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.

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.

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

Here is the view from the kitchen.

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

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

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

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

If you look east you see 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.