparitions, cold spots, feelings of being touched (or hung!) unexplainable lights, footsteps, rappings, objects moving, odd smells and feelings of being watched.  All of these have been observed, felt or heard in the Whaley House since it opened to the public in 1960.

Located in San Diego's Old Town, the house dates back to 1857 and it also includes an attached courthouse where, from what I've read and heard, frontier justice was most harshly and swiftly dispensed in its day. The Whaley House grounds even had their own hanging tree.  Wasn't that convenient?  When the gavel came down and a guilty verdict was announced, the hapless unfortunate was oft times dragged out into the courtyard for sentencing.  No wallowing in jail cells for the convicted.  

One of their more famous ghosts is named Yankee Jim, who was hung on the property, actually before the house itself was built.  He was hung for supposedly stealing a boat.  There was never any hard evidence found and Yankee Jim went to his death proclaiming his innocence.  It was not an easy hanging.  Sketchy history reports claim that Yankee Jim was a very tall man with unruly blond hair, and the law miscalculated his height. When they pulled the wagon out from under him, supposedly his feet still touched the ground.  He was reported to have actually strangled to death, slowly.  Lillian Whaley, the owner's daughter who lived in the house until 1953, claimed it was Yankee Jim's footsteps she heard at night walking the floors.  Today loud footsteps are heard upstairs when you're downstairs, and vice-versa.  And sightings of a tall man with messy blond hair are reported frequently.  His laughter is said to be heard echoing through the hallways.  Several other ghosts are said to haunt the house, including Mrs. Anna Whaley, who likes to play the piano.  Some of their children have been spotted, all of them having died bizarrely, along with the family friend of Anna's who accidentally hung herself on Anna's clothesline. And if that weren't enough, there are spirits of those who were actually hung where the parlor now stands, and that makes the parlor area the most haunted area of the house. Some have actually reported the sensation of a noose slipping about their neck when visiting the parlor rooms!   The gavel has been heard rapping in the courthouse, the privacy ropes keeping the public away from the judge's podium and out of the pews are frequently seen swinging; all in all a very creepy place.

The Haunted Parlor

I lived in San Diego until I was twelve and visited The Whaley House many times with my friends. And I have been back to visit a handful of times since moving away.  I have to say that never once did any of my friends nor myself ever see or experience anything in the Whaley House, though many, many others have.  

I had a ridiculously hard time ever getting hubby to go through the Whaley House with me in all the years we revisited San Diego.  He was always nervous about the spirits lurking around the place and didn't want to be susceptible to them.  It wasn't until our girls became teenagers and each took a friend, that those extra four voices were able to add their whining insistence to mine and pressure him into going in. We got out of the front door without incident, although once we returned home and had the pictures we took inside the house developed, we noticed a very definite shady outline of what looked like Thomas Whaley against the wall in the front parlor.  Above the painting.  I posted the picture below but the image is so subtle I know you won't be able to see it.  However, I find myself looking at the picture and skeptically analyzing it, questioning the authenticity.  Because, being a painter, I could see where someone could paint this very detailed outline in a slightly different shade of white . . . so close to the original color the naked eye probably couldn't see it, but it would be picked up by a camera.  Yup, that's me . . . after all I've experienced at our place my first reaction is still to be skeptical.  But, skeptical or not, it still makes for a creepy-fun afternoon!

The Haunted Parlor (faint image is above the painting)

So, don't miss a trip through the Whaley House, if you dare, on your next visit to San Diego.  Events do not occur there every day.  In fact, sometimes weeks pass without a spectral 'gotcha,' according to the historians who greet those touring the house.  But unlike myself, you may just walk through at the precise moment you're given a memorable, spine-tingling experience!  Later, friends.

Had to add this, also from that trip . . . someone's huge yacht planted in the middle of the freeway.  That's something else you don't see every day!

COWBOY BOB AND THE CARETAKERS

So, it's been a hectic couple of days, and promises to be busy for a few more so I may be a little scarce until sometime next week.  I'm sitting here enjoying the thunderstorms and patter of rain on the back porch, and I'm thinking back on the various guys we've had stay here over the years; free room and board in our guest apartment in exchange for maintenance around our acreage.  

