Author: mymostrecentobsession

the fire….

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

I thought I would write about our recent adventures with “the fire”. Friday night I was in Victoria for a “life celebration” for an uncle of mine, and Ken was at home with Tucker. The Lower East Adams fire was across the lake from us and we had offered our house as a place for friends from Lee Creek (across the lake) to stay. One couple had arrived and were just setting up their RV, and our other friends had found a place elsewhere when I got a call in Victoria from our neighbours below us to say that there was a fire up on the mountain behind us and that they were packing to go. This blog will not have pictures from our place, as we have none. So I will put in a picture from before the fire🤔 This is the view that will be changed forever, because everything in this picture has burned. (well except the 2 houses shown as of now)

SOOO… they did get ahold of Ken and so did I, he had the motorhome in place and the jeep behind it, and threw in a few coats, a few beer and a few guitars. THATS ALL. So he headed down the hill and turned on the highway below left towards Kamloops.(where our sons live) Turns out the fire was crossing the highway there and so everyone was being turned around. Ken said that the vehicle at the front of the line was a double tanker truck (?gasoline) Each truck had to drive into a turn on the left and then back out and then head east. Ken was worried because with the jeep behind and the hitch, he cannot back up. Our neighbour was ahead of Ken with a 5th wheel. Ken and I were chatting while he was waiting and I was quite worried knowing that the fire there was VERY aggressive, and I felt very badly not being there….. (in which case we likely would have unhooked the jeep and the turn around would have been much easier, and I would drive the jeep). Decisions at times like this are very important, especially if the fire turns quickly. He did get turned around by doing a U turn, and got the tire in the ditch but in the end got it turned. On the map below …. the black blob is where our house is and the line at the bottom is where the bridge crosses Little River and that is where the fire crossed.

I should explain that this fire actually started over a month ago after a lightening storm. It was on the east side of Adams Lake which is the lake in the top left corner of this picture. As you can imagine it has been its worst when the wind blows from the north west. A few weeks ago the fire aggressively bore down on the cabins along the lake in the top left marked in red. This area can only be accessed by a small car ferry which holds about 10 cars. The fire dept were able to save all of this homes at that time. This is a picture of that area. I have a sister who has a cottage there.

The fire then moved slowly towards Lee Creek, which is a small community between Scotch Creek and the black bridge line I have marked on the map. On Thursday morning this fire was still several kilometres away from Lee Creek, however it was becoming much more aggressive and the smoke was very bad. The fire department had Lee Creek on alert, and they felt very certain that they would be issuing an order soon, so some of my friends left on Thursday. This map below shows where the fire was on Thursday. The yellow is the fire and the blue is where they did a planned large scale ignition to attempt to protect homes in Scotch Creek. This is done, I believe with gasoline and they attempt to burn an area, so that when the fire gets to that spot …. there is no fuel left.

“We are still anticipating that at around 11 p.m., midnightish, winds will start to become pretty erratic and variable and then eventually switch over to come from the north,” said Tower, noting the burn was successful in scorching fuel north of the Scotch Creek area.

“When those winds switch, the fire now tries to come south, but it’s already burned all that fuel.”

This is what the media said on Thursday night. At this time they had not done an evacuation order for the north side of the Shuswap. You cannot see it on this map, but just below where it says Lee Creek, there is a bridge that is the only way out for all of the communities on the North Shuswap. (There is a small logging road that leads from the northern most part of the Shuswap Lake over to Malakwa) a many hours trip that only certain vehicles could take.

SOOOO this is a picture from a place in Scotch Creek on Friday afternoon.

SO while all of this was happening on the other side of the lake on Friday afternoon, Ken and I were thinking of offering our place to people from the other side of the lake on Facebook. GOOD thing we did not do that.

So back to Ken’s story. He was then driving east, the only way he could go, and the friend I was staying with in Victoria called her brother and sister in law in Armstrong who are also friends of ours and arranged for him to go there. THEY were at the Salmon arm roots and blues festival which had just started at this point. They called back a few minutes later to say that the power had gone out there and the festival was ended.

Ken got over to Armstrong and spent 2 night there and then he brought the motorhome to Kamloops yesterday and I drove here yesterday as well. So we are together again. This is the only picture we have of where our house is and it was taken at the beginning of the fire on Friday night. I believe our house would be to the right and below where this fire is. We currently have fire protection up there, and I will write more when I find out more. Our house is still standing but not sure about anything around it

This video is taken by a person driving from Celista to highway 1 while road was still open.

Much love to all, and especially to the friends who have lost their homes in the past few days. I also have a close friend in Ventura that while I was texting about our situation, texted me back to say that they had just had an earthquake. So much tragedy around.

Janet, Ken and Tucker.

All the sun brings us.. and more🌞

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Here we are once again in Forest fire season, hearing about the millions of acres of trees that have been burned in Canada. Trees that provided us some protection from Climate change, creating more climate change in their demise. Hard not to dwell on, but……. Looks like a full…. sun?

Perhaps in remembrance of all of those trees lost we can start using Bamboo (or recycled TP) to wipe our butts, instead of having more trees cut down for that purpose. I read once that Costco was using old growth forest trees to make toilet paper. I guess we never talk about these “things”. ( I remember wondering, as a kid, if the Flintstones ever used the toilet. )

I guess we are puttering along attempting to do our part in cooling this planet, or at least not warming more. I am sure that there are those whose carbon footprint is much smaller than ours, but also there are those with greater footprints too. We have found that many of the changes we have made have actually started saving us money as well.

