Winter roads …. take me … somewhere…

November 17, 2024November 17, 2024 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 3 Comments

It is the awkward time of our winter…….. that we are confused. We are racing to avoid snowstorms and dreadful cold temperatures in an RV when we would be totally warm and dry at home. In fact many nights would have been warmer had we stayed at home. It is the unfortunate truth that to get to somewhere warm for the winter, you have to go through somewhere colder. Last night we camped near Tonopah and it was -7 degrees this AM and there was frost on the inside of the front window. There is a blind that comes down that prevents the heat from within to warm the inside of the front window.

I guess it was an achievement as (-7C) (19 Fahrenheit) . the lowest temperature we have managed without any frozen pipes etc…while camping without hookups. Our furnace keeps the underneath part of motorhome warm (the basement) where all of the pipes and water tanks are. We are getting more confident with our winter conditions camping. This is never our intention, but nice to know we can get by in a pinch…. and weather IS getting more and more unpredictable. We camped at the Wasco county fairground campground which is further just south of the Dalles, in Oregon. It was a. wonderful site, and we saw a very unusual looking fawn. Instead of being brown with white spots it was mostly white with brown spots. Sadly….. easier for hunter to spot?

When we travel in Motorhome, Tucker usually rides right between us in a dog bed, and when the roads get too curvy, OR too up or down he squeezes in in front of me until things settle down, so you can imagine my thoughts when I looked down to see he was not in his bed! My first thoughts were that …. could we have left him behind at our last stop??? 🤔🤔 NOT very likely, in that his every move is closely monitored when we are anywhere away from home….So I looked back and ……… I guess after all of the years we have been traveling with him, he has decided he wants to try out the “other seats”. I guess he wants a better view🧐😎

Then today I looked back and WHERE IS TUCKER??

We have hit snow a few times now at the higher elevations, but we were lucky that by the time we came along the roads were bare and dry. The route we took was likely more likely to have snow in that we went through eastern Oregon into Nevada through a higher pass. But it really is quite beautiful and we have been driving the coastal route for SOOO many years, the change is nice. I have shown on this map the route we took from Burns OR to Winnemucca NV.

With any luck we will be somewhere that does not freeze tonite. We have heard that it IS snowing at home.

So for all of our friends who are staying home this winter in Canada, we admire you for your strength and endurance.🍻🍻🍻

Much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker, the dog who likes to sleep all over the place

Snake skin agates…..

November 22, 2019November 22, 2019 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

Once again we are making a run for it through Nevada. Usually it is to avoid the low night temperatures, this year it is to avoid the low night temperatures AND the snow.

Joshua trees in the snow.

We have had a few days of doing jigsaw puzzles and listening to the impeachment hearings….. We did venture out yesterday in Fallon Nevada to hunt for rocks in strong winds and rain, but it was NOT FUN.

Green mountain on a very cold day

We are also being hounded by the CRA (Canada revenue agency) the equivalent to the IRS. Not really sure why if we file our taxes in March, they wait until November when we head south to start hassling us. They do this to us every year, and every year we show them that we did everything right, but yet they keep doing this every year. The GOOD thing is that I no longer take it very seriously, and don’t get all stressed out about it. The hard thing is that each time we have called this week it has been an hour on hold on the phone. The classical music playing during the hold, then gets totally STUCK in my head for the next few days. REALLY? I think they need a few more phone answerers.

Just before leaving Canada I received my new Almond Cow, a machine for making nut milks. It is saving us many trips to the grocery stores, AND trips to dump garbage. (very little recycling in campgrounds) We are using mostly cashews. Pictures here of walnuts. One cup into the container…. plus one date.

The metal jug gets filled with water, you push a button on top and it goes through 3 stages, which takes less than a minute. VOILA.. You take the top off which contains the pulp (more on that later)

You get a big jug of milk

Then I pour the pulp into storage containers, there are a huge series of recipes you can make from the pulp.

My first attempt was to make granola, which you mix the pulp with other granola stuff and then bake in oven.

