We have had a very cool, damp spring here in Vacaville. Daytime temperatures are still in the low 70s Fahrenheit (22ºC), and in the high 40s (8ºC) in the early morning. I tried to till my daughter, Elaine's, back yard in mid April, but it was too wet. The soil is a heavy clay, and it is hard to catch it at the right moisture content for tilling. I didn't get the garden planted until 8 May; a month later than usual. Corn, beans, cucumbers, melons. squash basil, and cilantro came up thick last week. We will have to thin the corn soon. The okra seed didn't germinate, and some of the tomato plants look like they may die because we over watered them. I will probably have to replace at least two of them. I don't expect to have sweet corn to eat until late July.

Saturday 15 May 2010
Bruce T, Bruce H, Kim Fondrk, Paul E and I paddled our kayaks from the Yankee Jim Road bridge over the north fork of the American River to the Ponderosa Road bridge. The shuttle was almost as exciting as the paddle. Bright and extensive displays of wildflowers were continuously in view from Ponderosa Road. There were fewer but different wildflowers along Yankee Jim Road. I was particularly impressed by the display of Indian Pink on the uphill side of Yankee Jim Road near where the pavement ends. The flow of 1700 cfs created some great surfing spots. Both Kim and I caught the wave at surf city and rode it for as long as we wanted. We found several other good surfing spots, and I was able to get a great stern squirt toward the end of the run.I have posted more photos of kayaking Shirttail Canyon run on the NF American River at Picasa, and you can read more about the day at whitewater kayaking on the Shirttail run North Fork American River.

Sunday 2 May 2010
I had an omelet and hash browns while visiting with two local fellows at the Griddle before heading home at 0800. I stopped to take a few photos just west of Winnemucca, got fuel in Fernley, and stopped in Reno to look for a pair of hiking boots. I stayed for a class on ultra light backpacking at the Sierra Trading Post outlet, and bought a backpack weighing less than 1 Kg. I drove straight home from Reno and arrived home by 1800. You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.

Saturday 1 May 2010

I made potato pancakes with the mashed potatoes left over from supper. I added garlic powder and onion salt. Harold fried 4 slices of his favorite thick sliced bacon. I fried my potato pancakes in the bacon grease. I thanked Harold and Helen for their hospitality and bid them farewell and about 0800. I took some photos at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and got gasoline and coffee in Wendover, Nevada. I was getting sleepy, so I took a nap in Battle Mountain. I didn’t drive far before I felt sleepy again, so I got a room at the Pyrenees motel in Winnemucca. I had supper at the Winnemucca Hotel, a historic business where they serve Basque boarding house style meals. When I entered the hotel I noticed that the dining room was empty. There were three people sitting at a table in the bar and one person at the bar. I took a bar stool. Mike, the owner/bartender, said to me, “I hope you aren’t going to interrogate me.” Not being easily intimidated, I said “Yes, I do have a few questions; the first and most important being are you serving dinner tonight. He said, “Yes, seating begins at 6:15”, and looking at his watch said “That’s now.” I was followed into the dining room by everyone that had been in the bar. I joined two brothers and their mother for supper. They were on their way home to Nebraska after visiting relatives in Sacramento, California. After supper I visited with Mike until he closed the place. Mike is an interesting, if challenging, person to visit with.

Friday 30 April 2010.
There is a fresh cover of snow on everything this morning. It is about 2 inches thick. Harold got up and joined me in the kitchen while I was heating water for tea and oatmeal. He made me a bowl of 7 grain cereal sweetened with a very special honey. Many years ago Harold’s brother-in-law, Leo Eves, had given him a large container of dark honey from Newcastle, UT. Harold still had some left, and I used it to sweeten my 7 grain cereal. I knew Leo well as he and my cousin Virginia had visited my parents several times when I was a child in Selma, California, so the honey brought back many memories.

I arrived at Elizabeth’s house about 0845. She drove up a couple of minutes later. Her house is a red brick building that stands out among the mostly white houses of this Salt Lake City neighborhood. I showed her my ancestry.com web site. We added some information about her and her sisters. Her boyfriend wanted some information about his deceased sister, and I quickly found her birth, marriage, and death information. Elizabeth was very excited. I followed Elizabeth to the Family History Center where we worked until noon trying to identify the parents and siblings of my great grandmother, Joanna Petty Hardwick Teel. We had free access to numerous web sites and the help of experienced genealogists. Elizabeth left for work at noon. After lunch I returned for a couple of hours.

On the way back to Harold and Helen’s, I stopped at Cabela’s, a large outdoor equipment store and museum. Geese are flying over the entry; glass display cases usually reserved for merchandise contained mounted birds and mammals in dioramas of their native habitat. There is a large mountain in the middle of the store covered with mounted animals. There is a large room dedicated to North American wildlife, and another with large aquaria containing North American fishes. The store also has the largest display of firearms I have seen anywhere. It is worth a visit.