In March of this year we tripled our solar panels.

There is a government program that provides for a 5000.00 grant as well as a 10 year interest free loan for solar panel installation. (Our additional panels cost 14,000). So we figured that we pay an average of 180 per month for electricity, it would not make a lot of difference to be making loan payments instead, so technically we figure we got the solar panels for free. Our loan payments have worked out to 120 dollars a month for 10 years interest free, and our electric consumption looks like this.

So this is what the usage looks like. All the power we generate that we do not use, goes back to the grid giving us a credit. (you can see the negatives on this graph) What this means is that we are actually making money in this heat. The way BC hydro does it is that they balance all of the numbers each March and if they still owe you, you get a check. We actually have 2.5-3 months in the winter that the sun does not hit our panels, so the money we are “making” now, might just be spent in the winter 🥶

8 years ago we bought a fully electric car, and the power that our solar panels capture, is actually charging our car. SOOOO for most of the year we are not affected by gas prices. We essentially drive for free from energy from the sun.🌞

It is a freeing feeling, not being affected by the price of oil, or the price of electricity.

I should point out that I never took on any of these endeavours to save money, and am reminded all the time that these changes in energy consumption are expensive. But they have worked out well for us at a time we are heading into retirement and lower income.

I am continuing to make my toques, despite poor sales in this heat. 🥵 (but fall is right around the corner, RIGHT?) The yarn is made from recycled plastics, which is where fleece also comes from. I have recently read a book called “Unraveling” that defends the use of wool over recycled plastics (fleece) because tiny particles get into the water system and eventually to the oceans. There are apparently special filters you can use on your washing machine to prevent the particles from getting further down the water chain.

We have completed our garlic harvest and they are hanging to dry in our shop. We are thrilled with the size our garlic. We owe that to the large load of compost we had delivered from Spa Hills, a company that has bins all over Salmon arm and area, that composts everything, from animal remains at the chicken farms to food waste from restaurants. They compost at a very high temperature to ensure the material is disease free. SOOO it is strong stuff, and….. yes, smelly to begin with.💩

We have been selling “fresh’ garlic at the market for now before it is fully dried.

We did make a large batch of dill pickled garlic scapes and are now waiting the 6 “recommended” weeks to try them.

We have been camping at some lakes near where we live, and I discovered that you can really sneak up close to a bear in an electric car. …… to get a great picture. He did not ..hear… me coming. Isn’t he HUGE? (or she)

We have become a smoothie family, in trying to have smoothies for lunch each day. We have picked and frozen 20 lbs of fruit so far this year with direct plans for Smoothies. Although we get all of the recommended vegetable servings each day, I find it hard to meet the fruit recommendations. Hence the smoothies. We just put whatever fruit we have in freezer plus some cashew milk and then veggies such as celery and cucumbers. I throw in some rolled oats as well. We are studying up on the best machine for making them as my mini bullet is on its last legs.

Well so there is another blog, I have fallen behind as I let my subscription lapse, but am all paid up now.

thank you for reading much love

Janet, Ken and Tucker

After the rain…. a new song I have written

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 5 Comments

WELL I have finally sat down and written a new song. Was not sure I had it in me, but sometimes you just have to take the time and try. Writing seems to come when I am passionate about something and what better time than now 🤔

Of course I also had to relearn the recording software, which took a good week, but so happy to be able to do my own recording. So I recorded my vocal, Kens guitar and my guitar. I sent it on to Jim Henry to do the final mixing, and he also added guitar track, and bass and Tracy Grammar did the background vocals and violin. Please enjoy…..

This is the blurb that I have sent out to the radio stations with the compilation CD that the song is going on.

As a pacifist, I oppose gun violence, all wars and nuclear weapons. I have been appalled by the explosion of gun violence recently in the US. Most recently the shooting of neighbours, and people pulling up to the wrong address. The countless ways one can use weapons to kill people, and still… it is legal for almost everyone to own a gun.
Also as a pacifist I oppose all wars, refuse to cheer on one side vs the other. I believe that those who benefit financially in war have far too much say in whether or not to negotiate, or not. Hearing a recent talk on behalf of Danial Ellsberg, I was horrified how clear it is to all, how one nuclear attack and one retaliation will totally destroy all of our lives, and how well this is understood, and for how long this has been understood. But yet we are still advancing nuclear weapons all the time.

Thanks…. Janet

The tail of a flu

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

This story began a few weeks ago with us looking after our wonderful, clever, enthusiastic grandson, Talon. His parents went away for a few days and we had him for 3 days. He IS a daycare kid  🥹and so was coughing when he arrived. Given the circumstances there was nothing we could do about that, and kids are just so lousy at covering their cough etc etc etc.  We quickly resolved ourselves to the idea that we were going to GET THIS COLD.  I guess we bargained with ourselves,……fair enough,….it has been years since have been sick….. our turn…. etc… The last day we had him we started to feel the signs and knowingly looked at each other….. here we go.

Now what we were expecting was a few days of feeling lousy, cough, runny nose , then a few days of feeling not so bad, and that would be about it.

Well that is nothing like what we got.  I should point out here that we are fully vaccinated for Covid AND got our influenza shots last November (and incidentally SO did Talon, our grand son).

