04-16-11

On Thursday we went back to the deep shaft to try the camera again.

Roy redesigned the setup with some different lights and a rack from a convection oven as a base. It kind of looks like a flying saucer.

We slowly lowered the system into the hole until it settled on the bottom of the shaft.

When we retrieved it

we connected the camera to my mini laptop.

The video was to dark to see anything so we added two multi led head lamps to the rig and sent it down the hole again. This time we didn’t try the laptop because the sunlight was so bright that it was hard to see the screen. After we got home Roy hooked the camera to his TV and watched the video, it was dark all the way down until almost the bottom where the lights finally found something to illuminate. Roy is going to try again on Tuesday.

While we were playing with the camera Becky noticed a bird nest on one of the beams in the shaft.

 

The wind was blowing hard and was pretty cold so we left the shaft to find someplace out of the wind to have lunch. As usual that turned out to be a wash.

After lunch we drove around for a while, over the low hills, through some deep gullies and up a couple of narrow washes.

Along the way we stopped to check out a tunnel that we had passed several times in the trips out to this area. The tunnel was a little disappointing as it only went about 100 feet into the hill.

On the home front we got some more pictures of the birds that come to visit the pond

and the flowers.

Well, our Arizona adventure is almost at an end. It has been another great winter down here. We had a lot of fun and will miss all our friends until we see them again next season.  We will leave here  tomorrow (Sunday) for California. It will take us about two and a half days to get home.

My youngest daughter is undergoing major surgery on the 21rd and we want to be there for her.

We have to get a new roof put on the Motor-home in May.

In June we will be going to Redmond Oregon for our granddaughter’s graduation from high school.

We aren’t sure what we will be doing after that. Whether we will be doing a lot of traveling or not depends on the price of fuel.

There is plenty for me to do at home this summer.

I have to rebuild the front end on my van “Pigpen” and I still have a bunch of work to do on the cabin at Indian Creek. I am looking forward to getting back in the redwoods.

It will all be on the blog so check back from time to time.