Congrats Saints
Scribbled by Art on February 8, 2010 12:05 amCongrats to the New Orleans Saints on their victory today. I was rooting for ‘em to pull this out – really felt like they were the underdog and its just amazing to me that a team that has been such a perennial losing franchise finally got it together to go all the way. Nice to see an underdog win. Plus, I’m not a fan of the Colts or Manning, so that helped 
Wow – Clarkson Hockey sucks rocks this year
Scribbled by Art on February 5, 2010 6:34 pmRain, rain and more rain
Scribbled by Art on February 4, 2010 8:17 pmPlaying in the snow
Scribbled by Art on January 28, 2010 10:40 pmLast weekend Fraley and I headed up to the Sierra for the Cal4Wheel “Winter Fun Fest” which is an annual trek thru the snow in the high country. The trails aren’t what you’d consider as technical when they don’t have snow on them – most of them are merely forest service roads that just aren’t maintained. It reminded me of trying to get thru some of the backroads in the Adirondaks in the winter – except for the bitter cold. The temps in the Sierras all weekend were pretty mild, even at 7K ft – it was generally in the range of 30-40 the whole weekend.
We arrived Friday nite, but didn’t plan to do the night trail run, so we just stopped by the fairgrounds to see if we could register and get our trail info for the next day. We signed up for the Avalanche Express run which sounded cool, but the Sierra hadn’t had fresh snow for a couple weeks, so we were not anticipating any sliding snow
The run started about 15 miles outside of Grass Valley, just at the edge of where the snow line was. We had close to a full run (20+ Jeeps). From there we went up to the Tahoe National Forest, around Yuba Gap. After airing down, we headed down the trail, which went around Lake Valley Reservoir. About 10 of the drivers opted for the extreme part of the trail and split off into the deeper snow on a mostly unbroken trail. I think they spent most of their time getting each other unstuck. Not a big deal on such a sunny clear day. The snow was pretty icy on top and dense, so it packed pretty well.
A bunch of folks stopped at the top of the trail for lunch while Fraley, I and others headed further down the trail into some deeper snow – and a couple of us (including me) got stuck in a few places – it was actually worse in the tracks than cutting new trail as the tracks got pretty deep and with the dense crusted snow on top, the middle of the tracks started to hang up the rigs going thru. All was good after a few tugs with the tow straps and we were on our way.
The kids of a few folks made a couple snow forts at the top of the trail, which Fraley had to try out for size:
We wandered back to the fairgrounds early in the afternoon and hung out for the silent auction (I bid on and won a couple things I brought home for Lisa – like a digital torque wrench – just what every girl wants
We didn’t win anything in the raffle (again), so we signed up for the deep snow run scheduled for Sunday morning early and went back to the hotel to get some sleep.
We awoke Sunday to cold rain in Grass Valley, hoping that it was snow up higher and not more rain (the trails would be a slushfest if it were raining).
We ran the same trail as on Saturday, but with the plan to go further into the fresh snow than we did on Saturday. It was snowing when we got onto the trail and just go worse (better?) as the day went on. The guy in front of us with the yellow Jeep pickup pulled aside to let others break trail since his rig was really heavy and he didn’t want to get stuck where noone else was big enough or positioned right to get him out. We managed to get at least a couple miles down the trail, which was further than folks had ever gotten on this particular trail at this time of year. We finally decided to turn around when the snow was starting to really come down (we still had like 30+ miles to get out of the Sierra and get below the snow line). The trail out was really slippery due to the new snow and took us longer than expected to get out, but everyone made it safely (tho there were a couple folks doing 180-360 spins on the trail
I-80 – this was not a good place to spin out. Almost noone on the highway had chains on yet and we saw several vehicles go off the road:
Kitty is back
Scribbled by Art on January 23, 2010 1:38 amRain, rain and more rain
Scribbled by Art on January 22, 2010 12:29 amDid I mention rain? Its been raining here since Sunday. There’s been a series of storms stacked up out in the Pacific that have been like a train rolling thru here. Yesterday we had the worst of ‘em, with really high winds (near 70mph here at the house) and torrents of rain. Unfortunately in spite of trying to have everything nailed down, we did lose the lambing/horse shed out in the back pasture:
We had a bunch of tree limbs and debris on the road, but it was mostly moved out of the way by others before we got to it:
Welch Creek has been running pretty high all week for a change. Glad we are finally getting caught up on our water. Certainly all the trees and specifically the ferns love the water:
We’re due for a bit of a break on the weekend (at least on Saturday) and then more rain next week. The next couple nites might add a bit of snow to the mix just to keep things interesting. Speaking of snow, the Sierra was supposed to end up with another 10 ft of new snow. I can’t even fathom how to deal with that much white stuff.
Stuff in the mist
Scribbled by Art on January 19, 2010 12:24 amSorry for the long delay in posts. We have just been total slackers in updating the blog. We did in fact survive the spiders and other things in the mist, not to worry. The big thing with the tentacles was a little challenging, but it left us alone mostly.
Anyway
We had a fairly quiet Xmas this year – Laura and Jeff and their multitude of canines came down and joined our pack for a big doggy holiday. Lisa is still recovering from the surgery she had in early December (she’ll explain this more). We opted for a a small tree this year to make it easier to manage with all the dogs and such. I got a few pups to pose, but not all (we had a total of 10 dogs in the house for the holidays!)
