catlinye_maker

Progress

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:23:20 GMT

The photo is the top of the lightbox, with fabric for appliquéing, the original and revised patterns, and the block on top. To give you an idea of scale, those scissors are embroidery scissors. On the one hand, small pieces mean less stitching to get around them, on the other, when you’re trying to stitch a quarter inch circle down, finicky doesn’t begin to describe it. This week saw the pattern revised the way I wanted it, with acorns instead of the grapes. It echoes the antique pattern, but isn’t a straight lift. While I was at it I redid the bow and a couple of the rose buds to be more to my liking.

The light was crappy during the week, but fortunately yesterday was beautiful and bright, illuminating all that lovely snow out there (we got 14 out of a predicted 6 inches.) J insisted that I stay inside where it was warm, and I happily complied and cut little thumb-shaped scraps out of every piece of green that I thought would work for oak leaves, and not a few I thought wouldn’t. As is usually the case, some of the ones I thought wouldn’t work were the ones that did. They’re all set aside and ready to go; they’ll go into a zip-lock bag with the block when travelling.

Still mulling over the concept of the box; I borrowed Linda Johansen’s Fast Fun & Easy Fabric Boxes from the library, and that helped with some ideas, though I don’t want to do it precisely the way she does. Posting to JudyL's Design Wall Monday really helps with incentive to work on the project through the week. Plus it's good for inspiration with all the lovely things everyone else is working on.

Plans Made

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:56:47 GMT

I totted up the projects that I have in progress or really want to start in the coming year, and there are 14 of them (that's a lot, I am really slow.) I’ve promised to finish the compass quilt top by December for next year’s Applique by the Bay (actually a friend and I made a mutual pact to each finish our clipper ship block projects, in order to be able to show them off next year.) The craft project for ginevra007 is due in February, and I finally got what I hope is a good idea for it. In addition to these two projects, there are five tops ready to quilt or partially quilted, there’s a sewing project that just needs a little work to finish, two quilts cut and ready to piece, and four projects in the concept stages.

Accordingly, I am starting to post on Judy Laquidaria’s Design Wall Monday blog with works in progress, in the hopes that regular posts about working on these projects will translate into actual progress! Today’s photo is this year’s class block for Elly Sienkiewicz’s multi-day class at Applique by the Bay. It’s a wreath with birds in the center; it finishes at 8 inches. The wreath she teaches has oak leaves, grapes and what I call BITS, or Baltimore indeterminate teardrop shapes (you see them a lot in the antique blocks, they variously seem to represent acorns or flower buds or who knows what, depending on color) of which I am not a fan. She showed us an antique block of a very similar pattern which had oak leaves and acorns so that’s what I will be doing. The appliqué work is teensy but fun; I am using a much darker and busier background than normal, which should work really well with the finished concept for the block. It’s so nice to have an idea of what to do with these class blocks! So often you make them in class and then they languish, because you have no idea how to make use of them.

The white basting lines on the partially appliqued wreath stem are for back basting, which is a technique in which the design is drawn in reverse on the back of the background fabric, then the applique fabric is basted along the drawn lines. To sew it down, you clip the basting a little at a time and stitch along the holes left in the fabrics. The method doesn't leave any permanent marks on the front of the block and it's very portable, because you don't pre-cut any applique shapes, just bring along the block and the fabric scraps for appliquing.

I saw three ships come sailing in..

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:23:47 GMT

Well, actually, way more than three. Last week was the first time in a while that we were able to get out in the RV; we went down to Delaware and camped near Bethany Beach for a week so that I could go to Applique by the Bay, a Baltimore Applique weekend seminar sponsored by Mare’s Bears quilt shop and held every December in Lewes, DE.

Delaware Seashore State Park is only about 15 miles from Lewes and at least in the off season it’s gorgeous. Windswept marsh on one side and the Indian River inlet on the other. They’re rebuilding the route 1 bridge so there was construction to dodge around but it wasn’t bad. We had the park almost entirely to ourselves during the week; the few weekenders all headed out Sunday and Monday and aside from one or two overnighters we were alone. Our spot was near the campground entrance, an end site with a small and gnarled pine for company, one of the few trees in the campground.

We filled our fresh water tank Sunday night, which was a good thing because the campground water gets shut off on the 30th and they were out there bright and early turning everything off. We were judicious in our water usage and had very little left over when we had to dump the tanks to winterize. It’s a balancing act, saving water early on but not saving so much that it goes to waste. If we were stringently conserving, I think we could have gone one more day, so our usage rate was just right. And of course as we were preparing to leave someone who works there told us about the frost free faucets they leave on over the winter. Next year we will camp in the far corner of the park; there are a couple of sites that are close enough to the frost free pumps that we’ll easily be able to top off our fresh water tanks with the long hose, and all of the sites have sewer hookups so we can use as much water as we need without worrying about running out of fresh water or waste tank space.

The aforementioned ships were clipper ships, Baltimore Album style; last year’s class by Elly Sienkiewicz was a beautiful clipper ship, and many of the folks in the class finished their blocks and brought them in to show. Mine was finished in odd moments here and there during the seminar. The last thing to complete the block was embroidered rigging lines, and after wrestling with the couched rigging and trying several iterations, I elected to leave it off. I was disappointed that it didn’t look right, and J pointed out that the dark brown I was using was too heavy for the rest of the block. It looks good without it, but I may give manila-colored thread a try and see if that would provide a good balance between the unfortunate effect of having the sails floating in space, and the unfortunate result of negating the clean look by adding rigging. Elly is doing an article featuring interpretations of Baltimore blocks and she asked for a photo, so there’s a possibility that this block might be seen in a quilting magazine; that would be cool!

I think of Applique by the Bay as an informal, less expensive version of the Applique Academy, which is held in Williamsburg in February. The teachers are the same folks every year. The atmosphere is casual and friendly, sort of a kaffeklatch with appliqué blocks. Some of my friends go and make the blocks but they do it their way, substituting styles and techniques. This year I too broke with tradition and used my favorite techniques to make the blocks that they were teaching, rather than using the instructed techniques. Both teachers were cool with that, but I did overhear someone commenting in a censorious tone that ‘when I take a class I use the instructor’s method, and put it aside when I get home if I don’t like it!’ Well, yes, if I was at the Applique Academy, which is much more formal, I would too. But I know how these teachers do things, and I understand the method, and it’s a great method, but I’d rather do it my way. I pretended obliviousness as I think I was not meant to overhear, but it did give me a bit of a chuckle.

J saw wild birds on their migration routes almost every day; brant geese and rusty blackbirds both made pit stops near the trailer. I only saw his photos of the birds, sadly. (I suspect the rumble of the diesel truck drove them off – the only birds which stayed put as I drove by were the gulls, who aren’t impressed by mere pickup trucks.) We had gale warnings and 40 knot gusts Wednesday night. It was blowing hard enough that we brought in one of the slides, which was flexing under the wind pressure. The wind woke us up at about 3 am, and kept us up for an hour or so before it died down. I was grateful that it was a South wind. We were oriented north to south, and if the wind had been broadside to the trailer I think it would have been much more frightening.

We’re back at the house now, prepping for our big winter trip. It’s odd, this half-timing, since packing means thinking not just about what we’ll need for the next week but what we’ll need in two months. In some ways either full-timing or vacationing would be simpler. Layers is the solution, I think, at least for clothing. We’re headed down to Savannah for Christmas with my sister, then we will meander on to the Florida Keys for the beginning of January. After that, it’s over to Baton Rouge for Mardi Gras with friends, and then Easter weekend with J’s co-workers in Virginia.

Tday Afternoon

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:52:57 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:06:46 GMT

Borrowed from Cranky Epistles

George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to “recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789.

Save the Dragons

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:13:57 GMT

If you are interested in Science Fiction, and you read David Freer's books (military SF with a comic bent, IIRC) you might be interested to know that he and his family are emigrating from South Africa to Australia. The reason I am posting that info here is that they want to be able to take their pets with them, which requires a 7 month (!) quarantine at the cost of many thousands of dollars. They have about half of the funds they need. Mr Freer has put a modern twist on the storyteller's bowl and is publishing a novel online, one chapter at a time, supported by donations to a fund to help them move their beloved animals.

If you've read his stuff before or think you might enjoy it, please consider going by the website and dropping a few dollars in the bowl. I've seen before in online appeals how we can give just a small amount, money that's easy for us, and it adds up to a big difference for the people who need it.

There's a recent post about the situation on D Freer's blog about the move, and the Save the Dragons site has the novel to date (free to read) and a FAQ about the whole thing.

Gratitudes

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:08:50 GMT

I am grateful for my snuggly cat, who doesn't mind when I hold him for a peaceful moment and breath into his fur.

I am grateful I fixed the iron.

But mostly.. I am grateful no one (I hope!) SAW me fix the iron. :P

How so, say you? Well. You know how you get good ideas and about midway through the execution it occurs to you that maybe you should have thought it through a little more? I was working on cutting pieces for a quilt, ironing the fabric I am using as I go, when I noticed something dark in the iron's water reservoir. On closer examination, it turned out to be a drowned BUG! (All together now, EeewWW!) I turned off the iron and left it to cool. DH wanted to take the base apart, but that needed special star wrenches that we don't have, and I wasn't sure it would help, anyway, based on where the reservoir was. I tried filling and emptying several times, with no luck. The water hole is small, and the bug was big! Eventually I figured out I could pry off the front part of the plastic housing. Initially I was worried about damaging my expensive iron, until I realized that there was no way I was going to use it as an iron with a bug inside, so it really had zero value as it was.

