Big Springs

Went for a long bike ride today, up the old Bunyon logging road to the Goat Mountain area. I got to a place that was on my map that said Big Springs. I've never really explored that side of Hiway 44, so I had never been there before. The ride was an easy one with no challenging hills or trails on it, and it was a beautiful day, nice and warm and sunny... just the way I like it.

Tomorrow I have a little repair job to do on my Toyota. The rear u-joint is worn out and it rumbles when I'm up to highway speeds. I found that out yesterday on my way back from Fortuna. I had my fingers crossed that it wouldn't get worse, and it didn't. That part has over 230,000 miles on it so it lasted a long time. I'm changing the front one too as long as I'm at it.

Crabs and Clams

So my daughter and her husband took me out with them to get some clams and crabs. It was a minus low tide this morning so some good areas were exposed in the Humboldt Bay near Fields Landing. I slept in a little and didn't go with my son in law and his friend when they left early since I had neglected to bring my fishing license with me. I didn't have any rubber boots either, which is also a requirement of this expedition, so I stayed on the shoreline and looked at all the exposed shell beds. They were digging for horseneck clams and found quite a few. After that muddy experience we went to another place to throw in the crab pots and they got these 2 nice rock crab.

One of the great things about being near the ocean is being able to do stuff like this but for June 4th, it could have been a little warmer for my blood. I like hot and hot was far removed from the cold wind that was blowing all the time we were out there. It was still a great experience and something new for me. Needless to say, we are eating clams for dinner tonight... Yummy!!

June!

First of June and I decided that I haven't been up to Goumaz yet so that would be a good place to go on the first day of the month. Of course, that was yesterday and today I'm heading over to Fortuna to visit my kiddies. My trips this year might be fewer due to the outrageous price for gas. That's a subject that it's best not to get into here, so back to Goumaz. It was a pretty nice day, not too warm, not cold... almost just right. I ran into quite a few people along the trail, mostly bike riders. If I hadn't seen anyone I would have been really surprised.

There was a fair amount of water going down the Susan River and it was white water in the steeper places. I'm not sure if they are letting water out of McCoy or if it's just runoff.

The last picture posted here is of the only blooming onions I will eat. I didn't eat any of them but they sure gave the edge of the trail a nice colorful fringe.

Up in the woods again...

I had been planning on going up to the Wemple Cabin area to ride my bike and look for mushrooms for the last several days but the weather has been less than ideal for bike riding until now. I parked my truck up by Wemple Cabin, rode down to Antelope Lake and back up the Boulder Creek road. It was a fairly nice day and I stopped often and looked for the illusive mushrooms but didn't find any.
I did find some really pretty snow plants though and I took this picture of one of them.

Yep, bike riding again!

There was a strange light in the sky this morning and it turned out to be something I haven't seen much of for the last week... sun. I got an early start and did a short (18 mile) bike ride up to Devil's Corral and back down through the Susanville Ranch Park. The recent rain has kept everything nice and lush and the flowers are still blooming like mad. It's nice to see splashes of color as you ride along and today they were everywhere. It turned cloudy after lunch and almost total overcast by 3:00. I was back from my ride by then so it didn't matter. Tomorrow more bike riding, this time up in the woods for the day.... Yep Pete, same 'ol, same 'ol.

Ahhh... Computers!

Personally I can't see my life these days without a computer or broadband Internet service. The technology side of my life really doesn't conflict with my love of the outdoors but I would have truly liked to be out in the woods riding my bike today.

I started out this morning on the phone helping my daughter with an adware program she had somehow gotten on her desktop computer. It was fairly easy to clean and that was a good start to the day.

I ended up over at my friend Tom's house to see if I could help him solve a little computer problem he had. One thing kinda led to another and before I knew it I had been to Linda's house as well as Elaine's to check out their computer issues too. I had my bike loaded in the back of my truck but I never had a chance to get on it... oh well. It wasn't a very nice day anyway, mostly overcast and not very warm... mid 50's.

The end result of all the computer shit today was somewhat positive, Linda's computer is good, Elaine's issues were more questions, and good old Tom... he always gives me a run for my money. It never fails to amaze me of the problems that happen to Tom. At the present time I'm not sure of the outcome of the last set of instructions I sent Tom to try to fix his problem. I'll be hearing from him soon, I'm sure. I just love computers! (I really do, you know)

Mushrooms

Well, with the rainy cold weather I figured why not go up and look for mushrooms. It appears that there were some good mushrooms last week, or the week before, as I found where someone had been picking them but the ones I found there were too old. My guess is that there might be some new ones coming up within the next few days so maybe day after tomorrow I'll go back up and look again.

I checked the burned areas around Antelope Lake today and there must be some sort of biking event going on up there. I saw lots of bikers riding by in their spandex and cute little helmets but none of them seemed to be wearing rain gear which should have been the uniform of the day since it was raining on and off the whole time I was there... go figure. I guess it's more important to look the part than it is to stay warm and dry. I'll take the warm and dry instead.