Snowbirding 2020 Postcards: Fire Roasted Yams

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My absolute favorite camping food.

One of the things I like best about camping with friends along the Colorado River is the evening campfires. It’s not just sitting around a warm fire with friends on a cool desert evening — it’s the fact that I can roast up some yams or sweet potatoes to snack on the next day.

The trick is to get the fire going early enough in the evening so that we have plenty of hot coals to roast the potatoes on. Then I scrub each potato and wrap it in aluminum foil. I use enough foil so that the potato has at least two layers around it on all sides. Then I lay the potatoes on the coals and turn them occasionally as we sit around the fire chatting about this or that. The hotter the coals are, the more often I turn them and the quicker they get cooked.

Fire Roasted Yam
OMG. How’s this for a fire-roasted yam?

The other night, we burned the bundle of fruitwood I’d brought from home. (Long story there.) It’s a hard wood and very slow burning, but it did make good coals. Trouble is, it took so long to burn down that we were ready to call it a night before the potatoes I’d thrown on — four regular potatoes from my garden and two yams from the supermarket — were done. So I moved the regular potatoes over to the side of the fire pit and left the yams right on top of the fading coals. Then I went to bed.

In the morning, the fire pit was cold (as we expected). I pulled out one of the yams and my fingers immediately smushed it. Uh-oh, I thought. I ruined this one. But when I unwrapped it, I found the potato skin only mildly scorched. I broke the potato open and was thrilled to see a uniformly soft orange center.

I ate it with a spoon.

The regular potatoes came out okay, too, but they’re not nearly as tasty cold as the yams are. I’ll peel the scorched skins off, chop up the flesh, and add it to my breakfast scrambles.

Phoenix Festival of the Arts

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I participate in an art show in Phoenix.

I was set up as a jewelry vendor this past Friday through Sunday at the Phoenix Festival of the Arts in Phoenix’s Hance Park.

Hance Park is also known as “the deck park” because it’s the park that sits atop a tunnel where I-10 runs under Phoenix. (It’s a park on the top deck of the tunnel.) It’s a bit of a pain to set up and tear down because they limit the number of vehicles on the deck and if someone selfishly sets up while unloading — rather than unloading, moving a vehicle out of the park, and then setting up — there’s a long wait to set up. Parking outside the park was supposed to be a problem, but I didn’t have any problem at all. I always arrived early enough to get a good spot on the street less than a block away. For tear down, however, I couldn’t get my truck into the park timely so I wound up parking in the nearby library lot and taking my gear through a gap in the fence that someone had opened. It saved me a lot of time, but I had to carry each of my 40-pound tent leg weights separately. I felt it in the morning.

The event included at least 80 vendors, most of which were selling handmade goods. There were a lot of potters and jewelers, some woodworkers and metalworkers, a handful of photographers, and some painters. The rest were making a variety of other handmade items, some of which were impressive pieces of art while others fell into the category of granny crafts. There were also more than a few vendors who shouldn’t have been there at all — folks selling obviously buy/sell merchandise they didn’t made like salt scrubs and salsa and garlic grating dishes. It was a typical mix for an event that was apparently setting a low bar for vendors and lucked out by getting some good ones. I’d say that my work was neither the best nor the worst, which is a spot I don’t mind filling.

Because the booths were set up in quads, we were all able to have our booths open on two sides. Technically, I could have been open on three sides because I was in the last row, which just had paired booths. But I went with two sides and had a nice walk-through booth. I put my pendants on the back table, logically with the cases of stones that I use to make pendants. I had earrings in three places, including the back of my large hinged display on an island in the open corner of the booth.

First booth setup
My initial booth setup on the first day of the show.

Oddly, the only thing I sold that day were earrings — six pairs. No pendants, no bracelets, no rings, no stones. I suspected it was because of the booth layout so on Saturday morning, I reorganized to move the pendants closer to the front of the booth and reorganize the earrings to both sides of the hinged display.

Booth 2
My booth setup for the second and third day of the show.

I’d put up my shade extension on Saturday morning but quickly realized that it was causing people to walk around the front of my booth instead of coming in. So I pulled it down. People came in. (Go figure.) From that point on, I did relatively well, selling a mix of pendants, earrings, and rings.