Next time I think I will try to make Hummus with the pulp. (just google nut pulp recipes)

I should note that you do not need a machine to make the nut milks, you just need a food processor and a nut bag to squeeze out the nut pulp. This machine is a bit tidier for me.

So yesterday we drove from Fallon (4300 ft elevation), where it was stormy, but not snowy. We drove south on HWY 95, through Tonopah (6200 ft elevation) where it was snowing and extremely foggy. NO stops for pictures, no stops for anything. We have never had to negotiate this vehicle in snow, and do not want to. We were a bit sad because Tonopah is one of our favourite places to rock hunt.

We drove on to Beatty, where we are now, 3200 ft elevation and the lowest it got last night was 6 degrees celcius ( 42 F.) Very black sky, only light rain last night.

Some of the coolest rocks we have found recently are called Snake skin agates. They are extremely unique, and when cut

Or broken in this case….. quite pretty on the inside

This is called wonder stone, it is quite pretty, but we have decided we prefer Jasper which is more dense. So these are more “catch and release” or catch, take picture and release.

This one, I believe is a limb cast agate, formed inside a tube in rock. Note the snake skin appearance of the underlying rock.

WE are thinking that this is variscite but will need to cut it to make certain.

We are thinking of heading over to eastern Nevada/Utah today, but you never know.

Much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker.

Who the heck was John Day?

November 9, 2019November 9, 2019 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

Once again we are on the road and all the way down in Oregon, checking out the John Day river area. It does seem that everything in central/eastern Oregon is named after John Day. I have heard his name for years, and thought while we were in the area I would find out all about all the great things he did to get stuff named after him. I started here at John Day National Monument :Site Clarno (what this means is that there are more than one John Day National Monument sites.) This is one of 3.

At this site there was a plaque with the question Who was John Day? I had not thought I would find the answer so quickly. 🤔 This is what the plaque said: “John Day came to Oregon in 1812 as part of an overland expedition to the new Pacific Fur Company post in Astoria. The once large party split up into many small groups before reaching the Oregon Territory. While camped where the mouth of the Mah-hah River meets the Columbia, John Day and Ramsay Crooks were robbed of all their belongings, including clothing. Luckily they were rescued by a party of trappers also headed to Astoria.

John Day became well known at the trading post. Whenever others would pass the spot of the incident, they would point out where he had been robbed. By the 1850’s, the Mah-hah River had been renamed the John Day River. As far as historians can tell, John Day never found a fossil nor came within 100 miles of the monument that indirectly bears his name.”

SO the RIVER was named after him. How it all started……

What a lucky guy, get robbed and then have a river named after you. Look at how hard the present occupant of the white house is trying to get a wall named after him

But wait, the story does not end here. . . .

It turns out that it was Thomas Condon who named the national monuments after John Day, not that John Day had ever been anywheres near the fossil beds in the area, its just it was the John Day river that had carved out the area, exposing the fossils. Thomas Condon was an Irish presbyterian minister, and amateur geologist who actually was the one who discovered the fossils. info on Thomas Condon

I guess I was particularly interested in the town of Condon, as it is the married name of one of my sisters. So I stopped to take a picture

Turns out there is another town just down the way called “Bates”. It seems that a lot more things should be named Condon, VS John Day 🤔

We have found plenty on the John Day river to explore, since this river winds through fossil beds, it also winds through a volcanic region, which is always great for agates and the things we hunt for. The hard thing is finding gravel bars that are accessible. They usually seem to be across the river from where we are.

It really is a slow meandering kind of river, that suits us just fine.

This series of 3 hills appeared to be the same except that the closest one was more eroded, the second one less eroded and the third un eroded.

So these are the “palisades”. There are 3 sites that make up the John Day national monument and this one is called Clarno. I found this info on it “The mostly grassy hillsides bordering the creek are interrupted for a mile or so by a line of jagged, eroded cliffs – the Palisades – which contain a large number of plant fossils, including leaves, sticks and trunks, plus less common animal fossils, all relics of a time when this region was moist and well vegetated, unlike the arid, high desert conditions that prevail today. Facilities are limited to a picnic area, interpretive notices and three trails; the unit is unstaffed, and there are no large towns nearby. It does have a research center (Hancock Field Station), facilitating ongoing paleontological investigations, but this, and the fossil excavation sites, are not open to the public.”

