Week One with Family – Citrus Heights, Ca

When I think of Citrus Heights, or the surrounding towns/communities of Fair Oaks, Orangevale, Carmichael, Roseville, West Sacramento, Elk Grove, even Folsom…I just consider it all part of Sacramento.  Having been raised and lived in the area for the first 30+ years of my life, and having had addresses or associations in most of these communities, it is just how I see it.  And when I think of Sacramento, there are many landmarks which come to mind…the Capital, the new arena, the Sacramento and/or American River, Sutter’s Fort, Old Sacramento Folsom Dam…even the iconic Folsom Prison…but most of all, I think of the Tower Bridge.  The Tower Bridge spans across the Sacramento River, and opened to traffic in 1935.  It has not always been gold…that feature coming in 1976 as part of a Bicentennial project aimed at matching the gold in the dome of the Capital Building nearby.  The word “Tower” has been very important in the 20th Century Sacramento…Tower Theater, Tower Cafe, Capital Towers Apartments, and the most famous...Tower Records (founded in Sacramento in 1960)…just to name a few.  We plan to be here through July 11th, but we will be back sometime in September and will be here (except for a few short trips) through Christmas. 

Arriving a week ago, we did attend Aunt Rosie’s Celebration of Life on Saturday down in Oakdale.  When the minister ask people to say on word about Rosie, the three most common words were kindness, sweetness, and loving.  Yep, that sure was Aunt Rosie.   It was nice to see a few cousins who were there, one of whom I had not seen since the early 1980’s.  Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary (whom we have visited and written about before) were there, along with my mom and dad…four the last five of the children and their spouses of my maternal Grandmother. 

We also took mom and dad out to dinner last Friday, took dad to a few doctor appointments yesterday, got a few things done on the motorhome, got a huge laundry mess taken care of, and we have sweated out about 25 pounds from the heat…although the last few days have not been “too bad”, which is kind of like saying to a young man on a blind date, “She is not as ugly as I thought she would be….”, or to the young girl on the same date, “He is not as much of a dork as I thought he was…”

Arny’s mom, who is in her early 90’s, is doing pretty well.  I watched her last night while Sandy and Arny went to dinner…an easy task since she was already in bed for the night.  I went in shortly after they left and said, “Hello my lady…do you remember who I am?”  (Of course, she has seen me a number times this past week, but at this age you want to reinforce everything all the time.)  “Yes.” she says.  “What is my name?” I ask.  “Umm…umm…”  Seeing her bit of confusion I said, “I will make it easy on you….am I Roger of David?”   “DAVID” she replies, with a big old smile….   We sure do love that lady…

Back Among Family, Citrus Heights, CA

Pulled out of Truckee at 7:30 and into my sister's backyard by 10 this morning...easy drive from 6,000 feet, up to 7,200 feet and then all the way down to near sea level.  To say the dogs, especially Bubba, were overjoyed is an under statement.  

Unloaded the car, and took it to get an oil change and a good wash...$39 combined plus tax!  Took mom and dad to Black Angus for dinner, and tomorrow we drive to Oakdale for Aunt Rosie's Celebration of Life.

Nice to be back "home", as this area was my home for 30 years...but this valley heat!!!  YUCK!

(Photo and post done by Kindle Fire...just because I was outside melting.....)

Granite Flat Campground, along Truckee River, California

I don’t know what it is that brings us to Granite Flat just about year after year since we first found it back in 2013…or was it 2014.  It is right next to fairly busy, busy at times, highway 89 to Lake Tahoe.  On the other side is the Truckee River, which can be running real high, like this year, or real low, like it did the first year we were here.  But we get use to the car and trucks…the trucks are the loudest, passing by, and many times when we use it we have few neighbors.  Also, the $11 per night (golden pass rate) is real nice, but other then water spigots where you can fill your tanks, there are not other services…no dump station, pit toilets (we always use our own toilet anyway) and no  showers (again, we always use our own showers too).  I think what we like about it is that the weather, in the summer, is so nice.  Today, while Sacramento is at 107, giver or take a degree…we are at 89.  By 8 pm we will be at 78 while Sacramento will still be at 100.  Mind you, we will have to face those hot temperatures tomorrow…but for tonight, we will bask in the cooler temps, and with lows in the 40’s, close windows and use blankets.

