Frenzy 4

I thought the last frenzy was going to be easy, but I was wrong. I'm thinking this one will be incredibly easy, but you'll have to prove it so. In any case, this is one of the more remarkable visual panoramas I've ever stumbled across. I first visited about 6 years ago, and am delighted to report that it maintains it's jaw-dropping intensity on repeat visits.

One feature of the area is very tight, twisting canyons. A man with the first name Ebenezer, and whose last name is attached to this place, began homesteading land nearby in the late 1800s. He is quoted as saying, when asked about the area: "It's a hell of a place to lose a cow." Mooooo.



Elevation changes are dramatic - rising several thousand feet above nearby canyons and valleys, there are several ridges that offer mind-numbing views, and if you visit in late summer, the skies can be as dramatic as the landscapes.



An elderly Paiute named Indian Dick describes how this place was formed:

Before there were Indians, the Legend People lived in this place. They were many kinds - birds, animals, lizards, and such things - but they had the power to make themselves look like people. For some reason, the Legend People were bad, so Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now, all turned into rocks; some standing in rows, some sitting down, some holding on to others. You can see their faces with paint on them just as they were before they became rocks.



OK, the next three pics are the giveaways.

Hoodoos:



Hoodoos:



And mo Hoodoos:



So, to win: name the area. For the extra flavor squirt: name the year it became officially what it is today.

Frenzy 3 - River Plate vs Boca Juniors

Winner: No one???

How unfortunate that the sleuthing capabilities of the frenzied couldn't come up with an answer - or rather, with THE answer. C Love came closest, sort of, in that she actually recognized the sport being played, and was relatively close, continent-wise. I'm tempted to award her the snocone, but....no. Knowing Crystal, she will certainly win many cones over the next year, so to recognize her closity on this challenge - Cystal, you get a double shot of flavor squeezins on one of your winning cones.

As to the actual matchup, the video shows snippets from a match between what is probably the fiercest rivalry of any two sports teams on the planet: the Argentine professional soccer teams based in Buenos Aires, River Plate and Boca Juniors. I went, last January, to a "friendly" (if any match between these two could really be called such) in the resort town of Mar del Plata on the Atlantic coast a couple of hours south of Buenos Aires.

The atmosphere is practically indescribable; "electric" understates things to a ridiculous degree. "Dangerous" is another word that really fails to convey the reality of the situation. Many fans have died in fan-on-fan violence in recent years. These people are serious, and too often, deadly serious. One of the Argentines I went with just shook his head sadly when I asked about how fans would react after the match - there is no such thing as congratulations and "well-played" - winners will taunt the losers mercilessly, and the losers often respond with clubs, rocks, knives, or anything else they can get their hands on.

Extraordinary measures are being taken to try and prevent any recurrence of deadly encounters. Before the match, fans are physically segregated, and two separate entrances are used by fans for each side. The stadium is split evenly in half, and fans are routed to one side of the stadium or the other based on which tickets they hold. At the match in Mar del Plata, there were several hundred police mounted on horseback and wearing riot gear separating the crowd and threatening anyone who showed any sign of possibly crossing the line they had drawn.

Everyone is searched before entering the stadium, and they are thorough searches. If I were an Islamo-Fascist of recent lore, I think I'd have to kill a couple of the guards to restore honor to my family. Apparently though, while weapons were definitely not allowed, fireworks and incendiary devices were OK. (More on that in a minute.)

Once the crowd was in the stadium, a process that took over 2 hours, the police, still in riot gear, sat in the aisles at midfield that separated the two crowds, and vigorously responded to any move from either side. They were ready to beat the hell out of anyone who had even the slightest thought of beating the hell out of anyone.

But.....I'm painting a bleak picture.