Andretti is very good at posing:
Q was pretty good too:
And then things went down hill trying to get Darby to hold still:
The steamer trunk to the right of the tree is the one we found at a neat antique shop in Maine. Its a great piece.
The Mist
Scribbled by Art on December 16, 2009 9:47 pmTrip to Panamint Valley
Scribbled by Art on December 12, 2009 11:54 pmA few weeks back my buddy Paul and I took the Jeeps down to the desert for the annual “Panamint Valley Days” offroad gathering. Its a pretty long drive from here – we left around noon on a Friday and arrived just about 11pm. Registration/safety check was supposed to be open until 11pm, but folks were tired and we opted to get it all done first thing in the morning. After finding a suitable spot to camp in a large sandy wash, we sacked out for the nite and got a few hours of sleep.
We got up around 5:30am and got the Jeeps ready for the day – took the rest of the camping gear out, took the doors off, tied stuff down, etc and headed off to the registration/safety check. Our trip was scheduled to leave camp around 7:30, which gave us a bit of time to grab some breakfast at the Ruff Rock Run Cafe’ – a great bunch of folks who had food operations set up here in camp.
Off to the first run of the trip, Defense Mine. This region of CA is full of old mining operations, everything from gold to common borax. This particular mine looked to be a variety of stuff, including tungsten, gold, lead, …
Watching a buggy make his way up part of a dry waterfall on the trail up to the mine:
Posing at the lower of the mine entrances. The mine was open, so a bunch of us walked thru it and climbed the ladders to come out at the top some 250 feet above this shaft.
Here’s the ladder system inside the mine. It wasn’t too old, but still we were pretty cautious climbing, cuz it was a long ways down if it let loose.
View from the top shaft. Long walk back down to the Jeeps.
One of the buildings on site had this box of goodies:
From the mine, we took a trip out to Lookout City which is perched on a ridge outcropping that overlooks most of Panamint Valley.
Here’s what’s left of the old general store and a wagon scale.
We made our way down the mountain and back to camp by late afternoon. Used the rest of the daylight to do some tightening of various parts on both Jeeps and then it was off to dinner – a great pit BBQ. Mmmm
On Sunday we opted for one of the more historic (read: easy) trails – the old Death Valley – Darwin Toll Road. This road makes its way thru the mountains on the western side of Panamint Valley thru a number of mining operations and ends up in the (mostly) ghost town of Darwin. Its not really a ghost town – people still live there – population 39 currently. Mostly artists and some older miners.
Yes, this is a koi pond. In the middle of the mountains/desert. This is at China Springs which has a good water supply year round.
One of the remaining buildings in the China Springs mining camp – it was more modern construction and had a solid concrete foundation – probably circa the 40s or 50s.
Paul checking out one of the ‘cash for clunkers’ cars:
Up in the town of Darwin, this weird little scene was set up inside one of the abandoned buildings. Creepy. Like a scene from The Hills Have Eyes.
The old Darwin Post Office (also was a general store/gas station at various times):
After we finished up at Darwin, we split off from the rest of the group and set out on our own for the rest of the day. I took Paul for a side trip up to Wildrose, where there are these old charcoal kilns that were used back in the 1800s to produce charcoal for the various mines in the area:
One the road up to Wildrose, there is a chunk of the old Skidoo pipeline: These folks were really determined to get water into the least accessible places out here – they ran it 23 miles from Telescope Peak to the town of Skidoo which is back up another ridge:
Late in the afternoon on the way back to camp, we found this guy on the road. I helped him off to the side, tho it wasn’t clear he was immediately appreciative:
We headed over to Ridgecrest Sunday nite to get food (and beer/firewood) and camped out another nite since Paul decided he was going to take an extra day off work. A bunch of folks were still in camp when we came back, but they cleared out early the next morning.
We looked at a bunch of trails that nite as possible trips for Monday, and opted to do Pleasant Canyon since we missed doing it on Friday due to our late start. The trail started out in the ghost town of Ballarat (population 1?). There is a general store that is run by the one resident of Ballarat but since he had the flu, we didn’t go visit him.
Here’s a pickup that was used by Charles Manson and his ‘family’ while they were in the area back in the 60s:
Ballarat Jail/Morgue/Motel – take yer pick:
A fixer-up-er along the Pleasant Canyon trail in Clair Camp. The mining operations are still somewhat active along some of these trails and we did have a miner pass us along with road in his beat up truck.
We found this neat waterfall about half way up the canyon. There was tons of vegetation and then poof – a jungle scene with a waterfall:
We finished up the trail and started the long trip back to San Jose. Lisa asked me to bring something back for her, so I brought her this collection of rocks:
Let it snow
Scribbled by Art on December 6, 2009 8:43 pmWe were planning to spend Monday at home anyway, so no worries about driving our road with inches of snow on it. I can’t imagine the County will bring a snow plow out. I don’t even know if they have a snow plow come to think of it…
… Winter Weather Advisory in effect from 10 PM this evening to 4
PM PST Monday above 1500 feet…
The National Weather Service San Francisco Bay area has issued
a Winter Weather Advisory for snow above 1500 feet… which is in
effect from 10 PM this evening to 4 PM PST Monday.
Total snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches are expected above 1500
foot elevations through Monday afternoon.
We had maybe 3-4″ overnite and got up early to take the dogs out to play:
