Monday, 31st (Memorial Day)

Tired after the hike? I don't know where Monkey gets all his energy. [whisper, whisper]

He says his secret is the proper trail mix made of lots of peanut-M&Ms, raisins, C(z)heck mix, Brazil nuts, and liverwurst chips.

[whisper, whisper] And for lunch he swears by his backpacker's special: a peanut butter and banana sandwich in a pita pocket with lemon meringue pie for dessert.

Well, that explains why he has my carrying an ice-chest on our hike. I hope there's pie for me to.

[whisper, whisper] What do you mean, if I wanted some I should have remembered to pack some?!

Tuesday, 1st June

Opice is quite the contrarian. He rejects the cliché "Monkey see, monkey do."

Here he demonstrates his twist on the slogan. Monkey sees "don't," and does.

I'm not sure that make's him a trend-setter. I sure hope not in this case. Our national parks deserve a gentle touch--minimal impact. Fortunately Opice is a plush fellow, so his presence is light and soft most of the time. Of course there was that one, embarrassing incident at Hawai'i Volcanoes Natl. Park. But I've sworn never to tell the secret of what went into the lava.

Wednesday, 2nd

Opice loves ladders. He's a natural. Lickety-split he scales the rungs and enters the cave dwelling used by the Anasazi long ago.

After a quick look around he discovers... pretty much not much. No kitchen, no bedroom, no entertainment center, no toilette!

Oh, please please please please PLEASE let's not have another lava flow incident.

Thursday, 3rd
Frijoles Canyon Pueblo Ruin

"They should have taken better care of it," Monkey says. "Didn't they have condo covenants or nothin'?"

Then he gets a devilish smirk on his face, that all-too-familiar glint in his eye. "Doesn't 'frijole' mean bean? And don't beans give people, you know, flammable gas? Maybe all the gas, all at once, accidentally got flamed and kaBOOM! Instant ruins!"

Who were the Bandelierians and why did they live here?

People began living in this area as many as 12,000 years ago. Archeologists are divided into two camps of thought as to why. Some researchers believe these ancient residents wanted to live here, while others think that's a dumb excuse.

Whichever's true, the proto-Puebloans made this one of the places to live between 1325 and 1575 AD. That was during the height of the "Rio Grande Classic Period" when Bandelier had one of the best dwellings around. Which again proves that old axiom, "Location! Location! Location!"

Saturday, 5th

Monkey goes for it. He loves the look and feel of breakable objects, especially antiques and antiquities. His house contains nothing older than he is because he can break anything unbreakable, let alone everything fragile.

He also beta-tests software. Would you believe he can crash Windows--even when he doesn't want to?