Just another day in the mountains

Today was a "found" day as we expected to be tied up with contractors, and then on the road to San Francisco Bay to deal with hauling out our sailboat s/v Good News so we can get the bottom painted, a routine and expensive maintenance chore.

We took care of the first business early.

The contractor who is going to build us a garage came by with the county building permits in hand; actually almost, nearly, possibly ready to start the project. We began this process in Spring, signed a contract in June, and have been messing around with ideas, the county permit folk and an engineer ever since.
So far, we are only about $800 over budget, thanks to surprises from the county permit people regarding the required engineering (about $600 worth) and me paying a totally unfair penalty for the fact the wood shed, 20 years old and built by someone else, apparently did not have a permit. I decided not to argue about it, or tear down the shed, which were options that took too much energy and emotion.
We need the garage as the cars take a real beating when the snow and ice come to stay.
Our plan was to have the garage built before the snow flies.
Well, the snow flew a week ago, though it did not last long.
We remain hopeful, based on today's discussions, that within a week a neighbor will show up with a backhoe and start shoving dirt and gravel around. It is a fairly simple design, so if we get reasonable weather for the next 30 days, we may see a garage before the serious snow begins. Last year we had the first snow in late November. This year it has snowed here once, and just up the road, three times, already.

So, just in case, we will make sure the buiding supplies can be stashed out of the weather in our woodshed if needed.
The second contractor, this one a person who install kitchen counters, showed up before the first one left. That discussion required much looking at colorful tiles of various materials, all horrifically expensive, and suggesting multiple options. We will get a bid in a few days, and probably get one or two more.
This became necessary whe our kitchen counter tile cracked one especially cold winter. I have repaired the damage with duct tape for several years, but we agree it is time for a fix.
But then we were done, as the boatyard where I want to get the haulout done is not available this week.
So we went to the park.
Calaveras Big Trees State Park is our near neighbor, two miles down the road, and we almost never go there unless we have house guests.
But today we took off, found a bottle of water under the car seat, and went exploring and hiking.
We have visited the South Grove of Sequoiah (Sequoiadendron giganteum) trees many times, but today we drove all the way down the river canyon to the other side, in the middle of a beautiful forest, and hiked into the seldom-visited North Grove.
It is a beautiful time of year to be outside. The weather was post card perfect; sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-60s. Recent rains have dampened down the forest floor, and created a perfumed scent as a few eager plants have sprung back to hold their heads high.
Only four or five other vehicles were at the trailhead, and it was as if we had a magic place all to ourselves.
The drive down into the park and up the next ridge covered about ten miles of mixed conifer and oak forests, and elevation ranging from 5,000 feet down to 3,000 feet and back up again.
This part of the forest is full of small dogwoods under the larger cedars and pines and oaks, and they have all turned pink and yellow and gold and orange. Quite a sight. And we discovered a tree called a big leaf maple, plendid in yellows down alongside the creeks.
The squirrels are busy everywhere, getting ready for winter, and we even saw a few wooly worms getting ready for cold weather.
The big trees are stunning. They dominate everything nearby, and seem to lurk behind the merely magnificent Sugar Pines and White Cedars which reach upward over a hundred feet. The Stanislaus River and bear and Big Trees creeks were flowing happily.
The guide book says there are more than 1,000 living big trees (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in the groves in our park. These are not Coastal redwoods, which actually grow taller, but the prehistoric giant trees that are the largest living things in our world today -- the few that are left.
We plan to vsit them all, and not worry about meeting contractors.
We're retired. We have time to do it all.

Cruisin' away from the rustic life

Traveling from Vancouver, B.C., to Los Angeles, CA, on a giant cruise ship was never my idea of a really good time.
Until we actually did it.
Yes, it is conspicuous consumption.
Yes, there are a lot of people of a certain age on board.
Yes, we spent a lot of time discussing or consuming food.
But, man, was it fun!

First, a few technical details.
We sailed on the Norwegian Cruise Lines' Pearl from Vancouver to Los Angeles, with a stop in San Francisco, in the company of Pat's cousins Kathy and Brenda, and their husbands Dennis and Jim. (I consider them all my cousins-in-law, and good friends).
The ship is about one year old, longer than the road between Camp Connell and Dorrington, and taller than most buildings. Just think HUGE. The pictures, which are not in any particular order, will give you an idea.

It was not terribly expensive, considering the food supply, so long as you kept your bar bill (that's extra) and casino visits under control.


Our cabins, called "mini-suites," were about the size of a hotel room, slightly narrower but with quality everything, a stocked mini-bar, sofa, desk, television, phones, and a balcony overlooking the ocean. Cheaper cabins are available, but we were living it up.
At one point in the cruise we all hung over the balcony rails and watched the whales spouting off.
We sang to them.
Sorry, but I was too excited to take pictures.

