Do you like snow?

Well, I do.  I really don’t mind snow as long as I don’t need to go anywhere and it melts off in a reasonable amount of time.  The last 2 days have been steady rain and I was afraid of the flooding potential that brings.  The lake out in the meadow has grown quite large and now most of the huge meadow is under water.  Since the colder air moved in it has all turned to snow and it is piling up quickly with the huge flakes coming down.  I measured 5½ inches when I shoveled it off the deck a little while ago and now there is another 2-3 inches and there are some huge flakes.

You can see one of them in that picture on the top left side.  Yesterday I was out in a pouring rain trying to unplug the culvert going under our driveway.  It had gotten clogged and the overflow had started running down the driveway into our garden area and then into our first pond.  You can see what it looks like today, a major change.  Heavy wet snow like this causes power outages and so far the power has only gone out for a couple of minutes once but we have the generator handy if we need it.  Ya just gotta love living in the mountains!

Back home from the desert

We got back from Saline Valley yesterday after a very nice trip.  We went down to Taft first and stayed a couple of days with Judy and had a great visit and got to see a whole other life.  Taft is in the oil fields and Judy’s sons work there.  We saw all 3 of them and all of their respective offspring.  After our quiet lives up in Greenville sometimes it seemed like a mad house when they were all together but it was a controlled mad house anyway.  The weather down there was very nice and I wore a T-shirt most of the time.  Ya gotta love that this time of year.

After leaving Taft on Monday we drove over the Tehachapi’s into Mohave for breakfast.  I had never been over Highway 58 which was the route we took so it was all new to me.  I was very impressed by all the windmills over on the desert side.  We didn’t get any pictures of them but there were so many you couldn’t count them all.  They must be able to generate quite a bit of electricity there due to the strong winds.

Next it was up to 395 and Olancha  for the last gas stop before getting

on the dirt road to Saline.  The Saline Valley road had it’s usual road closed sign up but we didn’t find any real bad spots.  I was surprised to find that my new Windows phone had good enough cell service at our campsite for me to download web pages and send email.  I could have made some phone calls but I didn’t.  I was able to check on the weather though and I decided to come home a day early on Thursday instead of staying till Friday like I had planned because of the bad weather coming in.  Turned out that it was the right decision since it started snowing this morning and hasn’t stopped since and we have about 3-4 inches already and more coming.  The roads were clear yesterday and they sure aren’t now.  Nice to be home warm and safe!

Walking

We actually got out and went for a walk today and it was pretty nice.  I took this picture from across the meadow of our house.  My new camera has a 12X zoom on it so it brings things up pretty close as you can see.  Notice that you don’t see any neighbors close by… just the way we like it.

On another note I have a Google Voice account that I haven’t used much since I didn’t have much use for it until today.  We have a home phone here but it’s for incoming calls only so I got to thinking that I might be able to make Google Voice work as a way to call out on this home phone.  I tried it out and it works like a champ.  Our cell phones don’t work very well from home since the cell tower is just over the hill from us and we can only make calls from a few spots in our house.  This new ability helps a lot since we have cordless phones so now we should be able to call out from anywhere in the house.

Speaking of phones, I finally broke down and bought a new phone.  I wanted a smart phone so I ended up getting a Windows  phone, a Samsung Focus.  The phone itself cost me 1 cent… yep, hard to believe, huh?  I can’t believe they would actually even charge me for the one penny but they did.  AT&T doesn’t have any unlimited data plans any more so I had to get the 2 gig plan and the total for phone and data with messaging  comes to $70/month.  I would just dump AT&T altogether but there are too many people I know in that network and I can call them for free.  Anyway, a step up in technology for me.  Ya gotta love that!

Winter wonderland?

Well, we got our first substantial snow of the season last night.  Since the elevation here is around 3500 feet I guess it’s safe to say the snow level must be around 3000’.  I also see by the traffic cams that there was some snow that spilled over into Honey Lake Valley which always gets rain shadowed out.  I used to hate that when I was wanting rain and snow and didn’t have anywhere I needed to go but we don’t have that problem here on the west side of the mountains.  There is more predicted for today and the outside temp right now is 33° so whether it’s snow or rain, we shall see.

