I know that life is either very good or very bad when I don’t have time to write. This time it is very good. Thank goodness. It was the same way when I kept all those handwritten journals so many years. When things were good there are very few entries, when things were bad there are pages and pages of them. If my daughters ever find my journals after my death they would think I lived a horrible life if they didn’t know otherwise. That seems kind of sad to me in a way, but I suppose journaling is a form of self therapy and when things are good who needs therapy!
More than a month has passed since I last wrote in this particular journal, but the one that is now getting filled up is the Google Calendar, with what the weather was doing, where we were, and all those dang dentist and doctor appointments. I guess that is what life can be reduced to sometimes. I love going back to the blog to remember what we were doing, however, it is a lot more fun that looking appointments on a calendar, and I don’t want April to be a giant black hole.
The calendar looks really good today, with reminders of what to do next. “Pack for trip” “Send in last timesheet” and other such exciting little things. I have worked in town all week, so Mo has been taking care of home stuff, including setting up the complex sprinkler system and washing the cars. We finally have spring weather here in Rocky Point and the grass might need some watering while we are off wandering around the desert. Friends are back to house sit, but they don’t have a clue how to work with Mo’s intricate battery timed watering system, so by the time we leave it will be all automated and running and hopefully no hard freeze will mess it all up again. You never know in this part of the world.
Easter was so dang early this year that I barely had time to put up decorations before it was over, so I decided that April was Easter month and the decorations only came down a couple of days ago. Now all is quiet until Halloween and the only yard decorations will be whatever happens to be blooming. We had a simple Easter dinner and egg hunt here in Rocky Point, and then Mo and I spent a lot of time over in Grants Pass taking care of cottage chores. 
I even managed a bit of quilting here and there in between trips and chores and work and appointments.
I think I raked a total of twelve full days to get all those oak leaves up and burned. We tore out the old wall between the kitchen and the bathroom and Mo got a new one framed and drywalled, and it is ready for taping. The roof no longer leaks, the kitchen floor is now dry with no hidden wet surprises appearing, and the little cottage feels nice and cozy. We like staying there, especially this time of year. More than once this past month we left spitting snow and icy roads to drive over to Grants Pass and green grass and blooming spring flowers. Ahhhhh. Spring is one of my favorite times, so it is a kick to have spring extended this way as we drive back and forth between home and the cottage. Daffodils over there have been gone for three weeks and they are just now coming into full bloom here at home.
This last week was our annual progress office review and I delighted in the role as a worker bee rather than the supervisor. No stress! I love that part of working as a retiree part time. I am no longer in charge. Another ahhh.
After a couple of trips to the cottage and a lot of work around home, we are both ready to make use of that great motorhome that is sitting over there waiting for us. This time the decision is to head back down 395, the back side of the Sierras, the eastern slope of California. Our destination: Death Valley. We haven’t been there since 2004, although several times in our travels we have passed by it on both sides. This time we will just explore the valley. Our route home up 395 will bring the MoHo back to Rocky Point and her home berth, ready and waiting for summer camping trips. No more snow to worry about.
On the way south we have a couple of fun stops as we amble toward 395. It is that blog friend thing that I treasure, we will visit old and new blog friends in Placerville and Nevada City. More to come on that after I get photos and permission to post them! Then it is over the mountain and into the desert. Abby will be with us, but this time I decided to let our 17 year old kitty Jeremy spend the time at his cozy little home at the vet’s. I’ll miss him, but desert heat can be daunting, and if we take Abby in the Tracker with air conditioning, it is worrisome to leave Jeremy in the rig, especially if we don’t get a spot with hookups. Our route can have weather running the gamut of freezing nights to days over triple digits.
Furnace Creek now has 21 sites with full hookups, but we can’t reserve any because the season officially ends on May 1, our arrival date, so we are taking our chances. Worst case scenario can be that we will have to return to higher ground and lower temps. Either way, it will be great. We are planning a loose trip with options open to whatever fits and whatever works. Just a trip with some time in the desert! It is one of the reasons Mo and I like where we live. We have ocean coast within a short drive, and desert just the other side of Klamath on the Nevada side. The other delight for me will be heading east from the I-5 over the Sierras and not having to slog our way south through the San Joaquin Valley as we do every winter on our way to Desert Hot Springs. ahhhh.