I can't recall how many restaurants there were on board, but I assure you we never found them all, despite our best efforts. The women did discover a cafeteria converted into a chocolate buffet around midnight one night.

We ate at a steak house one night, an Asian place the next, French the next and haute cuisine the next, with other meals on the rear deck or in other parts of the ship.

The guys bowled (they have four alleys), worked at the slot machines, drank beer by the pool, while other people swam or soaked in the hot tubs, used the running trck, played tennis or basketball on the top deck. A few people even tried the rock climbing wall, or shuffleboard. We all shopped, gambled, visited the art gallery, ate and gawked like everyone else.

We saw the Second City Comedy Show, an excellent magician (with attractive young wife in bikini who, unfortunately, kept disappearing). And Pat and I took a dance class to learn how to Line Dance. Picture us doing the "Boot Scootin' Boogie" with about 20 Japanese women tourists.

Mostly, we just stared at people and stuff. There were a few thousand peple on board but it never seemed really crowded except when getting on and off the boat. There were a lot of people over 50, but an equally interesting group of families and younger people, particularly Asian tourists.

The crew was led by tall distinguished Norwegian men named Lars or something similar, had a good representation of women officers, and the majority of the support crew came from the Phillipines and Romania, with a smattering from everywhere else including a nice man from Bali named Iwayan (ryhmes with lion).


When we stopped at San Francisco for the day I was the tour guide, no tips please, so we hopped a trolley car to the Cable Car stop, then took that to the top of Nob Hill for pictures and views. We caught another cable car down the hills to the waterfront, where the sea lions (even as loud and stinky as they are) were the hit of the show.

But it was the ship (don't call it a boat) that was the star of the cruise. It was really magnificant. A tour without leaving the dock would have been a treat.

The cost was about equal to a few nights in the Ahwanee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, but we moved across the ocean and were treated to real luxury not faded glory.

Consider this: some day you may need to choose an Assisted Living Facility, but you could simply stay aboard a cruise ship and be housed, fed and cared for (they have a doctor on board) for less money.

I would do it again, just as soon as I get off my current diet. I look like Mister StayPuff and need to haul a few cords of wood before the snow gets deep.

But now it is nap time. And it is snowing outside.

Fire on the mountain

Camp Connell, CA - The last thing we wanted to see as we drove homeward up the mountain after out grandson's soccer game were the plumes of smoke rising from the ridge just above us.

This has been an unusually dry year, and fire is never far from our minds.
By the time two fire crews roared past us heading up the winding state highway, the concerns grew.

Our home sits on the edge of thousands of acres of forest, mostly private, some public, and we have worked hard this year at creating and maintaining a "defensible zone" around the wood-framed structure. But no zone can protect a home if a big fire gets going and winds blow it up the mountain canyons and over the ridges.

Traffic started to slow down, then stopped just as we approached a Forest Service office along the road. The Highway Patrol had red cones out, and was turning everyone back down the hill. All we could learn was that four separate fires were burning alongside the highway, and crews were flooding into the area in trucks along with helicopters and spotter planes and heavy equipment crews and water tankers.
We did what sensible people do in such times, with a forest fire burning hotly and cutting us off from out home: we went out for lunch.
Information was very hard to get while we ate and shared our concerns with other refugees. There are no television or radio stations in the area, and rumors tend to carry bits and pieces of news that aren't always reliable. We did learn it would be hours before we could get home, and the status of the fire was unknown.
We found the solution at the nearby home of our daughter and family: the local community internet site was "broadcasting live" from their den studio, on the other side of the fire line, including video and still photos.
The young couple that manage the site had been on their way to WalMart, 50 miles downhill, and happened upon the fire line and went right into action.
Their "studio" is primitive and their camera and reporting techniques unpolished, but God bless 'em, they were the only link between us and a potentially disastrous situation. And they did a great job of passing along everything they could learn, as fast as possible.
There were four separate fires, all apparently started by some idiot throwing firecrackers into the dry brush along the road. The area fire departments immediately threw men and equipment into a coordinated attack to keep the fire controlled, and despite the high temperatures and dry brush and parched trees, were able to stop the fires before they spread beyond ten acres.
The road reopened at 7 p.m., and we drove home through the charred areas while several fire crews were still cleaning up the area, and starting load into the trucks.
Our home, eight miles up the road from the site of the fires, was serene and cool when we arrived. No one has been arrested, and life goes on.
But my perspective on access to news has shifted. I'll still read the Sacramento Bee and the New York Times, and watch a little television news now and then, but from now on my primary link to my world will be through an unpolished web site that tells us about local festivals, free music events, the times for the farmers' market, highway accidents and forest fires that just might burn my house down.