So pretty ho hum. But we shall explore the other sites.

……Back to John Day…….. It turns out there is also a town named after him because the town is on the John Day river. Given the fame of his name, historians would attempt to find out more about him. It seems that there were 3 deaths he succumbed to as well, in 1812, 1813 and (perhaps finally) in 1819. story of the city of John Day

Perhaps dying 3 times might be worthy of at least SOME fame……..True story……..

We have been on the road for a week now, our last evening visit with Dylan, Sarah, and the very clever Talon.

Where other babies are working on mundane things like walking talking, crawling, Talon has mastered …….

…..chewing his toenails… clever boy.

Thats all for now.

Much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker (the ever present rock hound)

Our new home SWEET home.

August 17, 2019 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 4 Comments

Well our most recent obsession is a gravel pit we have purchased on the south side of the Shuswap lake. I should IMMEDIATELY add that it is no longer a gravel pit, but OUR homestead.

However it still LOOKS like a gravel pit.

We have been looking for a new place to live for a few years, wanting to be a bit closer to “amenities”, like doctors, banks, grocery stores, and insurance companies. ( you have no idea what a pain it is to have to physically go to another town to renew your automobile insurance. But also …..now to our new grandson Talon.

Back to the gravel pit part…..( also called a “mine”)…… We have learned a bit about how it all works. I guess the fellow who has hauled all the gravel out of here for some time, first of all had to take all of the topsoil and place it in a certain spot, so that when that mine (gravel pit) was decommissioned, … they would then take all of that top soil and put it back onto the property.

We have almost 9 acres of which at least 5 acres is usable land, so we have saved lots of large garlic with the plans to plant them in the fall.

We took ownership today, but it was great to be involved during the final stages of the gravel pit such that instead of spreading the top soil every where, we had them just put the top soil in a designated area where we are going to grow Garlic… and the rest of the place is gravel. IE no weeds…. or mud.

So there is of course no house here, and we have sold our house as of the end of September…..

So it is great that we have grown so fond of living in our motorhome in the winters, because it seems like we shall be living in it for at least a year now. At this stage, at least, I am quite excited, as I just love living in the motorhome, live is “simpler” than living in a house. Who knows how it will feel a year from now

However THIS is our new adventure, and this is where we begin.

Much love, Janet, Ken and Tucker.

Sonny Bono Salton Sea Wildlife refuge

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

So back to the Salton Sea story…… (see previous blog) in 1905, the Colorado River drained into the Salton see area for 2 years before they were able fix the area of the river. Wintering waterfowl began flocking to the sea almost immediately, and before long, the area proved to be a major stopover destination for migrating birds. “Shown to have a greater diversity of avian species than that of the Florida Everglades, the Salton Sea is a vital habitat for more than 400 species of birds making it a one of North America’s premier birding locations.” We decided prior to going there to give ourselves a new camera (?? christmas present) So we took LOTS of pictures. We “snuck up” on several birds attempting the perfect picture, and then while sorting out something with my camera in the car afterwards a HUGE heron flew within a few feet of our car (no time for a picture)

“The Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1930 at the southern end of the sea. Less than 1,800 of its original 37,600 acres remain manageable due to shoreline flooding. [1] In 1998, the refuge was renamed the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge to commemorate congressman and former celebrity showman Bono who was an early champion of Salton Sea remediation efforts.”

We went to the information centre, and it was quite interesting. She told us that the bird population that actually comes to the refuge has changed in recent years. The salinity of the sea increases by about 3% per year, and very few fish can tolerate the concentration of salt. Apparently, though the sea has been a great fishing area for a long time, non one has actually caught fish there in the past 2 years, at least that they knew of.