On another note…reading blogs seems to be slipping away from my list of priorities. Of course there are still a few that really matter to me a lot, and so I wade through the long list to check on those few, how many of you do that as well? There are some writers that make me laugh out loud and I look forward to that. Others who have photos that take my breath away and I am always waiting to see what is next. Others I have come to care about, for whatever reason, and I want to know they are ok, or where they are, or what is happening for them.
I am not going to list them here, or link to them because somehow that just doesn’t seem fair. Each writer spends time and energy putting themselves out here for whatever reason and that should be respected, I think. But as I do this, and read so many blogs of “stuff”, I totally recognize that my blog is also full of “stuff” that is only relevant to me, and trying to write for anyone but myself is a waste of time. Someone is looking at my header on google reader or feedly and cruising right by whatever I have to say. 
Some have the skill to write daily in ways that I don’t want to miss, but whether I have the skill or not, I certainly don’t have the desire. I have no need or desire to put up ads, so what do I need to worry about readership for anyway? It is so easy to get sucked in by the stats, who is reading, where are they from, what do they look at. I HATE that, I hate it that I still look at the stats and that I think, “Gee, I should post something so people keep reading”. Dumb, just dumb! I should post something just because I want to know what I did in April of 2013. We all talk about this now and then, I know. I see little blurbs of people saying they aren’t reading as much, and more blurbs of apologies about why they haven’t written. I catch myself thinking that way as well, that I should say why I haven’t written, but nobody really cares, do they?? If they are friends, they know why I haven’t written, and we have probably been emailing all along. If they aren’t friends, they don’t care why I haven’t written!
Ah well, enough of my little rant here….it is time to pack! Here is a little photo of us back in 2004, the first time we visited Death Valley together, pre-blog of course.
Tag: the cottage
Free House With Purchase
And you believe that? Nothing is really free, of course, even if it seems it might be. We only paid what the acre would have been worth even without the house on it in order to build the MoHo shed, so technically the cottage was free. Until we decided that maybe putting a roof on it might be a good idea since it was leaking. We really didn’t plan to stay in the house at all when we bought it, but somehow it just seems to work out that it is fun, kind of like camping with water and heat, and the funky little cottage has something about it that feels really good. Maybe it is the light. Maybe it is the fact that it was built in 1926, and even though small and funky, there are big strong beautiful fir beams in the ceiling that haven’t warped in nearly 90 years.
But a free house definitely must have some “issues”, and of course we found them. The kitchen wall had some mold in it where the roof had leaked. We replaced the roof and decided it was time to take out the moldy kitchen wall. Uhoh. Mo took a sledge hammer to the wall (aka HGTV style) and what should come pouring out but ants! yup, ants. Bazillions of ants. I think the entire ant population of Grants Pass was living in that wall. Needless to say, a simple job of just starting on the wall turned into a must do project of getting it out of there. In the process, we found that what was a kitchen wall had once been an exterior wall, complete with cedar shingles, even an old window, all covered up by several layers of varying wall types. Needless to say, it was a mess. 
We had spent the previous two days at the cottage burning some huge debris piles left over from the previous shed and roofing projects. Burn days in Grants Pass are rare, and involve calling at 6am to see if it is indeed a burn day. We haven’t had much luck lately so on Friday morning when the phone call gave us a resounding yes, we jumped into the pickup and made it to the cottage in less than 2 hours from waking up. We had two gorgeous burn days in a row before the inversion set in once again and no more burning was allowed. I raked and hauled leaves for two days straight while Mo managed the burn pile. There is a price to pay for those gorgeous huge oaks, and I never had a chance to get it all finished last fall. We don’t actually LIVE here, remember?! We were a bit worn out, and on Sunday morning Mo said, “Let’s just enjoy a nice easy day relaxing here before we head home”. Great idea. But that was before the ant wall was discovered.
Late on Sunday afternoon we celebrated with another great Abby’s pizza before we headed back over the mountain to our snowy home with the ice covered road up to the house. There is something about being able to leave, to actually get out of the funky cottage and back to our beautiful beautiful well water and warm wood stove and roomy bathrooms and all the goodies of living in a “real” house that make it all fun instead of depressing. The woman who lived in the cottage before us raised many sons there in the 60’s. We still can’t figure out where everyone slept, unless she sent the boys outside to the even funkier bunkhouse. Who knows. People did live differently then I guess. I know I did. 
