Kat Jo

Lowayne

Camping here at Aspen Acres for a whole week, the second time we’ve stopped somewhere for a week, has been a fascinating education.  Met two couples who used to be neighbors and now come here annually to golf and camp and have fun.  Norm and Lowayne, Martin and Kat Jo invited us to brunch at their campsite to sample breakfast burritos and cornmeal mush.  Bill and I never had mush before and we must say, it is out of this world!  The recipe is on the package of cornmeal and you mix it up and cool it in bacon drippings…. yes, that’s what I said.  Oh man, how good they are.
It was my immense pleasure to create custom pendants for these beautiful ladies according to their specifications.  Here they are modeling the pendants and here are the pendants, close up.  The pendant on the left is White Jade, wrapped in sterling silver.  The one on the right is Amethyst, also wrapped in sterling silver.  They looked beautiful on this sweet, fun-loving pair of friends.

What we learned was that Idahoans have a deep affection for their state and its diversity.  The state is very conservative, although not quite as much as Utah or Texas.  Apparently, most of the potatoes are grown in the southern portion of the state. The northern portion abounds with mountains, canyons, hot springs, lakes and rivers.  The northeast portion (eastern, really) of Idaho is part of Yellowstone. 

Potatoes Being Irrigated

Last night we were invited to sit around a campfire with another pair of neighbors.  Jack and Patty, Trad and Darby explained that the northeastern part of Idaho is really part of the dormant Yellowstone Supervolcano.  There are two calderas in the volcanic field surrounding the outer rim of the Yellowstone Caldera that are in Idaho.

The effects of several eruptions can still be seen today. Craters of the Moon, national monument in Idaho is a vast ocean of lava flows with scattered islands of cinder cones and sagebrush. The most recent flow in eastern Idaho is the Hell’s Half Acre lava flow which erupted about 4,100 years ago and is 125 square miles.  Crater Rings are two adjacent and symmetrical pit craters that are among the few examples of this type of crater in the continental United States. The pit craters, which are volcanic conduits in which the lava column rises and falls, were formed by explosions followed by collapse.  Those ancient eruptions have helped create the eastern part of the Snake River Plain from a what was once a mountainous region.

On the outer rim of all this heated upheaval, in a little mountain town called Spencer, ancient geysers deposited encapsulated silica in layers which formed into something special in the volcanic rock there.  Out of the fiery volcanoes, came opal.