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They do walk among us! 1024 576 Mari Bickmore

They do walk among us!

(If you aren’t interested in hearing about Zion and hiking, please skip down to the third paragraph and start there…I promise you will be amused by the short story afterwards – well I hope you’ll be amused.

But really folks, hiking in Zion National Park is soooo beautiful!  My husband, daughter, her then almost 2-month-old baby, and I went hiking in Zion back in mid February.  Perfect, sunny weather for hiking…high 60s!  I’d be crazy to come here to  hike in the summer as I’d swelter and/or die of heat stroke.  Also, in this winter/spring time there are hardly any people here, so no crowding on the trails.  It’s got some green going on too, as opposed to the dry, tan plants due to summer drought.   We did have some gorgeous hikes though, Emerald Pools being one of them.  I got double points for carrying the baby (in a pack) on the way up!  We did encounter a man on our way down clinging to the side of the mountain whilst his wife was  urging him up.  The hike hadn’t even gotten bad yet.  I’m pretty sure she should have been urging him to go back down.   He surely wasn’t looking too good.  Luckily, the trail was wide enough at that point for us to pass.  This was the second leg of a three-location trip, and, unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to give us two days of hiking.  However, I will return…in the winter, unless we decide to do the narrows and for me to get wet it’s got to be hot.  In any event, this park is magnificent.  Here are a couple of videos I found for Angel’s Landing…so now I don’t know if I will go or not.   Just Look at This.  (If you aren’t interested in hearing more about the area, please skip down past the next paragraph…I promise you will be amused by the three short stories afterwards.)

I will have to say that the little town  of Springdale, which is directly adjacent to the entrance of Zion isn’t completely open in the winter.  The first night we were there we left for dinner at 7:00 and the place was just closed.  We ended up at Blondie’s Diner, which is a retro-feeling diner in an old house and was just steps from where we were staying.  All I can say is don’t get the fish and chips.  Maybe that was just an error on my part.  There are several businesses that are only open in season, so that’s a bummer.  However, we did eat at two really good places.  Oscar’s Cafe (Mexican) for lunch was great and King’s Landing for dinner was outstanding.  The stickie toffee at King’s Landing was divine!

So here’s the oddball story.  On a post I read on Facebook recently, there was a  9/11 Truther spouting some fun things.  Believe or not, I didn’t realize that those planes were holograms!  Wow!  That technology must be better than I thought to fool people who were right there on the ground watching!  I did mention that to him.  I also asked him about the people on the third plane who were calling their families.  Did you know that those calls were preprogrammed?  Wow again!   That was way back in 2001.   Start talking to total strangers!  You never know what great stories you might end up with.

They Walk Among Us!

Enough is Enough…Muslims need their own designated place to live…and not with Western Society 270 187 Mari Bickmore

Enough is Enough…Muslims need their own designated place to live…and not with Western Society

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MODERATE ISLAMpeaceful religion

Hey, I usually never, ever post a politically-centric only article.  I am happy traveling and eating well, and will post something lovely to eat tomorrow, but for today I can’t help myself.  These Muslims are a plague and a pestilence wherever they become more than 5% (well any percent, but that tips their scales).  Every single day, somewhere in the world, an atrocity is committed in the name of Islam or by countries or people practicing Sharia.  Every. Single. Day.  Stoning, honor killings, chopping off hands, horrid treatment of women, rapes, pillages, forced conversions, beheadings, jizya…The list goes on and on.  You want to tell me that that is a small percentage of Muslims, 10-15%.  What percentage of Germans caused the Holocaust?  The activists?  10-15%.  With any historical war or evil movement, what percentage were the activists?  10-15%.  The biggest issue is the one that most people don’t want to see.  All Muslims believe that they are superior and that they should rule over everyone else.  That every person should have to live under Sharia.  All of them.  They are not the bomb-strapping, beheading, in-your-face killers.  They are just waiting for the others to do the wet work.  Part of those, however, are the complainers.  The ones who are offended.  They ones who are trying to change our laws, our cultures, the very fabric of our society, slowly, like a cancer.  Our governments, our liberals, our media are letting it happen.

say no to islam

Look at Sweden.  About 40 years ago their government voted to change their homogenous society to a multiculture society.  Once Sweden had almost no crime, and now they are number TWO in the world in rapes.

http://www.d-intl.com/2013/10/15/sweden-a-new-hell-for-women/?lang=en

Who do you suppose is committing the majority of those rapes?  But their news agencies and reporting bureaus are not allowed to report those numbers.  I suppose we should let that go and apologize because the women of Sweden aren’t covered head to toe in a black tent, otherwise the Muslim men can’t control themselves any better than animals.  (apologies go out to the animals).  Why are people not rising up in all our Western countries to protest?  Because we are lazy for one, but we are PC’ed to death or afraid we’ll be prosecuted for some “hate” crime.  I maintain that the term “Islamaphobe” is stupid.  A phobia is an irrational or unfounded fear of something.  There is nothing irrational or unfounded about it.  I read a new word lately that I like:  Islamapologist = our news and government would fall under that.

