PhotoSafari Field Day with Lori Brookes

Sometimes we cannot see.  We cannot see because we are moving.  We are constantly moving and thinking and being bombed with noises and demands.    What I learned from Lori Brookes is that you cannot photograph from your      heart if you keep moving around.  You need to sit awhile and simply just be.  I saw this weed and even though the flowers were dried, it was still beautiful.  And the subtle colors in the background.  The subtle blending colors of summer.  SNAP.  I did it, I slowed down enough to see.

Even Weeds are beautiful!

Sacred Rocks on Front Page

front page of The Alpine Sun

The Sacred Rocks GeoCaching Easter Egg Hunt made the front page of the 9 April 2009 issue of The Alpine Sun!

3 photos, courtesy of our PR expert Marti Amado, were published in the paper: 1 full color photo on the front page, and 2 color pictures on page 10 depicting young geocachers enjoying the natural outdoor setting of Sacred Rocks Reserve.

The article details the experiences of Boy Scout troop 316 of Point Loma, and a mom and her 2 sons as they hunt for the 6 caches hidden at Sacred Rocks Reserve. The caches were marked by nearby gold ribbons with an X&O on them. Geocachers entered their names into the cache journal logs, and kept little tokens from each cache on safety pins.

The hunt was so much fun that there’ll be a future class and a “Geocaching with Dad” hunt on Father’s Day weekend, Saturday 20 June 2009 at Sacred Rocks RV Park.

The Truth about Elderberries

Workamper Floyd came into the store on Friday with a huge handful of these offering tasting all around. “This is the Mexican Blue Elderberry Tree and the berries are edible.” So we have been eating them all weekend long, offering them to guests. They are like tiny grapes with a sweet/sour flavor, definitely good. I have been seeing this tree for 5 years, not knowing what it is.

So a couple of the ladies decided to make elderberry jelly and I just looked it up on the internet. After the ingredients and the cooking instructions, there was a single sentence that said, ‘elderberries are toxic if eaten raw’!!!! That sent me into panic thinking that I had inadvertently poisoned myself, and my family, and our guests!

More research on the internet. Evidently, the stems and leaves should not be eaten but you can make jelly from the berries. Perhaps in large quantities one might get a stomach ache, but large quantities of grapes will give you one too. What do you know about elderberries?

The Goal of Retreat

Here lies Mark Butler, summer visitor for the last 4 years, whose parents used to come up for the summer, you could say second generation. What does he like the most? “Great weather, stress reduction, peaceful, good summers!’