How about this: everyone, whether possessing any interest in sport or not, should attend at least one soccer match in South America in their lifetime. The River-Boca match was an incredible experience - electric, charged, whatever you call it - the atmosphere was stimulation in its purest form: animalistic in a way of being both the hunter and the hunted. It is a feast of stimulation - hours of non-stop singing and chanting, bouncing up and down in place, every now and then being lifted off your feet by the sheer surge of the crowd, fire, fire everywhere - there wasn't a single minute of the match when something wasn't on fire in the stadium, people waving red flares in the River end, and blue and gold flares for Boca, hand held roman candles erupting with flares barely streaming over head, and all the while still the singing and chanting, the rhythms demanding movement.

It's sensory overload in everything that means - stretching you to the edge of a rending, fraying pleasure, and the closer you get to that edge, the more energy flows from your deepest, survivalist reserves. It's the running of the bulls, it's blasting into space in a rocket, it's your first skydiving freefall - it's being right on the edge of "Holy shit, I could die here" but being so overwhelmed with a shared euphoria, none of it matters. It's living, baby.

Let me know when you're going; I'll meet you there.

Frenzy 3

Not gonna say a whole lot about this particular thing, since I think it will be pretty obvious once you take a look. Just one video collage this week. This will win the cone: tell me the two teams involved in the match depicted. For an extra bonus flavor swirl, tell me which team is better. For even more bonii: tell me the date of the match, the score, and the city in which it was played. If anyone can do that....well, I don't know what I'll do, but you can count on some special treatment.

Frenzy 2: Perito Moreno Glacier

Winner: Rob Buzzardcheater

Perito Moreno is, as you can no doubt tell, a very blue, very big, chunk of ice scrubbing its way down the Andes into the heart of Argentine Patagonia. It is, as are all glaciers, essentially a river of ice. This river, though, unlike may other glaciers around the world, is still growing and advancing, and viewing areas around the site where the glacier meets the rocky shore and melt-water lakes allow one to view house-sized chunks of ice calving (falling) into the lakes. The sound is indescribable - thunderously loud cracks and booms - and the splash impact of the calves hitting the water is spectacular.

The glacier itself s a complex system, with caves, canyons, surface- and below-ground rivers coursing through and around it, and beautiful, enticingly blue crevasses meandering about as lines on an ancient face. Hikes are offered deep into the heart of the glacier, and are worth every second of time you'll spend roaming into the unknown. Here are links to the website, and to more pics:

Perito Moreno Glacier

Perito Moreno PIcs

Turns out Rob Buzzardcheater, much like Ol' Joey last week, also has an interesting history. A couple of decades ago, in the wilds of West Texas and New Mexico, there was a rash of very mysterious cattle mutilations. Ranchers, over the course of a couple of years, found cattle dead on their land, and upon inspection discovered that many of the internal organs of the cows were missing while the carcasses seemed to be wholly intact.

Upon this news becoming public, there ensued a frenzy of speculation, most of it centered on aliens visiting and performing some kind of miraculous surgery to remove cattle organs without piercing the skin of the unlucky victims. UFO enthusiasts flocked to the area, but despite extreme vigilance, the cow "mutilations" continued with nary a sign of alien spaceship cruising for sweetbread treats. Eventually, the saucer watchers moved on to more fruitful pastures, and it was a couple of years before the culprit was finally identified.

Rob, who owns land near Terlingua in the Big Bend area, was camping with his family one night, and partaking freely of whisky, as is his wont, and the god-given right of any man with a wife and two daughters, when late at night he wandered off under a brilliant moon to share some moisture with the local desert plant life. Luckily for Rob, the moon was intensely bright, and so he avoided stumbling over the recently dead cow he discovered in his path at the bottom of a nearby ravine. Being aware of the UFO reports, he checked the sky, and seeing nothing unusual, decided to have a seat, sip a little whisky, and commiserate with his late amigo de vaca.