Over the weekend there were two shootings in Copenhagen committed by a Muslim, targeting an artist and at a Jewish synagogue.   Luckily, he was shot by police, after injuring three of them.  We must not let ourselves lose our freedom of speech and expression due to fear of harm or fear of “offending” them.   What is more offensive, a cartoon or a beheading (or any of the atrocities listed above?).  Jews are leaving France in record numbers (over 6000 in 2014 alone) due to fear from harm by Muslims.  They are being spit on, ridiculed and attacked by Muslims. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/08/exodus-why-europes-jews-are-fleeing-once-again-261854.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/jewish-graves-france-desecrated-nazi-slogans-swastikas-n306931

jewish gravesNBC reports that male teenagers were arrested for this, one having confessed, but did not report the names, thereby not reporting that it was Muslms.

“300 tombs were desecrated in the Jewish cemetery in the eastern town of Sarre-Union on Sunday. President Francois Hollande labelled the incident “odious and barbaric,” and Prime Minister Manuel Valls said via his Twitter feed that the “vile, anti-Semitic act” was “an insult to memory.”

CNN:  CNN states here that there is a growing anti-Semitism in Europe.  They are sooo PC that they cannot even say where is is coming from….THE MUSLIMS!  They won’t even utter that when they WONDER who did this to the graves.  Isn’t it more than obvious to everyone who can reason?  But, then again, CNN doesn’t reason very well.  CNN is non-news, in my opinion, so I even surprised that they reported this at all.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2015/02/16/newday-bittermann-jewish-graves-desecrated-france.cnn

Xylitol: A Messy, Failed Experiment 179 282 Mari Bickmore

Xylitol: A Messy, Failed Experiment

With the latest reports on how truly bad sugar is for you, and knowing that high fructose corn syrup is even worse, I was on the search for an alternative sweetener that I can cook with and use for a beverage xulitolsweetener.  Something with a low glycemic index and is natural.  I did some light research and went to my Natural Grocer and bought Xylitol (which was touted as natural) and some coconut palm sugar.  I started with the Xylitol.  You can read what xylitol.org says about it…sounds great!

Yesterday I had some lemon left over from a salad dressing I was making, just enough to make about half a glass of lemonade.  Light bulb!  I will try my Xylitol in the lemonade.  Success!  At least I thought.  I truly just had maybe a 1/4 cup of it.  Tasted good, although a bit difficult to dissolve.  Very shortly afterwards I started to have a rumbly tummy.  I remembered reading on the back of the package that diarrhea was a side effect of the product, but thought that it couldn’t happen that soon.  Soon afterwards I had two fairly severe episodes of diarrhea, but still didn’t want to believe that was what caused it.

Move over to today.  I wanted to try the lemonade again to see if the Xylitol worked on a 1:1 measure with sugar. So I made a half gallon pitcher of it.   FYI, it does work that way. The lemonade was good.  I thought it was a miracle, but that didn’t last long.  Shortly after I drank a bit of it the rumbles started again, and then …well you know what happened next.  I don’t think it is a healthy cleanse.  So I got back on my laptop, laying on the couch feeling a bit yucky, and dug a little deeper.  What I found wasn’t very nice. I will continue to try out new options for sweeteners, but will do a little deeper research beforehand.  I am sure everyone will not have the same issues that I did, but buh-bye to this one for me.  Here are a few of the links that I found for xylitol….and you can thank me for being the human guinea pig later.

Scariest:  http://www.naturalnews.com/022986.html

Casual blog, but quotes an organic chemist saying: “Xylitol will rip up your insides, namely the digestive tract.”  http://www.crunchybe…ling-it-natural

This one says it’s processed with heavy metals (a powdered nickel-aluminum alloy):  ttp://www.thehealth…acked-up-to-be/