It’s funny that as the seasons change we seem to grow tired of the scenery and when it changes so drastically overnight it looks so beautiful.  I’m sure that by March I will be very tired of seeing this beautiful scene when I wake up in the morning but for now it’s still very pretty.

Back from Idaho

We got back from Idaho yesterday, or maybe I should say we got back from Utah.  We only went up to Idaho Falls last Thursday for a funeral and the rest of the time we were in Logan Utah so technically we came back from Utah.

 

Anyway, the first night we stayed in Wells Nevada and woke up to several inches of snow on the ground.  Not what I wanted to see on a driving trip.  The interstate was pretty clear but there was a little slush on a couple of the mountain passes between Wendover and Wells.  It could have been much worse I guess so it was all good.

 

On the way home we stayed in Lovelock Nevada and just before we got there we saw the most beautiful sunset so Karen tried to take a few pictures of it with my new camera and here they are.

		Trip to Utah VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I’m trying a new way to post pictures on this blog so let’s see how it works.

 

So we are back in Greenville just in time for a major winter storm which is supposed to be here by Friday.  Our friend Eric is coming here on Saturday and that seems to be the worst day of the week for traveling.  Wouldn’t you know it!

Back to Idaho

Yep, we are heading back to Idaho for a few days to attend a funeral.  Today we will just drive to Wells to spend the night and tomorrow we will be in Logan Utah where we will be staying with Krista.  The funeral is on Thursday and it’s only a couple of hours drive from Logan so that is a good place for us to stay.

 

This morning the sunrise was beautiful so we were out on the deck taking pictures.  I was trying to edit some of them when Karen took this picture.  You can still see the sunrise in the window.  A little frosty this morning but not as cold as Idaho Falls where it snowed yesterday and it’s still on the ground this morning.  (I looked at the Idaho Falls web cams.)

Middle Fork of the Feather

Karen and I took a ride the other day over to look for places where we could take our friend Eric to go gold panning.  We found a very good place to go but had trouble with the established mining claims there.  I guess we could still do a little panning on one of those claims but we are trying to be street legal here and we prefer to stay off the claims entirely.  We took the short trail down into the confluence of Nelson Creek and the Middle Fork of the Feather River.  It was very beautiful down there and we both took lots of pictures.  Nelson Creek is crystal clear and we found that there are 2 mining claims that meet down there so figuring out where we could go was not all that easy.  We ran into a guy coming up who had been sluicing down there and he said he had found some gold doing that so we must have been in the right place.

Our Neighbors

Yes, I had to take a picture of our neighbors as they were out there in the front of our house.  They are a nice bunch, not making too much noise partying or playing loud music.  They don’t come and borrow things, visit at odd times or otherwise make a nuisance of themselves.  So, you have to love having neighbors like that, don’t you?

Rainy day

A perfect day to burn a big pile or 2 I would say.  It rained pretty much all day today and the big storm is not supposed to be here till tomorrow so we have yet another wet day in store.  It’s all good though since I got both of my piles burned today and had a nice warm fire going in the wood stove.  A great thing about living here is we get the rain.  Over in Susanville it would get rain shadowed out most of the time so the storms just missed us, but here we get it good.  I love the rain and I wasn’t disappointed today… ya gotta love it!

The days of fall

Being out in the woods this time of year is really special.  The colors are striking in the meadows where the aspen trees are growing.  Usually the trees have a reddish tint to them along with the yellow and although we did see some that were like that, there weren’t as many as I had hoped and I failed to photograph the ones we did see. 

Still, the contrast between the green conifers and the bright yellow leaves really makes for a nice effect.

 

I’m using Windows Live Writer to do this blog post and since it’s new to me I’m not sure how it is going to publish and since I didn’t resize this picture it might come out full size if you click on it so beware.

