Another day on Gopher Hill 9-29-07

Oh, as I was typing the date in the title it reminded me to say Happy Birthday to our future Son-in-law Will who turns THIRTY today and our nephew Steven who is now a teenager, the big 13. Happy Birthday guys!

Not much going on here with us. Last weekend we went up the hill to Oakhurst and had BBQ for lunch. Larry claims he isn’t having it again because there is something in the Pulled Pork that makes him sleep….hmmm.

We cruised down to Fresno one day to Walmart, Best Buy and Michaels. Larry wanted a flash drive for the computer and I needed yarn for a project I’ve wanted to try.

Yesterday we checked out Bass Lake and the surrounding Oakhurst area. When you are cruising along at 45 miles per hour and can see a spider tip-toeing its way across the asphalt, it is a BIG expletive spider. A nice furry Tarantula…yuck. It could have hurt our tire if we had rolled over it, it would have covered the palm of my hand (legs and all).
Makes me shiver just imagining it on my hand….gross.

So with just enjoying the lovely fall weather, sitting outside reading, knitting/crocheting, talking, taking walks and knowing how boring all that is for you all to hear about, I thought I would entertain you with pictures of our “lot-mate”. The street we are on is called Gopher Hill and for a reason. This lovely specimen is usually busy tidying up in the mornings or evenings. We’ll be sitting outside reading and can suddenly hear rocks scrabbling around. It doesn’t seem to be too concerned about us; I’ve never really seen so much of a gopher outside of its hole before, so with camera in hand I “captured” the little guy. Not so small, maybe 5 to 6 inches, with wicked teeth and claws. It comes out and stuffs dry grass in its cheeks and at other times just seems to be tidying up the rocks all around its holes. Nice to know our neighbor is neat! Wouldn’t surprise me with all the holes that are on this lot to have whatever rig is parked here to someday just sink 4 feet because the gopher caverns gave way!

More great pics!!!! 9-22-07

This first picture is a lovely family portrait, doncha think? It was taken during a wild roller coaster ride at California Adventure. Michelle is behind Larry and Andrea is behind me. Soooo much fun.

Seeing as this was our big 30th Anniversary trip I thought it might be nice if there were a couple pictures of us together...Andrea had taken them....ahhhhhh.

Our Disneyland Anniversary Trip 9-21-07

We all had a great time in Disneyland!

Michelle, Darel and Seth had left on Saturday and stayed the night in Williams. Andrea, Will and Ian hooked up with them on Sunday morning, had breakfast and then headed south on I-5. We hooked up with them at Santa Nella on I-5 and then we caravanned on down. At one of the rest areas Seth asked if he could ride with us so we had both of the boys the rest of the way down. Michelle had borrowed a friend’s dual DVD player for the car and that entertained the kids. Long car trips are the ideal place for movies for the kids, it is sooo boring for them, I wish we had that when I was a kid and for my own kids on our family trips! The screens mounted to the back of the front headrests, wonderful inventions!!!

It was Sunday so we didn’t have to deal with commute traffic in L.A. at 5 in the afternoon, but we still had a lot of traffic. When Lar went to check in they tried to give us rooms scattered all over the place, trying to tell him they didn’t know we were all together, until Will made a point of asking to see the paperwork the guy was looking at and then low and behold there it was…traveling all together. So the kids got two rooms with a connecting door and our room was just two doors down ( I asked Larry if he slipped the guy some money for that room between ours and theirs…tee hee). We were on the ground floor, which I don’t usually like, but with the boys it was safer…didn’t have to worry about one of them swinging from the railing. We stayed at the Tropicana Inn and Suites on Harbor Blvd. across the street from Disneyland. Perfect location. We had a not so good dinner down the street at Captain Kidds, it was good when we were there a few years ago…not now.

On Monday we got ourselves going but we didn’t have to rush because during the week in the fall the hours for Disneyland were 10 to 8 and California Adventure’s hours were 10 to 6.

Will bought Ian a glow in the dark Buzz Lightyear cap which made his day and it was just getting started! So off to Fantasyland we went to get the kids started. The first ride I think we took the kids on was Pinnochio and Seth was a little freaked out and then didn’t want to ride anything for awhile, and we were worried that he wasn’t going to have any fun. But after awhile he got into it and realized no monsters were going to hurt him so he soon started finding his favorites. He is 3 and had a blast. Ian is a little over 4.5 and he rode everything that he was tall enough for. He would get a little scared, but nothing kept him from going again.

I can’t remember all the details from each day, but everyone had a great time. We would hang together for awhile and then we would all go our separate ways for awhile and sometimes Larry and I would take the boys so the big kids could go play. Strollers for both of the boys were musts! It really saved Ian too, they never really took naps, but they could get some rest.

Now on Wednesday Will had made secret arrangements (secret to Andrea) with Disneyland to propose to Andrea. He knew there were going to be some perks but he didn’t really know what they were going to be. We all arranged to meet in front of the Castle at noon. We kind of dawdled around and then Will told Andrea he wanted a picture with her in front of the castle which they posed for and then Will turned and went down on one knee and popped the question. A Disneyland photographer was there to record the event and then an event coordinator came up and presented Will with a top hat with Mickey ears and Andrea with white sequined Mickey ears with a white veil attached. Well, the perks were that this lovely lady would lead them and the rest of our group all through Fantasyland while ringing a bell and announcing their names and their engagement and because it was our 30th anniversary we got a mention or three also….jeez. It was very funny and cute. AND we all got to get VIP treatment on every single ride in Fantasyland. So in an hour we rode every single ride in Fantasyland, it was way cool!! On It’s a Small World, Andrea and Will got their own boat and the rest of our group got our own boat. We had lots of fun and laughs.

I was wearing a Happy Anniversary button that Andrea had picked up earlier and later when we were ordering our lunch, because Larry didn’t have one the Lady helping us stopped everything to go get Larry a button too. Then all day we had Disney Employees telling us Happy Anniversary, should have had that button from the first day.

After our VIP tour of Fantasyland the Coordinator gave Will a pile of special passes onto any ride in Disneyland, we just had to go through the exit. We all needed food after that so we split up for a bit and we all went our separate ways for lunch. Then we hooked back up and we took the boys while the big kids went on their favorite rides over in California Adventure…there isn’t really a lot over there for small kids. So we decided we would use some of the fast passes and take the boys on their favorite rides. Our first stop was the cars, and when we got to the attendant, because it was our Anniversary he didn’t take our pass and as we passed him he pressed an extra pass in Larry’s hand…Cool! And off we went for the next couple hours, the Jungle Cruise had been closed for awhile, but with our passes we slipped right in ahead of the crowd when the ride started back up. No one actually took any of our passes from us. Will gave them away because we weren’t using them. There wasn’t a line on the Pirates of the Caribbean so didn’t use our passes, but we did ride it THREE times in an hour because the boys kept wanting to ride it again. Our butts were tired of that bench in those boats! It was an exhaustingly fun day which was topped off by the parade which the boys barely stayed awake for. We all had a great time and it went by all too fast!

The weather was perfect the whole time, warm but not hot, the boys were good and so were their parents….smile! It was a wonderful Anniversary Celebration for us.

Will bought us all breakfast before we hit the road for home. We left just after eleven, so there was traffic as always but not the morning commute. We got home around a little after 5, Andrea got home after 10 and Michelle got home today just before six. They had spent the night in Red Bluff and took Seth to the doctor. He had been breaking out in sores, and he had one on his rear that was painful, but he still was so good and had fun when I think most of us would have been crying and complaining. Our boys are just amazing…what else can I say…smile.

Back from Disneyland 9-20-07

Returned from Disneyland today. We are pooped, but had a stupendous time!!!! Tomorrow after I have recovered from sensory overload I'll get a full accounting posted!

Off for Dland 9-15-07

Well, we have been doing our usual boring stuff and I haven't taken any pictures the last few days.

Tomorrow we head off to Disneyland with the kids so I'll be offline for the next 5 days at least, then be prepared to be flooded with cute kids at Disneyland pictures!!!

Oil change 9-12-07

Yesterday we were awake early; the worker bees around here get an early start to beat the heat. They try to be quiet until after 7, but you just hear them. At 6:30 they were painting the shed on our lot and down a block or two they are blowing dirt out of cracks in the asphalt and filling them.

We went into Oakhurst to get the oil changed in the truck. Larry was going to have the oil changed in Quincy but they had the highest prices we have seen across the country! They wanted 75 and 80 dollars in Quincy, the highest was Demartile’s, when it has been costing us between 36 to 53 dollars depending on where we are and who we call. In Oakhurst it was 51 dollars. So after we finished that we fueled up and then hit the stores and then headed home.

We could see the mountains so the smoke is starting to clear out. The sun wasn’t red at sunset for the first time since we’ve been here.

Today was just a putz around day. We took a walk after dinner and came across rattlesnake road kill, it was a small one, 3 rattles and about a foot long, but reminded us we had to be careful.

We don’t have much planned the next few days, counting down the days until Disney-day!

Settling in at Park of the Sierras 9-10-07

The last couple days we have just been settling in and relaxing. We’ve gotten good at relaxing…we kinda like it. It gets down to about 66 at night and up to around 94 during the day...stunning weather.