Now Influenza is quite a different puppy to a cold 🐶…… 7-10 days of fevers, productive cough, general body aches, fatigue and copious amounts of mucus. 

So 10 days later, we are starting to feel better. We have gone through 2 cases of toilet paper, and twice a day have had a nice little fire ….burning bits of it.  (note we use toilet paper instead of Kleenex because we cannot find Kleenex made of bamboo)

We do not think we have ever been this sick, we might have, …… and forgotten about it…. But we do not think so.

Talon, our grandson, on the other hand was better by the time he got back to his parents. Were we making all this up?????

Now I did not sit down to write this to attract sympathy (…but who does not like a little sympathy when one is sick🤧) After much contemplation, (lotsa time on my hands) I see that this story illustrates some issues about vaccines/influenza, that are not always given. SO why did we get sick, we had done everything in our power to prevent influenza?

Well how good IS the flu vaccine? The flu vaccine reduces your need to seek medical care by 60%. Ah…. so it is not the be all end all prevention for flu. One thing that is quite clear, the flu vaccine does not prevent you from getting the flu. This is the most important part of all of this. You still get the flu when are exposed to it.

However if you look at that 4 year old, who is sliding down that hill (I should add he climbed up MANY times in order to slide down) was a kid with influenza….. Influenza that has been tempered with a vaccine, that is… So basically taking a more severe illness and turning it into a cold. In the fall, as you may recall, the children’s hospitals all over were overflowing with children with influenza and RSV.

The vaccine clearly did not work that well on us. We feel we are pretty darned healthy, we are able to walk miles every day and are going off in the fall to walk Hadrians Wall in England. (10 miles a day) We feel we eat a very healthy diet… the ONLY risk factor for us is that I will be 67 this year and Ken 69. I guess it kept us from needing medical attention, or hospitalization.??

So if the influenza vaccine only protects you by 60%, we really should be working hard at reducing the incidence of influenza in the general population. This would decrease the chances of being exposed to it in the first place. Only 50% of people get the flu vaccine, what if that number were 80%? What would happen if 80% of the population got the flu vaccine? Well what has been shown with our more historic infectious diseases such as polio, smallpox… etc was that when 80-85% of the population is vaccinated, the disease become rare. (Even though the vaccines do not work on everyone). I graduated from med school in 1990 and have never seen a case of polio, small pox, or rubella. (I had rubella as a child)

I guess my goal here was to put a bug in your ear to begin thinking about getting the flu vaccine in the fall. It could either protect you from getting the flu, OR it might prevent you from passing the flu onto a susceptible person, or who knows you might save someone else’s life by stopping the chain of infection. (hope it is someone nice)

I firmly feel that vaccines save lives, but not necessarily your own….. someone around you.

I must say that we feel very fortunate to have been able to enjoy such a wonderful view during this illness and I am very thankful to Jeffrey Archer for writing such great series books, that I could sit and read all day.

So we are now at the tail end of our flu and feeling so fortunate for our health. Tucker just thinks that we are a couple of lazy slackers, and he does not hesitate to tell us so. He is keeping us in physical shape by barking to get in, then barking to get out etc etc etc.

Much love and health to all this Easter Sunday…, Janet, Ken and Tucker, the annoyingly healthy dog.

How many deaths will it take till he knows, that too many people have died?

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 3 Comments

Well I for one feel that way too many people have died…. long ago. So I went to an antiwar rally in Washington DC. Last I heard 140,000 Ukrainians have died in this war and no one is counting the Russians. All the while Ukrainians are being cheered on as being brave and patriotic. What good has that done for the Ukrainians? What good is being brave and patriotic? if it usually makes you dead?

Look at all the brave Americans who thought they were fighting for something that had something to do with 911, when actually it was to reestablish control over the oil in Iraq. They were told that they were fighting for their country??? They thought that they were being patriotic, in taking actions that led to the deaths of a million people.

I guess I am angry with those who feel that the only way out of this is for Putin to retreat,….. What if he doesn’t? Do all of those lives lost in “waiting” for Putin to retreat worth nothing? Since 2015, and before this invasion, 15,000 have been killed in the eastern areas of Ukraine. (Donbas) The Ukraine military against Russian separatists. Ukraine has 2 parts, the west (USA) only sees ONE Ukraine, but there are 2. The event that started all of this was in 2014 is called a revolution by the west,(the American supported part of Ukraine), but it is called a coup by the eastern part of Ukraine. To see pictures of the scores of “revolutionaries” storming the home of Victor Yanukovych, looked an awful lot like the January 6 event in the US, its just that one was considered treason and another considered a “revolution”. It all depends on how you look at it, and how you look at it depends on who told you how to look at it.

Me talking to the media…. at the rage against the war machine rally

We all get our information somewhere. Sadly most mainstream media does not just tell you the news, they also tell you what to think about the news. For instance, they will never mention Crimea, and Russia’s control over it without also mentioning that the election in Crimea (to determine what country Crimea wanted to be part of), was a sham. How does the media know it was a sham? Why would the majority of Russian speaking people chose to vote to be part of Ukraine? No one has ever given proof that the election was a sham. It is a lie and the more times a lie is told it eventually becomes the truth in the minds of those who are not paying attention.