Fall Burning

One of the things I used to love doing in the fall was burning. Maybe it was the latent pyro in me from all my years as a firefighter I guess or the primal effect fire has on people, who knows, but one of the good things about living in Greenville is doing yard work by fire. Yesterday it was drizzling and it was a permissive burn day so outside with a pocket full of matches I go. I got 2 of my piles burned and I have 2 more really big ones so I will wait till it's raining again before I light those. It's great being able to burn the residue instead of having to haul it off somewhere and since we have so many trees here on our property I have lots of needles and branches to dispose of. I'm burning some of the larger branches in the wood stove but being able to do open burning really helps get rid of the rest of it.

Karen's property up on the hill has quite a few piles that she and Ken made before he died so we need to get up there and light those too but that will certainly have to wait for wetter weather. Anyway, ya gotta love it!

Lovely fall weather

Sadly we had to say goodbye to our friends Brad and Ione last Sunday morning. I had such a nice time with them and we seem to have the same interests in the beautiful natural surroundings in this area. It was great getting to know them better and the time went by much too fast which is always an indication of how good a time you are having.

We went up to Crystal Lake on Saturday and took a picture at the cross that somebody carved into a stump. It was another wonderfully clear day and we went up to the lookout to see the view. Brad is a very accomplished photographer and he took hundreds of pictures on his trip here and there were certainly some nice photo opportunities up on Mount Hough.

Today Bill is here and we are going down to Greenville Y to do a little metal detecting in the bedrock for gold and maybe a little panning. We will see how that goes.

Stanger visit

Our friends from Idaho are here visiting and we have been showing them around the area. The first day we went up in the woods to the place we like to find petrified wood. It was rainy and cold but everyone was dressed for it except me. Needless to say it was still nice to be out and of course we found lots of petrified wood and took lots of pictures.

Yesterday I took Brad and Wes up to Antelope Lake to try fishing but the fish weren't cooperating. Still, Brad took lots of pictures and as you can see it was a beautiful day so whether or not the fish were biting didn't really matter. Of course that's what you usually say when the fish aren't biting, isn't it?

Today we are heading up to Crystal Lake for some more sight seeing and photo opportunities and the weather looks pretty good so it should be another glorious day with our friends.

Levitation

Cutting firewood is hard work but when you can float the wood over to the truck it becomes much easier. We went up into Moonlight Valley today to get a load. As you can see there are a lot of cut trees laying on the ground right next to the road but unfortunately most of it is white fir and not a desirable species for firewood. If you look closely though, there are some pieces of douglas fir and also some yellow pine, both of which I will take when I am looking for softwood. Today was a softwood day so we got a pretty good load again. Tomorrow it will be back to oak and a lot closer to home. It took us a little over an hour to drive down from Moonlight Valley and I really don't like traveling that far to get wood. Hey, we live in the woods so I'm getting spoiled... ok? Oh, and levitation is just one of my many wood cutting skills.

Wood cutting

Well, we went out yesterday and got our first load of wood. On this side of the Plumas we can cut oak so we got a full load of it since there is so much up in the moonlight fire area that was killed by the fire. Most of it is buck skinned so it's not black and sooty and some of it still has some bark on it like the stuff I'm cutting here. We ended up with a pretty good load, I'm guessing about ½ a chord or a little more but it was a hot day and we didn't bring enough water so I was pretty dry when we called it quits for the day.

The place we are going is not too far from our house, maybe a 20 minute drive, and it used to be a pretty place before the fire but now the under growth is coming back and it's pretty brushy and there are a lot of burned trees still standing so it's not very picturesque or shady. Moonlight Creek runs right next to the road we are on though and when I went over to it I could see some trout in there and it's a pretty creek in a big burned area. Still, there are lots of dead oaks so we will go back in there again today and get another load.

