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.

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.

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.

11-08-10

Hi all,

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

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.

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.

At bed time she has to wear these eye guards.

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.

10-29-10

 

It’s been raining hard since last night and looks like it’s going to last a while.

I went up to I.C. on Tuesday although for a while I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make it or not. It was about 9:30 and as I was putting the last small bag of groceries into the jeep. I bent down to pick up the bag and tweaked my back. The pain buckled my knees and I was just able to get into the house to sit down.

Dave was supposed to meet me at I.C. so I tried to phone him to let him know what had happened but his phone was off so I left a message.

I took some pain pills and did some stretches, then I walked back and forth in the house for a while to try and loosen up my back. After a while the pain lessened a little and I decided that I had to go up there because the refrigerator was standing up in the back of the jeep so the top was off and there was rain in the forecast.

I left Santa Rosa around 11:00.

As I was going down the road to the camp and just past the first gate I came upon Dave driving up the road. He had been at the camp for a couple of hours and was on his way up the hill so he could check his cell phone for messages.

At the camp we unloaded the frig and the rest of the parts and stuff that I brought up.

We put the refrigerator where I had been keeping my little propane powered cooler, at the end of the counter. It was totally in the way but we left it there for the day.

The next thing we did was to install a couple of valves

and run a waterline from the wash stand, through the chase that Patti and I had buried a few years ago, to the wash house, where we put a stub up for the Shower

and then on down the hill to Joanne and Dave’s camp where he connected it to hose bib.

Dave did most of the hard work because of my back but by the end of the day my back was not hurting as bad as it was in the morning.

Wednesday morning we moved the frig over to the side of the room by the table. I still have to build an enclosure for the frig but that will have to wait until next year

We cut down that old funky set of shelves that we had there and moved that over to the food preparation area to put the stove on.

This it a temporary situation as we hope to use a 1930’s style apartment stove that our friend Mike has in Quartzsite if it works and will fit in the spot.

I hung up the clock and the “Tool Shed” sign.

  

It was a fairly productive couple of days.

I got home around 2:30.

Thursday morning I took the jeep into the shop to get the lockers removed. Then I went to the cardiologist for an eco cardiogram. Every thing looks good. No changes from the last one so I’m good to go for another year.

The shop called last night and said that they need the jeep for another day because they didn’t have the right parts.

Okay, that’s it for today.

10-25-10

Wow! Who turned the thermostat to Winter?

It’s been raining pretty hard for the last couple of days but it is supposed to be partly cloudy today, tomorrow and Wednesday.

Patti had some minor surgery on her foot last Wednesday

and was limping around for a couple of days but is healing very well and she is walking normally now.

I have been staying busy working on stuff for the tool shed and Thanksgiving.

For the last 18 years we have been having our Thanksgiving (“Autumn feast”) at Indian Creek. In the past we all lived in tents for the weekend and had our thanksgiving meal in an 18 X 20 foot Marque tent.

The roof of the Marque was beginning to leak so about 5 years ago I (with a lot of help from everyone who comes up for Thanksgiving) built what we call the “dining hall”

with wood milled from logs that were fallen on the property and donated by Peter the owner.

Every year Joanne has boiled a large pot of potatoes over a camp fire for mashed potatoes.

This year I fixed up an old (smokeless) propane burner I had laying around, to cook the potatoes on.

Last year Kim gave us a three burner stove so I cleaned it up and checked it out and will take that up with me tomorrow for use in the Dining hall.

I checked out the refrigerator and it works. I had to buy a deep cycle battery to run the controls but I wanted to install a 12 volt system up there anyway. I used some pieces of scrap paneling that Bob gave me to replace the door skins.

Oh Yeah! I almost for got! I made a clock out of an old shovel

and a sign for the tool shed.