Crimea was given to Ukraine back in the 50s by USSR as a gesture, of course at the time it was not significant because they were all part of the same country. It was done in good faith that Ukraine would never turn against Russia. A recent quote from Naom Chomsky “Nobody is going to pour the truth into your brain, its something you have to find out for yourself?

Apparently Rachel Maddow has called us (this rally) Pro Russian. A great example of how the media lies, I was there and there was nothing pro anything, other than peace. She has twisted a beautiful event of people coming together for peace into something bad, and that is what the media does, all the time. This is NOT journalism, Journalism would be going to the rally and interviewing people and listening to the speeches, but Rachel Maddow is not a journalist.

It is hard to feel strongly about something when everyone disagrees with you…. which is why I came to this event.

Back in the Iraq war, one in which 85% of Americans supported, I felt very alone in my views…. and coined a term……. “even when everyone seems to disagree with you, it still does not mean you are wrong”. Any time you question this war, you are a “Putin sympathizer”, always always always avoiding the narrative. After all he did invade Ukraine, which I do feel was very wrong. I do however feel that even more wrong was that NATO (the US) refused to reassure him that they would not allow Ukraine to join NATO. That is all it would have taken to prevent this war.

NATO really is a terrorist organization and the key is to make sure that everyone is very afraid, to ensure that they all feel that they NEED NATO to protect them. REALLY WHAT are we all afraid of? If NATO did not exist, this war would not exist. I cannot imagine as a Canadian what it would feel like if there was a massive military complex who’s sole goal was to destroy Canada, and then the US were to join up…OH MY……the only country that we have a border with, joining an alliance against us.

I guess mostly, I would have thought that the world might have come to the realization that we just cannot fight wars anymore. I do not believe that this war is about Ukraine anymore, it is a proxy war being fought between the US and Russia.

It is not a war that can be won on a battlefield. There is NO Military solution to this. Have you noticed that with every new type of weapons the US advances to Ukraine, that Russia retaliates and kills more Ukrainians. Is the answer really MORE WEAPONS??? Are more weapons achieving anything? The idea is to weaken Russia, no matter how many Ukrainian lives it costs. Many Democrat and Republican congress members own shares in weapon manufacturer companies. Talk about conflict of interest.

Putin is criticized for jailing those who oppose him while the US jails whistleblowers. Not a lot of difference there. Julianne Assange is a journalist is serving several life sentences for revealing the American war crimes in Iraq. Daniel Hale is in prison for revealing details about the US drone program and all of the innocents killed. Israel just mows down journalists who oppose them.

And Zelinsky has said that he will not give up any land to Russia….. WELL BULLY for him, it is his people who are dying to save Crimea and the Donbas, while he flits around demanding more weapons so that more of his people can die while he can say that he never gave Russia an inch. How many Ukrainians lives are worth keeping a part of Ukraine that was made up largely of Russian separatists? Oh and of course Zelinsky wants everyone to believe that Putin is planning to take over the rest of the world after Ukraine…. (what planet is he on??) Of course it is just a ruse to pressure Europe to give him more weapons. Do you know how much money and people it takes to defeat, occupy and control another country?? Zelinsky is sending out teenagers to die so that he can maintain control over ALL OF UKRAINE. I guess I have always been more of a John Lennon believer. Why not sit down, Putin and Zelinsky without the US there to interfere….Draw new lines. Draw lines that have something to do with the people who live there.

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Finally I want to say something positive about this rally as it was very different from any I have attended in Washington DC. The thing is that the Anti war movement disappears when there is a democrat in the White House, so most people are not aware of the countries that were destroyed by the US during Obama’s terms. It is like the media thinks that a democratic president can do no wrong. Anytime I criticize Biden, people assume I am a Trumper, but no, I am not a tribal person, I believe every issue must be looked at on its own merit. People came together from every side to oppose war, to encourage the truth to come out, after all, it is about time. Russia is not our enemy, China is not our enemy, Iran is not our enemy and the Ukraine is not our enemy. Rachel Maddow and the massive international conglomerate she works for is our enemy for trying to make us hate other people.

Thank you for reading, much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker ………who missed me BIGTIME while I was in in Washington DC with my sister (the one in front of me in this Democracy Now picture)

Oh and, does this look like a pro Russian rally? Rachel Maddow, you are a twit!

How many years can a mountain exist…

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How many years does a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?

Well it appears that all of the mountains are on their way to the sea, (eventually) and in doing so….. in some places….reveal their secret gems. I guess the fact that mountains are eroding is what makes for all of the fun of rock hounding.  As the gems become exposed they too erode and scatter down the washes, leaving evidence for “prospectors” like Ken and I. (and Tucker)

The two pictures above are of Turtle mountains….. California along hwy 95

Recently we have given up on our Rock books, instead just looking out at the mountains and saying….”lets go see what is on that mountain”. The technique we use is akin to the childs game…. warmer warmer warmer… colder .. warmer.  Seeing bits and pieces of cool rocks we look closer and look up.  Knowing that water always flows downhill and so do rocks, we follow the trail of secrets up, up, up. Some times the trails peter out ….. sometimes they reveal veins, or seams in the rock. Seams of opal, chalcedony, crystals …..

