Sherry, If you go to see the giant redwood/sequoia trees, please realize that there are dozens of places worth seeing them along the coast from the CA/OR border to central California and in the Sierra Nevada Mountains along the CA/NV border that each have their own unique appeal. It would take a week just to explore all of the big tree NP's, SP's, SRA's, SNR's and Monuments in CA alone. When I lived in San Francisco, Russian Gulch, Big Basin SP and Mount Madonna were favorites, but after I moved to Carmel it was all about Polo Colorada Canyon and the many spots around Pfeiffer Big Sur. I'll have to tell you about my very rare and unique coffee table made from a Polo Colorado Cyn giant and Bixby Creek driftwood sometime. Yes, "mesa" is a term loosly applied to any landform in the arid west with a flat top and verticle cliff sides, and they are quite common. They are also referred to as table mountains, buttes, potrero or tuya depending on how they were formed and their characteristics and can vary from small ones like those in the BDW to the Grand Mesa in CO which is the largest in the world at around 500 square miles on top. Sometimes plateau is also used wrongly. They don't always have the verticle sides and are much bigger covering huge areas up to millions of square miles. Yes I could move back to St.George I guess, although in many ways the cost of living is higher there than Vegas. I'm sure some of my old friends are still there and kicking. But since my Dad lives there now I wouldn't even consider it.

I plan all my trips as I enjoy scouring over maps and looking for interesting things to see. We were in most of these places in 1998 when Bobby was 5. Actually there are a few rest days and some days we will only be out for half the day. Also some of the places we will be seeing such as Canyonlands and Arches can be quite warm so we won't be missing all of our Arizona heat. Actually our temps a lot of the time are cooler compared to folks back East with their high temps and high humidity. It was only 75 here yesterday. We have been getting quite a bit of rain so our desert is very green right now.

Actually the weather has been beautiful. The days In Page were anywhere from mid 70's to the mid 90's. The North Rim was 68 degrees the first day and then in the mid 70's. Bryce was a bit hotter but not in the 100's. We are now at Capitol Reef and the temp today was in the low 70's with some rain showers. Haven't seen any snakes or other nasty varmints.

Fascinating! I only ever thought of barley as an old world crop, the kind essential to brewing beer ;). In fact the only cereal grain I had ever heard about coming from the Americas was corn. How very interesting! You could probably throw sunflowers into that mix as well. Though, the reading I have done follows yours in that many of the plants such as sunflowers and goosefoot (chenopodium, which would fall in the amaranth family), weren't necessarily "cultivated" but sort of "followed" human habitation and agriculture. Kind of an Indian version of "weed cuisine" haha. I also was reading an interesting article on peppers from NSS a little while back. While chilies were gathered and used frequently by the Indians in places like Mexico, further north, in areas like the Four Corners region, they never really caught on. The Indians there preferring a more "bland" diet.