A little prying, and it came free with a POP! Nothing looked broken, and the water opening, where the spout from the plastic housing had snugged into the base, was considerably bigger than it had been. Plenty of room for ex-bugs to exit. However some more experimentation with filling and emptying left the bug merely washing around near the surface, hanging up on the protrusions inside the reservoir. With gentle shaking, I was able to swirl it close to the opening but not out, and not close enough to pick out with a wire (tried fishing with some fine wire, no luck.)

But the best movement of the bug in the water was when I whipped the iron around in a short arc; centrifugal force moved it from one end of the reservoir to the other. "Aha!" thought I, having my semi-brilliant moment, "I bet if I take it outside and swing it around, centrifugal force will wash that bug right past those obstructions and right up next to the opening of the reservoir, from whence I can easily pluck it out."

I trotted outside, iron in hand, and commenced whirling around, holding the iron out sideways. About the time I accidentally stepped off the path, I began to wonder if this was really such a good idea, and how many twirls did it take until you were too dizzy to stand. The answer was: fewer twirls than I had done. I stopped whirling (I tried to stop whirling) and with a few extra involuntary rotations settled gently onto the grass. Laughing and waiting for things to stop going round and round, I held out the iron and upended it, draining it one more time before shakily getting up and going inside.

It worked like a charm; the bug (a spider as it turned out) was right in the tip of the reservoir, easily reached with a small forceps from the opening. I ran some dilute bleach into the reservoir and washed it out with clean water, then reassembled and tested the now pest-free iron. Works like a champ.

In Upstate New York

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:54:33 GMT

We’re all set up in a nice rural (semi; this is New York state after all) campground not far from Schenectady NY in a little town called Howe’s Cave, or Old Central Bridge, or Carlisle, depending on whether you ask Google Maps, or the campground’s website, or the GPS in my MIL’s car. The site is grass; the campground is close to the freeway so there’s some road noise, but much less than we had at Harrisburg East campground last week.

We had a nice week in Harrisburg attending the Hershey RV show. J had to go in to near-Philly on Monday and Tuesday, but the rest of the week he was able to work from home. It was really nice having him back during the day; it’s been a long time since that was possible. We went to the RV show Wednesday afternoon and had a lot of fun looking at rigs and fantasizing about buying RVs for our various family members if we ever won the lottery. We got to talk to a number of dealers and manufacturers; it was a record setting day attendance-wise, and most everyone we talked to said that they’d done well on the sales front too. We saw more deals being brokered than I remember from prior years. J thinks that this is due in part to dealers going under; with fewer local dealers, it seems like there’s a lot of pent up demand at the show to actually buy. And certainly if I was going to the show to buy I’d want to do it on Wednesday or Thursday, before the crowds ramped up on the weekend.

As usual, we were there until the show closed, after which we went into Hershey for a late dinner. I was surprised to find the Hershey Pantry restaurant still serving dinner that late, we had a nice meal and finished up with a take-out box of chocolate cake with peanut butter icing (me) and banana cream pie (J). They have the best pies and cakes there! Mom and I used to go there for lunch on the slightest excuse, and I was glad to find it barely changed at all, aside from the extended hours.

On Thursday I drove back to near-Philly to take Mercedes to the vet; she usually doesn’t eat well the first day or so in the trailer, but this time she was turning her nose up at food for several days. Cats can get very sick (fatty liver something-or-other) if they go without eating. We’d used a plastic bag with a corner cut off to get some food into her after a day or so, but she still wasn’t eating much if at all. Thankfully a full battery of tests and a vet exam turned up only a healthy cat, and the vet and I decided it was just stress (or devilment, intended to make me nuts, not sure which.) When we got back to the trailer she did condescend to eat a few treats and a little wet cat food, so we didn’t have to resort to the plastic bag again. I wondered if the road noise (which was really pretty bad) was stressing her out so we closed all the windows and that seemed to help a lot. She’s doing better every day as the trip goes on; I am sure by next week she’ll be back to normal.

My MIL came out on Friday, and after a late lunch we went back to the show to see if they had stabilizer bars for our fiver (her Christmas in advance gift to us) and to look at motorhomes for her – fantasy shopping again, but it’s fun to look! (I make sure to tell the salespeople we’re just lookie-loos, so they don’t waste time with us – some stay and talk anyway.) The stabilizer bars were a no go; the show’s about half the size it was so the vendors are way down and no one was selling them. She did find the perfect motorhome, though, so the visit wasn’t a total waste of time. J

Saturday we were at Hershey Pantry again, this time for breakfast and to meet up with a couple of J’s coworkers, one of whom was interested in considering RVing after hearing J talk about his trips. (They picked the restaurant, but I wasn’t sorry to get in a couple of meals there.) After breakfast we went and did the show one last time with them. We showed the guy who was there to look at RVs a few different styles of rigs, but after a while he just said he’d really prefer a class A, so we looked at those for the rest of the day. It was fun, popping in and out of a bunch of rigs. I am not sure that they had as good a time as we did, but we had a good time! We found a new model Winnabago that we all really liked; they were pretty innovative with the floorplan and it was a good use of space for a 34 ft rig at a good price. Class A’s are still much more expensive than fivers of equivalent size, though, and we didn’t see anything that we liked even as well as our rig.

After we wore those guys out and they’d left to go home, we nipped in to the indoor vendors and signed up for some time in the Florida Keys. Campgrounds are very, very expensive in the Keys; I’ve always wanted to go but prices in the $70 to $120 per night range were a real disincentive. There was a campground at the show pitching a buy 3 nights get 5 deal; the catch was you had to give them your deposit at the show. We got the offer on Friday and went back to the trailer to think it over and decided to go for it. When we went back to talk to them and ask what sort of deal they’d do on a weeklong stay they offered us the same deal doubled: pay for 6 nights stay for 10. Sounded good to us so we went ahead and made the booking for the beginning of the new year. In 2010, if all goes well, we’ll be in the Keys. From there the plan is to mosey up the gulf coast in January and February and see my uncles Dave (unless one of them wants to bring their camper down to the Keys.. hint, hint.)

This morning we got up at a reasonable hour and moved through the morning chores with alacrity; we were on the road to NY by 10:30. I drove the first stint until just before lunch. My MIL drove her van; she elected to follow us. A mistake, IMO, our speed is highly variable with hills and such so there’s no way to set the cruise control and just drive. By the time we stopped for diesel in the afternoon she was tired and frustrated, so J took over the towing and I drove the van the rest of the trip. I passed J and set the cruise control and just drove, and with rest stops we got into the campground less than ten minutes apart. We talked about it this evening; I think she should just drive her way; we’ll call each other and see if we can hook up for meals, but if not, no sweat. We’re pretty sure that between her more frequent stops and our slower pace we won’t be far apart when we stop for the night, and it should be easier for everyone doing it that way.

On the Road again (whee!)

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:56:29 GMT

We’re back out in our fiver, settled into a pleasant wooded campground right next to the highway in Harrisburg, PA. I was a little nervous setting out and setting up (what if we forget something!) The smooth routines of the spring and summer were noticeably rusty, but eventually we got all settled in a site that is unlevel enough front to back that the trailer is so low on the front legs it looks like it’s kneeling. We’re using all the chocks, that’s for sure. We’ve come out early for the Hershey RV Show, America’s Largest, say the promoters (there are three shows that claim the title, but who’s counting.) This week J will have to go back to near-Philly for a day or two to finish up with a customer. I’ll spend that time putting stuff away in the trailer; when we ‘packed’, we just stacked boxes and bags on every available surface. It’s surprising how much stuff moves in and out of the camper as we do. One of the things that I want to look at is stemming that tide, reducing the ebb and flow of things that see more use in the fifthwheel than in the house.

With the current mandate to clean and clear the house, I haven’t been quilting at all. I haven’t really wanted to; the thought of getting out fabric and tools and stuff during this period of putting things away, packing things up and shipping things out does not appeal. During the day, the focus is on decluttering and maintenance. By evening, I want to spend time relaxing; maybe play some Champions Online, maybe watch some TV, read, hang out, or just be a cat rest. I’m really looking forward to doing some sewing now that we’re on the road again, and if there’s no quilting going on at the house, the stash and tools could move into the camper full time. Then, instead of packing projects to go on the road, if there’s something I really want to work on at the house I could just move that back from the camper. The plastic storage boxes that used to hold books in a hall closet have all been emptied; they’ll work great for fabric, and I think they’ll go nicely into the front closet. If I am lucky, most if not all of the stash ought to fit in the available space (it’s a small stash.) Two boxes came with us this trip, hastily packed at the last minute after J asked why I didn’t take more fabric along when I was complaining to him that I wasn’t sure I would have everything I wanted to work on. (That’s another work in progress, just getting stuff done rather than hand-wringing because it can’t be done perfectly. I was planning to wait to move the fabric until I could get it all into the bins neatly sorted by color and/or style. I can do that once it’s moved; better some of it should move now and be useful than that it should all wait until it can move perfectly. Which if I wait for that maybe it never happens.)