This picture was taken in mountains along hwy 78 eastern California

We are essentially lazy prospectors, and so we do not hammer away at the seams to extract larger bits of rock, we just pick up what the elements (winds water and temperatures) have broken off chunks for us to just pick up 😀

What we found in all the hills/mountains we went up is that the views were amazing and the odd formations were interesting. Always curious as to why those rocks are there.🤔

We really wish we had more knowledge of why certain rocks are on one place and not another. We have read a lot about geology, but like any area of education….. without the basics, it is hard to fully understand some parts. Despite this we DID find lots of cool rocks around the veins/seams in the rocks. AND took home a few….

Geodes….

And this rather tiny skeleton was maybe 3 inches long??? could not figure out what it could have been.

Of course Tucker was pretty darned excited about our amazing discoveries….

..and trust him to find a few amazing things of his own….

Sadly he always buries the bones, despite the rocky ground covering OUCH….to his nose.

There never seems to be a shortage of US military adventures going on …..We watched these guys for awhile, there WAS a hose between them and they were flying slowly… I guess they have to stay up in the air in case some foreign flying object might stray into their airspace. Or could they be training for adventures in foreign lands?🤔

I guess the other part of all of this, is the very deluxe “accommodations” along the way.

This is along hwy 78 south of Blythe

Mojave national reserve….

Well there you have a snapshot of our recent adventures. Thank you for reading, Janet Ken and Tucker (our ever present co adventurer)

Caverns, Cacti and cute little gems……

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Our most noteworthy adventure recently has been a place we have been to in the past, but did not “take the tour” and so we did this time. Kartchner Caverns State Park.

These caves were found in 1974 when Randy Tufts took a friend (Gary Tenens) back to a sinkhole he had found years before, to investigate. They smelled Bat Guano and felt a warm breeze, a good sign that they had found a cave, and so started “exploring”. It took the quite some time for them to fully explore the caves and to find the major chambers, but they kept the caves secret for 14 years. They were aware of the risks of vandalism and without careful consideration of preservation the beautiful caverns would be destroyed. Can you imagine finding something like this?

The discovery of the cave was finally made public in 1988 when the landowners sold the area to the state for development as a park and show cavern. Prior to its grand opening in 1999, the state spent $28 million on a high-tech system of air-lock doors, misting machines and other equipment designed to preserve the cave.

I was unable to take any pictures… because when you do the tour, in fact, you cannot take anything into the cave with you. (so all photos are shamelessly stolen) If you touch any of the rock, you need to tell the guides so that they can put a marker on the spot so it can be cleaned at the end of the day. Apparently any oil from the skin, or fluff from your clothing will stop the rock from its natural formation and require extensive work to repair, if not cleaned right way. The cave has 98% humidity and 70+ degrees F temps, so I am sure it would be ripe for bacteria as well. So you go inside one heavy metal door and that one has to close before the next one is opened… to minimize the outside air going into cave, and drying it out. Apparently this cave is still alive whereas others are now considered to be dead. Our tour guide said that Carlsbad caverns are no longer “living caves”.

We stayed at the campground in the park and did one of the many scenic hikes, this picture is actually of the hills that are above the caves. All of it sits under those hills.

Sadly Gary Tufts who made this amazing discovery and protected it so well died at the age of 53 of bone marrow disorder, myelodysplasia. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/us/randy-tufts-spelunker-who-kept-a-secret-is-dead-at-53.html He certainly was an interesting person, if you read this NYtimes article.

I have never been much of a gem person, and do not actually wear any jewelry, but we have been on this search for Sapphires to use for a new “engagement/wedding bands”. Ken lost his wedding band at year 5 of our marriage. He was used to giving anaesthetics in the operating room (his first several years as a doctor he was a GP/anaesthetist). THEY did not have to take off jewelry in the OR. He did a special training thing in Vancouver where he had to scrub in the OR and he had not worked out what to do with his wedding band, so he tied to to his scrubs and the ring went into the laundry at Vancouver general hospital and was never seen again, so he replaced it. So now after having lost mine, I am going to replace mine. So I have bought some sapphires from Madagascar at the Tucson gem show. Still need to figure out what to do with them…. most likely will find someone to make the rings for me. The Gem show was amazing thousands and thousands of gems, diamonds, sapphires and any you could think of. Hard to know why we bought 4 of them, but…. they were so pretty and the picture does not do them justice.

We are now staying at Organ Pipe Cactus National monument. Home to the Organ pipe cactus. South and west of Tucson.

The Organ pipe is not as common as the Saguero cactus often seen in Arizona landscapes. The plant has a short trunk and multiple stems that grow from it. These stems rarely branch but rather grow annually from the tip of the last growth. The mature plant can reach a width of 3.5 m (12 ft). Each stem has twelve to nineteen 10 mm (3⁄8 in) high ribs that bear dark brown to black spines that turn gray as it matures. It takes 150 years to reach maturity. This campground is very cool and has no electric hook ups. The best part is that they separate the generators from the NON generators, so that the ones of us who have solar panels do not have to listen to generators. (well WE think that is cool). There are many hikes leading from this campground, but sadly dogs are not allowed on them, so we were only able to do the perimeter trail.

So we shall move on today because for us… it is all about the dog..

So on another note ♩♬♫…… Veterans for peace RADIO HOUR, interviewed me and played many of my songs. They wanted the stories behind the songs I had written. They posted the interview as a Soundcloud file, but many people were unable to open it so I have downloaded it and put it on dropbox so people can download and play…. https://www.dropbox.com/s/5lul82hnvsyhedk/309229016-44100-2-1fc91a000f2a8.m4a?dl=0

enjoy…… These songs were written about the invasion of Iraq, in 2003 and the subsequent side effects.