There are tales of boating several years ago, on a calm day, you could look down into the water at the town that exists, where the salt mine was. The OTHER really interesting boating story, is that because the lake sits ~260 feet below sea level, and with the increased salinity of the water, boats engines apparently perform much better. So boats go much faster than they would elsewhere. So they had to initiate boating speed laws. We went down to the boat launch. As you can see there is no water for the first mile out from the launch. The lake level is dropping all the time, and it sounds like it will eventually disappear again some day.

In 1998 the sea was named after Sonny Bono. Part of the Salton Sea was in Bono’s congressional district, and cleaning up the lake became one of the issues he championed during his two terms in Congress. Bono’s death has created bipartisan support for the cleanup project. It does seem that the area needs a new champion though.

So we are now almost to Oregon, we DID spend a few days in Ventura visiting with some friends we have not seen in years. Irene and Ken. Also (not pictured here) Cindy and Paul. We gave them a little concert of our newer songs. Who says you cannot have a party in a motorhome.:) 🙂 so wonderful to be with friends.

Much Love

Janet, and Ken and Tucker.

“..another seasons promise in the ground” SRogers

November 2, 2018November 3, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

This gardening year is drawing to a close and this years wandering aimlessly’s season is just opening up. We have about 4500 garlic in the ground. We had to create new beds this year, as garlic needs a 3 year crop rotation. So we needed to create about 1000 square feet of new bedding.

We took out a lot of raspberries to make more room for garlic. We got 4 loads of donkey manure from the Donkey refuge https://turtlevalleydonkeyrefuge.com. What a great place, check out the pictures. We decided this year to be extremely generous with our manure, so each bed got nice and thick (3 year aged) manure. WE WANT BIG GARLIC next year.

We then put KRAFT paper on top of the beds, (the paper is to keep down the weeds),and then put fresh wood chips down on top. We had to cut down a few Fir trees this year that were too close to our house (fire concerns) and we got all the limbs chipped, hence the fresh wood chips.

Then we were “gifted” a load of leaves from our neighbour, who usually burns them. We convinced him that we could make MUCH better use out of them by tucking our garlic under them for the winter. (we did NOT tell him that composting leaves is better for the environment as well)

PRESTO…. covering up all the garlic beds with a thick layer of leaves. NOW the garlic is ready for the winter. Some years we get a hard frost, and the ground freezes, before it snows, which is not good for the garlic. So all of what we have done here is to provide some insulation. The garlic is technically under 8 inches of stuff, much less likely to freeze down there. In the spring when it starts to warm, we will move a lot of this “mulch” away from the garlic so it will not make them too wet.

Of course I need to keep track of which type of garlic is where…. this is my complex record keeping “program”.

Another new process we have started this year, out of sheer desperation for controlling weeds, is to use the thick landscape fabric on top of the ground with the plans to move it when we want to “rotate crops” My theory is that the “carcasses” of the weeds and plants under the fabric, die and then compost in place. So when we move the fabric the soil will be enriched and weed free. So everything that is not planted is covered.

We have also been working on Motorhome, “customizing” it. For the past year, we have been largely camping in places without hookups, essentially going solar. SOOO we have not used the large convection/microwave since we put in the stove/oven. Sadly I did not get a very good “before” picture, but this is picture of the stove/oven with the convection microwave above it.

Ken has taken it out, and created a beautiful motorhome “pantry”. Which holds an amazing about of stuff. He does such beautiful work 🙂

Ken has also been working hard to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the motorhome, here checking the tires…..lubing what needed lubing to keep us on the road.

Of note, check out the beautiful deck he built this summer, then we wanted an awning, so he went to Craigs list and found an awning perfect for our house….50$. Now we can sit out on our deck, and pretend we are in a French Cafe. 🙂

Our “other” new feature this year is the jeep wrangler we are now towing.

Now we are down in Kelowna in the pouring rain, which is always the way we spend the first days of camping each fall. Fortunate to have Josh, our son, looking after the house for the winter. Much love to all who choose to follow us, and our obsessive life. Janet

The long ways home…..