Another thing that has been going on this week is, I finally have had enough with the lockers in the rear of the jeep. I have decided to get them removed and replaced with new spider gears. The lockers worked ok in the dirt but were a big pain in the butt on the road. Parking lots are the worst. when turning into a parking spot the jeep crow hop’s and clunks and scrubs rubber off the tires. If I put in the clutch when turning into a spot, the whole drive train rattles like it is trying to fall out. The jeep also lurches around tight turns on the highway and even on dirt roads. I finally got tired of all that and will have them replaced on Thursday. I am going up to I.C. tomorrow morning. It is going to be a cold ride because I have to have the top off the jeep so I can stand the refrigerator upright while I transport it and it is supposed to be cold and foggy tomorrow morning. Burrrrrrrr!

Talk to you later

10-07-10 to 10-19-10

10-19-10

Hi,

I am finally back from I.C.

I went up there last Thursday, 10-07 and was supposed to come home on Wednesday, 10-13 but I called Patti and convinced her to come up and join me so we didn’t come home until yesterday Monday 10-16.

On Thursday, after getting settled in, I finished putting the lag-bolts in the front steps. I spent the rest of the day getting the area around the spring cleaned up so we could work on it tomorrow when Bob comes up.

Friday morning around 10:00, I was building a new wash stand with an actual sink, to replace the old wooden plank with a hole in it that we have been using, when Bob’s Subaru came rumbling up the lower drive way.

We visited for a while, then we went up to the spring to see what we had to do the next day. The spring had made it through the winter very well so there wasn’t much digging to do. I had all the tools up there already so we went ahead and dug out the old tap

Old Tap

and put in the upgraded one.

After we got the new tap in, the dam built and clay laid in to form the basin.

We called it a day to let things settle out.

Saturday morning, we went down to the creek to get a load rock for the spring.

After laying the rock in the spring cut

we covered the whole thing with plastic garbage bags

Then covered that with dirt,

Then covered that with forest litter.

That should keep the critters out.

The spring is now running clear and cold.

Later in the day I took Bob up the hill in the jeep and dropped him off so he could walk back down through the woods to camp and check for other springs along the way. He found some water but it was a couple ridges over and not convenient to bring down to the camp.

Late Sunday morning I took Bob back up the hill to look for springs.

While he was gone I did some more work on the wash stand and spent some more time taking care of trim work on the “tool shed”.

Bob didn’t get back to camp until late in the afternoon. He had found a good spring and is very keen on tapping it. Apparently he did a lot of digging in the spring and was very excited about the prospects.

Bob Left around noon on Monday, he wanted to do some kayaking on the Navarro river before going home.

I needed to go to town to get some bananas and some gas for the generator so I left camp around the same time as Bob did.

On the way back to camp, I tried to call Patti on my cell phone but she was not home.

After dinner I drove up to the top gate and called Patti again. This time I got through to her and convinced her to come up and join me. She came up on Wednesday.

Tuesday morning I went down to the creek for more rock. This time it was some old fill rock that was used to fill in the ends of a temporary bridge over the creek when they were logging the place a few years ago. The rock was in a big pile near the road by the creek but very hard to shovel. I wanted the rock because I noticed after I set the wash stand in place that the pad for the stand was too small and would have to be enlarged. Also I wanted some rock to put in front of the tool shed steps.

I dug out old rock and dirt

then split a redwood log to make the sides for the pad and bolted a small log across the end.

Then I filled the area in with new rock. It took two loads of rock to fill the pad area, a little rock spread in front of the wash area and some in front of the steps. I still need two more loads to to finish the job.

On Wednesday morning I erected a temporary awning over the porch.

Patti showed up around 12:00. It was good to see her.

For the next couple of days we worked on trim and mouse proofing.

Joanne and Dave came up on Saturday to do some work on their spot.

So, it looks like all the trimming and mouse proofing is done. The last thing I did was to build a “ Food preparation tool storage area”

Connie and Bruce gave us an RV AC/propane refrigerator (thank you very much Connie and Bruce). It worked once but doesn’t now so my next task is to try to get the fridge working. If I can get it to work on propane it will be great!

Okay, well, we are home now. I’m not sure when I will be going back up to the camp. It is supposed to start raining later in the week and I need to get firewood cut and covered before the rains start in earnest so it can’t be long.