Thursday, July 10, 2008

The Gola Hike






10 Luglio
We took a day of vacation and went up into the Sibillina mountains to take a really nice stroll through a canyon cut by a stream over many millions of years. It has cut formations similar to the pictures I have seen of slot canyons. I had purchased waterproof hiking shoes just for this hike, and others like it, in our mountains an hour away. Bacco had a ball greeting all the hikers as we went along, as well as taking baths and drinking his fill every 200 meters or so. Be sure to check out Raffaele's blog post for today at the Nascondigliodibacco.blogspot.com link. We hiked, by my estimate about 10 miles and I had to try to enter one of the slot canyons to try out my shoes. I got well into the canyon climbing up on driftwood and finding handholds on the walls. Unfortunately, behind me, Bacco tried to follow me and more unfortunate still, Raffaele was not quick on the draw with his camera to show Bacco jumping up the stream and slipping back each time.
We then hiked up to a little church on a promontory which is being rebuilt ala St Francis, stone by stone by a single priest who 1st came up with the idea 38 years ago and has been plugging away ever since. I will have to post other pictures as I took a total of 90 today. (If these pix are not up to snuff it is because i had very sad news from this week-my Canon broke- and I will probably be without my baby for months as I would guess it will have to go back to the factory. To add insult to injury, I jumped into the pool with my motorola razor in my pocket and it was particulary incazzato afterwards, and now refuses to work. Oh well, I have my health!)
Finally, starving after the hike we tried out a really nice restaurant in the middle of nowhere called Il Tiglio with white glove service (no lie!) and then headed for home.
Tomorrow, I will be guiding a tour of our vineyard with 2 representatives from the company who sold us 1/2 of our grapevines and they are staying with us tonight.
The garden is producing a ton of zucchini, tomatoes, and sunflowers (don't know what to do with them, but I have hung some to dry to see if I can toast the seeds) and our cantaloupe are starting to mature. I harvested 20 lbs of figs yesterday and need to search for recipes. Maybe I will make fig ice cream.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! More pix to come.
dwight

5 comments:

Adrian Reynolds said...

Dwight, you are the king of personal electronics mishaps! I just got 2 new Canon cameras + lenses to replace my old one. One of the camera is for emergencies. I am looking forward to the Le Marche leg of my trip.

Adrian Reynolds said...

oh and I read that our "prestigious" masters course at UNISG is no more after this year. it will now be a masters in gastronomy and tourism and primarily in english, like the food culture masters. they are trying to make it more vocational or are advertising it as such.

Dwight said...

who knows what they are thinking, but i think it might be more useful for the graduates, especially the english part! d

Adrian Reynolds said...

i heard through the grapevine that enrollment was down and unisg not attracting enough interest in gasto sciences master. as fun as the experience was, there was a lot of useless info being taught. for that amount of money, the school should be emphasizing a career in gastronomy and not just the joy of learning

Anonymous said...

The canyon pics remind me a bit of Zion...was just there in May. What I would give for some of those figs. I think the run about a $1 apiece here in KC (when you can get them) I have about 14 quarts of backyard raspberries in my freezer...want to trade?

Mariann Vandenberg