February 10, 2018February 10, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

On our way home now, in fact I can see Canada from where I am sitting (at the border) We have had a great time in Oregon. Started out with 2 nights at Cape Blanco, one of our favourite spots for looking for beach agates. We walk down from the Cape Blanco campground and walk the two miles to the Elk River.

We things have changed a LOT. Good news, and Bad news. The Elk River mouth is MUCH closer to cape Blanco than it used to be, an enormous amount of erosion and it appears that much of the bank has disappeared from when we were there last year.

The banks behind Ken in this picture used to extend to where he is in this picture.

The BAD news is that (our guess) the soil from there high ridges came down and covered up all the agates. We only found a few with 3 days of searching.

We had great fun and Tucker is looking so nice after his major swim in that river in northern California (mentioned in the last BLOG)

We ran into a few “fellow” “Canadians” there. They decided that they would not be heading home QUITE yet.

NOW as well as bean sprouts we are also growing Pea sprouts. GREAT in tomato sauce on pasta

We spent a few days in Bandon, where we used to live. We used to have pizza parties at our house when we lived in Bandon, we have a large living room and invited everyone over after political rallies etc. When we moved away, my great friend Gail, has graciously offered her home for these great get togethers.I had intended to go around and take pictures of all the wonderful friends who came out to listen to a few of our songs, hear our rock stories and just visit and share the love. I miss all of these people so much after we moved away. There is something very special about people who will take to the streets for a common cause, and I hold my commonality with these folks very dear in my heart. Women in Black, Usual suspects, Bandonistas, Fine Women are just a few of the names we went through back then. MAN -OH- Man I DO love these folks.

But we are on a bit of a schedule, looking for a window of opportunity to get this motorhome home. British Columbia has had a HUGE dump of snow, and today (Saturday) appears to be the best time to try to get home without any snow…..besides.. we have just ran out of homegrown Raspberry jam.

It is currently 2 degrees Celsius which is about 29 Fahrenheit. and So I will close from here, for now

Much Love to all

janet

Quartzsite

December 30, 2017December 30, 2017 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

Quartzsite is our short term destination. It is in Arizona, just a few miles from the California border. It is at the crossroads of highway 10 and HWY 95. The population is 3600 people and it is often the hottest place in the USA in the summer time.

The winter is when all the action takes place there though. The population at any one time in the winter is 250,000 and they get 1.5 million visitors a year.

The weather is one attraction, but there is no way a town that small can host that many people. The key is that there are hundreds of miles of flat BLM land surrounding Quartzite and the “boondocking” or dry camping capital of the US. As one guy at a solar place told us last year “the only place where someone spends 300,000 on a motor home to go camping for free in the desert.” We have been boon docking for 6 weeks now and are not sure we want to camp alongside that many people, after all part of the reason we do this is for the wide open spaces we get.

Back to the OTHER reason we are attracted to QuartzSite….ROCKS.

Now is not the greatest time to be in Quartzite, so we just spent part of a day there and then left, there are a few rock shops open now, but the shows begin in January. THIS IS VARIETIES of quartz… I think. HUGE.

During January, there are 3 major shows, that draw in sellers and buyers from all over the world. Rocks and things made with rocks … jewellery and apparently many very unusual things. We have not been in Quartzite in January, so will likely have much more to tell after we have been. That and likely LOTS of pictures. What we hope to do is to learn more about the rocks we find, how to recognize them and how to work with them. We have some lapidary equipment at home, and each rock is dealt with a little differently.

OH and I put this one in here for Tucker…. his goals are very different from ours. Imagine if HE was writing this blog. 🙂

So for now, we left Quartzite and found some great places to camp 30 miles north east, with the plans to rent a car for a month, and camp out of town and travel in with the car.

We are thinking seriously about getting a tow vehicle, but it will be much more complicated and expensive getting one here, so we thought we would just get the rental for this year and decide when we get home, what to do.