I’ve got a little shelf to assemble that should fit in the clothes side of the closet and hold our shoes in better order than the current heap-on-closet-floor system. In the spirit of organization that is governing my days this fall, I hope to go through the fiver and clear out some never-used stuff. That seems to be something that full-timers should do regularly, and Lord knows the basement could use a clear-out.
The past month has been great for getting rid of stuff. 92 boxes and/or bags of stuff have either left the house or been packed up to take to auction in October. We’ve donated quite a bit of stuff to the Salvation Army, sent a ton to the trash pile, sold some. The goal is a bag or box per day, and the average has been about two per day. The ticker is currently on sabbatical. I thought about putting it on hiatus but for some reason that has negative connotations for me. Sabbatical is the right term. This is a pause in the work, to revisit my purpose and return refreshed. This trip is a tangible reminder of why I am doing all this work, not just to have a clean house, but to be able to take more trips, spend more time in the fiver.

We’ll be out for three weeks this time: this first week will be in Harrisburg/Hershey, going to the RV show and relaxing. My MIL will join us this coming weekend, we’ll all go see the show with some of J’s coworkers who are interested in RVing, and then on Sunday we’ll head to upstate New York near Cooperstown for a week. MIL’s really gung-ho to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, so we’ll do that and other museums in the area, then head over to the Hudson Valley to tour Hyde Park and its environs. If all goes to plan we’ll be back in PA at the beginning of October.

Got Fabric?

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:58:04 GMT

The deadline is the 8th of September. I'm going to see if I can't get a box in the mail by then (or a little before..)

This comes at a good time for me; ok, my sewing room is a shambles (really my fabric storage room, I sew downstairs at my desk where I do everything else too.) But I should be able to come up with enough extra supplies and fabric to pack a USPS flat rate box nice and full.

What is this about? Iraqi Bundles of Love. (this is the intro page.) It's a grassroots program to send fabric, yarn, crafty stuff to Iraqi people for their use, started by someone currently stationed in Iraq. He's looking for bundles to hand out at the end of Ramadan; the website requests that you post a comment on the program's blog in order to get the APO mailing address. There's recommendations on how to pack a bundle and what to put in it linked from that intro post. The blog for the aforementioned requested comments is here: IBOL blog

Poison Ivy

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:51:10 GMT

So, the week before last, J and I got a charming missive from the city about our hedges, which were not up to code. Now, while we were on the road, in the middle of July, my MIL had opened and read to us a notice from the codes office that our hedges needed to be trimmed, the debris from said trimming removed, and we needed to put up house numbers. My MIL kindly went and bought house numbers and installed them, and she told us that the guy who handles our yard work had just been by to do the hedges and they looked fine. I called him and asked him to be sure the twigs were picked up and thought no more about it; the notice must have been in the mail when the hedges were done.

Alas, no. Two weeks after we get home, here comes the nastygram. The hedges must be clear of the sidewalk, and everything trimmed back severely. I go into the codes office to talk to the officer about our misunderstanding, and he’s on vacation. We leave a message, borrow a hedge trimmer from the yard guy (he’s a peach) and set to work. The codes office doesn’t care about what the hedges look like or how tall they are, they just have to be off the walk. Unfortunately, to clear the sidewalk, we really have to scalp the poor things. Bare gray branches now face the street on all sides. And the ivy beneath the hedges also has to be cleared out. J handled the hedge trimmer, and both of us gathered up the cut branches. We put the stake sides on our truck and completely filled the bed with what turned out to be over 300 lbs of hedge.

I worked in short bursts Monday through Friday (it was too hot to be out there very long on any one day) and used shears and a snow shovel to clear away the ivy and general debris, seven giant trash bags worth. Unfortunately for both of us, some of that ivy was the “leaves of three, let it be” variety. We both bathed in Tecnu. J started breaking out last weekend. I thought I’d dodged a bullet until I cleared the worst pockets of the ground clutter. Now here I sit, liberally daubed with calamine lotion, working hard not to scratch. Ahh well, this too shall pass. And I was able to call the codes officer on Friday and let him know the job was all done to spec. He’d just left for the day – I left a message.

That Online Bookseller

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:16:05 GMT

So, I just received the first payment for the books I sent to Cash-for-books, the online merchant that I mentioned in the previous post. That was nice and fast. They sent me an email when they got the package and one when they paid, one day later.

They also informed me that if people come to them via my account, I'll get a small cash payment. Who knew? So, if you've got newer books in good condition to sell, please use this link to get to their website. Thanks in advance!

Cash4books.net

Progress

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:38:43 GMT

I’ve found an online merchant to buy my used books, and a not-too-distant used bookseller to take the ones that the online seller doesn’t want. Mostly they both want newer books in good to excellent condition. The online bookseller takes about one in five, giving good prices. You enter the ISBN of the book and the website gives you a price (it’s been ranging from a high of four dollars to a low of fifty cents) or a “not buying” message. They pay shipping; for more than five or six books, you can use Fedex which is slightly faster and provides tracking numbers. The bricks and mortar bookseller takes about two out of three books. Older paperbacks get rejected, as does any hardback without a dustcover. They go through the boxes I bring in and quote me a price for the ones they’ll take; it averages out to about fifty cents to a dollar for hardbacks and about twenty cents for paperbacks. I’ve been averaging ten dollars a box.

Most if not all of the newest books that I am willing to part with are gone; now I am getting into the older stuff. A lot of my older paperbacks will just be donated; I’ll check them with the online merchant just in case there’s something wacky in the stacks, but I won’t bother driving them to the used bookstore. There’s no point in wasting gas on things I know they won’t buy.

The Salvation Army got three boxes and a bag of assorted stuff this week. They wouldn’t take the Christmas lights and ornaments (new in box.) That was a surprise. They didn’t even look in the first two boxes, but the ornaments were on the top of the third box and the guy taking donations gruffly said “Don’t take Christmas stuff” as I walked up with it. Their website was very helpful for valuations on the donated goods and I got a receipt, which should help on the taxes next year.

I’ve made my goal of at least a bag or box out of the house daily so far this week. Oddly, it doesn’t seem like enough work when it’s just carrying donations or book boxes out to the car.

As far as our plans for most of the stuff go, there’s an auction house nearby who will take small consignment lots; we’ve got an appointment to bring stuff to them in October (first open date.) We’ll contact Replacements Limited and see if they are buying the good china and glass that we don’t want to keep. I briefly considered Ebay but decided that the stress of working to sell stuff myself made that option unpalatable. The cash we make from the sale of goods is going into a moving fund. Maybe we’ll have enough to hire movers. I’ve never done a move where someone else trucked all the stuff to the new place. Maybe, we’ll get rid of enough stuff that we won’t need to hire movers.

It’s been a busy week. Both the truck and the car have to be inspected. The car passed with minimal work. The AC was out and the check engine light was on; my mechanic (a real character) fixed the fuse that was the cause of the cooling fans not working, which was the cause of the check engine light. He freed up the stuck AC fan: “I whacked it with a hammer and rust flakes fell out; now it works! You’re gonna need a new one sometime, though.” Then he gave it back to me to drive around and reset the monitors so he could do the emissions test. I figured out what the problem was while driving around near-Philly on the hottest day of the year so far. After about 20 minutes, the system started to make a swooshing sound. By the end of the day, it sounded like a washing machine. And water wasn’t dripping outside the car; no, it was pooling in the passenger side footwell. I took it back to my mechanic and showed him: “Holy cow! The drain is plugged; we’ll blow that out with air and you should be fine.” Of course when I got to his shop the next day (they called and said it was done) he hadn’t told his assistant about the AC drain. Back up on the lift it went; they were both peering into the undercarriage. The assistant reached in and pulled; water cascaded down, showering both of them. There must have been a quart of water pent up in that system. They got it cleared, used a wet-dry vac on the footwell, and all is well, if still slightly damp.

The truck went into the shop tonight (a different one with a heavy duty lift) for inspection. It needs new brakes, and since we use it so hard we’re looking at the best possible sets. This puts the price into Holy #@$* territory. But as the service guy said, halfway down the mountain isn’t the place to be saying: “Drat, I should have spent the extra on the better brakes..” I’m hoping that the final number comes in slightly lower than the worst case estimate, but I am not holding my breath.

Quilt guild meeting was today; an interesting speaker talking about her process making art quilts and showing slides of her work. The discussion of inspiration and process was fascinating. My friends were all glad to see me and I got a number of welcome backs and hugs which was gratifying. We’re traveling so much that I didn’t rejoin for the year, especially since last year they were up against the membership cap. I’ll just pay the per meeting fee for the ones I can attend.

Boxes and Bags Oh my!

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:11:28 GMT

J and I are committed to changing our lifestyle to allow more trips like the one we just finished. To that end, we're planning to downsize to a house which will be less expensive and easier to take care of, easier for Jackie to get around in. The first step on this journey is clearing this house of stuff. After my mother passed, I came home with much more of her goods than I'd planned. And for years, I just couldn't face letting them go. The rest of the house, which at one time had been fairly tidy, also started to slide. Now, I am willing and able to do some tough things for the benefit of living the way I want to live, especially with the example I have just had of that life.

My mother's stuff isn't my mother; I can keep my memories of her without keeping the stuff. I must consider that stuff as mine now; if I'd purchased it in the past would I keep it today?