A couple of hours and a copious amount of sips later, the cow and Rob were getting along famously, but it seemed every now and then the cow might be moving about a bit. Probably just the whisky and the occasional shadows of the low clouds scudding by the moon, but Rob decided to investigate further. He stood, somewhat unsteadily, and bent down to eyeball the nether regions of the cow that seemed to be the epicenter of the strange movements. Suddenly, a tiny, furry, blood- and mucus-covered head erupted from the anus of the cow, took a look at Rob and emitted a high pitched squeal, almost exactly matching the squeal erupting from Rob at that very same moment. The messy head was immediately followed by an elongated body and short legs, and the creature bolted into the night, leaving both the cow and Rob in less than optimum operating condition.

After discarding and burying his pants, Rob made his way back to the campsite, picking up cactus thorns in unfortunate places on his half-nekkid torso, yet excited in the knowledge that he had solved the long-standing Cattle Mutilation Mystery: it wasn't aliens gorging themselves on cow innards, it was cows dying natural deaths and weasels crawling through the biggest opening they could find, eating all the yummy parts, and then exiting the same way they came in, without a trace! "Eureka!" cried Rob, "the weasels are the buzzard cheaters!"

And so it was that Rob became the toast of veterinarian investigators for miles around, and picked up his nickname at the same time. Eureka indeed!

Be sure and tune in next week to learn more about the fascinating folks converging at Snocone Frenzy!

Frenzy 2

Canyons were cool in week one, and they're still cool. These may be the coolest you'll find anywhere. They're blue, they're blue, they move, they shimmer, they glow, they melt, they freeze, they snap, crackle and pop, and they're blue, blue, blue.



Deep, deep, deep....blue womb or icy tomb....matters not, just wanna dive in...



Blue trumps rock.



Pedro digs it.



OK, so what's that advancing toward Pedro? Hint - it's one of the only advancing objects of its kind left in the world, a result of more than 300+ annual days of snow on the peaks from whence it flows. Tell me the name of the object, and where it's located...and some icy goodness is in your future!

Frenzy 1 – Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado, USA

Well, Ol’ Joey the master geographer snatched the snocone for week one. No surprise there, given his family history (more on that in a bit). The rest of y’all are gonna have your work cut out for ya if you wanna get in on the frosty treat action.

As for Black Canyon, it’s one of the newest parks in the USA park system. Although first named a National Monument back in 1933 by Herbert Hoover, the area didn’t become a national park until Bill Clinton signed it into being.

Here’s a link to the official park site, and to a photo site with more lovely pics for your enjoyment:

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon Pics

(Interesting note: a president may name any piece of land in the country a National Monument by issuing a written decree, but it takes an act of Congress to designate a National Park. As such, most of the parks in the federal system have their starts as monuments, with Congress eventually following the president’s lead and designating a given area a park, which carries much stronger protection than do monuments.)

And now, a brief history of the Cockerham geographical legacy, and why you’ll have to be on your toes to beat out Ol’ Joey for the snoprize each week:

Back in the middle ages, round about 1200 or so, Wild William Cockerham was the mayor, anointed by his own decree, of Cockeville, a fair-to-middlin’ sized village nestled in the briar and heather of the netherlands between England and Scotland. Pledging allegiance to kings from both domains, Wild Willie played off each of them all the while keeping the Druids at bay, a juggling act that earned him the admiration and devotion of many of his minions.

Unfortunately for Willie, he had a predilection for food criticism, and fancying himself something of a dandy, would regularly hold court with withering critiques of vittles offered upon his doorstep. Details are murky, but legend has it that one dark winter’s eve Willie erupted with a particularly bellicose and ill-timed bellow of “That tweren’t no chicken!” at which he was summarily ridden out of town on a rail.

Bereft of domain, and chilled in the gloaming of a short winter’s day, Willie set out for Africa. To tell of his many adventures would take more space than we have here; suffice to say he returned to Cockeville a hero many years hence, with tales of unimagined terror and triumph from all corners of the globe, and eventually founded the Cockerham Royal Ambulatory Party, a society devoted to exploration, and a critical element in developing the wayfaring adventurous spirit that would one day lead to an empire on which the sun did not set.