    

June 26, 2015 above, June 22, 2017 below

    

WOW, the Truckee River is really high this year!   I read a news report about a month ago that said that by Federal Court Order, dating back nearly 100 years ago, that Lake Tahoe could only reach a certain height, and that they ‘had’ to release water at the dam into the Truckee River (only river that exits Lake Tahoe) to bring it down to that level.  Well, they have been releasing lots of water for nearly two months now, after Lake Tahoe finally filled up after the drought conditions over the past few years.  Perhaps they need to have the Federal Courts re-exam that court order issued so long ago….

    

Every year we have been here they have had signs about bears in the area…but unfortunately we have never seen one.  This year they have added Bear Proof containers at many of the camp sites.  Although motorhomes, campers and trailers don’t need them, tent people sure do.  Now in Lake Tahoe there are MANY cases where a bear had gotten into a car in the middle of the night just to get to a candy bar, or grocery bag which has been left in it.  The results are ‘not good’, to say the least.  (Sometimes these break-ins are in the day time too!)  However, most RVers will awaken and scare the bear off if they try to get into a motorhome, trailer or camper.  A good honk of the horn, or a barking dog, normally does the trick.  Good thing they have installed these bear proof containers, unless it makes RVers a more likely target now….

We did not get site 54, our favorite site…it is a handicap only site, but some else had it today.  So I picked this “first come-first serve” site along the road for two reasons….don’t have to unhook the car, and it has had shade the entire time we have been here.  For one night, it is very doable…better than a Walmart or even a Cracker Barrel…although the later we are able to go inside and get a good meal at.   Tomorrow, before it gets too hot down in the valley, we will make our way to Sandy and Arny’s house…I am sure “someone”, namely Bubba, will be very happy about that!

Winnemucca Nevada – Skruffy One Year Later

Heading from Lake Jordanelle, through Salt Lake City, and on across I-80 into Nevada, there are certain sites that you just pass by.  In Wendover Nevada we passed by “Wendover Will”, who use to stand right on the state line of Nevada and Utah along the old highway…it now is about a mile to the west from the state line, still along the old highway.  Wendover Will is the "World's Largest Mechanical Cowboy", according to Guinness Book of Records, standing 63 feet tall.  We filled up at the Pilot with gas.

About 25 miles east of Wendover you pass by the “Metaphor: The Tree of Utah”, also known as the “Utah Pine Tree”, “Utah Christmas Tree”, and “That Awful Waste of Money Tree”.  All of these latter terms I have heard people call it, among some things which I cannot place in this family friendly blog post.  Back in the days of traveling with a “CB”, truckers and fellow travelers would always blast the thing.  Over the past few years (it was built in the early 1980’s) they have had to put the fence around it…but I remember the days before the fence.  Created by and paid for by Swedish artist Karl Momen, it stands 87 feet tall.  The “Tree” contains “100 tons of chrysacolla rock, 4 tons of epoxy, 160 tons of steel, 15 tons of colored cement and sand, 18,000 imported ceramic tiles, 5 tons of welding rods, 7 tons of timber for mold formers, and 20 tons of plaster.  All-in-all the structure ended up weighing 875 tons and had consumed 21,000 man hours of labor.  The project had also cost Momen over $1 million of his own funds, which was more than double what original estimates had indicated.”  (Click here for the website on the tree)

Near Wells, you can see the northern portion of the Ruby Mountains, as the Interstate runs just north of the mountain range.  Ruby Dome, which you can see from the town of Elko, is 11,387 feet tall…but I did not like the picture from Elko due to the haze.  The southern portion of the Ruby Mountains is the known for a B-17 crash back on January 2, 1943.  It took until June 24, 1943 to find the wreck, and it took a week to recover the bodies of the ten fliers, four officers and six enlisted men.  An Accident Review Board concluded that, while on instruments, the pilot had not maintained sufficient drift correction to stay within the airway, and that extreme downdrafts caused the aircraft to descend approximately 1300 feet below assigned altitude, resulting in the crash into the mountain.

