Friday, September 22, 2017

A little catching up to do.


To complete the jobs in progress from the last post; I bought new Trojan batteries from a local auto parts house. After spending the better part of a day cleaning the battery trays I installed the new batteries. This was not quite the chore I anticipated as the new batteries are not as heavy as the old T105RE batteries. The 105 RE’s were not available so I had to settle for the T105 batteries.

We left early on Monday the 28th and drove to Boulder Creek RV Park South of Lone Pine on Hwy 395. It was an easy trip but warm as the temps were about 103 going up the desert.

One of the reasons for staying at the RV Park was to test out the new AC unit we just had installed. I must say, it worked quite well.

The next day we drove to Glass Creek, a Forest Service campground North of Mammoth where our friends Margot and Larry had saved us a spot in their campsite.

For the next 2 weeks we explored, laid around camp, took walks, had campfires and BBQ’ed. We attended the annual Mammoth Library Book Sale and each came away with large bags of books. They sell the bags for $5 and you can put as many hardback books in it as you can stuff in. Oh, and still be able to carry it. I got some that I never would have bought otherwise. How about "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" a complete history of the nuclear bomb making effort by all governments through WWII. It read more like a college text book but was also fascinating. Or the complete history of building Hitler's "Eagles Nest" with drawings and photos.

The weather was perfect. Warm days in the 70’s with cool nights in the 40’s. I did make one boo-boo, I forgot to put the propane heater in the RV before we left so I had to bite the bullet and buy a Mr Buddy heater to take off the morning chill.

On Thursday the 14th of September we left as it was predicted to get down into the 20’s overnight and be that way for days . We drove to Ridgecrest and stayed at the Elks Club for 2 days. Clyda had not been back to Ridgecrest since we left in September of 1963 and moved to the coast. It was an eye opener as little remains of the town as we knew it. The population now is about 28,000 but was less than 6,000 when we left there. We spent some time trying to find all three places where we had lived. We found 2 but not the 3rd one.

It is not an upscale community by any means, in fact the locals we talked to at the Elks Club said that Kern county is dumping its jail overflow on Ridgecrest. There are lots of houses I would just call shacks in any other location but people are living in them.

We came home on Saturday September 15th with no problems other than my truck exhaust brake had stopped working. The vacuum compressor was running full time so I disconnected power to it.

This week I took it back to Buellton where I had it worked on in June and just got it back this afternoon. The computer module had failed again so it was replaced under warranty.

I have been doing my fall trimming this week. Most of it is now in various garbage cans waiting for a day next week when I will shred it all. I have also dug up a flower bed of “Naked Lady” bulbs. This bed had not been dug up in years and some of the bulbs are huge. Clyda wants to plant the extras in front of the garage. The ground however is hard as a rock so I put some water on it tonight hoping to make it easier to dig. I still need to dig up a bed of Agapanthas in the back yard but I think I need more water on it before I can tackle that. I think the roots go to China somewhere by the amount of prying I tried today. It is almost beyond my “senior” ability anymore to do some of this stuff

Naked ladies (Amaryllis Belladona)
 
That brings us up to the present.