In 2023, en route home from our winter in Texas, we explored New Mexico from bottom to top and side to side.
My feature photo is of a mural at the Taos Plaza in downtown Taos – an extremely artsy and cultural area.
Our main reason for visiting Taos, NM was to tour the Taos Pueblo. Both the town and the Pueblo were among our favourite New Mexico stops.
This simple, two-egg cheese omelette is filling and almost (1.5 grams carbs per tablespoon of chunky slasa) carb free.
One nice thing about switching to low carb for a while, is that large portions aren’t necessary to keep hunger at bay.
After touring my cousin around the Las Vegas area for a week, we took her to the plane and then made our way home via a different route than usual.
My feature photo is of a portion of Arches National Park near Moab, UT. We didn’t take any side roads to see the actual arches, but even without that, the scenery “on the way by” was spectacular.
We’d hoped to drive from there to Denver, Co.
At Grand Junction, Co, where we spent the night, we were advised the next morning by the hotel clerk, that there had been a rockslide ahead, so the road we planned to take was closed. We were also informed that roads out of Denver (from our direction) were closed for the winter.
Enter Plan B:
We drove on as far as Aspen, Co, toured the place and watched some skiing. Neither of us had been there before, so it was a fun little “been there done that” trip.
After Aspen, we turned around and headed back to Grand Junction.
From there, we headed north to and through Wyoming and more incredible scenery.
After Wyoming, it was South Dakota and then North Dakota (which I’ll cover in a future post) and then home.
In 2013, hubs and I spent 10 days exploring the Caribbean island of Curaçao.
On a walkabout around the capital city of Willemstad, we came across a courtyard adorned with two giant murals that depicted both every day life and some of the history of the city.
Here’s a closer shot of one of the sections of my feature photo:
Here’s the historical one:
This one needs lots of post processing. I’ll edit out a few of the distracting elements in the photo, and try to improve the clarity. This is a complicated one so I’ll wait until I’m further along in my photo editing course.
A burger without the bun.
Take on fork: a cherry tomato half, a bit of lettuce, a piece of air-fried burger. Dip it all into ketchup and then mustard and it’s a burger minus the carb-loaded bun (28-38 grams of carbs per bun).
This makes room for a filling lite beer (3.2 grams of carbs per can)
In my world, that’s a good trade-off.
Whether man made or Mother Nature made, there are more marvels in this world than one could hope to see in a lifetime.
After a few days on the Vegas Strip and Fremont Street, we took my cousin, Carrie out of town to Laughlin, NV.
On the way, we showed Carrie the spectacular and historical Hoover Dam (hubs and I had been there several times before). On our second day at Laughlin, we took in the West Rim of The Grand Canyon (first time for all of us).
There’s nothing that beats the feeling of sharing these incredible sights and experiences with family.
I recently walked over to one of our many parks because I learned that this past spring, murals had been painted on the backs of some of the baseball dugouts.
The one in my cover photo spells out our city (Weyburn) in symbols.
These works have brought art, colour, and fun to the site.
There are a few more dugouts in this park, slated for completion next year.
To get back to my most comfortable weight, I intend to lose 10 lbs in the next two months.
I’ve made up a new eating program, which consists of three methods combined: 16/8 intermittent fasting, low carb, and reduced calorie.
Can you guess what bits from this plate ended up on hubs’ plate?
Once we completed our 2016 exploration of places in Arizona we hadn’t seen on previous visits, we headed to Nevada, picked up my cousin, Carrie, at the airport, and proceeded for the nest week, to tour her around the Las Vegas area.
Carrie had never been there before, so the fact that her visit coincided with the Chinese New Year made the trip for her all the more fun – and definitely extremely colourful!
Outside of China, I’d bet that Las Vegas is the next best place for Chinese New Year decor.
Sticking with my Monday Murals theme, I decided to feature a few from where we live.
This mural was completed in panels by the community. The artist who created it, made it a paint by number, so that anyone who wanted to, could paint a part of it.
That artist/designer won a $1,000 award for her idea and for including community involvement.
Each hand is holding something that defines our community, and the tiger lilies scattered throughout the painting are our provincial flower.
The sunset in the background gives a shoutout to our province’s motto “The Land of Living Skies” (our sunrises and sunsets are nothing short of spectacular).
Radically Retired 