These next photos were at the Pima Air Museum
The photos were taken the day after Thanksgiving playing paintball. 
We really had a good time and no one got an eye put out. The closest was Sarah, who got shot on the top of her head with a yellow paintball. She did not want to leave that in her hair for the drive to back to Utah.
The 22 hour drive back to Missouri was pleasantly uneventful.
This was a hotel a long time ago. 
Angouleme is more than 800 years old, so many of the old streets were built long before there were cars and are quite narrow. Even though this street was very narrow, it still had parallel parking with enough space for cars to barely get by.
My last night in France was in Paris. I ate dinner in the hotel by the airport. I ordered “apple pie” for desert. But the apple pie was not what traditional American apple pie. This is what it looked like. It tasted pretty good.
The next day my flight back to the states did not leave until noon, so I decided to get up early and take the train into the city and see the Eiffel Tower. This was taken shortly after it got light in the morning, as seen from the east of the tower looking west (sun to my back).
While at the Eiffel Tower, I found a geocache in a small hole in the wall on the far side of the Seine River just west of the tower. Close by was a old barge like boat that had house plants on the boat suggesting that someone lived on the boat. This is a photo of the boat with the Seine River and the Eiffel Tower in the background looking east into the sunrise through the clouds.
I made it back to the airport in time to catch my plane and fly to Salt Lake and see my family. 
Mom looked for him in the National Audubon Society Field Guide. It is a “wheel bug” or Arilus cristatus. I copied the following from the Field Guide:
Description: 1 1/8 – 1 3/8" Gray-brown to black. Prothorax raised into a curved series of coglike teeth along midline, inspiring the common name. Nymph is blood-red with black markings.
Habitat: Meadows and crop fields.
Range: East of the Rocky Mountains, from southern Canada south to the Gulf states.
Food: Caterpillars, even large ones including hornworms, Japanese Beetle larvae, and other insects.
Life Cycle: Eggs are laid in clusters on foliage. One generation a year.
This handsome predator can give a painful stab when it defends itself from a carless handler.”
I did not read the part about the painful stab until after I had captured and brought him in for Mom to see. Fortunately, I used a paper towel to handle him and did not get stabbed. When I saw the part about eating caterpillars and other insects, I wished we had lots more of these guys in the garden.
I have made “Dilly Beans before much like dill pickles but made with green beans. I wondered if it would work to treat small skinny squash like green beans and make “Dilly Squash”. I decided to try it. I chose the skinniest squash I had until there was enough to fill a pint jar and then followed the dilly bean recipe for one pint. The recipe includes water, vinegar, salt, garlic, dried red pepper flakes and dill. The largest squash was about 5/8 of and inch in diameter. This is what the jar looks like. 
I’ll load it in the car to try out at Thanksgiving. It might be good and then again it might be horrible. We can all find out together.
Even closer yet, I could see they were not morels. 
I looked in our Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. The closest I could find was “Shaggy Mane” which was listed as “choice”. There were enough differences (like the cap on top) that I was not going to try them out. There were also some similarities to “Scaly Inky Cap” which was listed as edible with caution. Regardless of what kind of mushroom these actually were, I decided to go with the caution philosophy and only take photos.
While in the yard with the camera, I thought I should check out the growing sink hole. A couple of years ago, a new large hole opened up in the front sink hole. It had steep sides and was pretty deep with lots of mud in the bottom. We recently had lots of rain. We had about 5 inches in one day, so I was wondering how the muddy sink hole was, because the scouts are coming to our house to play capture the flag in the woods at night on Wednesday evening, and I did not want it to eat any scouts. This is what it looks like now. 
The diameter has increased from erosion and filled in the bottom so it is not as deep as it was a few months ago. Rocky used to go nuts when Joseph would go down in the hole, which made it more fun.
I think I need to mark it off with some caution tape and glow sticks for Wednesday night so we don’t lose any scouts in the dark.
The peppers are roasted to get the skins off. We used the oven method by putting them in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes. When the skins puff up, they are done. The peppers are then pulled out and wrapped in a wet towel. When they have cooled down enough to handle, the skins are removed and the top of the pepper is opened and seeds removed without completely opening the pepper. Strips of Monterrey Jack Cheese are then placed inside the peppers as shown in the following photo.
The peppers are then rolled in flower.
Once coated, the peppers are dipped in an egg mixture described at the end. 
They are then fried in hot oil until golden brown.
Mom made 6 of them.
This is what it looked like on the plate with rice.
They were really really good. We each had two for dinner. Mom had one the next day for lunch and I froze my leftover one and took in my lunch to see how good they were after freezing and then re-heating in the microwave. It was still really good.
The next photo is a completed eagle.
I think I’ll just stick to cutting up logs for firewood. That is more my skill level.