The goal is to only own things that we love and/or use a lot. Preferably both; I love the bowl that I use for our cats' dry food -- it's a beautiful deep blue. I got rid of the red bowl, which was just 'eh', since I had two bowls and only needed one. The daily goal is to remove at least one bag or box of stuff from the house daily.

Accordingly, there is a ticker (and we'll see how well this works..)

Journey's End

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:59:49 GMT

We're back at the house, at least until sometime in September. J's work has ramped up in the wake of summer vacations and holidays. I am working on clearing the house of stuff we don't love and/or use.

Our last weekend in Chanute coincided with the hottest weather we’d seen to date: heat indices in the hundreds. I perspired in the fifthwheel, AC going flat out, wishing it was cooling. J took me outside when I complained that it wasn’t working well enough, and the heat was like standing too close to a campfire. After a short walk, the trailer was blissfully cool. We did that a couple of times on Saturday and Sunday, and it worked every time.

Monday we went by the factory; they were swamped and glad when we said we’d bring the fiver in on Tuesday. Getting hitched on Tuesday took a little extra time and care; the landing legs are not meant to support the full weight of the fifthwheel, so we used a bottle jack on the bad side to take the strain of raising the front of the fiver enough to get it hitched up. We got to the factory, got the rig in place, went to unhitch.. and the landing gear worked perfectly. It was way out of alignment, but it was running in and out just fine. We took ourselves and the cats over to the break room to wait. After a couple of hours, the shop manager came over and told us that they’d tried everything, and they couldn’t reproduce the error. The legs had been aligned, lubed, run in and out over and over, and nothing. He said they could tell from the alignment that something had been wrong but whatever it was working fine now. We were happy with their efforts and eager to get back on the road, so we picked up the cats and headed out. I think that the drive threads were riding on top of each other, and the weight of the fifthwheel over the weekend settled them back into the grooves. It worked fine from then on, anyway..

Tuesday got us into Missouri to a small but great campground in the middle of nowhere. We had a day of rest and nice weather; it was muggy, but cool enough that when I realized the folks in the van conversion across the way were having an impromptu jam session with hammer dulcimer and banjo, we were able to sit outside and listen.

Thursday we camped just inside the eastern border of Indiana; the drive was very nice once we were past Indianapolis. On hearing of a major accident on the freeway we had planned to take, we diverted to the state highway paralleling the freeway and enjoyed seeing something more of the state than rest stops. It was very slow in the suburbs, but settled into a nice drive on a good road. At the speed we usually travel (slow), state highways and the small towns they run through don’t slow us up too much, and it was nice to drive on the “National Road”, US 40, created in 1806 by an act of Congress as the first Federally funded highway construction project. The campground in Indiana was jam-packed; we were cheek by jowl with the neighbors, and of course J got a con call just as we were pulling in. I always get the ‘interesting’ campsites. It took a lot of backing and filling but we were finally in place, mere feet from the fire ring just behind us. Yay.

As it turned out, the con call almost sent us into Georgia, so we stayed put until a definitive answer let us go on our way to Maryland late Saturday morning. It made for a long day Saturday. We pushed on into the night, getting into the campground at midnight. That wouldn’t have been so bad except that it was another tight space. No one, myself included, appreciated the back up alarm on our truck as we pulled forward and back getting into the site. Once again, the ‘don’t check into a campground after dark’ rule was proved out. Thankfully some of the folks nearby were still out and about, and most of the rest of them left the next day, so we didn’t have to do too much slinking around. We had a pleasant few days; saw some friends, J worked in the area until Wednesday, and then got called to go up to Philly on Thursday. We’d planned to check out of the MD campground on Friday and move to a campground north of Allentown, where my family reunion was being held that weekend.

Instead, we changed our reservations to a campground halfway between J’s work and the reunion. I drove J to the house Thursday morning (we called his MIL from the road so she wouldn’t think we were burglars) and he took the car up to the work site while I headed back to MD. It took the rest of the day to get the trailer in shape (laundry..) On Friday I headed for near Quakertown. It wasn’t too bad a drive; heavy traffic near Philly. As always getting into the site was interesting.. it was a pull through site, sorta. Pull in across the grass, go through the site, and back in across the drive in front. As always, the ‘helper’ from the campground was less than. We got it into the site and I got out to look: “I’m going to have to move over,” I said, “the utility post won’t clear our slide out.” “Sure!” he said, “it’s only 15 inches.. “Umm, no, more like 36,” I said, looking at the post 20 inches from the side of the rig.

The trailer was finally positioned, and I thanked him and got him to leave before I leveled the rig. It took three layers of lynx levelers to get set up, but we were all shipshape and cozy by the time J got back from work. We were close enough to home that my MIL was able to come up for the weekend. The family reunion was great, and we enjoyed hanging out at the campground with my MIL. Poor Mister Guy had a rough time on his daily walk, though. We knew he was spooked by gravel crunching -- along with diesel engines, large dogs (small ones he stalks) and people -- but we didn’t realize how bad it was until someone on a bike came crunching up the gravel path to say hi! Mister Guy panicked and clawed J badly enough to get down, then set off running. Well, he was still on the leash so J’s running behind him trying to guide him towards the trailer, so of course he’s being chased (crunch crunch crunch!) My MIL threw the door open when he got close and he bolted inside. For the rest of our stay walks were a matter of putting the leash on the cat and letting him look out the door. A couple of times he went down the steps but as soon as he realized we were still at the scary place, right back up the steps to safety in the fifthwheel.

We stayed Monday for J’s work, and Tuesday to finish the packing needed to get the camper ready for storage. On Wednesday we headed out, a little delayed by a gullywasher. I was about to box the cats when the weather radio went off with a thunderstorm warning. It was only for an hour, so we stopped packing up and had lunch instead. An hour later we had clear sailing back to the storage lot. I got us checked back in, and we got the trailer in the space and everything transferred out just before the skies reopened. A good end to a fabulous trip.

Lightbulb Moment

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:08:14 GMT

I’m sitting here working on the last little bit of my Hawaiian appliqué quilt, and thinking over the gorgeous quilts I saw at Paducah, and the class I took there which mostly involved using inks to color fabric to get the precise look you want. I was disappointed in the class; in general, I find I don’t like that sort of technique. One of the winning quilts at the show was done that way -- it was quilted whole cloth: one piece of fabric which had been quilted and then the quilting motifs were colored in. It was beautiful, but when I got up close and saw how it had been done I walked away thinking less of the quilt.

As I sat and stitched and pondered, I wondered why I think of those sorts of techniques (painting on fabric) as cheats. Why am I such a traditionalist? It struck me suddenly: it’s about the frame of the art. What defines the art? This is clearest to me in poetry. The form of a haiku is 17 ‘on’ (corresponding loosely to English syllables) in a 5-7-5 pattern. If the poem uses 20 ‘on’ because it’s easier to get the effect the poet is looking for, well, it might be pretty but it’s not a haiku, not anymore. Sonnets can use any words they want, but if they don’t have a frame of 14 lines and regular meter, they’re not sonnets anymore. Quilting is about making art with fabric and thread. The challenge, to me, is making the art I want to create within the framework of using fabric and thread to get that effect. If I have to resort to paint, that’s a failure of craft; that’s taking the easy way out.

(This hasn’t stopped me from taking a class in using oil pastel sticks to shade fabric for an appliqué block. I enjoyed said class immensely; apparently a little cheating is ok. *grin*)

Quilt Top Finish

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:45:18 GMT

This week I finished the hawaiian jewelbox quilt that I've been working on off and on, started here. It took a while to get the last border on, as I had to wait for other priorities:

Here's the finished product spread out on the bed:

I plan to machine quilt this with a simple wave pattern, maybe with hawaiian flowers 'floating' on the waves.

Bringing things up to date

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:00:38 GMT

After Yellowstone, we headed for Madison, SD, on the southeastern end of the state. About a 14 hour drive took us to Rapid City, where we overnighted in a Wal-Mart parking lot along with quite a few other rigs. As usual, getting to sleep was tough, but we got a good night’s rest once we finally dozed off. The next day was a relatively short drive to get to our campground. Wall Drug was on the way, and just in time for breakfast. So the cats got their first break early, and we got a very nice breakfast at the Wall Drug café. Coffee for a nickel a cup, with a wooden box in front of the carafe to pay, and the best pancakes I have had in a long time. We were glad we stopped, it was pretty cheesy, yes, but fun to stroll through. The restaurant area was chock-a-block with illustration art, mostly western themed, including one (admittedly appalling) Wyeth right next to the buffet line. In the ‘back-yard’, along with the animatronic T-rex there were decades worth of scrapbook materials all framed and hung closely, covering the walls. Plaques from the city of Wall honoring the founders of Wall Drug rubbed shoulders with high school good attendance awards and military medals wound up next to foreign newspaper articles about the attraction which were next to family vacation snapshots. There was no real rhyme or reason to the display; it was as if all of grandma’s memory boxes/attic/trunk had been randomly dumped out and fastened up. It was oddly charming, which pretty much summed up my whole experience at Wall Drug.

