Hey, Bill. Burros will keep me on the trail well into my old age. I haven't started using them yet, but they offer me a great assurance of continued mobility for those later years. There are burros just about every where here. We see them every day climbing up and down the mountain past our house, and we hear them day and night in the village below us. They are wonderful, sweet natured animals, and many of the elderly here could not get around without them. I see the animals packing sacks of corn, firewood, big metal milk cans sloshing along tied across their backs, and of course bearing their human passengers with sandaled feet swinging to the little fellow's rhythmic walk. My dad placed burros with his high strung Tennessee Walkers as a calming effect. It worked well.

I grew up with cast iron in the kitchen and I still use it today. Nothing beats cornbread cooked in a cast iron skillet. As you probably know, the secret is to first get the empty, but greased skillet hot enough in the oven to make a golden dark brown crust form when the batter hits the smoking hot skillet. There's an art to it, for sure. I have friends from New York that now can make good old Southern Style cornbread like a pro. She carried a big cast iron skillet from New Orleans back home to NYC in her carry on luggage, plus ten pounds of course grist mill ground yellow corn meal. When I start using a burro to pack my gear for me, I'm adding a cast iron skillet to the rig. Brum