Road Trip to Colorado-Day 1

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Robin

VACAVILLE TO BODIE

We just completed our annual Road Trip. Last year it was to see my daughter and her family in Texas, exploring Arizona and New Mexico on the way. If you’re interested the blog posts about that trip start with this one. This year the goal was to meet up with my husband’s brother and sister in Leadville, Colorado on July 9 and do some site-seeing and camping along the way.

I do use my iPhone for maps and interesting info along the way, but it doesn’t do you much good when the phone says “no service”, which it did a lot on this trip. Besides we like to follow along with the detail in these map books as we’re driving. They are also invaluable at finding places to camp along the way.

We started east on Hwy. 50. I always get a kick out of this sign when entering Sacramento.

I’m glad that Dan likes to do most of the driving because it leaves me free to watch scenery and take photos from the truck. This was another journey for the old green truck.

This is some of the evidence of last year’s fires in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

East side of Sierras

We joined up with 395 on the east side of the Sierras. Beautiful. Most of the country on the east side is considered the high desert, but the West Walker River is at the base of the mountains and other creeks flow out of the mountains that are east of the highway. The valley is lush and this is cattle country.

Our plan was to first visit Bodie, and old mining town in Mono County, California. Bodie had been a favorite haunt of Dan’s dad and he wanted to check it out.

Disclaimer: Let me say here that a lot of my travel photos are DBP (Drive-By-Photography). Some are from the open (or maybe not) side window and some are through the bug-splattered windshield. I’d rather read (and write) blog posts that are more photos than text, so I’m using what I have. Even my good photos will never be National Geographic quality, but these posts are about the story. So here we go.

We turned off of 395 onto Bodie Road (270). The country is mostly desert, but again, where there is water the desert is kept away. I was excited to see sheep on the way to Bodie. This was not a fiber trip, but sheep are always a good sign. I tried counting these from a photo and I think there are about 600 sheep with 4 guardian dogs and a herder. They were moving up this valley when we drove to Bodie. (The next post will be about that.)

When we left Bodie two hours later the sheep were back in the middle of the valley and had been going to water in an irrigation ditch at the right of the photo. They were moving away from the ditch and back into the valley. We stopped and watched awhile.

When I enlarged the photos I could see about 17 black-faced rams in with the ewes.

The band started moving up the valley on it’s own but that was obviously not the plan the herder had. He and his Border Collie walked out to the road and up in front to cut them off. The Border Collie turned them while the guardian dog in the center of the photo went to get a stray.

Near Bodie

But back to Bodie. Here is the landscape without water.

Stay tuned for the next post.

Random Thoughts in Photos

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Robin

Seen while driving in town the other day… lumber pattern I liked the patterns of the wood. I especially noticed the part that doesn’t show up very well here but the bottom right where the heartwood (I think) makes the half circles. Weaving ideas.Also while driving. I was on Pedrick Road east of Dixon. I really wanted a photo of the snow-covered Sierras. It’s been awhile since we’ve had that view. The lens on the phone makes the mountains too far away for that shot, but I like seeing the train.In this shot too.I may have shown this photo before, but I like this sunset view. It makes the mud and swampy “lake” worthwhile.And speaking of lots of water, this was a result of the last storm that came through. This is a very old fig tree that the kids used to play in a long time ago. Note the steps and the treehouse platform. The roots of this tree have been rotten for some time and the dogs often found something to bark at in the hole in the trunk. giraffe sculpture I’ll bet you didn’t know that we had giraffes in Solano County. These two are about a mile from here where I take Ginny to herding lessons.And while we’re talking about herding, this is Ginny working “her flock” at home.

A White Christmas

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Robin

We spent a lovely Christmas Day with my son and other family members. We got there in the morning before everyone else so that we could spend some time in the forest that is their backyard. I am not a snow person, but I can brave it occasionally, especially when the sun is out, and I’ll admit that it was a nice touch to have a beautiful snowy view from inside Matt & Kaleena’s warm house with a fabulous woodstove to back up against. The morning began, however, with us sliding backwards down Matt’s driveway in our Explorer. (I am planning to sell this before the next smog deadline, so no new tires for us.) That little glitch solved (by rocking the Explorer out of the snowbank and then parking at the bottom of the hill), we geared up with showshoes and foot warmers in ~~our~~ my boots and walked down to Jenkinson Lake.

What time I have spent in the snow has been well after the storms have come through. There is something very different and beautiful about being there immediately after the snowfall……while the branches are still heavy with snow.