Our lunch stop was in Mitchell, SD, for another kitschy roadside attraction, the “World’s Only Corn Palace!” The exterior of this arena building which hosts basketball games in the winter is covered with corn murals, which change every year. Unfortunately they begin to dismantle the outside displays in early June and change the murals in late summer/early fall, so the display wasn’t looking its best. It was interesting touring the interior and looking at the portraits of Corn Palaces in years past, and it would be worth a stop in fall when the murals are at their best.

We arrived in Madison, SD in the afternoon, and spent a pleasant few days there. The park was nice, the lake was full of algae but pretty from a distance. On a late evening walk to see the sunset, we saw pelicans and a swan in the distance floating placidly on the lake in the gloaming. Getting our mailing address changed over took a while on Tuesday; the mail forwarding place was really hopping.

On Thursday, we headed south to Mayetta, KS, on our way to Chanute, where we found a nice RV park to spend the Fourth at an Indian casino. The rates were downright cheap for full hookups with a players card, which I promptly obtained. The casino was pretty, if crowded; the slots were just loose enough to be fun. The buffet was excellent, the restaurant, alas, poor (great wine list, lousy food) and we actually came out a little ahead. Friday and some of Saturday were spent tinkering with the air-conditioner. Every time it shut off we had a waterfall feature in the kitchen. Not appealing, nor good for the roof (or the kitchen for that matter.) A plastic bin set on the sink caught the water but the volume was increasing in a scary way.

I was up on the roof twice on Friday and once on Saturday, disassembling and reassembling the unit. J handed me tools and helped me up and down the ladder: “ok, hon, you can let go now, you’re on the ground.” It turned out that the unit was installed in such a way as to press the (small) drain hole in the drip pan against the rubber roof. The pan drained very slowly, so when the fan was running it let out just enough water to keep things dry. When the fan shut off, the condensation on the cooling coils was no longer held in place by the air movement over them, and rolled down in a surge of water into the drip pan, overflowing it. I shimmed the drip pan to improve drainage and that sort-of worked, but Saturday found me back on the roof, adding an additional shim (nickels, as it happened) and widening the drain hole with my pocketknife. J couldn’t watch as I finished the job, working my knife into the gap between the AC and the roof to ensure that the hole was clear of the rubber and would drain well. That last trimming finally seemed to do the trick and we’ve been dry inside (and comfortable in the coolness too) ever since. We’d also observed that the AC gasket seemed over-compressed, so we had the NuWa folks replace it as one of the items on our punch list, and I think that helped too.

The only downside was that I completely forgot that in crawling around on the roof for hours, my T-shirt would ride up and my jeans descend, leaving a gap of normally unexposed skin. So now I have a crescent-shaped sunburn across the small of my back. Oww, ow, and oww again.

Saturday evening we went to a local festival and were treated to a concert including Joey+Rory, a favorite country group, with a really terrific fireworks show afterward. I found an unexpected benefit to celebrating the Fourth of July on the plains of Kansas. All around us, local fireworks shows were going on during the concert, close enough to see well, but not close enough to interfere with the music. It was very cool! I was also very glad we’d opted to stay at the casino a few miles away rather than the campground in the state park. The locals were shooting off fireworks that I had thought you’d need a license to get, and the bangs were almost non-stop from the campground. Mister Guy is not a fan of bangs; he and Mercedes would both have been frantic.

Sunday was a short drive down to Chanute, where we set up in the city campground to await our Tuesday morning service appointment. We were up at the crack of freaking dawn, as J likes to say, and at the factory not long after. This was the first time we’ve been there now that service is in the main factory building. They’ve got a new system of getting the trailers into the service bay; they back them in rather than letting us do it. As nerve-wracking as it was to do it ourselves, it was ten times worse to watch someone else, especially since it became clear he wasn’t used to long wheelbase trucks as he backed and filled over and over. I offered to do it myself several times, but nothing doing, and eventually we were in the bay. I was going over the punch list with one of the workers, so I missed the next trailer coming in; the guy moving it punched out the rear window of the owner’s shortbed truck in too tight a turn. Clearly the new procedures are a work in progress.

We were at the factory to have a couple of stress fractures near the bedroom slide repaired and the root cause of said cracks found and fixed, along with a few minor fixes like the AC gasket. In going over the list, the mechanic asked me to run out the slides, which turned out to be a very good thing. As the bedroom slide was going out, I happened to remember something that bugged me a little, and asked the mechanic to watch. At the end of the slide traverse, it noticeably moved the bedroom wall. I wasn’t sure if that was normal or something to worry about; by the way his eyes bugged out it was the latter. So it turned out our root cause was easy to find and easy to fix. They originally thought it would take four days or so but the trailer was finished Wednesday night. We’d removed to the Safari Inn, across the street from the campground, which was much nicer than I expected, with a comfortable room for both us and the cats and a shower stall which was all turquoise fabulousness, with three scallop shell platforms for soap and shampoo. We picked up the fiver Thursday morning early, and all of the work was covered under warrantee, which was a nice surprise.

The plan was to head out for Indiana on Saturday, taking two days to travel halfway to the east coast, finishing up the following weekend. The best laid plans gang aft agley, and ours ganged agley when our left front landing gear, one of the two supports that hold up the trailer at rest, made a sproinging noise and stopped working at the top of its traverse. I think that whatever is wrong is below the gearbox, which appears to be working fine. Since it’s Saturday and the nearby dealers are all swamped, we’ve elected to stay put and throw ourselves on the mercy of the factory service folks on Monday. The cats were quite surprised to be let out of their carriers after a mere fifteen minutes, as we shored up the landing gear, unhitched, and rolled the slideouts back out. If we have to be stuck, there are worse places for it to happen.

The week in Yellowstone

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:27:43 GMT

The last full week in June, we had six full days in West Yellowstone. It was glorious. We took a raft of photos with my poor overworked point-and-shoot camera; it did its best for us but a new camera moved to near the top of the wish list.

Sunday we pulled into the campground in the afternoon. On the way, there’s a rest area on one side of the hill; we stopped there for lunch and enjoyed the picnic meadow and the spring, with what looks like CCC stonework around it. The water was breathtakingly cold. Over the rise and Whoops! There’s our campground. I was really glad that I knew it was on the same site as a Super 8 motel or we would have missed it; as it was, we made the turn just a whisker faster than we like. They were going to put us into a teeny gravel site in the center of the campground, just barely large enough for the trailer by itself, but we bargained for a better space on the campground edge and they were accommodating. Once again, walking the campground pays off. Sunday night was the first of the G&G rally get-togethers, which was pleasant enough.

Monday, J had to work until afternoon, but then we went into the park. The (high) amount of traffic was surprising to me, though I guess it shouldn’t have been. My memories of a family trip years and years ago are of stop-and-go traffic throughout the park. We were spared that once we were through the admission gate, and went off to see Old Faithful first thing. It took a while to find parking in the enormous parking area. There seemed to be a crowd around Old Faithful so we headed right over, bypassing the lodge and concession buildings; it’s a huge complex. I was briefly disappointed to see that by the sign on the ranger station we’d missed the eruption by ten minutes, but a nearby photographer assured me it hadn’t happened yet, and we were in prime position when about five minutes later it did go off. After the geyser geysered, we walked the trail out to Morning Glory pool, passing many more geysers in various stages of spitting and burbling. It took about 90 minutes to walk the loop we’d chosen, including stops to take photos with other people’s cameras (J must have a trustworthy face, more than one family asked him to get a photo of all of them.) And just as we’d gotten close enough to see it well, Old Faithful erupted again right on schedule, so we had a gorgeous walk and saw Old Faithful twice.

Tuesday there were a bunch of activities on the G&G schedule but none that we wanted to do more than we wanted to go into the park again. This time, we headed out first thing in the morning, planning to stop at every little turn-out and loop road in our path. This worked great; we headed south toward the geyser area again and stopped at paint pots and aquamarine and cobalt pools and falls steaming from the heat of the water. Our favorite was the Grand Prismatic Spring, almost a small lake in size, deep blue in the center and orange and peach at the edges. The surface swirls with steam all of the time, until a gust of wind moves the curtain aside to show the lucent blue. It was a clear cool day and viewing conditions were perfect; I looked back at the spring as we walked away and was rewarded with the sight of the colored steam -- vivid blue and peach as it moved over the surface of the water.

On the main road again, our passage was halted by a large herd of buffalo (yes, yes, bison, I know – they’ll always be buffalo to me.) They were crossing the road in small groups, mostly cows, dark brown and shaggy with the remnants of their winter coats, and calves, cinnamon colored and incredibly cute. One calf crossed right in front of us to join his mother who was watching from the shoulder of the road. Naturally, this was one of the days that we’d forgotten the camera..

More than once in Yellowstone I had cause to marvel at people’s willful ignorance. This time it was the woman holding a toddler, who walked right up to one of the mother and calf pairs and turned her back to them, gesturing to her companion to take their picture. Luckily, the buffalo were more interested in crossing the road than in taking umbrage and all ended well.