I can't remember one of these men who hasn't had an experience of some kind; probably because as a minimum they've stirred Cowboy Bob's curiosity . . . who is this person, what are they doing here?  Beyond the usual noises a frame house makes, some have heard doors opening/closing, the ongoing footsteps.  But there have been caretakers we've hired that apparently Cowboy Bob didn't like particularly well, and he'd let the caretaker know his true feelings, by acting them out.  While we were away traveling, this one caretaker who lived up in the guest apartment would no more than come home from work and get inside the apartment and he'd hear multiple doors opening and slamming shut all at the same time directly underneath him in our rec room. He'd charge down the stairs to find everything in place, nothing unsecured. Up he'd go back to the apartment and within two to five minutes the doors would be slamming open and shut again. Cursing in exasperation, this time he'd run down the stairs and all would be quiet and in order. This would go on several times on the nights the activity decided to manifest. It wasn't something he would ignore because he was in charge of keeping the place secure in our absence. It was intermittent, not happening every night, but enough that our caretaker was very annoyed by the time we returned home from our trip.

Another friend who watched the house while we were gone, woke up at somewhere around two-thirty to three a.m. one morning and looked up toward the ceiling fan. He lay there for about three minutes watching a spooky mist with bluish light pulsing within it, slowly swirling around the ceiling fan until it at last disappeared. Of course the windows and doors were closed and we live in such a wilderness area you never see car lights . . . only star lights. 

Whatever the energy is around here, it has a mischievous streak . . . more than one of the caretakers has had their stuff disappear only to reappear much later. This is a favorite prank around the place. We've actually been looking for something we left right on the kitchen table, looking for it for hours or even days, and then five minutes after we quit looking for it, amazingly it reappears right in the middle of the table.  And not with a bunch of other clutter around it . . . all by its lonesome. Very bizarre. One time it took over a year for the item to be returned. I was wrapping Christmas gifts in our rec room, using our ping-pong table as my wrapping platform. I had the gifts piled on a gaming table we had located close by. As I finished I realized I was suddenly one gift short. A video game for one of the nephews. It had just been there. I turned first the game room and then the whole house upside down looking for it and ended up having to buy another one because we never found it.

Over a year later I walked into the rec room and spied the video game sitting on top of the gaming table, right where I knew I'd left it. No dust on it or any signs of wear and tear, it was still perfectly brand new and in its wrapper. I will tell you that the video game's discovery was very unsettling, and exasperating. I'd spent good money on another video game only to end up stuck with an extra. I donated it. Ho, Ho, Ho . . . someone got a little Merry After Christmas present.    

So, what exactly is this energy around our place? Is it just that? An energy of a nature mankind has yet to understand or explain? That seems plausible, especially after finding out something interesting which was shared on a "Ghost Hunters" episode. After several years of ghost hunting, the guys were asked recently to comment on the things they found in common between the sites which displayed the most activity. One, it seemed to make a big difference if there were teenage girls in the house. Hmmm. I had two teenage girls, who weren't living here at the time the activity was at its heaviest, but they were here often enough. Secondly, by far the most active sites were sitting on top of limestone. Limestone is apparently some type of conductor for the kind of psychic energy they experienced. Hearing that, I looked at my hubby and asked; "Um, just what type of rock is this mountain made of that our house is bolted to?" He replied; "Solid limestone." Well, of course it is. So perhaps it's a naturally occurring energy, then.  

Except . . . that 'energy' has been seen and spoken to. The energy here seems to have taken on the persona of a Cavalry Officer. That, along with the fact that about four years ago, after a bout of very heavy rains, my hubby discovered what looked like the remains of an old grave on our acreage. There were a few piled up rocks, the remnants of two pieces of wood with the numbers '3' and '8' burned into the one piece and the other piece had antique nails which had been apparently used to piece together a makeshift cross. After discovering these items,  the 'activity' immediately slowed down to a fraction of what it used to be. Though another of our relatives was visiting here recently, staying in the guest apartment, and in the wee hours of morning she was awakened to the sounds of heavy footsteps coming up the outside stairs, stopping right outside the door.  That's Cowboy Bob, whatever he or it is, saying, "I'm still here . . . don't think for a minute I'm going to let you forget me."     Later, friends 

CAN OUR LITTLE LOST ONES COME BACK?