A married man

Well, when we were in Idaho we decided to go ahead and get married since we had 2 pastor friends there and we never seemed to be able to find the time to do it. We were supposed to be there to get the house ready to put on the market and getting married slowed down the process a little but in the end we got it all done. Our friends gave us a "country" wedding, and we all had a great time in the process. Sonny, on the left in that picture was the gracious host and we had it at his house out in potato country. He was one of our pastors. Eric, on the right side was the other pastor and all 4 of those guys had some part in the ceremony. Brad next to Eric played guitar and had a song for us that the lord led him to play and John, next to Sonny led us in communion. You couldn't ask for a better group of people to give us a wonderful memory that will always be with us.

So now we are back in Greenville, married FINALLY, and thinking about getting ready for winter. We still have 5 chords of wood to get in and other things that need to be done before the cold weather starts. Or maybe I should say colder weather starts.

Early winter

It rained pretty good last night and this morning it looks like a beautiful fall scene. Makes me want to go out and burn some piles like I used to do when I was working for the Forest Service. But it's still August according to the calendar and we still have almost a month left until fall officially arrives. This type of weather makes me also think of fishing at Eagle lake which I'll get to do this year, but when the weather changes so fast like it has done the last few days, you have to wonder. Climate change? You bet. Global warming, I think not. Ice age? Maybe. Still.... ya gotta love it!

Mt. Jura

This afternoon Karen and I drove up to Mt. Jura and much to my surprise, the road went all the way to the top. We can see Mt. Jura across the meadow from our house as you can see in the first picture that was taken from our deck, but I had no idea there was a road all the way to the top. It was a pleasant drive and not very far from home which makes me even more happy I live here now.

In the bottom picture we are on the top looking back toward our house which is on the far side of the meadow. I just love living here and having the opportunity to jump in the Jeep and be out in the woods in a matter of minutes.

Metal Detecting

Well, this morning I decided to break out my metal detector and look around our new digs. Of course I started finding the usual junk, and I mean that literally but pretty soon I found an interesting thing. It was an old axe head. It's pretty rusty and I think it's not too old but old enough to make it an interesting find. So now I'm out ranging around away from the house and I see a fruit on the ground and when I pick it up I see it's a pear. Unknown to both Karen and I, we have a nice pear tree and it has some fruit on it but not too much. So we start looking at the rest of the trees and shrubs and notice the berries and yet another apple tree. The berry bush I finally identified as Black Hawthorn, which is edible and is also used as an herbal treatment for heart conditions. You can make jam and wine out of the berries but they have some large seeds so some straining might be required and I think I'll stick with the berries that are easier to process. If I change my mind though, we certainly have plenty on our property.

So apparently we are coming to the end of a warm stretch of weather so I guess we need to head back to Idaho to finish up the business we still have there. It's nice and warm today but by Sunday we are supposed to be much cooler, to the tune of 30° less than a day or 2 ago. Ya gotta love that good old global warming, I keep hoping we will see some of it soon. Maybe it's in Idaho...

A berry good day

Yesterday we headed down the canyon to the Caribou road to do a little berry picking. The blackberries are coming along nicely but next week they will be even better since we found quite a few that weren't ripe yet. If we were going to be here I would go back down there and get some more for sure but we will be heading back to Idaho Falls by then. Needless to say we picked plenty to make a few pies and next year I want to get enough to make some wine.

Picking blackberries is a prickly affair and I had to wade into the patches to get to the good ones. I didn't see any poison oak but I know it grows down there and I hope I didn't stumble into any as I was picking. I was watching out for it so I don't think I got around any.

After picking and getting pricked we drove back up the Caribou road around Butt Lake and back to Greenville. It was a nice day, not very warm for August but then this year has been colder than normal all summer. Good old global warming... where is it?

Train Ride

We took a train ride from Sacramento up the Feather River Canyon yesterday. I have driven up highway 70 which goes up that same route many times but the train tracks take a slightly different route and since I was free to walk around and didn't have to drive, I could enjoy the view like I never have before. It was a great experience even though the people who organized it should have had a little better idea about how to organize something like that. I could critique it but needless to say overall it was quite a fun thing to do and a nice day to do it.