I thought I would include a cute little story about our christmas day dinner. Years ago when we first moved to Bandon Oregon, we had some friends over for supper and made something sort of fancy with Scallops. The recipe was from a cooking light magazine and it was delicious. I loved cooking light recipes and so over the years I collected the magazines and then the annual books. I had them all. Finally they became an online entity, and eventually I was just looking up my recipes online so gave away all the books.

Well it turns out that you can no longer GET recipes from 1997 online. So Ken and I set out to try to remember all that was in that recipe. It is always funny how things come to you in the middle of the night. One night after letting Tucker out during the night he came back and said “Asparagus”…… and then ” I think there was asparagus in that recipe”. So we gradually pieced together that there was also lemon rind… and juice…..etc.

So we made the dinner for boxing day, and took all the pictures like they do on recipe blogs. So here it is.

First you roll the scallops in corn starch, then heat up olive oil in pan, fry them for about 3 minutes on each side, then remove from pan.

Add 3/4 cup of white wine, then the lemon juice, rind, CHILI PUREE (we used 1/4 cup of our homemade tomato sauce) and asparagus. x about 5 minutes, then add the scallops to the dish. Heat x 1 minute or so.

then serve over rice.

my lousy selfie…… I still feel that there might have been something else in the dish, but it was still great. Now if only I could find a 1997 cooking light magazine.

Much love and Happy New YEAR

janet

Ghost town in Nevada….

Image ~ December 9, 2017December 9, 2017 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

We have been on the road for almost 3 weeks now. We have only paid for a campground 3 nights now. They usually cost about 40-45 a night, so about 1300-1400 a month. I guess we avoid them partially because of the cost, partially because we are to the point that we do not need them, ( we are getting by just fine on our solar power, our 100 gallon water tank, propane for the stove, and a generator when all else fails(rare) ), but mostly because of the gorgeous spots we get to camp…… and the wild life..

Not a great shot, but there is a coyote there, and Tucker is barking like crazy about it.

…. and the burros. Strong winds, and I just missed a few of them rolling around in the sand kicking up the dust.

We have had several days of strong winds, COLD winds. It has been interesting having our son Josh taking geography this term, learning how weather systems form. It seems as though the dreadful winds we have been experiencing through West Nevada, is in effect a high pressure system associated with the Santa Ana winds that fuel the fires in Southern California. The western part of Nevada, into California is called the “great west basin” . Here is an excerpt I found in Wikipedia.

“The Santa Anas are katabatic winds—Greek for “flowing downhill”, arising in higher altitudes and blowing down towards sea level.^[4] Santa Ana winds originate from high-pressure airmasses over the Great Basin and upper Mojave Desert. Any low-pressure area over the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, can change the stability of the Great Basin High, causing a pressure gradient that turns the synoptic scale winds southward down the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada and into the Southern California region.^[5] Cool, dry air flows outward in a clockwise spiral from the high pressure center. This cool, dry airmass sweeps across the deserts of eastern California toward the coast, and encounters the towering Transverse Ranges, which separate coastal Southern California from the deserts. The airmass, flowing from high pressure in the Great Basin to a low pressure center off the coast, takes the path of least resistance by channeling through the mountain passes to the lower coastal elevations, as the low pressure area off the coast pulls the airmass offshore.”

So yesterday was the first day we have noted a lessening of the winds, and the news said also that the Santa Ana winds had decreased. So perhaps they will cool down and we will warm up.

One of the places we explored was Rhyolite, a ghost town from the gold boom. It was dreadfully windy there, so we thought if we climbed closer to the mountains we might get out of the wind….. and we did.

If you look at the spot up near the V, we got out of the wind there 🙂

…and this is the view from there. The flat part is Death Valley, and California in the distance.

The entire valley is riddled with mining shafts like this one.

Gold was discovered here in 1905, and in 2 years it was a town of 12,000 people. It had banks, newspapers, gambling halls (of course gambling halls, it is Nevada..) … and even an Opera house. 3 Railroads had lines built into Rhyolite, but by 1911 the ores had begun to play out. Too bad they did not have RVs back then…… they could have just moved on to the next bonanza 🙂 .