I loved seeing the snow clear to the tops of the trees. As the sun started warming the trees, snow cascaded from the highest branches.I spent the night at M & K’s (Dan came home for chores and dog duty) and the next day Dan came back and brought Chris and Meryl with him. Then we celebrated our private family Christmas.The younger generation helping the older one with digital issues.Chris plays a mini-flute sporting his new Storm Trooper oven mitt.Here are my sheep/barn related Christmas gifts. My wheelbarrows constantly need their tires pumped up so Dan got the fittings to go on an extra air compressor in the barn. There are tubes and tires for my handtruck. Dog treats from Hawaii. Sheep and dog magnets. All the attachments for my new GoPro (birthday present). Footrot Flats is a comic strip series that I think only a sheep farmer would enjoy. Hand and foot warmers packets that I’ll share with Farm Club in the barn. We took another hike that afternoon. This was a great two-day Christmas celebration with family. And it’s not quite over. The kids are taking us to see StarWars in a couple of days. The only thing missing was my granddaughter and her family but at least we spent a week with them not long ago.

Road Trip to Texas – The End

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Robin

In the last post we had come home to California about sunset, but we were still a long way from home.

We had decided to camp at Joshua Tree National Park, but arrived there after dark. Mid-week, mid-July. No problem finding a camping site. I woke up before sunrise and walked in the desert to get some photos.I didn’t have much luck with great sunrise photos but the good thing about sunrise (besides that another great day is starting) is that the light is great for other photos.

Have you ever seen so many spines?

Joshua Tree NP We had slept in the truck so it didn’t take long to break camp. We had entered the park from the south and planned to drive through to the northern exit.We stopped at the Cholla Cactus Garden, a nature trail constructed through the cholla with warnings to not touch…for your own safety!

I was not tempted to touch. This “jumping cholla” is known for it’s tendency to attach to a passerby without much provocation.

This is what the park is known for–the Joshua tree which is not really a tree, but a species of yucca that can grow to 40 feet tall. The park protects 794,000 acres of Mojave and Colorado Desert.

We drove to Keys View. At 5185 feet, its not the highest place in the park but I think it’s the highest spot you can drive too. You can see the Coachella Valley to the southwest and Mount San Jacinto and Palm Springs to the north (just out of this photo)

Joshua Tree Park has plenty more to come back to, especially if we could take a vacation in the spring. Can you imagine what it would be like for early settlers? There were miners, homesteaders, and ranchers who tried to make a go of it here and there are remnants of those homesteads and mines. We stopped at the visitor center on the way out and saw this statue and mural when driving away. After seeing the interesting public art in southern New Mexico and Arizona I wish that I had been on the lookout for it in the earlier part of our trip.Leaving Joshua Tree NP and driving through the town of Twentynine Palms, now the plan was to just head home. California is a big place. The iPhone map showed almost 8 1/2 hours to go.

More public art…or is this private art…or art at all? Amusement.

More amusement. This is the only souvenir I bought for myself (other than the National Park patches, which someday may be sewn to something but for now are on my bulletin board with others). This bighorn sheep now is on my big loom with a collection of other sheep.California oak woodland. Many hours still to go.

Looking west from near Rio Vista. We live on the western side of the Central Valley and those are “our” mountains in the distance.

Road Trip to Texas – Day 1

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Robin

It is exhausting going on vacation…the part before you actually leave. Thanks to friends and family who are taking care of things while we’re gone. Self portrait. Near Tehachapi from the truck window. We didn’t leave the house until 1:30 and wanted to get some miles behind us the first day. We finally needed to stop and eat. For the first day or two we planned to eat out of the ice chest using up food from our refrigerator. So we had salads and hard boiled eggs at a rest stop near Boron. Trivia: Did you know that the 20-mule train teams that hauled boron out of Death Valley were actually 18 mules and 2 draft horses?

Usually we sleep in the back of the truck when we need to stop but this time the truck was packed full with some of the things that Katie has had stored at our house. I had visions of the Conestoga wagons carrying the precious possessions that pioneers wanted to have with them. I loaded my grandmother’s secretary desk that I used as a kid, an old trunk that was also from a grandparent, and my grandmother’s delicate tile-topped table into the truck. One of the grandmothers was from New York so the desk and the table (and I don’t remember about the trunk) came from there to CA, probably by moving van and now were being carried in a pick-up truck back east to TX. Stuffed around and in the furniture are things Katie had packed in boxes–Breyers horses, trophies from her dairy cattle showing days, stuffed animals (lots of stuffed animals), horse tack, lots of other memorabilia, and two oil paintings that my aunt painted. Dan reminded me, as we had to keep unpacking and repacking the largest painting when we needed something from the back of the truck, that the pioneers ended up leaving things along the trail.

Anyway, we brought a tent because we knew we couldn’t sleep in the truck on the trip out to TX.We drove into the Preserve and took a dirt road watching lightening in the distance. We finally found a place where we could park and set up a tent. The moon was spectacular although not a full moon.Here is what it looked like in the morning.