Willow Lake

Went up to Willow Lake today to show everyone the floating bog. That thing is so cool and it still looks like I remember it. The whole shoreline in this picture is floating bog and walking on it is like walking on a water bed. The last time I went up there was many years ago and it didn't change much over time. We went swimming but there are a fair amount of weeds growing just under the surface which made treading water almost impossible. I was able to back float over them though and that worked out just fine. I was also able to identify 3 species of fish in there, bluegill, trout, and catfish. As bassy as it looks you'd think there might also be some bass in there but I don't know and didn't see any I could clearly identify as bass. It was a nice day, warm and the water felt great. Not to mention that the scenery was hard to beat.

Looking for petrified wood

Well, looking for petrified wood wasn't exactly what we were doing, it was more like picking up petrified wood since there is so much of it out in the place we went to. You have to pick only the best pieces otherwise you end up with full pockets after only a short time. I was looking for stuff I could cut and polish and there was plenty of it. Everyone had pockets full within ½ hour. This place is on the old Milford District where I used to work and I've known about it for many years. I've shown several people where it is but for the most part it is a place known only to me.

I saw this old juniper tree out there and thought it was pretty picturesque so I took this picture. There was a dry front coming through today and it was very windy and not very warm. I'm used to hot and dry this time of year and we had the dry part but it was not hot at all. I could have had it another 20° warmer and still would have been cool as a cucumber. Oh well, ya gotta take what you get with the weather.

Homer Lake

Beautiful Homer Lake! You used to be able to drive within about an eighth of a mile from this gem but the Forest Service in their infinite wisdom have closed it off for anyone who doesn't have 2 good legs and the desire to walk the distance. I didn't mind the walk mind you, but when the road going in here is in such good shape, the idea that they needed to close it just makes me mad due to the lack of thought they put into this decision. Yet another bad choice concerning our so called public lands.

We went swimming up there and I'll tell you, that water was cold. I went in anyway but it almost took my breath away once I got all the way in. The water was nice and clear and not weedy so swimming was easy from where we were.

After we got back to the parking area I had them all pose for me, even the dogs as you can see in this picture. A very nice day and an easy hike even though the road going in there could have been driven if they hadn't closed it off.

Crystal Lake

Today we decided to take Karen's 3 grand kids up to Crystal Lake in the Jeep. It was a little tight for the kids in the back seat but they made it and didn't complain about it. The boys went swimming but it just wasn't warm enough today for me to get any deeper in the water than about knee deep. There were still lots of wild flowers blooming at that elevation so I walked around the shore to get another view of the lake and take a few pictures of them. The last 2 times we were there we saw a bear but not today. We did see some deer along the road and that was good for the boys to see some wildlife. It was a nice day but it certainly could have been warmer for my blood, after all, it is near the end of July and it should be nice and toasty. I guess global warming is to blame, we must be in the area where the new polar icecaps will be forming. I'm not complaining mind you, just poking fun at this so called global warming hoax.

Moved!

Wow... moving day is over and now the unpacking is taking all of our time. We have been making pretty good headway and that's a good thing since tomorrow we go to Reno to pick up 3 of Karen's grandsons for a 3 week stay. We will still be getting the remainder unpacked but those boys are going to want to be doing things and we have lots of stuff planned to do with them. In addition, my grandson Tristan will be coming to stay with us for a while too so having 4 boys here might be a chore, but then you never know, it might be lots of fun too.

We got Dish for TV and we get 120 channels, 90% of which seem to be commercial. Truth be known I will probably only watch 5 or 6 channels anyway so kind of a waste of money. Our internet we get through good old 2 cans and a string phone company (Frontier) and true to their nature they advertise 3 mb connection speeds and then when the installer comes he tells me we can only get 1 mb since we are too far from the switching station. I know I got spoiled when I had cable internet but Frontier was the last resort for us and as soon as somebody comes along with something else I'll be switching.

Ok, I guess that's enough of an update for now. Ya gotta love it... at least I love the view from our deck, don't think I'll ever get tired of that.