We did as many geothermal features as we could stand, and once we started to get hungry, hotfooted it over to the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, which we had been assured had the best restaurant in the park. We made it just in time for lunch and really enjoyed our meal in the old-fashioned dining room with a stunning view of the lake. In the afternoon, there was time and energy for one last vista at Artist’s Point, the beautiful view of the falls at one end of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

On Wednesday, the rally had arranged an all-day bus tour to a couple of gold-mining towns in Montana. At a stop in Virginia City, I got to take a stagecoach tour, which was a lot of fun especially since I was the only passenger. So the driver and her small collie and I all rode on the driver’s bench up top. It was lots of fun and good information with very little camp, for which I was grateful. We also stopped at Quake Lake, created by a massive rockslide caused by a major earthquake in 1959; it was very interesting, especially seeing what the area was like in that era. We saw more antelope than you could shake a stick at. We were a little frustrated by the vague itinerary -- the schedule kept shifting at whim. I doubt we’d do that sort of thing again, but a stop at a local meat market made up for it somewhat as we were able to get an excellent bison roast for the chili J was going to make for the last potluck of the rally.

Thursday we were so tired that we abandoned plans to visit the park again in favor of resting at the campground and getting the laundry done. We weren’t the only ones with that idea so the laundry room was a happening place, especially since only one or two of the dryers could be considered to be working well. In the evening we had a gift exchange at the potluck, which was one of those “stealing” exchanges. Normally I hate those but this was more good-natured than most so it was ok. The gifts we’d brought, a quilted vent pillow and a bottle of bourbon, were much sought after and went early, which was gratifying.

On Friday we got up early. Not too early, as I remembered in the nick of time Thursday night (just before setting the alarm for five am) that the road we wanted to take wouldn’t open until 8 am. We were there for the road opening, and drove the north loop of the park in a quest for wildlife. We saw more buffalo, some elk (we saw elk every day we were there), and two near-bear (that’s when you get to the clot of people looking out into the forest just in time to be told that: ”there was a bear, right over there!”) To make up for the near-bear, though, we did see a wolf, hunting in a marshy meadow. He crossed the road as we were walking back from parking and I got some good photos as he moved across the meadow, causing a major traffic jam. Most of the animal sightings we had in Yellowstone were the result of stopping to see what the traffic jam was looking at, though in this case I’d spotted him and we‘d pulled over to start the ball rolling (or stopping, as the case may be.) The bald eagle in a nest close to the road was at home to visitors, and we got a great view from the truck driving by slowly in the press of traffic, as in front of us folks persisted in slowing or pulling over despite many signs saying don’t stop don’t slow down in this area.

Saturday we took the sure thing as far as bear sightings are concerned and went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone. They have an interpretive center with info on both black and brown (aka grizzly) bears, along with a small zoo featuring a wolf enclosure and a number of rescue bears. The bears are allowed into the viewing enclosure in groups of two or three, according to their temperament one assumes. This goes on all day, and they’ve set up a neat feature where kids are allowed to go into the enclosure between bears and hide food for the bears to find. It was a fun time for everyone, and it was neat to see the bears come in and look for food. They also had a big flock of ravens hanging around, and I heard the staffer warn the kids to hide the food well, because if we could see it so could the ravens and they’d eat it first if they could. We had just enough time in the afternoon to nip in to the park and visit Grand Prismatic Spring once more, this time with the camera, and got some good photos from the trail on the hillside behind the spring.

Sunday morning we headed out for the long drive to Madison after hearty farewells to the folks we’d come to know and like over the course of the week.

We're in South Dakota

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:55:50 GMT

And I'm behind on posts. Yellowstone was amazing and very busy, but before there was Yellowstone there was

When last we left our saga, we were in Arco, ID. We spent a week there, visiting Craters of the Moon National Park and EBR-1. Both were fascinating. Craters of the Moon was stark and beautiful; the spring wildflowers, most of them all of three inches high, were flourishing on the dark cinder slopes. They almost look planted, sprouting at regular intervals over the black ground. If you’ve ever seen those tapestries with flowers evenly spaced across the background, it looked very like that. This apparently is water-related; root competition determines the layout. Not that water was a problem when we were there; it rained almost every afternoon. Our campground hostess told us that it was the first time in three years that there’d been water in the riverbed of the Big Lost River that runs through town.

I got to see (and walk through) a lava tube for the first time, and see the impressions left in the lava of trees when they were engulfed; the steam of their burning cools the lava enough to solidify it and retain the impression of a charring trunk. Some of the rocks were a beautiful iridescent blue. We walked a fair bit, in between storms. We went up to the Mackay reservoir and saw the water arcing out from the spillway, considered going to the Mackay Rodeo and elected to hang out at home when the rain didn’t let up. We went to see EBR-1, the world's first electricity-generating nuclear power plant; its primary purpose was to test the hypothesis that it would be possible to ‘breed’ nuclear fuel (hence Experimental Breeder Reactor 1.) There are signs for a self-guided tour but we went with one of the guides, and got to hear the story about how operators would occasionally kick a panel near the piping, causing problem readouts in order to scram the reactor and get off work an hour early (if the reactor was shut down late in the day they just left it for the next day and everyone got to go home early.) They had the lab notebook on display in the control room, open to the page showing the first time the reactor came online. It took me back to working as a lab tech, in a good way.

We spent a lot of time in the fiver; J worked in the mornings and in the afternoons there were the aforementioned thunderstorms. J said he wasn’t going out on possibly ferrous rock in thunderstorms and I had to agree. It will shock my friends in PA to learn that I actually quilted some. I made a cushion with a one-block quilted front for the Yellowstone Rally gift exchange, and worked on a queen-sized bed quilt that was half-done (it still needs borders but that’s it.) It was nice to have a peaceful week; we got a lot of tidying done too.

J went to a nearby city to go grocery shopping while I worked on the quilt, and we stocked up on groceries for the following week in West Yellowstone. We drove up there on Sunday, and it was non-stop between doing as much in the National Park as possible and the events of the rally itself. More on that later, I think.

At the moment it’s early evening, the sun is shining, the sky is cloudless, and the fire is dying down; I moved the laptop outside to work on this post. It has been a lovely breezy day in Lake Herman State Park, near Madison in eastern South Dakota. We got into the campground yesterday after a hard two days driving (952 miles from West Yellowstone.) The cats, accustomed to the past few weeks’ shorter drives, are just beginning to consider forgiving us. Sunday night was spent Wally-docking; they were Not Amused.

Into Idaho

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:24:07 GMT

We're heading East, homeward-bound, eventually. We left Oregon and are now almost all the way across Idaho, getting ready to make our way to Yellowstone for a rally, then South Dakota, then down to Chanute, KS again for rig repair, and that's the extent of the pre-planned travel for now.

Our travels through Idaho, in the course of which I am sadly dis-illusioned. We left the Columbia River and drove across Oregon to the Snake River and camped for what was supposed to be a week at Farewell Bend State Park. Alas, despite checking the Verizon website for coverage and being assured that it was good, it was in fact crappy. We stayed a couple of days so that I could visit the Oregon Trail center in Baker City and then moved on. A cell booster is definitely in our future plans; there have just been too many great places where cell coverage is almost good enough. From there we went to a very nice campground in Meridian, ID, just outside of Boise. We took advantage of the suburbs to do some shopping and go see Up, which was lovely and touching and especially apt to us.

In our time in Oregon, I’ve had a chance to visit two BLM-managed areas, both with interpretive centers. The first, Yaquina Head near Newport, OR, is operated by the BLM as an Outstanding Natural Area (a specific class of BLM lands) and there is a lighthouse with costumed docents doing tours; an interpretive center with kids activities, a video about the lighthouse, a display on sea-life, and an extensive gift-shop; and an interpretive trail down to a superb tide pool area. Uniformed staffers (probably USFWS but I was not sure) give group tours of the tide pools and are happy to answer questions from passersby. The second was the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City, OR. Here there’s a fairly large museum with interactive displays, videos about the trail, many helpful volunteers, etc. A path leads down to some of the remaining trail ruts; it’s a fascinating place. I was able to buy a couple of books on the Oregon Trail migrations which have been very interesting reading.

So naturally I was expecting great things from the BLM interpretive center near Meridian, a place called Dedication Point. We headed out in the late afternoon so J could go too, the first of these jaunts he’s been on. We saw the sign and pulled off into a dusty roadside parking area. I looked in vain for the interpretive center. All I saw was a couple of restroom facilities, and a sign. J, more experienced with BLM lands than I, exclaimed over the amenities: “Wow, they even have pit toilets here!” The sign pointed out a short loop trail to an overlook, with native plantings on one leg and sagebrush on the other. J and I both laughed a little over the idea that sage was somehow ‘non-native’ but the concept was interesting; they’d burned out an area and treated it with herbicides designed to suppress the truly non-native and invasive cheatgrass, then planted native species as a test bed for habitat conservation, very interesting. Once I had gotten over the disappointment of having my false expectations dashed, I really enjoyed this. The trail led past a shelter with seating down to an overlook bounded by low rock walls. Extensive signage described the raptors that visit the area, and the view of the Snake River winding far below was gorgeous.

Further along, the road switchbacked down the bluffs to a hydroelectric plant, built in 1901. (There was a sign showing delivery of the first turbines, by mule train.) We were able to walk around the outside but tours are only given on certain days. We drove the gravel road along the Snake River as far as it was passable. I was very glad we’d come, the views were spectacular and it was a fun trip.

