Reunited

Avik:
After our gig in Salt Lake City, Debbie and I both returned to Michigan--Debbie (sadly) for the rest of the tour, and I for a weekend academic conference in Ann Arbor. The conference, which focused on a model of human behavior and motivations known as the Reasonable Person Model, was both educational and inspiring. The weekend in general was restful, but I must say that I was looking forward to getting on the plane to Boise to reunite with Carmen and Andrew. Which I finally did on Tuesday afternoon. Of course, I was envious when I heard they had been up to...

Carmen:
We spent the weekend with Mom and Dad Maret hiking, camping, and "shrooming" in the Sawtooth Mountains in central Idaho. We hiked and camped around Red Fish Lake, a body of water surrounded by steep snow covered granite mountains that spike up and out of a meadowed landscape. Red Fish Lake got its name from the thousands of sockeye salmon that used to travel to the ocean and back to spawn via the Salmon, Snake, and Columbia rivers. When sockeye spawn their backs turn bright red. According to my water biologist father, only five sockeye returned to Red Fish Lake last year, mostly due to the 14 dams that young fish must travel through on their way to the ocean and back.



On Sunday we went morel mushroom hunting in the burn areas north of Stanley, Idaho. We ended up picking about 15 lbs. of morels!! We have cooked everything from morel omlets, to fire roasted morels on the camp fire to morel pizza, and topped it off with a lasagne for Avik on his arrival back in Boise.



We are on our way tomorrow to Portland via the Columbia Gorge.