I just realized that it has been 4 months since I last posted.
So, what is happening here on the West coast? Not much. It is either locked down or burned up this summer. Poor old California has had a lot of bad luck lately.
We were not in any of the fire areas. We have had smoke from the earlier fires North of us but that dissipated after a few days.
We on the other hand have not been doing much. We limit our socializing to a few friends. I still do wood at the Elks every Saturday with masks and social distancing. We occasionally go to the Elks on Monday night for hamburgers, etc also with friends. We just limit our interaction with people as much as possible.
We did go camping in October for 5 days. Just up the coast North of us with a few friends. I had taken the RV in to have the MorRyde pin box hitch rebuilt. It is 12 years old and was showing sun damage on some rubber and plastic parts. It took some time to find the right rebuild kit and do the work. The truck has been serviced so we are good to go for this fall.
The garden has been cleaned out. I roasted the last of the Anaheim Chili's. I used some for chili rellanos and the rest go in the freezer for use later. I had pulled the jalapeno pepper plant after making “poppers”. Those last “poppers” had a real kick to them.
The tomatoes are done. I had a bumper crop of Romas. So many in fact that I took 4 lug boxes to the food bank over a few weeks time.
Then there are the gourds. I have slowed down the watering to those hoping they will stop growing. I keep the new growth cut back as anything putting on gourds now won’t finish this fall. I have all the gourds tied up in t-shirts to take the weight off the stems as each one is soooo heavy. I planted what was supposed to be Birdhouse shaped gourds but only one of those is on the vines. Lots of large pear shaped ones however. Once the stems turn brown I will cut them loose and hang them in the garage rafters where it is warmer so they can dry out.
I just came back from my annual fall trip to the desert. This year Tim was with me again. He spent over a week here before we left. We traveled up the East side of the Sierra’s to Ridgecrest and Bishop, CA then on to Mina and Tonopah, NV spending 2 days in each place. We visited museums, poked around in old mining towns, looked for petroglyphs, and drove 4-wheel drive roads. We visited a memorial for an X-15 crash site near Randsburg, CA and found a 1995 plane wreck in Death Valley. The plane was trying to deliver Christmas trees to Furnace Creek when it crashed 60 feet short of clearing a ridge. The wreck wasn’t found for 6 months until it was discovered by 2 technicians going to a nearby microwave site.
We hiked and drove back roads in Death Valley National Park and collected mylar balloons as part of the DBRC (Desert Balloon Recovery Crew. Look for us on Facebook). This year we set an all time record of 78 balloons collected in 3 weeks.
Another great fall trip.