So to end …. this is an amazing piece of art work…….

Made of recycled spark plugs…at the gem show.

So Bye for now, much love Janet, Ken and Tucker, the spoilt rotten dog who has taken over all of our seats in the Motor home. 🐕‍🦺☮️☮️

Quartzsite, something for everyone, and I mean EVERYONE!

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SOOOO Ken has gone to visit a friend this morning and I have the whole motorhome to myself. All 250 square feet of it (well except for Tucker, just me and tucker and the motorhome). Time to make bread, bake Tofu, write blog.

We have been here for almost 2 weeks, which is kind of long for us, but we challenged ourselves to stick around until the official rock show, the POWWOW. Starting January 18-22

Now the most obvious reason to come to Quartzsite is for the rocks, and that is what initially drew us here. Everything that can be done to a rock…..has been done to a rock …..and is here on sale in Quartzsite. There are many less official rock events that actually start building in mid December. Sellers travel from all over the world to sell rocks in one form or another here in Quartzsite. The Desert garden show started officially January 6th, but unofficially mid December.

So to start with the largest…. rocks. They are shipped in these huge… oil Barrels. Large boulders of rock that SOMEONE might find appealing, often that cannot be found elsewhere. We saw stuff from Australia, Morocco, china, Madagascar ….and many parts of US,. We bought the rocks we used in our bedroom floor by this means, last year. Of course you would have to have some sort of saw in order to be able to utilize these huge boulders. They sell by the pound and usually anywhere from 3-10 dollars a pound trending upwards to much higher for much more valuable rocks.

There are rocks with interesting calcite or other forms of designs with in them. These ones are usually bought as display pieces.

These ones are large boulders of a rock called Fordite

This is forte after it has been worked with and made in to pieces that can be used to make jewelry.

Does it look familiar at all??? Well the “boulders” come from using a pick ax on the walls of a car manufacturers paint rooms….just many layers of car paint over many years. 😀

These are some boulders we bought for 30 dollars a lb. You can see that there is a window to give you an idea of what is inside the rocks, and we decided that the colours would match what we have planned for our LR floor. As you can see the less processed you get something the cheaper it is, but the more unknowns come with it.

Many types of stone are carved into shapes, some more useful than others. The people at this booth were quite surprised by how many people asked what THESE were for 🤔 Stocking STUFFERS.

Personally, I was not sure what someone could use heart shaped rocks for?🤔. Or round ones

and then..these things which I believe are a form of Chrystal that forms in metals ???

AND then we buy beautiful things that match our kitchen…

These are slabs, essentially 1/4 inch slices of rocks that are sold to people who do jewelry who might buy a slab or 2 of a certain type of rock and then create a series of earrings, pendants rings etc out of these pieces. And of course there are many of these jewellers who are selling these sets in other areas of quartzsite. So each slab has a price on it…7 dollars or 10….. etc

Every year here, there are OTHER things that people have created that contain rocks. I found these guys kind of gaudy.

These pictures below are large piles of very small tumbled stone, each pile seems to have created a different look. They come from China and the lady at the booth said that this was a whole new way she was experimenting with selling rocks. Our interest in them is our future plans with epoxy.

They are sold much like the stuff in the bulk section of the grocery stores….. each item price/grams..

These are the ones we bought, Turquoise, Peridot, and coral, and a few other mixtures. We are thinking of filling the cracks in our floor with these rocks with epoxy to glue them in.

So this is just the desert garden rock show, and the official Pow Wow does not start until the 18th, and the reason we are waiting for that to open is that we think it might be more likely to find an engagement type of ring there. STORY behind it. 📕📕 Several years ago we were out rock hounding in the middle of nowhere and when I got back to the jeep I realized that the diamond from my engagement ring was GONE and the ring fairly damaged… Dammit Janet, can’t you just look after stuff 🥹🥹 …… well actually…. no,,,, I tend to be hard on stuff!! Ken is sort of like HO HUM…. he is used to me.🤔 Years ago we used to use the Jeff Foxworthy line “if it ain’t broke it ain’t ours” and while we mused about it being about our kids… it was also about me. 🙄

So Fair enough, I never really liked diamonds anyways, however recently I have seen some beautiful sapphire “engagement” rings and think…well maybe I would like one of them. So we decided that maybe down here might be the very best place to buy a new ring. Even bigger than the Pow WOW in Quartzsite is the international Gem show in Tucson, only a week after this one. So if we do not find one we like here, we will follow along to Tucson for that show. Aren’t sapphires beautiful

So that is all about the rock shows here,…….. the truth of the matter is that most people here are NOT here for the rock shows and could not care less about rocks. 🙀🙀

THIS IS what most people are here for. Because the weather is here…. and not bad for the winter, and there are essentially many square miles of this (natural) desert parking lot, people come from all over to spend the winter here.

I am sure you will find million dollar rigs here as well as people who have converted their cars into a home and are living in them. If you have read Nomadland or seen the movie, (very different stories, but both involving Quartzsite) you will understand the very different dreams and purposes that lure people here. Some years there are as many as a million people here. What you can see in the picture is what is called LTVA. You can camp anywhere here for ~ 180 dollars for the whole winter and 40 dollars for 2 weeks. What you get for that is a place to dump your Sani, fill up with water and expose of your garbage, beyond that you can camp anywhere. People seem to take ownership of their spots and “landscape” with rocks to out line the borders of their spot. Some of the landscaping is quite extensive, after all they have the whole winter. There is one area in the La PosA South LTVA that is called the “magic circle” it is the only “clothing optional” spot that is legal in Arizona. There are people who come to Quartzsite just for this reason. Warm (sort of) weather and clothing optional….