Harold and Helen had a supper of chicken, mashed potatoes, and green salad waiting for me when I returned at 1800. After supper Harold and I looked through a large album of family photos he had gotten from his sister Louise. Most of them I had not seen before. I urged him to have Elizabeth scan them and distribute them to all interested family members.

You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.

Thursday. 29 April, 2010
I slept soundly until 0630, the first time in a bed since I left home last Sunday. I went outside to take pictures of the house and barn. The wind was still blowing hard, and a few flakes of snow were falling. I didn’t stay outside long because it was so cold. I put water on to boil, and Carolyn got up to offer to cook me breakfast, but I told her I had oatmeal to cook. After Jimmy, Ron, and Kay got up we took pictures and I headed for Salt Lake City.

I stopped at the auto parts store in Dove Creek to buy a splitter for my cigarette lighter so I could charge my GPS and listen to my ipod at the same time. The manager of the auto parts store was a very friendly fellow. He offered to help me open the plastic packaging. I accepted his offer, telling him I would avoid buying anything packaged in this manner if I had an option. He agreed that he too disliked it.

It started to snow seriously, so I called home and my cousin Harold Wilcox in Salt Lake City while I was in Dove Creek to discuss the weather and whether I would be able to get over the Sierra at Tahoe or would have to go south to Tehachapi. Harold said there was less snow in Salt Lake City than in Flagstaff, Arizona and recommended that I come through Salt Lake City. I told him I would try to get there that evening. I took some photos of the Abajo Mountains from somewhere between Dove Creek and Montecello.

I stopped at the Mountain View RV Park in Montecello to pay for the shower I took there yesterday, and took a few more photos of the snow covered landscape just north of Montecello. I drove north on 191 through some very scenic country, then west on I 50 and north on 191 again to Helper where I took a nap next to a display of mining equipment and got fuel. Helper is an interesting town; one that I could have spent a day in. It is the home of the Western Railroad and Mining Museum, and the historical buildings have been preserved so that the town looks much as it did a hundred years ago.

I arrived at Harold and Helen Wilcox’s home in Highland, UT before 1800. They had a supper of spaghetti and green salad waiting for me. Their daughter, Elizabeth, came by after supper. Elizabeth is a bubbly, high energy person with the best hug I have ever experienced. She offered to show me the Family History Center in Salt Lake City tomorrow. Harold and Helen have a large basement with bedroom, bath, large living room and wet bar. I helped Elizabeth make up the bed, and Harold got out an electric heater in case I got cold. I didn’t need it.

You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.

Wednesday 28 April 2010

We had coffee in camp before driving into Blanding for breakfast. Bob headed home after breakfast, and I called Kay Garlinghouse. I told her I was in Blanding, and she enthusiastically invited me to come on over to Lewis, Colorado for a visit. I drove to Montecello, Utah. I stopped at the BLM visitor center to ask where I could get a shower. I fueled the Honda and stopped at the Mountain View RV Park for a shower before driving to Lewis, Colorado. I greeted my cousin Jimmy and his wife Kay before going next door to greet my Cousin Carolyn and her husband Ron. Ron and Carolyn had just arrived from their winter quarters in Arizona the day before. Carolyn had just taken some cinnamon rolls out of the oven and offered me one. I gleefully accepted. Ron soon joined us, and then Jimmy. A repairman was trying to get their telephone working. We visited most of the afternoon, discussed taking a ride on ATVs to see the 234 acre ranch, but the wind was blowing up a lot of dust, and it did not look like a good day for an ATV ride. Jimmy has irrigated pasture for his livestock in the summer, and grows 50 acres of alfalfa hay. He sells about half the hay and feeds the rest to his livestock in the winter. He has about 50 head of sheep, 50 head of Boer goats, 40 head of cattle, and his son Marc has half a dozen horses on the ranch. Marc’s daughter Hunter Jo joined us for supper in Dolores. She is 11, in 4 H with projects in goats and sewing. Her sewing projects went to the state fair last year. Kay had to go to work; she is the medical emergency coordinator at the Ute Mountain Casino. Marc is an EMT, and he got called out on an emergency. Jimmy and Kay’s daughter Monica is a respiratory therapist in Denver. After supper, Carolyn invited me to spend the night, and made up a bed in the spare bedroom for me.

Tuesday 27 April 2010

I slept in until 0630. I started the stove and went back to my pack for my breakfast food. When I returned to the kitchen, Bob was making coffee. I added raisins and walnuts to my oatmeal this morning, and had a cup of tea afterward. Bob thought it was colder this morning than the previous morning, but last night was the first time I didn’t zip my sleeping bag up during the night.