The cottage has a well, but the water has some salts in it, and it only gives about 2.5 gallons a minute. We had a long hose from the well house to the fire and after running it for about 20 minutes, we suddenly had no more water. Uhoh again. Neither of us has a clue how to prime a well pump, so had to go to the internet to discover that we probably had a submersible pump that didn’t need priming anyway. Just turn it off and wait two hours and see if it recovers.
We went inside, and waited, then back out to start up the water and uhoh again, no water at all. As Mo was walking back to the pump house, she discovered what we had missed earlier…a kink in the hose…can you believe that?!?! We never really ran the well dry at all. It was such a relief that we were all excited again about having 2.5 gallons a minute after all. We do bring drinking water from home, though, and there is no way we will put that salty water in our MoHo tanks. Guess we can’t ever really ‘move’ over to the cottage even when we get too old to shovel snow and haul wood at home in Rocky Point.
Ah well, we are home again, and I am working this week, but next week we will go back to the cottage. Only this time it will be what it was supposed to be, just a little stopover place for us to relax a bit before we load up the MoHo and head for the beach. Brookings here we come! Rain or shine. Rumor has it there might be at least a couple of days of sunshine at the ocean and we are going to make sure we find it.
February This n That
Home in Rocky Point, Oregon Sunshine and 49 degrees, low tonight 27 
We returned home from our January travels just in time to get the last of the Christmas lights down and the Valentine decorations up. I know, I am a little bit crazy that way. I love to do seasonal decorations.
Besides, it gave me a chance to get out my first little quilt table topper
that I made last year as a very tentative, brand new quilter. Funny how the imperfections become a bit endearing after a bit of time has passed. No one really cares but me anyway, and it is fun to see my progress.
Leaving sunny California behind, we drove once again into another cloudy inversion over the Rogue Valley. The little cottage was waiting, all proud and excited to show off her brand new hat. The roofing job was completed with just a few glitches and a little bit over bid, but Mo is happy with it. There was a lot of repair involved, and several layers of roofing, dating all the way back to 1926 had to be removed. Someone asked me to show a photo of the cottage, so here it is again, with the new roof of course.
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We put the MoHo to bed and traveled back over the pass to Rocky Point, relieved that there wasn’t much new snow since we left in mid January. Everything was in good order, with the driveway accessible, the house warmed to a balmy 55 degrees by the backup electric heaters, and everything in good shape.
It is good to be home, but February is really my least favorite month of winter, and if I didn’t have to be working for a couple of weeks, I think we would have just gone back over the mountain and right on over to the coast! Ah well, that will come next month when I return from Florida in early March.
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In the mean time, the sun has been shining daily and the nights are cold. The snow is still very deep and the driveway is completely frozen into a sheet of solid ice. I can’t stand up on it, and when I tried to move the truck it just slid sideways for a bit before deciding to go forward. The only way to get outside and enjoy the sunshine is in the mid afternoon, when I put on the snow pac’s and trudge up an old side road by our place that isn’t completely iced over. I leave it to Mo to get the mail, which entails walking down the glare ice driveway to the sheet ice road to get to Rocky Point Road, completely bare and dry.
Speaking of mail…it doesn’t seem like there is ever anything in there at all except advertising. Not sure I would miss it if I didn’t have it at all, but I know I won’t miss Saturday mail. We don’t put anything in the box that is worrisome, mailing from town if we need to, and we don’t get anything troubling either, choosing instead to receive almost everything electronically. Packages are usually delivered via FedEx or UPS. Lots safer that way, I guess, unless of course everything gets hacked. UhOh. I hear the mood of February sifting into this journal. I have no right to complain at all, I am sitting here with the glare of brilliant sunshine on snow coming through my window and lighting up this room.
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Lots of RV’rs have been talking about mice lately, so I thought I would add my little story to the conversation. I store bird seed in a big, strong, heavy plastic garbage can. We seem to only have ground feeders around in the winter, so I thought that maybe they would appreciate a bit of seed scattered over the snow. Opened the bin to find several very fat, very dead mice in the bottom of the container. Seems as though they figured out how to chew through the plastic, but then couldn’t get back out of the bin. ugh. I don’t do dead things, so whined for Mo to come and fix it. I would hate to live alone at moments like this. I guess we will have to find something stronger to hold the bird seed when those little guys are winter hungry.