While we were in Meridian we also went to the World Center for Birds of Prey. This started out in the era of DDT as a peregrine breeding center; they’d found a population of peregrines untainted by DDT and started a captive breeding program that eventually released thousands of peregrines into the wild. Now it’s a small museum and facility where they keep a number of unreleasable raptors and maintain a raptor breeding program (the condor wasn’t on display as it’s off, er, having fun as it were.) They do live bird demonstrations, we saw the end of one with a well trained crow and another with a red-tailed hawk. The entry is through the shop, then into a courtyard which just teems with small birds. Crowds of them tussling at the bird feeder, ground squirrels and quail and chukars running around merrily. Granted it’s almost perfect habitat, with a small stream and plenty of food and cover but I was surprised at the great numbers of birds. Cages around the courtyard hold larger raptors, and it turns out that’s the real reason for the exuberant small fry. According to the docent, wild raptors notice the hawks and eagles in the area cages and stay away. The facility also holds a falconry center which wasn’t open while we were there; we’ll have to come back.

On Saturday we drove from Meridian to Arco, ID, which is close to Craters of the Moon National Park and EBR-1, the first US breeder reactor. Arco is the first town electrified by nuclear energy, and has the USS Hawkbill (SSN 666) sail on a pedestal in the town park, along with a submariner’s memorial. I drove most of the way, keeping my promise to drive on most if not all driving days. We got into the campground just before the first storm of the afternoon arrived, always a plus. We’re at the very pleasant Mountain View RV Park, with nice grassy well spaced sites, great cell coverage (I checked when I called to make the reservation) and a large and shady site in the back of the campground. There’s a lilac bush just outside the trailer window and a spruce tree sheltering the picnic table. We’ve been to a couple of places now where they’ve put us in the back for a week-long stay, which is great because we prefer the quieter section of the campground.

From here we’ll travel to West Yellowstone for a Hitchhiker rally all next week; it’s a short drive (167 miles.) Arco is about a thousand feet lower in elevation than West Yellowstone, 5325 to 6667. It’s getting colder as we climb, and I am glad of the extra week at high altitude; I was puffing like a grampus just walking around today.

Odds and ends

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 04:13:32 GMT

Wednesday evening, driving home from a very good dinner at the Rogue Ale brewpub, I was slowly wending my way past the tents and trailers in the first third of the campground. Looking at the campsites, I realized something that hadn’t struck me before. The tent campers pretty much all had stuff spread all over, stuff on the picnic tables, stuff spilling out of open hatchbacks. Even the very fancy folks who had set up a dining fly complete with a spill of Christmas lights for a chandelier had stuff all over the table. Condiment bottles and coolers and towels and so forth. And I realized. One of the things I value about RVing is that there’s a place to put all that stuff. Not haphazardly packed in the trunk in brown paper bags, the way we did it when we tent camped two years ago, but neatly stacked (or to be honest, sometimes messily shoved) into cabinets and drawers. It can all be put away. Just the thought makes me sigh with contentment.

Pity the poor sea anemone. The week after Memorial day the Oregon coast was blessed with unusually low tides (2 ft below average) that coincided nicely with lunchtime. I took advantage of the extra days on my admission to Yaquina Head and went and picnicked on the shore overlooking the tidepools, listening to the ranger-led school trips. I heard one ranger talking to his group: “Is there anyone that hasn’t had a chance to do this? Touch there, and it will curl up..” It wasn’t till they left and I was able to peer into the tidepool that I saw what he was talking about. The green sea anemones are safe to touch (for us) and they’ll curl themselves up around your fingers, thinking that the touch is something to eat coming into their tentacles. So most of the anemones I saw were sitting all folded up, looking rather sullen at the trick. Little mossy green donuts. There were a few that were open, their short fronds a soft green like sea glass. The tide pools were well furnished with orange sea stars, purple sea urchins and the green anemones. It was quite lovely. I’ve never seen that many inhabitants in a tidepool before. E and I went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium on Saturday and all of their anemones, little pink ones, medium green ones like the one’s I’d seen at Yaquina Head, and big white ones looking like so many aquatic feather boas, were open and moving in the currents of the tanks.

And then there are sea lions. There are more than one type, which I am not certain that I knew before this trip. This week I took the drive down to the Sea Lion Caves attraction, one of the few attractions on the Oregon coast that isn’t run by either the state or the feds. The families that have owned and operated it since the 1930’s have done and are doing such a good job that there’s no need to take it over (aside from a desire to eradicate their mascot, which is a sickeningly cute anthropomorphized sea lion pup in a sailor hat.) The Sea Lion Caves area contains both a rookery and winter home for Northern or Stellar sea lions, the larger and more northerly variety. There’s a sea cave where the sea lions overwinter, and a rocky shore that serves them as a breeding ground and nursery in spring and summer. The rookery is the only one on the mainland; others are all on islands. The cave’s supposedly the largest sea cave in the world; there’s an elevator to reach its observation post, built in short sessions over several years during the time of year that the sea lions were mostly out in the rookery. Shore birds nest on the rocky walls and when I was there at least, sea lions drape themselves over the small island in the middle of the cave. There’s a continuous clamor in the cave, between the high-pitched twittering of the birds and the low roars of the sea lions. They were even more vocal in the rookery; one bull would start in with a growling roar and most of the others would join in harmony. The rise and fall of the noise, oddly enough, sounded exactly like distant motocross racing.

By contrast, the sea lions in Newport harbor bark when disturbed, deep hoarse barks, but not roars. Walking to the restaurant Wednesday night I glanced toward the harbor on hearing said barking, and saw a bunch of people standing on the pier looking down. When I walked over to see what they were looking at, I saw a score of snoozing sea lions not fifteen feet below on floating docks. They looked very comfortable, periodically grooming their fur and rutching around into better sleeping positions. Most were tagged for tracking. According to a nearby sign, they are California sea lions, males commuting from their homes in the northern waters down to California for the spring breeding season.

J couldn’t get away from his work until this weekend, so I packed up and towed the trailer to Cascade Locks on Friday, and drove in to Portland to get him at the airport on Saturday. 155 miles towing. I reserved a pull through site at this campground, since my helper had to go home. They were very surprised and solicitous at the campground here when I came in. “You tow a fifthwheel by yourself?!?” They upgraded my site to make sure that it was easy-in and out, and sent a guide to help me pull in. Which was funny; I was mostly parked and he wanted me to back up a bit to move over in the site. I turned off the truck, and he said don't shut it off! I told him that I understood we weren't done getting set in the site but I wanted to see for myself what he wanted me to do. And got out and walked the site so we both understood what the plan was.

Thanks to those Palmdale driving lessons, the trip went very smoothly. I even occasionally take one hand off the wheel while towing! My anxiety levels are no worse than they should be. Our experience is that with the trailer everything’s just one notch up because of the extra care that you take, so light traffic feels like moderate traffic, moderate like heavy, and so forth. I’m so glad to know that I can handle the rig if DH gets called away again and I can take my fair share of the driving to make it easier on him. I can’t recommend driving lessons highly enough; they were worth every penny. What had been a highly dreaded event was no big deal, thanks to Jerry.

Tomorrow we’re off to Farewell Bend State Park, the point where the Oregon trail left the river and started the trek overland. We’ll be there for a week and I’m looking forward to finding out more about the trail.

A quiet two weeks

Fri, 29 May 2009 02:09:39 GMT

It’s been a quiet couple of weeks. After seeing the redwoods, we moved to gold rush country; Sonora, CA, in a fairgrounds campground for a couple of days. Still no aircard service, though our phones worked fine and we found an internet café so J could work. We drove the area and toured the local museum; we went to Angels Camp, home of the annual frog jumping contest -- Calaveras Co, if that rings any bells.. ;) The record distances, immortalized with bronze plaques in the sidewalk (name of frog, year, distance) were startling: 20 feet, 22 feet, 24 feet. I asked at the info center if they allowed teeny jet packs; the lady behind the counter was Not Amused, but did deign to explain that the winning distances were for three consecutive jumps.

Our campground in Sonora was pleasant, grassy sites shaded by large trees. All around us was a gathering of E Clampus Vitus folks preparing for a weekend get together. First I’d heard of them; they’re a drinking historical society, or possibly a historical drinking society, like yet strangely unlike such worthies as Masons or Elk. They were all very friendly, anyway.

On Wednesday we pulled out and made the easy drive up to Orland, CA, and a nice campground in Orland for J’s family reunion in Willows. The weather turned hot for the weekend and the trees were producing pollen at an astounding rate. I was ok but J’s allergies were in high gear. We hung out with everyone on the covered patio at a cousin’s house, various people coming and going until the Saturday festivities. It was a good party with lots of picnic food. I couldn’t escape without being gifted with several containers of potato salad, which went well with my lunches for a couple of days. We spent a few days in the area after the party and took advantage of the fact that we were close to Chico, CA to go by Transfer Flow, Inc and get a new fill neck for the truck. It wasn’t too expensive, and it will let us fill our tank at truck pumps, often the only place we can get into to get diesel while we are towing. We also made an appointment at the local Ford dealership to get Eloise’s oil changed and radiator flushed and filled, both of which were much needed.

With multiple appointments and an early start time, I talked J into letting me take the truck in for the work while he stayed at the campground. It turned out to be a good thing, because his work ramped up that day and he spent most of the day on the phone. A couple of things needed his personal attention, as it turned out, so we had to revise our travel plans to fit. From Orland we drove to Mount Shasta as planned, but instead of picking up our friend E at the train station in Dunsmuir and driving to see the coastal redwoods, we went from Mt Shasta to Corvallis, OR and spent the Memorial Day weekend in a KOA campground.