A Spring Morning in the Pasture

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Robin

I was going to write this post about ewes and their lambs but found a lot more subjects to photograph–not all sheep. Loretta and triplets.Ginseng and twins. Look at the horn spread on that ram lamb. They all have lilac coloring.This is Foxglove’s ram lamb, also a lilac.Puddleduck Melinda and one of her lambs. Alexandria.Eliza.It is balloon season. Rusty is hiding in the barn. These ewes were waiting for me to change the fence and let them into that tall grass but I was distracted by other things. Do you see the bird on the fence behind them? Don’t look too hard for it. See it below.I looked it up. Western Kingbird. I know my birder friends will tell me if I’m wrong.I think there is pair nesting nearby. I was mowing the pasture later in the day and they followed the tractor catching bugs. They would zoom off toward the trees and then come back for more. Balloon getting lower. In the meantime… Hawk with prey …I saw this hawk being harassed by another bird. Hawk with prey (1) I didn’t know until I zoomed in on the photo on my computer that the hawk had something in it’s talons.

Balloon has landed and now I can change the fence. Happy sheep.

Ice

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Robin

The older I get the less I want to slip and fall. My body sabotages me enough without doing something that is more likely to break a bone. So on our hike yesterday I was very careful to avoid the icy parts on the trail. But not everyone else seemed to care so much.Sam on ice. Ginny on ice.Kirin on ice. Chris on ice.Meryl and Chris on ice.

Chris on ice–this time on purpose.

Matt’s version of the louge…

…followed by the skeleton…

Here he breaks form before breaking his head.

Bassi Falls

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Robin

Yesterday it was way too cold and windy at Loon Lake … …for us to enjoy snowshoeing for very long so we drove back down……to the trail to Bassi Falls at about 5400′ elevation.There wasn’t enough snow to snowshoe but there was no wind and the other signs of winter were still there. At the base of the falls Meryl and Chris showed off their gymnastic skills.Here is a group shot where we’re not quite as bundled up as in the previous post. How many people does it take to arrange a dog-only group shot? You can see the result of this in Rusty’s blog after he gets his turn at the computer. Maggie and Ginny Once again, Maggie provide entertainment for Ginny because just hiking isn’t enough for her.After the trauma of the first stop we made, Ginny had a great time on this hike. We all thought that she would be worn out for the day, but it seems that the long car ride was enough to revive her and she wasn’t at all tired last night.

Loon Lake

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Robin

It’s not easy to find a time when we can all get together for a whole day. We had planned on a snowshoeing trip and the prediction of a little cold weather wasn’t going to deter us. The problem was that even though we had significant precipitation in December with Caliornia’s continuing drought the snow level was fairly high. To find enough snow for snowshoeing we drove to Loon Lake (6358′ elevation). There was enough snow here and it was sunny but the temperature was in the low 20’s and the wind was howling. (I know that plenty of people live in this kind of weather, but not me. I’ll go for 100 degree days anytime over bone-chilling cold.)

We decided to go for it with the snowshoes at least for a short time. Everyone out of the car… …including Ginny, in the snow for the first time. Matt, Kaleena, Chris, and Meryl started down to the lake with the big dogs. I was behind because I had to remember how to walk with snowshoes without getting my feet tangled up going down the steep slope from the road. It didn’t take us long to figure out that with the strong wind it was just too cold for Ginny so Dan took her back to the car. The rest of us continued down to the lake. Matt was having a hard time keeping track of which was his wife since both Kaleena and Meryl were wearing Kaleena’s snow gear. There were white caps on the lake and lots of ice at the edge.

That’s me on the left, then Kaleena, Matt, Chris, and Meryl.

Meryl and Chris with Sam and Rusty.It’s the wind that is making Rusty’s ears stand up.

We didn’t spend too much time here. Instead we drove back down to Bassi Falls and went for a hike there–something that all of us could enjoy. Photos of that in the next blog post.

Fall in the Forest

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Robin

A couple of days ago we took advantage of the beautiful weather (although I would rather see snow and rain right now) to visit Matt and Kaleena in their backyard, the El Dorado National Forest. We walked down to the American River at the spot that M & K call Rope to the River.

Look at what we found at the bottom.

I looked up ladybugs later and read that they hibernate this time of year and cluster together for warmth, finding any cracks that they can, even in houses. I think that I’d rather see them in the forest than in the house.

The day was warm, but In the shaded areas at the river where the sun is too low to hit now there was still frost. Brilliant colors.Looking across the American River. Highway 50 is just up the hill.

We drove to another favorite place of M & K’s to see a waterfall. Unfortunately Mill Creek is almost dry right now but we stopped along the way for the view. This is Big Hill, where Matt’s helicopter is based. (Well, he doesn’t own it, the USFS does, but he’ll be working there again in January.)View of Pyramid Peak. It should be glistening with snow right now. Let’s hope that the storm coming in this weekend dumps a lot.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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