Tuesday, April 12, 2011

04-12-11

On Saturday I was replacing the starter solenoid on the RV and when I opened the engine compartment I noticed a Dove sitting on a nest next to the engine.

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We are leaving for home on Sunday the 17th. Now we have a problem. How do we move the nest without having the dove abandon it? We have had several suggestions and will try to do it as gently as possible but if we fail we will have at least tried.

The doves have been having trouble getting to the water in the pond because of the height of the sides. We put a large rock in the pond to form an island so they can get closer to the water.

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Well, the doves aren’t smart enough to figure it out so I put a piece of Ironwood in the pond to form a bridge to the Island.

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So far I have seen only two doves using the bridge.

Roy’s Key-fob camera arrived on Saturday. He built a rig to mount it and we went out to find the deep, deep shaft on the north side of the Plomosa mountains to try it out.

This time Debby and Mike were with us.

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It took us a long time to find the correct shaft. Along the way we Checked out some tunnels but they didn’t go in vary far.

This one was to small to easily enter and only went in about 10 feet.

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The next one was tall enough to stand up in but again only went into the hill about 30 feet.

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This one was full of water the last time we saw it so we couldn’t check it out.

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We were disappointed this time because the tunnel only went about 15 feet into the hill.

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We stopped at a deep vertical shaft but it was shaped like a funnel and was too wide and dangerous to try lowering the camera into it.

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As we traveled along we found another really interesting lizard.

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The lizard is called a “Great Basin Collard Lizard”.

We stopped in a wash for lunch. There wasn’t much shade but the sky was a little overcast so it didn’t matter much.

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A couple of miles further down the trail we finally came to the shaft we were looking for.

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We spent a lot of time setting up to lower the Key-fob camera into the hole.

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Here is the setup.

The camera on top,

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With a five LED clip-on head light underneath

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The camera rig is tied to a 500 foot long line and lowered into the shaft.

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We spent about an hour messing with this setup

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but the lights were not bright enough to get any video of the hole. We will try again at some other time. However, we did find out that the hole is about 250 feet deep.

We did however find some neat stuff around the hole. Here is a rodent scull

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Debby found a small piece of rock that she thinks has some gold in it.

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Who knows?

We continued to travel north and came upon some more old mines. This thing looks like some kind of a rock crusher.

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We got back to the parking spot around 3:30 and loaded up the ATV to go home.

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We stopped at the Gurbstake for dinner and at the restaurant ran into  Iron Jaw and his wife, Blue Eyes, some old buckskinner friends of ours.

This morning I was sitting in the backyard

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enjoying the sun and got some pictures of this Humming bird.

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