We began hiking at 0930. Bob showed me more ruins and we saw more wildflowers. We hiked to a location where we can hike out of the canyon and not far from where I left my Honda Civic hybrid. We ate lunch of tuna wraps at 1300, and Bob filtered more water with his gravity powered filter. We are using plastic bladders to hold our water. Mine still gives my water a bit of plastic flavor so I began adding lemonade flavoring to my water this morning. The water here is quite alkaline and leaves white and blue stains on the red sandstone. There are a few thin blue layers of rock (limestone?) in the red sandstone. I ground some into a paste this morning and rubbed the blue paste into a piece of red sandstone. When it dried it seemed to be fairly difficult to remove, and may be one of the colors used in creating the snake pictograph we saw earlier.

After our lunch of tuna wraps we cached our backpacks and hiked downstream with our day packs. The canyon widens here with wide terraces first on one side of the creek, then on the other. The Anasazi farmed these terraces. We found a large habitation site at the foot of the cliff on the left side of the creek, and a bit farther downstream a habitation and food storage site near the top of an isolated portion of the mesa. We hiked to the top and investigated the site.

It is quite windy, and getting cloudy. It looks like it might rain. We returned to our backpacks about 1600 and after a short rest, began the climb out of the canyon. The trail is well marked until we approach the top of the mesa. There the trail becomes hard to follow and we lost it several times, but Bob’s local knowledge took us right to my car.

We drove to Mexican Hat for a 6 pack of Polygamy Porter before driving to Bob’s Toyota pickup. Lots of people were camped at the trailhead, so we drove to another trailhead where we made camp. Bob cooked supper while I put up my tent for the first time this trip. The wind has been blowing since about noon and the sky is now thick with dust obscuring the views of distant mountains.

You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.

Monday 26 April 2010

The moon is nearly full so I can’t see many stars. I did see the winter circle Saturday evening and this morning about 0300 I saw Arcturus and the summer triangle as well as the big dipper and Polaris. Bob set up his stove and a pot of water within reach of his sleeping bag before going to sleep last night. I lit the stove and put the water on to boil. Bob made coffee with Starbucks instant. We drank our coffee and made oatmeal. After finishing my oatmeal I hiked back up the creek to look for my camera. I found it on the left side of the creek where we crossed it just above two waterfalls. It was hanging in a shrub about a foot off the ground. Apparently the woven fabric wrist strap was hanging out of the camera case on my backpack hip strap and snagged on the shrub pulling the camera out of the case.

When I returned to camp, Bob was packed and writing notes. I packed and we began hiking down the creek about 0900. We explored a very large ruin not far below our first camp. We were about ready to leave when Jeff and Holly walked up. They had yodeled at us from the right rim last night, but we had no idea it was them until we met them in the canyon. They are day hiking. We hiked another hour downstream and had chunk light tuna wrap in the shade of a cottonwood tree on a stream terrace probably farmed by the Anasazi. They grew corn, beans, squash, and cotton. We have been seeing a small deciduous oak the past hour. It is usually no taller than 2 m (6 or 8 feet). The buds have broken in the past couple of weeks and there are several leaves and catkins on at the end of almost every twig.

We made camp under a cottonwood tree where dead cottonwood logs surround several flat stones. Bob set up the stove on the flat stones before going for a hike to a nearby spring where water drips from a layer of rock 15 to 20 m (50 feet) above a deep pool of water. This dripping water creates a habitat different than any we have seen this trip. It is early spring here, and the plants are just beginning to grow, but I can see that the walls are nearly covered with vegetation later in the year. Bob says he has seen columbines here. The pool is surrounded by a dense copse of willows.

We returned to camp, made supper and finished off Bob’s vodka. Bob mixed it with flavored EmergenC powder and water, and it makes quite a nice cocktail. I hiked up the left slope and sat on top of a large boulder. While there I saw a mammal running towards me along a ledge about 200 m away. He continued towards me until about 30 m away where he or she disappeared into a crack in the rock. The mammal had a bushy tail nearly as long as its body and half the diameter of its body. Its legs were short, and its nose pointed. It looked somewhat like a weasel, but much larger, about 60 cm long. Bob suggested it might have been a fox. That seems like a possibility.

Sunday 25 April 2010
After breakfast we left my Honda Civic Hybrid at the campsite and drove Bob's Toyota pickup to the trail head. Bob showed me some pictographs and a ruin on top of a ridge with great views of the surrounding country. The ruin may have been a lookout or guard station, and the occupants warned their people of impending attacks. My legs started cramping about 1530. We filtered water, After resting for an hour I was able to resume hiking. We tried to climb out of the canyon on the left, but could not get out. We hiked for another hour. When we stopped to inspect another ruin, I discovered that I did not have my camera, so we began looking for a place to camp. We were well short of where Bob had planned to camp. He was bothered that we were camping on the floor of the windy canyon where cold air collected rather than on the top or a thermal belt where the cold would drain off of the campsite. Bob explored the ruins while I stretched and massaged my legs and wrote notes.