We’ve walked around the RV Park which is hilly and very large, there are over 250 sites on 161 acres covered in oak, manzanita, pines and dried grass. There are gray squirrels, quail, bunnies, woodpeckers and miscellaneous other birds hanging around. We were given a tour of the park yesterday by a volunteer in a golf cart and it was interesting. He took us back into the undeveloped area down past the dry creek bed of Coarsegold Creek which is where I took these photos of the rocks that were eroded back in the days when glaciers covered this area. As Indians lived in the area at one time there were several grinding stones too. That monstrosity on the hill across the highway from the Park is the largest Indian Casino we’ve ever seen, they are doing so well they are expanding.

The red trunked trees are manzanita, a hard wood but they have such graceful swooping shapes.

We got our chores done, Larry washed the trailer, its roof was black with ash and washed and waxed the truck.

I talked to my cousin Darcy. She continues to do really well and she is discovering that once you have faced death there is really nothing else worth being afraid of in life and being unhappy is no way to live so she is getting on with hers. I love talking to her because she continually amazes me.

The countdown has begun…one week until we see the giant black mouse…woo hoo!

Coarsegold, Ca 9-8-07

This first picture is of the smoke from the Moonlight fire in Plumas/Lassen Forest that was raining ash down on us in Quincy. The fire was about 15 miles as the crow flies northish of us and is one of those wicked fires that grew really fast and changes direction. Until we left yesterday the smoke stayed above us, but yesterday it was sitting on the ground.

We pulled out of Quincy yesterday at 8:30 because we had a long day and our destination’s office closed at 4 and we needed to get there by then. We took highway 70 west out of Quincy and then caught 99 south. We are still amazed that with all the growth through the valley that highway 99 is still only 4 lanes south of Sac. We caught highway 145 out of Madera which hit 41 which goes into the south of Yosemite and we took it north to Sierra Park Escapees RV Park just a few miles from Coarsegold. Some of you may be more familiar with Oakhurst which is where highway 49 hits highway 41. We are just south of Yosemite. We traveled 327 miles yesterday and got in at 3:45.

It was in the 90’s when we got here and very smoky. The smoke from the Moonlight fire is all the way past Fresno the news was saying. We never did see the hills, much less the mountains…we know the Sierra’s are up there somewhere! We got checked in and shown to our site. I think it is the first time that we didn't have to do a bit of leveling or moving to get settled in once we had parked! We can see and hear highway 41 which is a busy two lane highway in the distance, but our site is perched on a little hill with a great view which outweighs the minor noise from the highway. This is a huge park, gated and quiet when you get over the hill from the highway. We have a neighbor on up the hill from us, but we can’t see them the hill is so steep. The “neighbors” I’m worried about are the scorpions, spiders, rattlesnakes and tarantulas that live in these parts. I know this because of the warning on the paper they gave us.

We are staying here a month. Being native Californians (well technically Lar was born in South Dakota) neither one of us have ever been to Yosemite, so we hope the smoke clears out one day and we’ll go check it out. We also aren’t far from Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Monument, but with our trip to Disneyland coming up we’ll see how much we actually get around to.

After we got settled in we drove on up the highway to check out Coarsegold, it is small so we kept on going to check out Oakhurst. It is a pretty little town nestled in a valley. I would have taken some pictures but the smoke just grayed everything up too bad.

We cruised through Oakhurst which is pretty good sized and Larry was getting ready to turn around and head back through town when we noticed we were in front of a Bar-b-que place and it was dinner time so we decided to check it out. Boy are we glad we did. Todd’s Cookhouse Bar-B-Que is the best BBQ we have ever had. It is on highway 41 in Oakhurst east of the highway 49 junction and if you are ever through here and like BBQ you should give it a try. Larry and I split a special which was smoked pulled pork, BBQ ribs, chili, coleslaw and hushpuppies. I’m o.k. with BBQ and Larry LOVES it and I’ve gotta say I loved this. You go to some places and it all tastes the same because they put the same sauce on it all, but this pork…you could taste the smoke and the ribs weren’t dry and had just the right amount of sauce and all the rest was equally good. The coleslaw was some of the best I’ve had and the hushpuppies were great too! We will be back to that place a few times before we leave!!! Even with splitting we still brought a couple ribs home. The owner, Todd, had won a Kraft Foods BBQ Sauce “Flavor Search Contest”. It became one of the fastest selling sauces in Kraft history. Todd opened his own place in Oakhurst…yum for us.

We stopped at Von’s on the way home and bought us an anniversary bouquet of flowers and anniversary chocolate cake. We sat outside after a stunning red sunset from the smoke having our chocolate cake and just gave thanks for being able to live the life we have with each other…aaahhhhhh.