You can check it out at www.thepinetree.net
(The photo is from their web site)

Tell them I said thanks.

We're okay, really

Camp Connell, CA- Part of learning to live in the mountains of
California is explaining to friends from other parts of the world that
every time they hear on TV that California is going up in flames, or
experiencing a destructive earthquake, it isn't necessarily happening
right here.
Jimmy Buffett sings about fires and earthquakes, and
non-Californians tend to think of this rather large state as one big
shake-n-bake zone. But this is a BIG state, and we rarely even know
there is a problem until our friends back east call and ask if we are
okay.
That doesn't mean that we are blase' about fires and quakes. A
few weeks ago I was at the computer late at night when a giant thump
shook the house. That was a small earthquake over on the east side of
the mountains, just a reminder that the earth has not settled down yet.

When you live in the middle of the forest and it doesn't rain for
months, you understand it's only a matter of time before something
will catch fire somewhere. A few days ago the temperature was in the
high 90s even way up here at 5,000 feet, and the humidity was 12%.
Folks in the South Lake Tahoe region learned about the vulnerability of mountain living a week
ago, and more than 200 families are homeless today as a result.
We could smell the smoke from those fires on the evening breeze, even though
it was almost 100 miles north of us. It was a reminder of the
risks of living here in the woods. Now, another really big forest
fire is burning a hundred miles or so to the south.
But we tend not to think about it till something happens close enough to home to get our attention,
even though we are isolated and the only people who live on our
dead-end dirt road.
Helicopters got our attention quickly last night, about the time we were sitting down to dinner.
We had just enjoyed our very first rainfall since March. We could hear the thunder booming higher
in the mountains, like the stories of ghost bowlers, and it reminded us
of Florida's great daily summer thunderstorms.
But the louder sounds
of helicopters and airplanes interfered with our quiet enjoyment of
nature's show and dinner, and pretty soon we were standing on the deck
watching helicopters carry buckets of water directly over our heads.
Not once, but time after time after time. We started sniffing for
smoke, but detected none.
Television or radio were useless, as
neither provide any local news coverage here. Even the local web site
for residents had nothing posted when I first checked.
So I jumped in the car and went to the source of all news in our area -- the Camp Connell Store. It was closed and no one was about.
Next stop, a quarter mile away, the Lube Room Bar & Grill. It stays open
late. Sure enough, a couple of neighbors were standing on the edge of
the meadow back of the bar watching a helicopter attach its big water
bucket before taking off over the ridge. But no one knew what was
happening, or where.
I saw a fire crew in fighting gear in a truck heading up the road.
Next stop was the ranger station up the road in the other direction. A young
couple was sitting on the steps of their home watching the air traffic.
Nothing special, he said, probably just crews knocking down spot fires
from the lightning. He didn't even have his official radio turned on to
eavesdrop.
So I drove back to the house, reasonably assured things
were fine, and we started talking about what if the danger had been
real. What would we do? What would we take? Where would we go?
Pat made a list.
What's important enough to grab and run out the door? Family photos and
papers, checkbooks, keys and of course the computers. Oh yes, and my
good guitar and her hammered dulcimer.
Everything else can, and probably will, burn if a big forest fire comes our way.
That's just the way it is when you enjoy the pleasures of living in the forest.
Later in the evening a neighbor posted an update on the local website after talking to the local firefighters: lightning strikes triggered two small fires on the ridge above our house, a mile or so away, and crews were on the scene and would stay there till morning. Everything, we were told, was under control.
Irony Footnote:
Sierra Pacific Lumber,the Great Satan of tree cutters in the western U.S., may have made us a bit safer by clear-cutting swaths all around our community, whacking down thousands of trees within miles of our home. I doubt it actually helps,
but you can see what they have done to the once beautiful forest on
Google Earth by plugging in "Fly to 129 Campbell Lane, CampConnell California, 95223."

Spring at last! Spring at last! Maybe!

Camp Connell, CA -- When you think Spring has arrived around here, it snows.
Maybe not a lot, but enough to remind you that when the long-time local folks suggest you not plant a garden until after Memorial Day (or the Calaveras Frog Jump/ County fair), they know what they are talking about.

The first picture is from about ten days ago, and shows the bulbs trying to survive an early May snowfall.














But then you wait a few days, the sun comes out, and the daffodils bloom.











And then the tulips follow.
