Mount Shasta was beautiful; the campground, not so much. The swimming beach on the lake had a stunning view of the mountain, and that was the best part of the park. The sites were tight and the roads narrow. Our site had no water when we arrived (quickly corrected) and the EMS system showed improper ground so we had no power either. They came out and rebuilt the power post but it didn’t fix the problem, so we wound up getting 20 amp power from a nearby rental cabin. Fortunately the weather was cool enough that we didn’t need our air conditioner.. Pulling out on Saturday was an adventure too. Just before we were ready to get going, a truck towing a large toy hauler (type of fifthwheel) got stuck at the bend of the road right in front of our campsite. He had to back up a few hundred feet to get out. Between the tree on one side and the cabin porch on the other side of the road, that curve just didn’t have quite enough clearance: two feet less porch or one less tree and it would have been no problem. We took the object lesson to heart and crept out of the site, swinging as wide as possible, almost scraping the front fender of the truck on the porch, and cleared the tree on the other side by a literal two inches.

After that, the rest of the day was a piece of cake. We stopped for lunch at a rest stop and I did the last few grades into the Willamette Valley to get some experience towing on hills. It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The KOA was a pretty campground with very friendly folks. We extended a day so that the drive to Newport would be on Tuesday rather than on Memorial Day. E showed up just as we were getting the trailer in place and took us out to dinner in Corvallis once we were set up. It was a nice restful weekend; we drove to the coast on Sunday and spent the afternoon in Newport so that we could check the route to our campground there. On Monday we dropped J off at the airport in Portland for a flight to Philly, and on Tuesday E and I took the rig to Beverly Beach State Park in Newport. It was a big help having her there to help back the trailer into the site. Any number of trees and stumps were saved from a close encounter with the truck by her timely intervention.

Wednesday she and I toured Yaquina Head and then headed into Portland to drop her off and scope out part of our route eastward. It’s an easier drive than the one from Corvallis to Newport, which is a good thing. We’ve extended here at Beverly Beach until the first weekend in June, and if J isn’t able to be back by then I’ll take the trailer solo up to near Portland and then over to Boise. I am really enjoying the campground and the Oregon coast, even if my instincts are betraying me. Beverly Beach is Bethany Beach, and the ocean is east of here, right??

Guess what J got (LOL)

Fri, 15 May 2009 17:44:31 GMT

Your result for The Social Persona Test (What kind of man/woman are you?)...

The Librarian (QTBF)

Quirky Traditional Beta Female

You know the story--The quiet, smart girl who emerges from her shell to become the new queen bee. Nothing wrong with nerdy girls, in fact there aren't enough of you. Your best match is The Late Bloomer, as he once was the male version of you.

You are more QUIRKY than NORMAL.

You are more TRADITIONAL than LIBERAL.

You are more PASSIVE than DOMINANT.

When picking a date, consider: The Late Bloomer (QTAM), The Lord of the Misfits (QLAM), The Snowball's Chance in Hell (QTBM), The Suit (NTAM), or The Altar Boy (NTBM).

Avoid: The Frat Boy (NLAM)

(Image from theblackspiderman.com)

Take The Social Persona Test (What kind of man/woman are you?) at HelloQuizzy

In the Cathedral of the Trees

Tue, 12 May 2009 18:21:06 GMT

It turns out that this part of the trip is all about the many regions of California. We went from Palmdale, in the desert hills outside of the Los Angeles basin, to Three Rivers, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas this weekend.

Our last two days in Palmdale were two days of driving for me. The RV driving instructor showed up promptly at nine am, and we pulled out shortly thereafter, leaving J to work by the pool with the cats in their carriers. At four hours a session, it wasn’t too long for any of them, and the cats were quite entertained by the birds near the pool area (J was entertained watching the cats.) I drove steadily, turning and turning and turning again (left, left, left, left, right, right, right..) and stopping and starting and going uphill and down as directed, guided with a constant stream of instruction all over the Palmdale area. We went by the Lockheed Skunkworks and past the display of military planes at the museum near the airbase. We went through the downtowns of several towns and over the hills and through construction zones, and when the ambulance went by and I had to pull over he laughed and said “right on time!”

I was amazed that it didn’t take long at all until I was comfortable enough at the wheel to be driving one-handed, chatting and gesturing with the other. The instructor was great! The tips on using simple reference points to make turns that let the trailer clear easily, judging heights of obstructions, driving hills, driving on the freeway, backing straight and in a turn, are exactly what I wanted to learn. He said that he didn’t need to teach me about holding a lane; I said that I’d driven the truck a lot and worked out my reference points (there’s that concept again.) He was impressed with my backing up: one practice with him guiding me as I backed along the cones and I did it solo the second time, coming just a little closer to that line of cones, as is my preference. We stopped backing practice at that point. Apparently people don’t usually get it right the first time. He professed his surprise, and I told him that over a year of getting J into campsites all over the country made a big difference. When J and I pulled out on Saturday I drove the first part of the trip and it was much, much less stressful than ever before, even including pulling in to the gas station to get diesel.

Coming down Tehachapi pass on route 58 into Bakersfield we noticed that the trailer brakes weren’t releasing completely, a Very Bad Thing with several more downhill miles to go. A handy turnoff gave us a wide place in the road to stop and check everything. We let the cats loose in the trailer for an early break, got ourselves a snack, let everyone and everything cool down, and carefully cleaned the contacts where the trailer plugs into the truck electrical system. That did the trick; we used contact cleaner to scrub off some corrosion from the connection and a can of air to blow it clear of the recess, and the brakes behaved themselves perfectly. Our detour came with an alternate route; we stayed on the minor highway we had turned onto and drove down the last bit of the hills into the start of the central valley.

It was beautiful, looking down from the tawny grass slopes into the verdant flatland. A much lovelier route than the one we’d intended. Down on the wide valley floor we drove past fields and fields of carrots, onions and the like, gradually changing over to citrus, olives and, surprisingly – we stopped to check what the vivid red dots in the trees were – pomegranates in bloom. Then it was back into new hills suddenly rising from the flatland, sparse stunted trees and golden grass and, off a side road next to a stream, our campground.

The creeks here in the hills are frothing and white with spring runoff. We got in late Saturday afternoon after a hot sticky drive and immediately headed over to the big feature for this campground, a swimming hole. Big rocks downstream from a sandy bank make a nice deep pool complete with a gently sloped boulder for basking on the far side of the stream. Swimming over to said rock immediately took care of any residual stickiness. The water is breath-stealing cold. I swam, almost dog-paddling to keep my head out of water, over to the boulder. The current runs strong in the center of the pond. Only once I was safely ensconced in the shallows upstream of the boulder did I splash water over my face and head; splash, gasp for breath, splash, gasp. We alternated sunning ourselves and eating huge sweet oranges bought for a dollar a bag with cooling off in the icy water.

Later that evening we went for dinner at a restaurant recommended by the local sheriff -- we’d stopped and asked when we saw his car (I’ve never had a boring meal going by the locals’ recommendation.) It was built almost overhanging another stream, and we managed to finagle a table overlooking the rushing water. Submerged bushes and small trees showed just how high the water was. Fascinating to watch, and the food was good too. I took the last of the tiramisu home and had it for breakfast.

Sunday morning we woke up early and headed out into the mountains. Up and up and up, climbing into the steep valley and switchbacking up the side of the mountain. The river was far below as we climbed into greener slopes and larger trees, then we lost sight of it as the evergreens began to outnumber the oaks. Patches of snow started to appear among the trees. Giant white flowering spikes of yucca plants were everywhere at the lower elevations, replaced higher up with wildflowers, yellow and purple. The road got narrow enough that we folded in our mirrors, and finally we reached our first stop at the Sentinel tree and a grove of sequoias around a small mountain meadow. We walked and marveled. There were few people at this stop; we had the grove almost to ourselves. I heard birdsong and rushing water and the stillness of the pines. I’ve never seen anything like the sequoias, huge thick trees with deeply furrowed reddish bark and branches starting miles up the trunk. Their bases are splayed and knobby which seems as it should be from their great weight pressing down. I pressed my hand to the bark and found it soft, flaking and shredding to show the red under-bark.

Our second stop was the General Sherman tree, supposedly the largest living thing currently known. The crowds were thicker here; we parked out a bit and walked over snowpack to reach the main trail down to the tree. We walked down a long path, stopping at the halfway mark to see the upper branches of the great tree, then continuing on to the path around the roots. I stood at a carefully contrived photographer’s vantage point and frankly gaped. It was awe-some, to be precise. It seemed like a magic trick, to climb from the fertile valley into scrubland, pass through the dark woods, and emerge into dappled sunlight among enormous and stately trees, like the huge pillars of a cathedral.

The road out of the park climbed above the zone where sequoias can grow and into the tall pines, then swooped and curved gently down into the valley again. We found a quirky café in a tiny town and had a very nice lunch, then wended our way back over to Three Rivers and our campsite. Sadly we can’t stay here as long as we’d planned. No internet service and no cell service (AT&T works fine, say all the locals) means we can’t spend workdays here. So we’ll be off on Monday, most likely, to see another of California’s many faces.