winter – Page 3 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Yes!

I won! I won!! Amazing. Those of you who rode along with me in the MoHo on the Coast 101 Quilt Run (my very first such experience), and wished me well, are in for some thank you’s. I won a third prize gift certificate for $50 to spend at will at the sweet little quilt shop in Brookings. I am happy to say that this was one of my favorite stores of the 14 that I visited. I had given up on winning anything except receipts for all the fabric I bought when this little card showed up in the mail yesterday. Needless to say, I am tickled and already imagining and remembering all those gorgeous fabrics and the great ladies I met in the shop last month.

Lucky me, since we are heading back to Brookings on Sunday morning, and I told Mo that we would have to wait until store opening time on Monday before we travel south to California. Once again we are going south, looking for sunshine and warmth. According to the predictions, however, it might be warmer than Rocky Point but probably not much sunnier. A big storm is dampening the west right now, and it spreads far and wide.

Our plans have shifted back and forth several times, with thoughts of traveling far enough south to the Carizzo Plain to see the amazing wildflower show. The image on the right is from the internet (I have no idea who to acknowledge here), but it is one I have seen repeatedly when searching for wildflower blooming times in the California springtime. The Carizzo Plain and the Tremblor Mountains straddle the San Andreas Fault and are a long way from anywhere southeast of Paso Robles and southwest of Bakersfield.

I plugged the plan into Streets and Trips, counted the days, looked at the weather, and looked at the lack of rain and rethought the plan. Wildflowers on the plain are an ephemeral thing, totally dependent on the timing of rainfall, and this year there has been very little. Rumor has it there isn’t much blooming yet. The Carizzo Plain will have to wait for another year. Of course, now that we have ten days to get away, it is raining. Of course.

Gas prices being what they are, and timing being what it is, I decided instead that it might be time to go see Pinnacles National Monument. Merikay was there recently and took some great photos. Mo was there many years ago when she lived near Half Moon Bay, but I have never seen it. Several friends from soil survey have been involved in the soil mapping there as well. I have read papers, and seen the results of research and study, but now I just want to walk and explore and experience what it has to offer.

Being a national monument, we knew that Abby couldn’t go on the trails, so planned for a doggie day care in nearby Gilroy for the two days we plan to stay in the park. The day care seems rather amazing, with no cages, just lots of beds and toys and other friendly dogs in a big doggie park kind of environment.

Last week I wasn’t working, but of course Mo and I had some big projects waiting for a non-working, non-traveling week. We finished the painting project started last year at this time and completed our office, and mud room and back entry halls.

In the early mornings I worked on the baby blanket I am knitting for Mo’s new grand niece born just after her birthday and took one long afternoon to pull out the sewing machine. When Maryruth and I had our girls weekend last fall, we bought fabric and patterns at the quilt shop in Chico, but of course Maryruth doesn’t quilt. I am making this diamond lattice table runner for her. As simple as it looks, it still is a bit of a challenge for me as a newbie, but I am having so much fun with it. It amazes me how all these little puzzle pieces actually turn into something.

This week was a working week for me again, and Mo managed to finish painting her entire big bathroom while I plunked away on the computer. It is Friday!! I shut down NASIS for the last time this evening and won’t look at it again for ten days. Poured myself a glass of wine and took a deep breath. Tomorrow we will brave whatever the weather gods have in store for us over the Highway 140 pass to go to Medford for the day. Our destination: the annual Cheese Festival at the Rogue Creamery and of course an opportunistic Costo Run as well. Gotta stock up for our Sunday exit to sunny…er…rainy California.

Christmas

I am writing this post from the comfy MoHo sofa waiting for the frozen water hose to melt. Of course, we are in California and it dropped to 25 degrees last night. Silly us. We saw rumors of freezing temperatures but kind of ignored them. Couldn’t be THAT bad, right? We are on the road again, but instead of writing about the trip (that will come in the next post), I wanted to write about Christmas. As the years go by, how would I ever remember where we were and what we did if I missed blogging it?!

For the first time I can remember, there was no snow in Rocky Point for Christmas. We had a month of gorgeous sunny clear days, short as they were, and cold temperatures, but not a single day of plowing or shoveling. It made for a good month for me to spend time decorating the house inside and out. Two comments from the day made it all worth while. My youngest said, “Thanks Mom, it finally feels like Christmas to me”. And my oldest said, “Thanks Mom for a true “mom” Christmas”.

The lack of snow made travel easier for everyone, and Deb and my grandson Matthew drove down from Portland on Friday without a hitch. It was wonderful having two nights with them here before Christmas, with time to just hang out together, eat good food, watch a sweet little movie, and have time to talk. Then on Christmas morning the rest of the local family, with Melody and Kevin, grandkids Hillary and Elric, and my sister Sally and my niece Savannah arrived early for our traditional family breakfast of eggs benedict.

