Tuesday, November 30, 2010

11-30-10

Our Thanksgiving feast was a success..

I went up to IC Monday morning. Patti came up on Tuesday. Wednesday evening Joanne and Dave arrived.

J & D

Josie showed up Thursday morning

josie

also arriving on Thursday were Kris and Kim.

kris and kim

And Peter and his oldest son Leon.

kris kim peter leon me

We started cooking around noon

barbies

Joanne Mashed 15 lbs. of potatoes.

taters

Patti making the 2 quarts of gravy.

 patti gravy

We had everything ready by 4:30.

carving

There were two turkey's, two hams, yams, veggies, mashed potatoes , gravy, roles and more pies than we could possibly eat.

food and pies   

Cheers!

cheers

The meal was great and we were all too full and so thankful.

My nephew John and his wife Cindy from Reno came up for the day on Friday.

John and Dave

john and dave

Patti and Cindy.

Patti & Cindy

On Saturday J&D’s son Mat came up with his father-in-law, Ray.

mat ray and dave

Dave and Kris both brought up portable on demand water heaters.

We put one in the bath house

water heater

for the shower.

shower

and tied one to the tree behind the wash stand.

tree heater 

Hot water is GOOD!

The weather was typical for for the end of November. It rained Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday morning there was frost every where and it stayed frozen all day, Thursday morning was clear and the temperature dropped to around 26 degrees and never got over 45. It began to rain around 8:30. PM and continued off and on all day Friday. We had planned to do some trap shooting on Friday  but canceled that because of the rain and cold. Rain and occasional hail  on Saturday. Sunday was clear and very cold. Joanne, Dave, Patti and I, cleaned up, took down the walls of the Dining hall and packed up to go home. We got home around 5:15 Sunday evening.

Monday morning we went to the storage yard and got “Plan B”.
I think we will be ready to leave for Quartzsite in a couple of weeks.

Monday, November 22, 2010

11-22-10

Well its Monday,

The weather has been mixed. The beginning of last week was beautiful but by Friday It was raining and has been raining off and on. Yesterday was COLD! we went to the City league all star football game as Harvey (#49) was playing.

IMG_4604

It was so cold that we left after the first quarter.

I am going to I.C. today and Patti will come up tomorrow.

We will be up there for the autumn feast until next Sunday.

As it turns out, we will have 11 guests for dinner. There will be others coming up during the weekend and we will be shooting clay pigeons on Friday and Saturday if we have enough birds and shells so it should be fun

I’ll take pictures for the next blog.

Until then Have a good holiday.

Monday, November 15, 2010

11-15-10

I’ve been back in town for a couple of days,

Yesterday we drove down to San Francisco to see my daughter Gaby and son-in-law Morgan.

G&M

They recently bought a house on the south east side of the city. The house is very nice and in pretty good shape for one built in the fifties.

the house

If you like CITY views their house has them in spades.

Here is the view from the kitchen.

kitchen view

Looking north they can see across the city and the tops of the towers on the Golden Gate Bridge.

2 towers

If you look to the right a little you can see the Bay Bridge.

Bay Bridge from S.F. to Yerba Buena Island.

bay bridge west

a little further to the right there is Yerba Buena and the east span of the bridge to the East Bay.

bay bridge east

If you look east you see Oakland

oakland

and of course they have a great view of the bay and all the marine traffic.

We had a great visit, Gaby and Morgan took us out to lunch to a place called “The Clam House”. The seafood was excellent. Morgan and I split a dozen raw oysters and they were perfect. I ordered a bucket of steamed clams. I expected to get the small butter clams that are normally served but these were large clams maybe 2 inches across or more and very fresh and good. Patti had the deep fried prawns that were done to perfection. Gaby had Chicken Parmesan and couldn't’t finish it all. Morgan also had the steamed clams.

Last Monday 11-08 I went back up to Indian Creek.

I hadn’t been there more than an hour and was In the process of wiring up the refrigerator when Bob showed up. He came up to do some more work developing the spring he found the last time.

After visiting for a bit we got in the jeep and I took him up the road (the spring is about 400 feet above the camp and just below the road about fifty feet.) and dropped him and some tools off then I drove back to the camp and continued my work there.

Bob came back to camp a few hours later exhausted from his labors.

I didn’t know why he was so tired until he showed me the pictures of what he had been doing.

big dig

Apparently he was following the flow to its source and had to do a lot of digging.

spring head

The next day I took Bob back up the hill with a shovel, a small digging tool and all the parts for a spring tap.

tap

He will leave the tap open for the winter and next year will clean it up and seal it. Then I will have to get about 1,000 feet if black pipe to run the water down to the hill to a 50 gallon plastic storage drum placed fifty feet or more above the camp and tie it into the main system. Then I will move the water line on the spring we are using now from the main system to the “Tool Shed”.

Bob left on Wednesday and about five minutes later Dave showed up. He came up to finish setting up his camp and fix a leak in the water spigot in his camp. I spent my time cutting firewood and doing other small chores.

Dave spent Wednesday night and left in the late afternoon on Thursday.

When I woke up Friday morning the refrigerator was off. The batery voltage had dropped to low. When I hooked up the charger, the battery voltage was around 10 volts. I ran the Generator for about 3 hours to bring the battery voltage back up to 12.6 volts. The battery was connected to the frig for control voltage and I also was running my XM radio off it a few hours a day. I guess I can deal with running the generator for a few hours every five days or so.

I rearranged the "sleeping tool" storage area which gives us a little more room in the tool office area.

new layout

I also put together a small end table to go between the bunks.

end table

Dave was planning to come back up on Saturday. I needed to get the van home so I drove the jeep back to Santa Rosa Friday evening and came back up with Dave on Saturday morning. Dave got his tent all squared away and I put up the walls on the dining hall for Thanksgiving.

I was back in Santa Rosa by Dark.

Okay, that’s all for now.

Monday, November 8, 2010

11-08-10

Hi all,

Well I got the new top on the jeep and it looks good.

new cover

Its Monday and I am heading up to I.C. this morning. I will be there until Friday.  I hope to get the refrigerator working and do some more plumbing on the bath house.

Bob is coming up today also and will stay up there until Wednesday. Dave will be up Tuesday to Wednesday and will be coming back up on Saturday. I will come home Friday and go back up on Saturday with Dave so I can bring the Van home.

Confused yet?

Ok, Talk to you later.

Friday, November 5, 2010

11-05-10

I got the jeep out of the shop Friday and it works great, no more clunks, hops and squeals.

We went to Harvey’s last football game of the season on Sunday. They won the game 56-24. They only won 4 games out of 11 this season. But Harvey did very good and will be on the All-Star team and was awarded MVP for the Phantom’s.

On Tuesday. Patti had her eyelids worked on.

patti's eyes

At bed time she has to wear these eye guards.

the fly

It’s a little like sleeping with “The Fly”.

I think this is the longest amount of time that I have spent in

Santa Rosa this year and I am so ready to head back up to I.C.

I will be going up on Monday morning but I am not sure when I will be coming back to SRO.

It looks like this Thanksgiving we will see the smallest turnout in 19 years. There will only be six of us for dinner. Some of the other folks are coming up during weekend.