Although the whole thing began with the rock show, because so many people came here, many other things spawned from that. For instance…. there IS a gun show here this weekend (more like a reason to leave for us, but for many ……??).

There is also a massive RV show here starting on the 20th of January. There are likely many people who think that it is all about the RV show. Anything RV, you have ever thought you might need or want will be there, included a few thousand RVs.

The other big interest here is ATV/ 4×4 ing. They are here everywhere, and I guess we would be included with them, but our adventures in the jeep are far more purpose driven.🚗🚙🏎. We are not just driving around, we are driving around looking for rocks 🧐

If you have read nomadland … you can see that there is a whole culture of people who are here for the winter because it is a place that they can afford to live within the financial constraints of whatever “income” they have. They live in vans, cars, tents and RVs. They leave in March and April when it gets too hot to “be” here, but by then it is warm enough to “be” in other places. In fact a guy just showed up at our RV saying that his wife had died a few years ago and he was selling her jewelry to make ends meet.😔

One other thing that I have not heard anyone mention about Quartzsite, but I absolutely love…….. the mountain Range at KOFA just south of here. I can see the mountains in the distance from my Motorhome window.

This picture I took down closer to the mountains. It is very hard to capture the 3 dimensional aspect of these mountains.

They are very striking, perhaps because they stand out alone….. and also, did I mention there are rocks …..

Bye for now, many have asked how the weather is where we are, it has been a bit windy, but we are not getting the scary weather going on on California coast and central California.

much Love Janet, Ken and Tucker who does not really take up much space.🐕‍🦺

Adventures in crocheting…… and….hunting dumorierite

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

As the name of this blog implies, I tend to go from one obsession to another, sometimes back and forth (IE mushrooms/rocks) This winter I decided to learn/relearn how to crochet. I need something to do with my hands while we watch Britbox, because they are already very good at obtaining more food.😀 Also something to do while we bounce along the bumpy roads finding remote rock sites.

I vaguely recall crocheting in my long ago past, but I believe that my older sister tended to rescue me from my projects, and I finally just left it to her. 🤔🤔 Or was than knitting. Either way, I totally forgot how to. So I started off by watching you tube video. Ended up lining up the lines wrong, after taking it apart many times before I realized it was not going to work.

Then I got some expert advice from a friend while in Fountain of Youth RV resort, but had forgotten it all by the time we were 10 miles down the road. So I went back to YouTube and found a video that better suited my yarn. I basically put this pattern together about 10 times, tearing it apart many times before I finally got to this

So there is clearly a weird ridge along this hat so I did rip it apart and start over again. By ripping it apart and RE crocheting, I did finally get the tension right and so the next hat went MUCH quicker, only tore it apart… maybe 3 times. I guess crocheting is more of a journey VS destination sort of thing, so the more times you rip it apart, the longer your yarn lasts. 🙄

I tried all these things in my youth, but had MUCH less patience back then, I remember a jacket I made in high school that I sewed the sleeves on upside down ….if you can imagine……. A story I often told drunks I was sewing up in the ER years later.

All this exciting crocheting EVENTUALLY gave way to rocks again.

We have been in south eastern California now for the past few weeks. Staying in a “dispersal” site, which means big open desert that is basically like a gravel parking lot that extends for miles

The mountains behind us are called the Cargo Muchacho mountains. On top of a very cool name for the mountains, an unpronounceable name for the rocks we were looking for here. Dumortierite. Upon looking up more about this rock, the article had a whole section on how to pronounce it.🤔. We have been practicing. We also knew that the rocks are blue. So these are the types of maps we rely on. They are NOT drawn to scale and are a geographical exercise in themselves. IE.. what did he MEAN with that little squiggle? So the first day we went out we did not see a thing that looked blue, in fact we did not find ANYTHING of interest. So went back to the books (google) to find out what dumortierite looks like in the rough.

So the next day we tried another place on the map and ….LO and behold we found LOTS. It is so rewarding to finally find what you are looking for. Not sure what we will do with it, but apparently you can cut and polish it, so likely they will find a place in our floor.

So in the same area is a rock quarry/ deserted mine, a massive hole in the ground, called the blue bird mine. We could not help but wonder where the rock that HAD been in the hole, had gone to???

This one is looking up.

This was from the very bottom. We did not find one interesting rock all that way down. Nothing.

What we found at the very bottom of that mine though………”Turned the stone and looked beneath it”. voila a Tarantula.

Worth the trip…. gave him/her some water and climbed back out of the hole in the ground.

I had meant to publish this, but then we ended up at a campground with poor internet, so I just carried on.. We have been staying for the past several days at Oxbow BLM site, and right on the shore of the Colorado river. Everything I have read in recent years is how it is turning into a bit of a creek with the draught. We have camped several times in Parker, and the Colorado river was actually quite marshy. HOWEVER… it seems to have come up considerably with the recent substantial rain/snow that has hit western Canada and the US. All kinds of “stuff” floating down the river, I guess the river cleaning its shores. I read somewhere that the Shasta reservoir was up 12 feet. Perhaps this is a reprieve……

We have been rockhounding the past several days along the Wiley’s well road.