These last pictures were taken along highway 70 along the Feather River. I still think this drive from Quincy to Oroville is one of the prettiest drives in the country. Gigantic granite boulders litter the river and some have the most interesting smooth holes worn into them from the eons of water and sand washing over them. Too much smoke to get any good pictures and we were on a time crunch. That piece takes about 2 hours and when we went down it in the spring (you may remember all the pictures) it took us 4 hours because I had to keep stopping and taking pictures of all the flowers!

A few days in Quincy, Ca 9-5-07

Monday the 3rd was the 30th anniversary of our marriage. You know the romance is gone when for your anniversary you get to eat at a diner in Winnemucca, Nevada. At least he didn’t buy us a bucket of chicken and spread out a blanket under a tree in the cemetery like we saw one couple doing! I guess it was the only place there was shade and grass in Winnemucca, struck us as funny…quiet place to have supper. I’ve never been through Winnemucca and now I can say that I don’t need to go back…tee hee. We didn't do anything special, Disneyland is waiting for us! Plus every day is special with my snookums...LOL, I can hear gagging all across the world! And I'm not even kidding.

We spent the night at the Rye Patch State Park west of Winnemucca. Then yesterday we hit the road again, scenery wasn’t different than the day before that, Nevada all looks pretty much the same. Every once in awhile there might be a lake or some rock formations, but that is about it. We did see some antelope at Wild Horse Lake and in case you always wanted to know what that lake looked like here is a couple of pictures and one with the antelope.

We headed north on 395 from Reno then took 70 on into Quincy, California. We are here for three nights. Larry decided he needed to do something for a friend and needed to pick something up and as we are here I made an appointment with my favorite massage therapist.

There is a fire north of here and this morning we woke up to everything coated in ash…yuck. This time of year is hard on the forests. At least in California they still try to put them out…sort of.

This last picture is of our lovely site here at Pioneer RV Park in sunny Quincy. Its ad in the Passport America book, said quiet and no trains…they are apparently hard of hearing because you can hear the highway, there IS a train and the park is right next to a Mill. We’ve been in noisier and this place is nice, but it is annoying when they mislead you in their ads.

An Interesting Story 9-2-07

The last two days have been wonderful. We leave tomorrow, have been here since Thursday and have used a little over half of our 45 gallons of water. That is with taking our showers, flushing the toilet and doing dishes, but using the water very conservatively we can get by on so little. The weather has been wonderful but not too hot or cold at 5,900 feet, in the mid 80’s during the day and the low 50’s at night. Even being a big holiday weekend this spot we found has been mostly empty. It is on a little used highway and the campground doesn’t have water at all, so most people pass those up, we are tucked up away from everyone and we can’t hardly hear generators or barking dogs. This morning on our walk up the hill we saw two small horned lizards and lots of deer track.

This following was part of an e-magazine I get once a week called RV Traveler and I think of it often because I think it illustrates beautifully how complacent we human beings have become and explains why so much stays the same. We humans just trot along like lambs hardly ever questioning those we follow.

By Chuck Woodbury

Why do we do things a certain way without knowing why? Do you ever accept "truths" told to you by a parent or friend? When you ask someone why you should do something a certain way, and get the response, "because that's the way it's always done," do you just accept that answer or question it?

Permit me to tell a short story: An animal researcher put four gorillas in a big cage, their new home. Beginning the next day and for each day thereafter, he lowered a bunch of bananas into the cage. When the gorillas grabbed for the bananas, the researcher sprayed them all with a high-pressure hose that caused great pain. Even if only one of the animals went for the bananas, they all got hosed. Soon, the smartest gorillas began restraining those who still grabbed for the fruit. Before long, all knew to leave the bananas alone to avoid the awful punishment.

Then, the researcher pulled one of the gorillas from the cage, replacing it with another one, which, of course, grabbed for the tasty bananas when offered. But the other three gorillas, knowing the painful consequences, held the new gorilla back. Soon, the new gorilla avoided the bananas, too.

One by one, each of the original gorillas was replaced with a new one. Each time, the newbie was physically restrained when grabbing for the bananas.

Finally, the last original gorilla was removed from the cage leaving four gorillas that knew nothing of the powerful hose.

The last arrival, like those before him, quickly learned to avoid the fruit. And so it came to be that none of the animals went for it.

A human observing the scene at this point might wonder "Why don't they eat those bananas?" If the gorillas could speak, they might say, "we don't eat them because that's the way it must be," with no further comment.

Ask yourself. What do you do in your daily lives "because it's always done that way?" Think of the gorillas. You might find that you don't have a clue, other than someone told you so.

Worth contemplating don't you think?

Happy 27th Andrea Moniz 9-1-07

Seems like only yesterday!!!! The first picture is when Andrea was a week old. The second picture she was three months old. The third picture is with her Mommy and the fourth picture is with her Daddy and she was about three and a half months. The last picture is Andrea eating her first cookie at six months old.

Happy, Happy, Birthday! We love you.