You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.

Saturday 24 April 2010

I was on my way to Bluff, Utah by 0600. I got coffee in Prescott Valley and ate a granola bar as I drove east on highway 69 to Dewey. I took 169 from Dewey to I 17 then north toward Flagstaff. I stopped a couple of times to photograph views of Mt Agassiz. I bought gasoline in Flagstaff, and bought a Navajo taco in Kayenta. I took a few photos from the road in Monument Valley and one of the bridge in Mexican Hat.

I got into Bluff, Utah about 1600 Mountain Daylight Time. I found Far Out Expeditions at the east end of town. I didn’t see anyone around, so I called Bob Helmes on my cell phone. He told me to look behind the house. I found Bob and several friends drinking beer in the back yard. Bob introduced me to Vaughn, Marsha, Desa, Holly, and Jeff. Vaughn and Marsha own Far Out Expeditions, and live next door to the office. Desa, their daughter, is working on an archaeological dig. Jeff is a kayaker, rafter, whitewater outfitter, former owner of a kayak manufacturing company, building contractor, and was with Walt Blackadar, the famous kayaker, when he died. We went to dinner at 1800, and Bob and I headed to our campsite at 1930.

To protect the archaeological resources of this outdoor museum I won’t say exactly where we went. We slept under the stars on top of a mesa. The moon was almost full so we saw few stars, but I could make out a few stars of the winter circle in the west. Before sunrise, the summer triangle was near the zenith.

You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.

Friday 23 April 2010
I was on the highway headed to Prescott by 0630. I got fuel in Kingman. There was snow on the junipers near the tops of several passes, and a misty fog drifted through the junipers in the high valleys giving the landscape a mystical, fairyland appearance. I stopped to photograph the mist in the junipers twice. The first time I pulled off the pavement I ran over a rock that hit the undercarriage of the Honda.

I got into Prescott, Arizona about 1100. I visited with my cousin, Bruce Hardwick until 1230. He is in the Veterans Administration hospital. He mysteriously lost the use of his legs about 6 months ago, and the doctors haven’t been able to restore his use of them. He sold his house, a historic landmark, and bought another about two blocks from downtown that can be modified for wheelchair access. He hopes to have the modifications completed in a couple of months so he can move there. I went to a garage where a friend of Bruce’s put my Honda up on a rack. I had put quite a dent in the exhaust pipe and pushed it up against the frame so it made quite a bit of noise. The mechanic used a crow bar to pull the exhaust pipe away from the frame, greatly reducing the amount of noise it made. At 1800 I met Bruce and three of his contra dancing partners at The Raven, a very popular pub downtown Prescott. They have a large selection of beers on tap. I ordered the barbecued ribs and Bourbon Barrel Stout. The stout was served in stemware. I really liked it. It was smooth, malty, with the mouth feel of cream.

You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.

Thursday 22 April 2010; Vacaville, California

It is partly cloudy and the street is wet. I suspect it rained a little bit last night. I left Vacaville in my 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid at 0710; destination, Prescott, Arizona. I took highways 113 and 12 through Rio Vista to I 5; then south to Stockton where I cut over to 99. It rained continuously, but lightly from Stockton to Selma. I ate lunch at Sal’s in Selma. My parents lived in a house about two blocks from Sal’s when I was born, and my family ate at Sal’s frequently when I was a child. I also went the high school and college with Sal’s younger sister, Lupe Salazar Vargas who I still see at Selma High School class reunions.

I refueled in Bakersfield. There was fresh snow down to 4500 feet elevation at Tehachapi. I began seeing displays of yellow wildflowers just north of Tehachapi. Those displays continued intermittently to near Needles, California. I stopped to photograph them twice. There were very small poppies, goldfields, a larger orange composite, a purple Mimulus?, very tiny popcorn flowers, fiddleneck, and a small plant with white, bell shaped, Manzanita like flowers. My granddaughter, Marley, called when I was near Barstow. I told Marley, Kooper, and Betty about the wildflowers, snow and rain. I talked Marley through a reboot the Dell desktop computer and log back on. I wished Kooper luck in his baseball game and urged Betty to tape the ankle he sprained last week. It rained again most of the way from Mojave to Needles. I was tired by the time I got to Needles and decided to stay there for the night. I drove around Needles looking for a motel next to a brew pub. I got a draft hefeweizen and Caesar salad at Juicy’s.

You can see more photos of this trip at Picasa.