And then, the mountain dogwood starts. (A thousand feet below us, in the vicinity of Calaveras Big Trees State Park, the woods are filled with dogwood snuggled under the giant trees.)





I asked the local snowplow operator when he could be certain we were done with snow, and he gave me the usual "you never know" answer, but then shared the widely-held belief that winter ends after the dogwood blossoms have been snowed upon.

That didn't help much because at some elevations that has happened already, and at others, including ours, we just missed that event.

One way or the other, Spring will get here.
The birds are coming back in larger numbers. The first hummingbirds are buzzing around the feeder. Flies and other bugs are starting to hatch. Robins are cruising the woods searching for the worms and critters they feed upon.
And the seasonal creek is bubbling happily, for now. It stopped once before when we had a dry spell of a week or two.
I think when it stops this time we will know summer has arrived.

One footnote for those who read about this being the "driest year ever" in California. That may be true down south, near L.A. and at Santa Catalina Island, but up here in Northern California we had an almost normal snowpack, and at this point it doesn't look a lot drier than normal, which is pretty dry every summer.
Of course that can change in a hurry and we are still clearing the leaves and pine needles away from the house, trimming dead branches off the trees, and observing the rules about burning outdoor fires only at night, and only on designated "burn days."
That's life in the mountains.

More Californians-as-Mexicans

California really isn't taking over, but a lot of folks from up here and going down there. This is the second post showing a few Sacramento area folks enjoying a winter break in Mexico. Check the next post for more pictures.
Picture one is Capt. Dick Gilmore, retired Bee photographer and well-known sailor, aboard Solitude in Marina Vallarta. he looks happy, but there was a touch of frustration waiting on his sick outboard motor to come back from repair. (Update: he is in Cabo San Lucas waiting for a weather window to sail north.)

Photo two shows Dan and Lorraine Olsen, off the sailboat Zephyrus, having breakfast at Malaque. A day or so later they sailed up from Barra de Navidad to Tenacatita Bay, with Pat and me as crew, to join other friends before heading further north. Guacamole and beer works for me. (Update: they are now in Mazatlan.)
Then there's a bad shot of a shy Dustin Fox in his apartment in Puerto Vallarta. Dustin was headed out early to the docks where he works as a marine electronics specialist.



And then there's my beloved Pat, also at breakfast on the beach. We seem to pull out the camera every time we eat. (Update: we are back in the mountains, and just celebrated Easter at a service in Murphys, then came home and then I cranked up the chainsaw while Pat practiced her hammered dulcimer.)


And finally, a group hard at work in the living room/patio/palapa at the apartment in LaManzanilla. Pictured are Michael, David, Sylvia and Scott. (Update: So far as I know, everybody is back at work, though a few are planning a return to Mexico soon.)
Even though LaManzanilla is a small town, you'll note they are using the wifi link to check out something on Sylvia's laptop. It's a wired world.

Sacramento goes Mexico

Here I was hard at work in the dining room of Casa de Sanza, also known as Joe Santana's home in LaManzanilla. The message I am sending says: "Having a wonderful time."
Photo two is Capt. Michael under the casa's palapa taking a picture of Admiral Sylvia looking at the sun setting over Tenacatita Bay. In the distance is the location of their soon-to-be-built retirement home.


Photo three is Pat, Scott, David, Lily, Michael and Jen, awaiting breakfast on the beach about 200 feet from the crocodiles' location. Where else could you see a teacher, mechanic, banker, corporate executive, college professors and law school student (and a former journalist) having a good time and not talking about business, but about the quality of the food, friendship and last night's rest.

Photos four and five are the members of the group either making music, or eating, something we did a lot.


Maybe it's because of the warm days and cool nights. Or perhaps the sunsets. Or the beach. Or the food. or the friendly people. Or the cerveza.
But for some reason the weat coast of Mexico seems to attract a lot of peope from Northern California, particularly from the Sacramento area.
The pictures show some of the strenuous activities required.
Missing from these photos are a former Bee photographer, Dick, who we caught up with in Puerto Vallarta aboard "Solitude," Dustin, former Sacramentan who now lives in PV and works as a marine electrician, and Dan and Lorraine who we caught up with in Barra de Navidad and sailed aboard s/v Zephyrus to Tencatita. (Check the next blog for those pictures).

And if you are thinking this is only for the rich, think again. A decent hotel room in LaManzanilla costs $37 a night with private bath.
The temptation is to return and go native, but the natives won't buy that when I try to speak my version of Spanish. But all you really need to know is "gracias," "por favor" and los banos?" That'll get you by.
We're all home now, watching the weather forecast (nice Spring weather, but cooler with a chance of showers later this week), but we haven't forgotten this.