I was satisfied with sales at the event, but not thrilled. All my costs were covered and I made a little profit, but I’m not convinced that my time wouldn’t have been been better spent at camp, making more jewelry in my mobile shop. As it was, I sold out on all of my most popular earring styles; I’ll definitely need to make a lot more for my next show in January.

I’d been accepted to two shows that weekend but had chosen this one because it was a three-day event instead of a two-day event. I think it was also a little cheaper. Next year, I might try the other show, which I think was in Tempe, AZ.

As an event for people wanting something to do on a December weekend in Phoenix, I recommend it. With art vendors, mural painting, live music, and food trucks, it was a great way for people — including families — to spend an afternoon.

Snowbirding 2020 Postcards: Traffic

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I experience Phoenix rush hour traffic in my truck.

On Friday morning, I had to drive to Phoenix for the first day of a three-day art show. I had a setup window that required me to be there by about 7:30 AM. Because I’m camped out in the desert more than 100 miles west of there, I had to leave my camp at 5 AM.

I don’t like driving at night, but the moon was just past full and it illuminated the desert around me with a faint monochrome glow. There were few vehicles on I-10 at that hour — mostly semis — and I was able to easily maintain the 75 mph speed limit most of the way.

Google Maps
Here’s what I saw on Google Maps when I realized there was something wrong with the math.

I watched the readout on Google Maps on my iPhone as I got closer and closer to Phoenix. At one point, I noticed that the math didn’t seem right: I was moving along at 75 miles per hour and had only 38 miles to go, yet Google said it would take a full hour. How could that be? Even when I slowed down when the speed limit dropped to 65 and probably 55 in the city, I should still be able to make it in much less than an hour. Like maybe even 30 minutes.

What I hadn’t accounted for, of course, was rush hour traffic, which I experienced firsthand about 15 minutes later. Stop and go — just like I used to deal with when I had a “real job” in corporate America. I realized that it had been years since I’d been stuck in traffic like that — the kind of traffic where it takes you 15 minutes to go 3 miles. But this was traffic on steroids: at certain points, there were five lanes of vehicles completely stopped.

What was cool, however, was sitting up high in my big truck, being able to look over the tops of the sedans and compact cars ahead of me. I had never realized how much taller my truck was than the average passenger vehicle. There were few semis on this part of the road — I suspect the drivers were smart enough to exit for a truck stop breakfast instead of dealing with the mess. Instead, most vehicles were commuters with just one person per car, leaving the HOV lane pretty much open. And, as I could easily see, the red taillights went on for miles ahead of me.

I did make it to my destination on time. When I’d left camp at 4:57 AM, Google told me I’d arrive at 7:34 AM. I arrived at 7:35. That’s pretty amazing.

Snowbirding 2020 Postcards: Another Colorado River Sunset

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Another gorgeous sunset as seen from our campsite.

I’m going to try very hard not to share photos of every single beautiful sunset we’re seeing from our Colorado River campsite, but this one was too good not to share. With just enough clouds and smooth water to reflect them, Thursday’s sunset was the best I’d watched in a very long time.

Sunset 12/12/19
What a light show!

Snowbirding 2020 Postcards: The Cotton Field

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A closer look at a nearby cotton field.

From Wikipedia’s Cotton entry:

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.

We’re camped in BLM land a few miles south of I-10 in western Arizona. On our way to or from the campsite, we pass a cotton field (and an alfalfa field) that’s ready for harvest when we arrive. This year, for the first time ever, I stopped alongside it for a closer look before harvest.

It looks to me as if they either cut the water supply or apply a herbicide (as they do to potatoes) after the cotton bolls have formed. As you can see in the first photo, the plants are pretty much dead, although there was some green at the bases of some plants.

Cotton Field, Close Up
A close view of a cotton field.

I stepped into the field and grabbed a cotton boll for a closer look and to share online. I remember seeing cotton bolls like this packaged as souvenirs in tourist shops in the southeast. The cotton felt soft, like a cotton ball. (I don’t know why I found that surprising, but I did.) I knew that deep inside the boll were seeds that had to be removed to use the cotton, but I didn’t tear it apart to find them. I liked its natural look.

Cotton Boll
A closer look at a cotton boll. I found a tiny yellow spider in the middle of the boll.

I’ll try to get photos of the harvest, but it all depends on if I happen to be driving by when they’re working. I know this field is completely cleared by Christmas every year.

You can learn more about cotton production in the United States, which has a history closely tied with slavery, on Wikipedia.