So what do you do when you move to a new place?  To get to know the locals…. join a church, a choir….   I guess one might consider our attachment to rocks a bit like a religion???

So we have joined the Vernon rock club and have been out on 2 field trips with them.  As you can see Tucker fit right in.  Everyone loves Tucker.  This first one was at another gravel pit in Armstrong. (Quite a bit larger than our gravel pit.)

And this was the view from the second field trip we went on. Something about rockhounding, you always get to go to the coolest places. In the middle of nowhere and with great views.  Turns out that this site is just on the other side of the mountain from our place.

So our THIRD field trip was here…. look familiar???  Yes we invited the rock club all to come up and look for rocks here.  The Vernon rock club sent the invite far and wide and … over 100 people showed up at our place.  The largest turnout that they have ever had.

The neighbours down below were freaking out seeing 45 cars come driving up the road….. the road that usually sees maybe 10 cars a day… My picture does not show them, (I started taking pictures after many people had left.)

Everyone dispersed in all directions and everyone had a great time, especially the kids. …. and social distanced, I think? There are about 25 acres in total to explore, so lots of distance between everyone. One guy even went all the way to the top of the mountain… to see what was there.

These kids found some great agates etc…. and they were quite excited about it until the found……

THIS…. a snail in a shell, and suddenly there was No interest in rocks, only what they were going to do with the snail.

…. and some kids found the large puddle down below and…..

people brought picnics and everyone just seemed to have fun. There were some clever “hounds” that we learned lots about rocks from.  AND everyone found agates to take home with them… COOL.  We have  been quite thrilled with the family nature of the rock club field trips, lots and lots of kids. Makes us wish we had taken on rocks back when we had small kids. What a great way to run them ragged.

 

A few weeks ago we purchased a smaller motorhome.  It is a 2016,(so over 20 years newer than our other MH)  and it is shorter, but has 3 slides. So pretty much as big as the other one, only easier to drive, easier to get around things.  With all of the rock cutting we have been doing for the past few months, we are starting to miss the southern rockhounding we do in the winter.   We are hoping that by next spring… it might be easier to travel.  We are taking some time to go on a trip around British Columbia for the first 2 weeks of August.  See what BC has for cool rocks.  In previous years I feel that since I take 3 months off in the winter, that I should not take time in the summer, but….. i am getting old. what the heck.

Our newer motorhome is really quite nice…… after we got rid of the cigarette smell.  We were so enamoured with the rig we had not noticed it at first, but after a night in it we realized that the strong perfumie smell was covering something up. So we took it back and they “ozonated” it over night and it really seemed to work. Now it just smells normal.

As you can see it is Garlic Scape season and we are falling sadly behind in doing things with the garlic scapes, but did make some pesto with them.

Speaking of the garlic, it has sadly been through a lot this year. If it looks kind of striped in this picture, it is because last fall, I took the tractor and left piles of chicken manure in various spots.  As you can see, the deep green garlic leaves are in the areas near where the chicken manure was left. The garlic that was covered with the chicken manure…..died.  Too much of a good thing.  You can also see in this picture that there are areas that were lower than others. The guy we bought from said that the whole place was really well drained. Well not so!  The areas in the garden that were lower lying have tended to be under water whenever we get the torrential rains.. that we SEEM to be getting quite often…. NOT good for garlic.  We also at this point are wondering why we bothered to put in an irrigation system. We have not gone more than a day or two without rain for ?? a few months (pretty much when we put in the irrigation system)

Here are the walls going up.

so what it will look like in the Living room,/kitchen/dining room room

Some days we think perhaps we should be building an Ark, rather than a house.

 

So this picture is from today, storms coming and going.  We are warm and dry.  Ken has never wanted an RV with slide outs …. “because they all leak”  We shall see. We are dry thus far.

Much Love from Janet, Ken and Tucker, the rock hounders hound.