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Within a few days of arriving home, I got a call from Heart to Heart Quilters in Merrill letting me know that my first big project, a queen sized quilt, was ready for pick-up. My daughter Melody had the day off, so I picked her up and we drove the half hour south to Merrill together. In addition to picking up the quilt, which was quilted beautifully, we spent a long time in the quilt shop looking at fabric and patterns and day dreaming about the day when I will again tackle a big project and make a bed quilt for her. She let me know that a lap quilt would be nice…but gee Mom, I would really love a big one. I told her she would be lucky to get it in the next ten years. This last big one only took me a few months to finish, and in all fairness, I certainly wasn’t working on it all the time. 
I also managed to finish the quilting and binding on the baby quilt for Alison’s newborn little boy. Alison is the wonderful soil scientist who worked for me in California who moved to Florida. I am tickled about the chance to visit her next week while I am in Ocala with my friend Bel, and to deliver the quilt in person. I thought frogs and bugs and blue and green would be a great theme for a little boy who lives in Florida, right? 
I will manage to get in a good 80 hours of work before I leave next Thursday for the Sunshine State. Of course, the weather there has been fabulous, with temperatures in the 80’s, and as soon as I get there the highs will be 60 or something. I have no idea why that happens to me when I go to Florida, probably it is because I just don’t get to stay long enough. Mo and I are still having the conversation about next year and my wish for a Florida winter. We will see. In the mean time, we are going to focus this year on getting the cottage in shape and keeping our getaways fairly close to home.
Just thought I would throw in a shot of Jeremy enjoying the lovely new wool hearth rug in front of the fire. I know he is completely sure that I bought it just for him. He is getting so skinny, and of course it shows in the photo. At his prime he was 13 pounds of long limbed lithe beauty and now he is down to less than 8 pounds. He is on special vet food, limited ingredient diet, with a bit of tuna and fresh meat now and then. He is such a sweetie, so personable and loving. At nearly 17, though, it seems that he gets a touch of kitty Alzheimer’s now and then. I read recently about some of the challenges involved with having an “elderly” cat, kind of a bit like an elderly human, I guess. He gets anxious if he can’t see us and they say that is because old cats lose their vision and hearing and that makes them more fearful.
He still loves nothing more than riding on the dash in the MoHo, and waking me up at 4:30 am with a loud purr and that sneaky cat claw chin slap that most cat owners will recognize.
I am excited about my upcoming trip, looking forward to seeing how Bel is doing in person, and most of all looking forward to seeing my daughter Deborah in San Antonio on the way home! I booked a jump flight so I could do both at once, just couldn’t stand the idea of flying over Texas and not getting to see my girl!
Escape
Lodi, California; 7PM; clear and 60 degrees F
The snow started way back in early December, gave us a beautiful white Christmas, and didn’t let up. When it did finally stop, the temperatures plummeted to morning lows near zero for days in a row and clear sunny skies that warmed up to all of 12 degrees. It has been great fun. Mo and I did a lot of shoveling and plowing, managed to move almost 6 cords of free wood that we inherited from a neighbor, and kept the fires burning and the house cozy and warm.
I love winter. For awhile. I have had some knitting and quilting time, and truly enjoyed the ability to telecommute for work when the roads were icy and treacherous. I finished the queen sized quilt I have been working on for a few months and took it to the quilter. I almost finished a soft luscious shawl for Melody, just waiting for the hand dyed silk to arrive for the fringe. I almost finished a baby quilt that I will deliver next month to a beloved friend about to have a little boy. 
But enough is enough! Every night when we go to the hot tub, the bare feet freeze on the porch and the entire ten feet of distance from the back door until we are in the hot water is a challenge. No matter how beautiful the pristine cold snow looks outside my window, and no matter how warm and cozy we are with our wood stove, I am tired of it. I am ready to be somewhere warm. I am a bit tired of the thick fence of icicles between me and the view out the bedroom window.