“Wiley’s Well is a natural artesian well in Southern California. It is named after storekeeper and postmaster A.P. Wiley who, in 1907, made a shallow well deeper that was dug in 1876 by a stagecoach company which traveled along the Bradshaw Trail Wiley expanded the well in the hope of attracting business to his remote desert store; it was maintained by local ranchers and cattlemen for years afterward. However, the rapidly falling water table meant a drop of the water’s depth to 60 feet (18 m) within a dozen years. Today, the well’s original depth is only about 20 feet (6.1 m) at best after wet weather and is unfit for drinking.”

THIS is the history of the well, which everything in the area is named after… I guess because a well is kind of an important thing in the desert.

This area is about 9 miles from Palo Verde across desert like terrain. There is a historic Fire agate mine here called Opal hill mine. Apparently the mines “former owner was well known and a cantankerous woman known for her prickly manner and salty language. She was ALSO known for driving her bulldozer into Palo Verde for a late night binge at the local saloon.

According to our rock book which is 25 – 30 years old, it says “for those planning to spend several days digging, a few small trailers are available to overnight in”…. at no extra charge 😀🤔. EEK.

Needless to say, we did not go anywhere near the mine… very creepy place. But in the surrounding hills we found lots of gems.

The morning of the big rainfall.

Perhaps the plants in the desert will make it through this year.

I want to make an official plug for peace in 2023, much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker (🤔 I wonder if HE would like a toque?)

No Ticks On Tucker……..

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 3 Comments

Well at least we hope not. Ken has taken 3 ticks off of Tucker so far, and because Tucker was beginning to avoid Ken, to be fair, I took one out too. Here is a picture of a tick “in vivo” ……. (in TUCKER)

And the tick “in vitro” (on Ken’s finger) ….. soon to be “In TOILET”……. (self explanatory)

We were not aware that they had ticks in the desert and had been blaming all of the ticks on Oregon, but Lo and Behold, there are apparently ticks in the desert, there is one type in the mohave desert, (which we are closest to)….. that lives on the backs of tortoises.🐢🐢 We never actually saw a live tortoise, but Tucker gets into the bushes etc with his sniff sniff sniffing, and so who knows where he got them. The good news is that we “apparently” have not gotten any ticks, not that we haven’t THOUGHT that we had them 🪳. OH and I guess I should explain our technique for getting ticks out. We use a few drops of this very fine EXTRA virgin Olive oil.. (of course likely any olive oil will work, but we only want the very best for our Tucker🐶😀 ). …. cover the tick with the oil and then twirl the tick around …(we found that twirling clockwise works pretty much the same as counter clockwise) and they just fall off.

We have gotten back into rockhounding in the desert like a couple of dirty shirts…. and have found LOTSA rocks. We also have Wiener roasts for lunch(well… wieners cooked in a pot of water over a camp stove)(of course veggie dogs)

Most importantly, we have found the rocks we need to complete the floor in our living room. We just went back to the place we found the ones we already have. THIS is the floor we need to match it up to as there are 2 more openings in the floor along side this one.

This is the most amazing site, ….. every rock here in this picture is Jasper …. rare to have so much in one place. So we just chose the best pieces for the rest of the floor.

These rocks we have found near Ludlow, which also has a large free parking lot for RVs, like us and more significantly, the big trucks. We did have a hunkered down day in Ludlow with a sand storm that eventually because a real live storm with real rain. Unusual. 🤔 Of course as soon as the rain starts, the sand stops flying… It really is hard to show what a sand storm looks like.

This area is truly magnificent, I really wish my pictures did the area justice.

I must say that I never would have seen “the desert” as a vacation destination, despite all of the songs that mention it…. and embellish it. However I totally LOVE the desert. I guess mostly by how far you can see. I love seeing far. I also love that you can see the sunset AND the sunrise from the very same spot. SUNRISE

Sunset

Actually another sunrise and below a sunset….

It is definitely easier to hike long distances in the desert, and in this area… there are no cacti, so we do not have to pull them out of Tuckers feet….(I guess we have replaced cactus barbs for ticks.

I DO follow the news back home and have been quite taken by a news story that occurred right where we live. We live on a 10 acre lot, and there are 3 other acreages around us ….4 in total. There is a trail that basically goes around our grouping of acreages, called Baldie Trail. It is a wonderful hike that started down below our lots. Apparently a dog went missing on the trail and this is a link to the story of the owners efforts to find the dog … over a 2 week period .https://www.100milefreepress.net/news/emaciated-pet-survives-20-c-no-food-in-his-search-for-south-shuswap-home/

Spoiler alert, the story has a happy ending….. But if we had been home, this dog MIGHT have come down to our place, perhaps he even DID. We do have a yummy compost. 💩💩

It is great to have so many Trader Joes down here, but they are VERY hard to get to. We usually have to park the Motorhome a long ways away.

So we have our airport fold up trolley, and our back packs to haul the “heavy stuff”

Ok one more sunset from Fountain of Youth….

bye for now, much love to all (OH and PEACE TOO) from Janet, Ken andTucker the Tickey dog☮️🐶https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34143676/. For more info on the ticks found in Mojave Desert.