The house was warm and festive with family all together laughing and talking and sharing stories. Something that happens all to rarely it seems, so I treasured every single moment of the entire day. After breakfast we opened packages and a highlight for me was the soft sculpture coyote that my granddaughter Hillary made for me. She couldn’t find a pattern so she just designed her own, personally designed and hand sewn. Hillary is an artist who spends much of her time drawing, so somehow she had the ability to picture something two dimensional turning into something three dimensional. Amazing to me, since I am the one that always had trouble with those shapes tests! Vocabulary and reading skills off the charts for me and forget the mechanical stuff! I failed miserably.

Since there was no snow, we settled on another family walk through the Rocky Point neighborhoods, amazed at the 40 degree temperatures and light skies. I hear that winter is coming with a vengeance this week, but lucky us, we missed it! Most of the family left just before dark on Christmas Day, but Deb and Matt waited to leave for Portland until Monday morning, just in time for Mo and I to pack up the baby car and leave Rocky Point behind for two weeks of traveling.

Of course, most of you know to hover over photos to see captions and click to enlarge the picture. For family who want to see the rest of the photos, click here for the web album on Picasa. It seems that these albums are also viewable on Google Plus for plus users as well. I made them visible to anyone interested.

Once all the Christmas hoop-de-do died down, I had some time to read some of the blogs and see all the wonderful Christmas posts from everyone. Beautiful. A belated Christmas to everyone and thanks for being part of my world.

Making a List

Checking it twice. Christmas is almost here and it is time for the final lists: groceries, gifts sent, gifts still in the waiting, cards? yes or no. All the little details that go with this season. After two weeks off while I traveled to Florida, I now have two weeks working full time in order to prepare for our two weeks coming up in Desert Hot Springs. Something about this plan isn’t working that well. It seems as though all my time is spent working or traveling.

Where oh where do I find the time for the baking, the wrapping, the decorating? the Open House? All those special little pieces of the Christmas holiday that make me want to spend it at home in Rocky Point. The snow?? A mixed blessing, of course, with icy roads and shoveling always a part of it, but this year the snow has evaporated and no new snow is on the agenda before Christmas day. Nights are clear and cold and days are brilliantly sunny. It is gorgeous, but surely doesn’t look anything like Rocky Point at Christmas.

We even had the amazing gift of a perfectly clear dark morning to view the total eclipse of the moon. I packed up the camera and the tripod and Mo drove while we searched for some open sky among the trees. The temperature gauge in the truck read a clean 7 degrees F and my fingers had a hard time finding buttons on the camera in the dark. Still, we watched in awe at the heavenly sky treat, punctuated now and then with a shooting star to make it all the more dramatic.

So far, I seem to have at least managed the decorating part of Christmas at home. Mo and I have a lifetime of accumulated Christmas “things”, and as usual her collection is much smaller than mine. We agreed that anything that we couldn’t find a place for this year would get passed on, either to my kids if they want it or to Goodwill if they don’t. Needless to say, there are little treasures that have been tucked into places where we might not think to put any decorations, just because we want to keep the particular item. We are sticking to the rule: If there isn’t a place for it, it goes!

Case in point: all the Disney decorations that Mo had tucked away for at least 25 years. I put them on the little white tree with white lights and we set it in the laundry room next to the cat food. Works just fine with the white appliances and I think that Jeremy likes the lights while he is eating. Lucky for me, we also have porches where things can go. We have managed to eliminate several boxes of “stuff” and when we get back from the desert in January, the packing up of Christmas should be easier than it has in the past. Yeah, I still have my village, but am giving away a bunch more stuff when Christmas is over. I still have a tree inside the house, with my pears and partridges and special ornaments, and Mo still has all her keepsake ornaments from around the world on the green trees on the front porch, protected from weather and lit up at night. It all works.

I will have at least part of my family here for Christmas. Oldest daughter and my grandson are coming south from Portland for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year. Youngest daughter who lives in Klamath will be here with her family. Sister and niece might drive out if the snow continues to wait till January, she has 2 wheel drive and is scared to death of snowy roads. Middle daughter is hauling jet engines around the country with her husband in their big rig and will be here in spirit. Holidays off are not part of their trucking life right now. Son and his wife are tucked away in Missouri and a trip west in the winter won’t be on the agenda any time soon. Grandson and his wife and my great grandkids will be in Texas. Other grandson will be going to his father’s family up in Washington State. I have no idea when or if I will ever again have my entire family in one place at one time. I’m just grateful for the internet, email, and telephones to make keeping in touch with everyone so much easier.

I returned home from Florida just in time to attend the traditional Rocky Point Ladies Luncheon, where many of the men of our community volunteer to cook a special dinner for all the ladies, and some of the ladies volunteer to dress the tables in Christmas finery. It was a lovely day spent connecting with the folks who live out here that we don’t often see. The joke was that we show up now and then between travels to take a nap before we head off to some other destination. The favorite comment we get is, “Where are you two going next?”

In the midst of all this fun, I am finally knitting a sweater for my trucker daughter. I have had the yarn for almost two years now, and this time the promised sweater may get finished by her birthday at the summer solstice. Ah yes, I am NOT a fast knitter, especially with all these other projects in waiting. My quilt is sitting in a bin in the closet waiting for another chance to set up the sewing machine. Cookies and tarts are waiting to be made, and I found an online recipe for my favorite goodie from Starbucks, “Cranberry Bliss Bars” that will find their way into my Christmas pile of sweets and savories to share with the family.