Yesterday we loaded up the dog and the cat and and supplies for our escape and drove the two hours over the mountain to the cottage and the waiting MoHo. Instead of temperatures in the teens with clear skies, we drove into temperatures in the 30’s with icy fog shrouding everything. It is one of the famous temperature inversions that make the cold winter fogs of the Rogue Valley legendary. At the cottage, there wasn’t a speck of snow on the ground, but that icy fog is COLD! Mo said, “Are you complaining about the weather here too?”. Well, yeah, I guess I am. I am envisioning warm sunshine, not icy roads and steely gray skies.
We had most of the afternoon at the cottage to fiddle around a bit, and Mo decided to tackle the moldy cupboard wall that she wanted out of the kitchen. It kind of reminded me of those shows on HGTV where they take a sledge hammer to the walls. It is sort of fun tearing a house apart. While we were demolishing the kitchen wall, the roofer was outside tearing off the 4 different layers of roofing down to the rafters. The cottage was built in 1926, and wasn’t a high end build even then, but underneath all that stuff, we found what looks to be solid, beautiful redwood beams. Kinda nice.
We enjoyed a simple supper, a game of cards, and some evening reading before turning down the heat for the night. Saturday morning would come soon enough. 
This morning, the icy fog was still thick as we hooked up the MoHo and headed south of the Five. First, however, we decided to stop for a good breakfast at Elmer’s, close to the interstate onramp. It is the second time we have had breakfast there and it wasn’t a fluke. The restaurant is wonderful, with really great food. Again we split a breakfast of potato pancakes with applesauce, bacon and green onions, applewood bacon and great coffee. We were on the road by 9:30 with an estimated time of arrival at Flag City in Lodi around 4:30. I think we pulled in here at about 4:15.
The drive was lovely. Traffic was light, the I-5 surface has been redone since our last trip south, and once we were out of the Rogue Valley, the temperature inversions were behind us. By the time we got to Redding it was 65 gorgeous, sunny, luscious degrees. As we rolled down the road, both of us realized that the destination is almost irrelevant, it is just that desire to get rolling that makes it what it is. The Journey, not so much the Destination. Although I think the destination is nice, and we are looking forward to it, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to just fly south. It is the road. I may have said this before, but the realization always seems to come to me anew when we get back on the road. I love the movement, the changing scenery, the companionable silence of rolling down the road.
We covered an easy 375 miles today, rolling right through downtown Sacramento without a hitch. We took a chance without a reservation for Flag City, and when we arrived, in spite of a big group being here, there was a nice, level pull through waiting for us for $27. (half price) with our Passport America card. Tomorrow another day on the road, an easy 250 miles or so before we pull into the Orange Grove RV Park near Bakersfield. I am looking forward to those sweet oranges everyone keeps talking about. I really hope the cold snap hasn’t wiped them out!
NoSnow Vacation
Now that Christmas is behind us, and all the romance of those gorgeous snowy days is a bit dim, we decided it was time to head over the mountain for a break. We wanted to check on the MoHo, make sure that the space heater Mo set up was working properly, see the new fancy chain drive that was installed on the shed roll up door, and just hang out for a couple of days in a place where snow is a rarity. We also thought it might be fun to see just how much the hole in the kitchen ceiling had grown.
Most of the time when we drive over the snowy pass, we take our toad, the Tracker. It has studded tires and 4 wheel drive and could probably climb a tree if needed. But we wanted space and comfort and it was only a 2 hour drive, so we opted instead to take the Lexus. With something called ECT (a button!) and Overdrive OFF, she did just fine in spite of the dicey conditions on the pass. 
Our Oregon State DOT wrote something up in the newspaper last summer about coming up with a name for our pass. I sure hope they do it soon. It is definitely a real pass, with a summit and lots of snow. For now, we just call it Highway 140, and say we are going “over the pass”. Sure would be nice to have a name. I am voting for Sky Lakes Pass since it travels just south of the Sky Lakes Wilderness. Hey, Jeanne, maybe Brown Mountain Pass, or Mt McLoughlin Pass, or Pelican Butte pass? The road doesn’t go over a single one of those big mountains, but ‘passes’ right in between all of them.