From beauty to ugly

We had a great trip to Greenville. Unfortunately we didn't get to the solar cookoff as we had planned but we took everyone up to Crystal Lake instead and since it was such a nice day it turned out to be a wonderful thing to do. While we were there a bear decided to come down to the lake for a drink and Krista got some pictures of him but I was off climbing rocks and didn't get to see him. We had seen this bear a couple of days earlier when we had come up to the lake so I didn't feel like I missed much.

Now we are back in Idaho dealing with moving again and fixing things to get the house ready to sell. The basement has a couple of leaks in the walls and here is one of them. That hole is about 4 feet deep and with that water pipe in the way it was a little hard to dig. I covered the crack with an asphalt sealer and I don't think that will leak again any time soon. Now we have another one to fix but that one is going to be an above ground fix that involves concrete work. We don't have much time since we are leaving with our final big load for Greenville on Saturday or Sunday, depending on the time it takes to fill the truck. So in a few days it will be back on the road again but the end is finally in sight... YEAH!!!

On the road again

Tomorrow we are heading back to Greenville with the 5th wheel and the Jeep. We have lots of stuff in the RV and we are trying to kill 3 birds with one stone here, taking the 5th wheel to California and hauling some more stuff as well as getting the Jeep moved there too. Next time we move it should be almost all the rest of what we need to take but I'm thinking we will need to make one more trip with the utility trailer after that for the yard tools and maybe some of the shop tools. I'll still need to get my truck there too, so that will be the last thing to go I guess.

This trip to California will be more a pleasure trip than the last one. We are going to the Solar Cook off in Taylorsville on Saturday the 10th with Krista and Kayla, and Karen's brother and sister are also going to be there so we will be having a McKenzie family get together. Cody and his girlfriend are also coming and getting married in Reno on Friday the 9th, so that's yet another thing we will be doing on this trip. So, it's on the road again tomorrow and a nice break for Karen and I from all the packing the last 3 weeks. Ya gotta love it!

Moving is such a pain!

Yep, that's the way it is, moving is a royal pain in the you know what. This is what Karen's beautiful living room looks like now that we are using it for a staging area. We will be loading up a bunch of this stuff in the next couple of days to her utility trailer which will open it up a little but still, not only do we need to pack it in a moving device, but we need to unpack it on the other end. Poor Karen is having a hard time with this since she has been living here a long time and she is having to make some hard decisions on what to keep and what to let go. It's really hard when you are on the verge of the end of an era, and that's what it is for Karen. I recently had to struggle with that when I moved out of Susanville after 38 years so I understand the feeling but there is more to it for her, it's also saying goodbye to her old life and the remnants of her life with Ken. I feel very sorry for her. Well, like I said, pain, that's what moving is all about sometimes, huh?

Morning coffee

There is nothing like sitting out on the deck in the morning drinking my coffee and enjoying the view. The first several weeks of June we spent at our new house painting, mowing, and weed eating and trying to evict the local bat population. For the most part we were successful in all of our projects and as it always happens we eventually had to leave to head back to Idaho. Still, I really enjoyed sitting out on the deck in the mornings having my coffee and listening to the birds singing. You really have to enjoy the little things in life since you never know how long you are going to be here. Even though Karen and I worked hard every day we still had time for the little things. Life is good!

Green Acres

Boy, we have been busy beavers around or new house. We spent the first week there working on the kitchen cabinets, re-staining and varnishing so we could start using the shelf space. After that we decided that getting the tractor down from Karen's property on the hill was a priority so we could use the mower on the weeds that were getting very tall. That turned out to be a real 'Green Acres' moment so we had to take pictures of the process.


So all this work is getting us to where we will be able to move in on the 19th of July. Right now we are over at Tracey's for Alisha and Laura's graduations and then we will have another week to work on our house before we head back to Idaho. There is still lot's of stuff to do and getting the bat population relocated will be our next project. We have some bat houses that we are going to put up before we evict them from our attic so they have a place to go. We definitely want to keep those guys around for the bug control. Tomorrow we head back to Greenville and no internet service again so this might be my last blog entry until we get back to Idaho unless we get down to the library. Anyway, things are going great and we are loving this new place!