I love Christmas. I plan to keep knitting, keep cooking, play some carols on my piano, and enjoy every single minute that I have with family and friends and sparkly lights in my living room.

The Best Laid Plans and all that

After posting yesterday about our departure plans, I continued to check the internet for road conditions and weather cams. Our original plan included visiting some good friends in Tehachapi, traveling east along Highway 58. After reading about 6 inches of snow accumulation and predicted winds on Sunday of 40 plus miles per hour with gusts to 85! yes that is 85 mph, we thought we should possibly reroute. Next plan, instead of driving over 58 toward Laughlin, we could just stay south on 5, get through LA hooking up to the 210 and the 10 heading east and go straight to Borrego Springs, saving Laughlin for the latter part of the trip and skipping out on our visit to friends. That’s a bit sad since we haven’t seen them since 2007.

So, once again to weatherunderground.com and the web cams and the severe weather reports. What??!! 85 mph gusts at Bakersfield, Frazier Park, and 6 inches of snow possible over the Grapevine on Sunday??? Big Sigh.

Jeremy doesn’t care whether we are traveling or home, just as long as he can be warm and snooze.

So here I am this morning, in my jammies typing away on the computer instead of driving south to Redding as planned. We wrote all our friends along the route saying, nope, not this time. We are packed and mostly loaded, watching the weather. At first we thought we might wait until Monday, but looking a bit more closely led us to deciding on a Sunday departure. Yes, high winds and rain all the way to Sacramento tomorrow, but not 85 mph. We will hole up tomorrow night near Lodi, amble south on 5 toward the Grapevine and hole up again at a truck stop and wait to see what the road is doing on Monday morning. Sooner or later we are going to get to all that hot sun and warm temperatures that everyone is talking about, right?

One of the very best things about retirement and the RV life is the ability to re-route, re-plan, and stay flexible. Today, instead of driving, I am going to cook up a bunch of stuff for our trip that I hadn’t the opportunity to do last week. Today the house will be filled the the smell of pulled pork in the crock pot, some chocolate chip and some peanut butter cookies, a big pot of spaghetti sauce to freeze, and a luscious turkey pot pie with a biscuit topping made from some of our leftover freezer turkey. I won’t have to cook for a week while we are on the road!

It’s snowing and we are leaving tomorrow!!

Today winter returned to Rocky Point with a vengeance. Just a few days ago, while doing our bi-weekly wood haul to the back porch, I noticed stiff little green spikes poking up through the old leaf litter in my flower beds: rows and rows of miniature daffodils along a stone wall, and several large groups of naturalized bigger daffodils under the aspens down by Mo’s handmade water wheel.

Yesterday Mo drove over the mountain to Medford to pick up a nice little greenhouse for us from Harbor Freight. Super sale price for a 10×12 structure made with sturdy aluminum framing and some kind of semi-rigid plexiglass walls. I am sooo tickled about this. Last year we spent most of the summer trying to outsmart the deer and guess what, the deer won! We also live in the mountains, where nights just don’t warm up enough to ripen things much. Even the lavender that I planted at my old house back in Klamath Falls (where my daughter lives now) grew five times as big as what I can grow here.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Isn’t this just the picture of optimism?

This year we will put up the greenhouse in late spring and I will use it as the main garden, safe behind walls that will keep the deer out, and warmer at night so I might actually get some tomatoes and peppers, and yum! some fresh basil, and… and…and… Since we plan to be traveling in Alaska during June and July, I am curious to see just what kind of garden will greet me on my arrival back home August 1st. I will optimistically plant goodies in raised beds filled with rich soil, make sure everything is ventilated well, and Mo will hook up an automatic watering system. We will have someone caretaking the big house and mowing lawns, but I certainly wouldn’t expect them to handle the greenhouse garden. Even if it all goes to seed, or gets too hot, or if the rabbits and voles find their way inside, it will still be a great experiment, and I’ll know better what to do next time.

Ah well, for now the snow is coming down in thick huge heavy flakes, piling up on the trees until the blustery winds dump big solid white cascades of cold wet stuff. Better make sure you aren’t standing under any trees out there right now. Mo brought up the bins for loading up clothes and food and all the other “stuff” we need for our 2 1/2 weeks on the road and I am making lists and checking off items as we load them up. I think I do need to make a “real” list, something permanent somewhere, and then I can just check everything off as we load up, whether it is in the baby car or in the MoHo directly. This time will be the last for awhile that we have to haul things back and forth, because after this trip we are bringing the MoHo home again. Let’s pray that early April doesn’t send another snowstorm like this one. If so, we might have to come up with another plan as we travel toward home on 395.

Tonight we will brush the snow off the hot tub for one more soothing soak before getting a good night’s rest in anticipation of an early morning departure. Tomorrow should be great fun, in spite of the predicted rain. After picking up the MoHo in Redding, 160 miles south, we will continue south on I-5 to Sacramento, where we plan to stop in for a visit with Laurie and Odel at Cal Expo before we settle in for the night a bit farther on down the road toward the desert and sunshine!!