It isn’t much distance from home to Medford. We are near milepost 44 and the highway starts in Medford at 0. Probably 25 miles this side of Medford is out of the snow zone, so the pass itself is really only about 15 miles of actually winter pass driving. Medford and Grants Pass are in zone 7 on the agricultural scale, the same as the foothills of California. There is occasional snow, and a cold enough winter that tulips and lilacs will bloom, but most of the time there isn’t anything to shovel and the daytime temperatures are almost always above freezing. Within half an hour of leaving home, we were out of the snow and into the rain and fog that is common this time of year in the Rogue Valley.
Once we arrived at the cottage, we were happy to see the MoHo shed looking shiny and the MoHo all safe and cozy inside. Mo had a big roll up door installed, and they hadn’t put in the chain drive when we were here last. Both of us got a big kick out of how incredibly easy it was to open the big door with that fancy drive. Sure beats trying to push the thing up with a pole. It is Heavy!
Once we knew that the MoHo was all safe and sound and that the little space heater had kept things just toasty in there, we went inside the chilly damp cottage to see how things were faring. Funny how something like the hole in the kitchen ceiling just seems interesting instead of devastating when the cottage isn’t a full time proposition. I sure would hate to have this happen in my real house. Mo found a roofer in the area who seemed reasonably experienced and made an appointment for him to come and give us an estimate for a new or repaired roof. 
This guy was interesting, to say the least, and he really likes to talk, especially in circles. Hopefully he knows what he is doing. He said there were at least 4 and maybe 5 layers on that old roof, and that he would take it down to the wood, replace anything that is rotted and start fresh. Mo decided on shingles instead of metal, since there isn’t any snow to slide off in Grants Pass to speak of anyway. He said that he would tarp the roof until he could get to it. Tarp??!! Blue Tarps??!! I have spent the last 40 years laughing at what my friends and I called “North Idaho Roofing Jobs”, blue tarps everywhere. Now I am going to have one? I hope maybe he uses something other than those awful blue tarps.
We spent the rest of our time enjoying the break from plowing and shoveling snow. The leaves from the oaks were wet and thick on the ground, but since we can’t seem to coordinate our visits with a legal burn day, Mo thought it was better to just let the leaves wait where they are instead of making a big wet pile of them somewhere else. I liked that idea a lot, since I am the major leaf raker, and while Mo did puttery house repairs (her favorite hobby), I sat in front of the big south facing window knitting.
We have a nice old fashioned and very good gas stove in the house that had it warmed up and cozy in no time. Dinner was leftover ham from Christmas on the first night but the second night after running some errands we decided it was time for real pizza. Living in Rocky Point most of the time, means it is a minimum 40 minutes on a dry good day from town to home. Hard to get a pizza back from the shop while still hot.
The cottage, however, is just 3 miles from town, and the Legendary Abby’s Pizza. I remember eating Abby’s pizzas when I lived in Medford back in 1969! The store was full but not overcrowded, with lots of happy folks eating pizza and enjoying the big fire in the center of the dining room. Our pizza was great, the half carafe of Burgundy wine was certainly not fancy, but obviously we had a good time.
Dang, that pizza was GOOD! Or was it the wine.
The best part was the ten minute drive back to the cottage! We really like this part about living near town. Grants Pass seems to have some nice stores and restaurants, and even though the population is technically smaller than Klamath Falls, the stores are all bigger, newer, and nicer for some reason. Home Depot is well stocked and probably 1/3 bigger than our shop in Klamath. Is it access to the interstate that makes the difference? 
This morning we woke again to a foggy day and deer in the yard. The mama looked familiar, with what is probably last year’s yearling and this year’s fawn. The doe and the yearling get over the fence, but the fawn always seems to end up wandering along outside the fence. I suppose he will eventually get big enough to actually jump with the other two.
Both of us are getting a bit antsy to get the MoHo out of her pretty shed and on the road. Before mid month January we will be heading south to the desert via the old favorite, I-5. I really miss that hot springs pool at Catalina Spa in Desert Hot Springs. I think we owe a nice Palm Springs dinner to Rick and Paulette as well, and I even miss those silly windmills spinning away.
I also showed Mo some of the reviews that Nina wrote about San Diego, so we are going to give it a try this season after our 7 day Passport America stay at Catalina Spa. Looking forward to something a bit different that we haven’t done before. I haven’t been to the San Diego Zoo since I was a kid. Yippee!!
The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales 