Holy Cow. What do you do there?

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Our friend, Margaret, sent an email inquiring about us.  It read, “Holy cow.  What do you do there?”.  She asked this question after discovering that we are growing moss by staying in the same campground for days on end (2 days short of a month).  By the way, the picture above are cows in Spain!!

That’s a valid question.  So many days, even more hours.  And here we are up in the Sierras, at about 4500 ft. where the air is dry and the temperatures have been hot, hot, hot.  Too hot to cook in The Dog House.  Boiling water heats up TDH.  So, what to do about that problem?  Cook outside!!  Barbecue.  We barbecued chicken.  We barbecued pork tenderloin.  We barbecued asparagus.  We barbecued lamb chops.  And I tossed Greek salad which was comprised of fresh tomatoes, fresh cucumbers, kalamata olives, feta cheese, red onion sliced thin and then soaked in ice water to tame the heat (of said onion). and sliced avocado.  All that dressed with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic aged vinegar.   Oh, and some dried oregano for good measure.  So, problem of heat in TDH solved.

Inquiring minds might want to know if TDH has air conditioning.  Yes, it does.  And we have used it every day since arriving.  When it finally starts cooling off (long after the sun goes down), we shut off the air conditioner, fling open the windows and sleep with the fresh mountain air permeating our home on wheels.

But I digress.  We have been doing a lot of nothing.  Nothing is new to us.  Usually, our days are filled with activities of all varieties.  In TDH things slow down considerably.  It’s a small space so RV cleaning doesn’t take a great deal of time.  We have no yards to tend.  Our yard consists of gravel.  We have a fire pit (read stones placed in a circle around a shallow hole) and we have a picnic table.  That’s the yard.  So not a lot to tend to that either.  This leaves us free to read, play computer games (that’s Rayman’s thing), blog, read, play Scrabble.  And get this.  No TV.  We have 2 TVs and they have not been on since we arrived.  TDH doesn’t have a satellite dish that works (we think), and so the TVs remain silent.  This is a bit of a revelation.  No talking heads.  This frees up our own heads.  Really, people, consider turning off your TV.  The silence is wonderful.  Occasionally we put on our iTunes and play songs on our Jawbone speaker that works off our bluetooth.  (Can you believe the name of our toys?  And all these toys require charging and charging requires cords.  We have a whole basket of cords.)  Music makes us feel good.  So, we spend a lot of time feeling good.

But I digress.

True confessions.  I am missing Breaking Bad.  That horrible show that we have watched thru the 3rd season (two to go).  I’m missing that.  But the news, no way.  Want news?  Read.  It’s all there on the internet.  So, we’re missing the horrors of the Israelis and the Palestinians (that’s new???), the Congress and Senate behaving badly toward the President (that’s not new either), the Supremes rendering bad decision after bad decision (the sheer number of 5/4 split decisions is new).  Ugh.  It is so depressing.  So, without the TV we are free to contemplate our state of affairs in silence.  I’ll tell you one thing.  Global warming is happening.  It is hotter than Hades up here.  Not a bit of snow to be seen on any peak.  And this has cooled our heels.  Most days we are hanging around TDH(during the heat of the day) just to stay cool.  The beach has turned us into weather wimps.

Speaking of Scrabble.  Rayman and I have a healthy competition going here.  It is amazing how many games end up just a point or two different (his score to mine or vice versa).  We have been having great fun playing Scrabble.  It can be very interesting but the other night I think I misspelled yodel but neither of us realized it until he tried to use the blank that I said was a U.  There is no U in yodel.  But by the time we figured it out, it was so late in the game we just ignored it and finished the game out.  Rayman spelled the F word the other night and then came back and added an -er to it.  I’ve spelled some interesting words too.  Sponge was one of my more exotic words.  Fun, fun, fun.

I’m reading a book about Lewis and Clark ahead of arrival in Oregon.  Fabulous book.  Lewis wrote journals and in those journals he also drew pictures of various plants and animals they encountered along the way.  He calculated their positions using scientific instruments, he kept all the men( with Clark’s help) in line.  He traded with the Indians (lots of different tribes).  He was the doctor administering mercury  to cure venereal disease which was rampant amongst the men.  Uhm.  They carved canoes, made moccasins, ate horses, dogs, elk, buffalo, beaver tail, very little vegetables and so suffered from scurvy.   I could go on and on and bore you to tears.  What they did was amazing.  Oh, and they let Sacagawea join the party because she was married to a french trader (beaver skin trader) who knew several Indian languages.  She was teenager and pregnant when she started her travels with them and gave birth during the journey.  It was a hard birth and they fed her rattlesnake rattles crushed and cooked and it caused the baby to be born soon after she drank it.  Lewis reported.  You decide.

Anyway…we also play golf here.  There are about 6 different courses here and we will play 5 of the 6 before we leave next Friday.  After we play, we eat lunch and then I go back to TDH and shower and nap.  Perfect.  Rayman plays on his computer.   Thing is, it is too hot to walk 18 holes when playing golf so we plan in the next few days to kayak and bike for some cardio exercise.   We do take turns walking every other hole usually.  Always trying to stay in shape.

Check the link below for pictures of one of the courses.

http://www.plumaspinesgolf.com/

 

We have met some new people that are all friends with our friends from Morro Bay that are here.  So, tomorrow night a potluck is planned,  And before dinner, some of us have been gathering (just this week) for cocktails before dinner sitting out in front of various RVs to visit and tell stories.  Sort of an adult version of “sharing”.  Remember when you came to school on Monday and the teacher had sharing?  We all got up and bored each other with our activities.  Much of it may have been made up, kids being kids.  Well, that is sort of like our cocktail hour, I figure!!  I’ll bet our teachers back then had a few snickers and raised eyebrows.  I remember the time that the parents were invited to hear our oral report about various countries of Latin America.  I did Peru and Bolivia.  Do you know that there are two lakes with “interesting” names.  Yes, Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopo (I pronounced it pooh pooh).  And I embarrassed the heck out of my grandmother and my mother when I got up in front of all these people and talked about those lakes.  Here is more info if you are so inclinced re: said lakes.

http://www.laketiticaca.org/

http://www.eosnap.com/tag/lake-poopo/

But I digress.

Did I mention today?  We played golf today, ran back to TDH, showered, changed and ran out the door to meet some friends for dinner at a place called Big Springs Garden near Sierra City.  Here’s some pictures.  It was a wonderful evening with a trio playing music and us eating, drinking and snapping our cameras.  A good time was had by all.

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What happened to Beau?  Don’t cry for him Argentina.  The same people (pictured above) we supped with stopped by TDH this a.m and took Beau with them so Beau could play with their Labradoodle puppy.  And we have hired a wonderful young girl who is here with her family to feed and walk and play with Beau when we are out golfing.  $10 a day.  A good deal for her and us.  Beau, otherwise, is having a great time in TDH.  He has adjusted beautifully to this nomadic life.  He is sleeping beside me as I type this tome.

Well, it it after 10 and it has been a very long day.  Lights out.  I shall dream about doing nothing much tomorrow.  A winning plan.

 




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