What We're Doing on Vacation

In front of the woodpile on our Colfax property

    It seems appropriate to call the time between our Camp Hosting assignments at Eagle Point Campground, Emerald Bay Lake Tahoe this summer and our return to Samuel P Taylor State Park November 1, Vacation. But, what we've been up to looks a lot more like work than vacation! With our extra two weeks in Colfax due to the Caldor Fire we have spent a lot of time preparing a woodpile for the winter and doing some general yard work. Our daughter Ruth generally does all those tasks, but currently she is on crutches due to a work injury in March and waiting for the slow progress of being treated through Worker's Compensation. She's also busy doing homeschooling with our granddaughter Avi and working through her next to last semester of a degree in Electrical Engineering, so we were quite happy to help out where and how we could. 

    A big disappointment for us is the cancellation of our planned trip to Europe. I was supposed to fly to Sweden tomorrow, September 11, to join our oldest daughter for an Inn to Inn hike in celebration of her turning 50 and my turning 70, but that celebration hike will have to wait until we're 51 and 71. Rob was going to join us at the end of our hike and then we'd all fly to Cyprus to spend a month with Sheila and her family. When we booked the flights and the hiking tour in May it looked very promising for Europe to be fully open to folks from the United States, but as COVID went crazy around the world we started getting pretty nervous about whether we'd be able to travel, so until the end of last month we were trying not to get too excited about traveling. The last week of August when we checked travel restrictions it all looked good so we scheduled the required COVID tests, I bought a new carry on suitcase and some new hiking clothes, and we were feeling like it was really going to happen. On September 2 we learned that Sweden was going to announce the closing of its borders to persons traveling from the United States on September 6. We couldn't get any real details or confirmation of that information until Monday, September 6, when we learned it was true - we could not go to Sweden. We were able to get credit for our flights and considered just going to Cyprus, but anytime within the next couple of weeks was going to be totally cost prohibitive, and we were nervous that more of Europe might shut down so we decided to postpone our European vacation until late Spring 2022 - hopefully things will be more stable for travel by then. So after grieving our thwarted plans and anticipated time with our daughter, her husband and three of our grandchildren we made new plans.

    While Sheila and I were to be hiking, Rob had planned to spend the week in San Bruno where daughter Erin lives in the house Rob and his sister inherited from their parents. There is always lots of work to do around that house and in the yard. Erin got tickets for them to see a Giants game on Monday, September 14. With the canceled International travel we decided we would come to San Bruno for a few days, do some yard work, and go to the game on Monday. As it turns out Erin is going to a State Park training event in Asilomar on Tuesday, so going to the game on Monday night would be complicated for her - I will use her ticket. On Tuesday, we'll head back to Colfax and pack up the motor home to hit the road for a few weeks. We plan to stay in California, traveling around mainly to State Parks and hopefully spend some time in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks where so far the air looks pretty clear. The main factors that will determine where we go are air quality and mild temperatures. The last two days in Colfax were horribly hot - hitting over 100 degrees and not cooling down much at night. We hope we're done with the excessive heat for awhile!

Rob loading a wheelbarrow with firewood.

    They say that preparing and using wood for heat that you get warm twice, but really it's more times than that! There are a lot of dead and down pine trees on the Colfax property due to an infestation of bark beetles a few years ago, and there are a few oak trees that are dead as well, so we didn't have to go far to get the wood, but it was a lot of work. Rob used Ruth's chainsaw to cut up some of the pine and oak, then it all had to be moved uphill to where the house is, some of it had to be split, and then of course it had to be stacked. Rob did the cutting, most of the moving of the wood and ran the wood splitter. I did some of the moving of wood in the wheelbarrow and pretty much all of the stacking, but we were pleased with the results.

After 4 trips up the hill from the bottom corner of our property pushing the wheelbarrow solo, we figured out a "push-me-pul-me" method that definitely worked better. Here I'm backing up the hill, while Rob pushes from below, but mostly I turned around to pull.

Rob running the wood splitter

    When our children were young and we got permits to cut wood on public property Rob and I would split wood by hand while the children sat around and watched while they guessed how many blows it would take to split a log. This wood splitter that a neighbor left for Ruth when he moved sure makes the work easier! Not sure we'd have gotten much done the old way.

The finished wood project - hard to imagine in the heat we were working in that all this will burn up pretty quickly when the cold weather comes.

Tackling blackberries in the backyard in San Bruno - Rob says cutting word is more fun!

Early morning sky early this week in Colfax - so beautiful to see blue after all the smoke.

Turkeys near by on my way to the house in Colfax on my morning hike.

We saw this large flock of turkeys every day while we were there - I don't remember wild turkeys being around there in the past.

St Jerome - a chalk drawing done by Ruth

    Ruth is using a Walforf curriculum for Avi for her third grade studies and the saints are a large unit. Avi is loving the stories of the saints and Ruth is getting to exercise her beautiful artistic talent. At the end of the week she'll erase this picture and draw another - at least it's preserved in a photograph!

Avi after flipping on the trampoline in the front yard - she tried to get me to bounce with her, but I was too timid to let there be air between my feet and the trampoline. When I was in high school I loved jumping on the trampoline, but that was a lot of years ago!

Elsie on the bed in the RV before the four of us (Rob, me, Straus and Elsie) headed to San Bruno

Straus on the bed in San Bruno

The cats did not like the ride from Colfax to San Bruno in their crate, 

but they seem quite content in their new surroundings. 

We will take them back to Colfax with us next week to get the RV for our tour of California.

Elsie on the cat tree in San Bruno - I don't think she'll let Straus up there!