The one building that is still standing is oddly the Kelly’s bottle house, made entirely of bottles.

I believe this was the school.

There was also “the panic of 1907” which saw the stock markets fall 50%, so there was much less money to invest in mining, yet another factor in the demise of Rhyolite. Interesting to read about Charles Schwab as a major investor in this.

seeing the remains of this building I was wondering if the bars were to keep someone in (jail), or keep someone out (bank). Turns out it was the former.

And we can hardly have a day with out something going wrong with the motorhome, and this is what our motorhome looks like when the hood is up…. the engine is under the bed, and some spring dohicky broke off that keeps the engine from over revving or something like that. Ken managed to gerry rig it back to being hooked up again and all was good.

and Tucker now has booties, now that we are into the cactus. So we do not have to use pliers to get the thorns out of his paws.

Where we stayed last night………

So that is where Ken and Tucker and I are now

Much love

A life in a day….

December 15, 2016December 15, 2016 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

We have been camping out in the desert for about 6 weeks now, a few nights in campgrounds and a few nights with friends outside of Phoenix. It really is the most laid back trip we have ever had. We have been back and forth across the border of California and Arizona a lot and have been near the border a lot. So rather than change our clocks over and over, we just decided to pick a time zone and stick with it. We like Arizona time.

Our motorhome is showing some signs of abuse, with us trying to get to places we likely should not get into. I love to see the smirks on peoples faces as they drive by us in their 4×4 vehicles, out in the middle of nowhere. We can usually see civilization from where we camp, but are usually 2-3 miles or more away from it. Tonite I can see the highway and trains 2 miles from here. Deserts are like that.

We found that the campgrounds usually had very poor internet, so are relying on our AT&T cards. We have found that it is a pretty good deal, 10$ for a GB. We can buy the refill cards in the grocery stores. We are not streaming anything (and have turned off automatic stream) and are able to work on the blog, check email, news, and although these days we are trying to avoid it, Facebook. 🙂 So it is costing us 40-50 dollars a month for internet. We fill up water and dump sani at stations after every 4-5 days out. Our only issue is garbage, which we have very little of….. We use all cardboard boxes to fill with rocks, 🙂 not really but some. We bury all out compost out in the desert.

We often stay at the same places a few days and cover on average 60 miles every few days driving. We walk between 3-5 miles a day looking for rocks, and some days biking (one day we biked 17 miles, half up hill in sand. was not part of the plan)

When we get back we set up our table scrub off our rocks to find which ones are keepers and which ones are not. We smash some to make sure. 🙂 We now have several reference books to help us ID stuff.

We have wine, stoned wheat thins, and watch the sun sets. (or suns set) We have wonderful gourmet dinners, and some days leftovers of gourmet dinners. Then we play crib. Ken usually beats me, but last night we tried out a different deck of cards and I started winning. Nice days. OH and reading lots of books.

These are Chalcedony Roses. Essentially the same stuff that make up Agates, with out the lines (bands) . We have some pink ones and some white as well…..They will tumble up beautifully, when we get back to our tumbler.

This is a geode. We see them everywhere here. We have yet to find an unopened one though we have smashed a lot of ordinary rocks to see if there were geodes.

This is a rockhound.

This is an agate with some opal in it, with part of a geode???

This is jasper/agate that has formed within a seam (the space between two rocks layers). I should add that these are my interpretations

larger chalcedony rose wth an agate geode.

This is an agate geode with some amethyst ? centrally, and some copper minerals around the edges??

I am not totally sure what this is, but every piece of it looked like hunks of wood, but they were completely very fragile crystals.

I know this looks like a hunk of rotten beef… it is rather complex and will take cutting etc to bring out the full beauty. I am hoping my friend the gemologist will add to this and I will edit this then.

This is an amethyst geode with some…?opal, chrysocolla around it.

We think that this is a jasper/agate with central brown jasper and some opal around the edges.

an agate.

Well it is 7:30, ARIZONA time…….