A couple of centuries later, upon the permanent exile of Wild Willie’s descendants to the New World (another tale for which we have regrettably no space to render), his CRAP society was renamed, largely due to the unfortunate acronym with which it was saddled, the Royal Geographic Society, a name it retains to this day.

And so there you have it – a brief, largely unknown history, and a warning to those that would tangle and/or tussle in search of a snocone. Ol’ Joey is a force with which to be reckoned…

Good luck to all!

Frenzy 1

Canyons are cool. These are deep, steep, narrow, dark, mysterious, and ... unexpected. Situated between two significant mountain ranges, you travel across a relatively flat, large valley, and then wham! - sheer walls with drops over 2000 feet are beneath your feet. Other canyons are deeper, wider, larger, but no other canyon combines the steepness, depth, and narrowness of this approximately 6 million year old gash in the earth.



At the bottom of this gorge, called the Narrows, the canyon walls creep together until they are no more than 40 feet across. In the years before the river that carved the passage was dammed upstream, spring melts would drive the river through this gap with the force of 2.75 million horsepower - enough to fling house-sized boulders about like pebbles. This force was critical in carving the canyon, since the walls are composed of Pre-Cambrian rock - some of the hardest rock on the planet.



Fissures in the Pre-Cambrian rock allowed magma to seep up through the walls during a major volcanic epoch that formed the mountain ranges to the south and east of the canyon area. The pink stripes in this wall, known as the Painted Wall, are cooled lava that worked it's way up from the fiery depths deep below the uplifted rock. This cliff is over 2000 feet high from top to bottom - the highest cliff in the state in which it resides.



This pic probably won't help you much in identifying the locale, but wow - the sunset makes the lichen-covered boulders look like they're on fire. Gorgeous.



OK - should be a breeze to identify with the clues and pics above. Enjoy!

How it Works

Aiight, here we go.

Snocone Frenzy! is a geographical wonderland with photos - a wonderland that lets you, the reader, have a look-see at selections from my photo library, acquired over years of travel here and about. And...not only do you get to enjoy the fabulous sites from around the world, but you can win a snocone if you correctly identify the location of the photos in each posting.

But - how, how how does it work, you cry?!?! Easy now....just take yourself a gander at the pics, read the brief descriptions in which you'll find a delicious assortment of tasty clues, and post a comment at the bottom of the page with your conclusion as to the whereabouts of the photos you've enjoyed. If you're the first to post a correct answer....a snocone of your choice is in your future! Schwing!!

With each new posting, I'll announce a winner for the previous post, give more details about the previous location, and post photos of a fabuous new location that will spin your propeller like...umm...a spinny, propeller-like thing. Woohoo!

Disclaimer: Snocone Frenzy is open to anyone, but winners should realize the following:
1. The author is located, occasionally, in Austin, Texas, USA.
2. Snocones may be claimed in Austin, or elsewhere, should the author be in the vicinity of a winner who is not in Austin.
3. The author is under no obligation to travel to a winner's locale to provide a snocone.
4. It is the winners' responsibility to coordinate snocone appropriation, whether it be in Austin or elsewhere.
5. Winners of multiple posting challenges may accrue snocone winnings, and once in excess of a bank of 5 snocones due, the author may, at his sole discretion, arrive at the winner's home with a block of ice, a shaver, and a raft of flavored syrups, whereupon a snocone making frenzy shall ensue.
6. Snocones shall be enjoyed enthusiastically, preferably resulting in a syrupy mess coating and coloring winners' chins. The author may, at his sole discretion, provide a moist towelette for removal of said mess.
7. The author reserves the right to make up more rules as the contest moves along, but always with the intent of increasing YOUR enjoyment.

Thanks for stopping by!