That is the question my hubby and I are asking ourselves tonight.  I have to digress from Cowboy Bob once again and share with you something I think you'll appreciate that my hubby and I just encountered this afternoon. For a couple of months now, when I'm alone at night in the living room writing and its quiet, hubby's doing something else or gone to bed, I've been hearing this very definitive scratching at our back door, not ten feet away from me. Loud. I get up, throw on the back patio light and look out . . . but there's nothing there. This has happened well over a dozen times, sometimes several nights in a row. Usually more than once a week.  I've always thought that I was dealing with a Cujo squirrel at the back door, but there's never anything there.  So I'm thinking, well, maybe they see me approaching and high-tail it out of sight before I get to the door, so I've left it at that, especially because I'm the only one hearing it.  I told hubby about it two or three times, and he always looked at me like I'd sprouted a third eye, following that up with something like, "Yeah, yeah.  You need to get your hearing checked."

Then my youngest was visiting this summer for a little while and she was sitting close to me in the living room one night, and she heard it.  I'd gotten so used to the noise by that time I'd been ignoring it.  

"What on earth is that scratching noise?" she said and stood up.

I startled, saying, "So you heard that, too?"   

She reached the back door in under five seconds, saying "Yeah, I heard it!" but there was nothing there.  

I shrugged and said, "Probably squirrels."  Except you never see squirrels or chipmunks running around outside on our back patio deck at night.  Ever.

Since we live in the middle of the wilderness we have a very large outside dog run that is completely enclosed so the wild beasties can't get at our dogs.  Nothing bigger than a fly can get through the thick wire mesh. And yet . . . Today hubby and I were in the utility room talking. He was about five feet away from our doggie door, which we'd put the cover on so our kitty couldn't go out to the dog run and 'poo' when it's in the house.  Anyway, we both heard the loud scratching of something wanting in, and I figured I'd accidentally left one of the poms out on the ramp when I secured the cover over the door but, no, hubby opened the doggie door and nothing was there!   Our doggies came out of their dog carriers where they'd been sleeping, giving us a "What gives?" look.  My hubby, on the other hand,  got that 'round-as-saucers' look going, and he kept repeating, "What the hell was that?  What was that? Did you hear that?"  Interestingly, within about five minutes our dogs abruptly started running around the living room and kitchen, barking at nothing.  Acting excited . . . well, agitated.  The whole barking at nothing thing is not unusual for our poms, but the timing was very odd.

Now I'm really starting to wonder if one of our little lost ones is coming around in spirit.  Maximus, specifically.  Looking back on when the scratching started, it was soon after we had to put Maximus down.  With Gidget and Taz, they both died in the Valley, in Gilbert, and there was a long delay before we could bury them.  With Gidget I had to have the Vet's office keep her body until hubby healed enough from his operation a few weeks later to make the trip back to our house.  With Taz, we brought her up here immediately, but the ground was frozen solid (being the day after Christmas) and we had to keep her body until the ground thawed out enough to bury her.  But Maximus was sick and dying, here.  I ran him into an emergency Vet in Flagstaff late that night so they could put him out of his suffering, but I brought his body back with me and we buried him the next morning.  Just by virtue of the circumstances we had to deal with, Max was the only one whose spirit might have stayed more connected to this place when he passed than the others.  And truly, Maximus was our little 'scratchy-scratchy' dog.  Most times at night.  If we accidentally shut the bedroom door on him while he was still laying under the couch we'd be awakened to that very same scratching noise at our door.  If I was in the bathroom with the door closed, soon I'd hear 'scratchy-scratchy.'  Suddenly it doesn't seem so far-fetched to think Max wants in.  He was happy here and is doing his 'scratchy-scratchy' at the door to let us know he's still around.  It brings me close to tears thinking one of them could be out there wanting in . . . especially when the weather is gloomy, wet and miserable, even though I know if it is them they probably wouldn't feel the elements.   But next time I hear that scratching I'm opening the door!  

I promise I will move on with Cowboy Bob!  Later, friends.