I have driven the 380 mile route that we took today at least 50, perhaps 100 times.  In a car, I try to cover it “as fast as I can” from Reno to Salt Lake City.  By motorhome, it is hard to keep it at 62, my normal travel speed…but I did keep it under 65 most of the time, but hard to do on a few hills.  Also, there are a few areas where I had to shift down to second gear…the most notables are just before Elko and near Battle Mountain..and in the 95 degree heat, I turned off the A/C, but did not see any increase in my temperature gage….better safe than sorry.  We got to Winnemucca at 3:30, with a time change of an hour at Wendover, so it took us seven hours.  Hmmm…seems I have made it from Salt Lake City to Reno is seven hours before by car…but now days, who is in a hurry????

   

Last year at this time we were in Alaska.  Spent the “morning” of the longest day in Seward where, at the stroke of midnight, saw the moon come over the mountains on the other side of Resurrection Bay…if you click on the picture left, you will also see a small fishing boat along the reflection of the moon in the water near the mountains on the far side of the bay.  But we awoke the next morning with a very sick little dog.  Skruffy, whom we were watching closely over the weekend, awoke on Tuesday throwing up.  A visit to the local vet found that he had gone on vacation…and a call to the emergency number told us to go to Soldotna or Anchorage…about the same distance away.  Thank God we picked Soldotna Animal Hospital.   The top picture shows Skruffy in the arms of Marcia…the left picture with Skruffy as we traveled to Soldotna (100 miles, about three hour trip), and the picture to the right of Skruffy the next day after Dr. Meezie had started to successfully treat her.  On Tuesday when Meezie told us, “…if she makes it through the night…”, our hearts hit the floor…we had no clue she was that sick.  She turned out to be diabetic, which due to our ignorance, turned into pancreatitis, and she was very anemic.  After two nights in the Soldotna Animal Hospital, and seeing that she was having Separation Anxiety, we were able to bring her to the motorhome on Thursday. When we returned that afternoon with her, she barked at everybody and they said, “Wow, that is an entirely different dog.”  However, it was Meezie’s (click to read our post about Meezie, a GREAT Vet, Fisherman, and person) professional and loving care (with the help of the entire animal hospital) which kept our precious little girl from passing on to the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.  A week later, we took her in for the final appointment, this after a trip to Anchorage to have a ultrasound of her liver.  The tests on July 8th came back with positive results of her liver healing…and off we went.  But it was a very difficult journey for us.  On the night of the 21st (3 am in the morning of the 22nd), I awoke and started to write Skruffy’s obituary.  On the day that we got the test back that she was going to heal, I finished the obituary with a twist…and posted it.  Read “Skruffy’s Last Bark?”, but warning…you will need tissue.

So here is a picture of Skruffy I took yesterday or the day before.  A year later, our little girl is doing very well.  I posted another thank you to the Soldotna Animal Hospital on their facebook, and emailed Dr. Meezie again to say thanks….again.  She is so nice, she answered back within a couple of hours, and said, in part: 

“Glad to see Skruffy is still doing well.  She (and the rest her family) will always hold a special place in my memories of cases I was proud to be a part of.  She is a little trooper.”

Meezie…we just can’t thank you enough….and all the people you work with...

Lake Jordanelle, Utah – Visiting Stephanie

Here is a picture of Lake Jordanelle that I took out my window this morning.  It is nice seeing the lake completely full!  When we arrived on Sunday there were all sorts of boats and water crafts out on the lake, and the guy at the gate said, “For a Sunday, we are pretty busy!”, further stating that normally they fill up on Friday and empty Sunday morning.  The last two times we stayed her, back in October and May of last year, the “greenery” was not here…in early May it had arrived yet, in October it had already left.  The temps have been at 90 as a high, and 55 as a low.  Slept with windows and vents open both nights…it feels so nice, though just a tad warm during the day, but the A/C helps with that.

Utah is a very beautiful state…lots of mountains, rivers, canyons, lakes, and interesting places to see.  Of course, the BEST thing about Utah is my girl Stephanie.  A few years ago she had a devastating blow to her head with a surfboard, was laid up in the hospital for a few weeks, and has been dealing with an injury to her brain ever since.  The brain is a very complex thing…the injury’s affect is most notable on her her ability to make decisions, even easy ones, real quick.  Headed to the library at BYU from another building she seldom uses she might not know if she should turn left or right, so it becomes a trial and error type of decision.  Now, put that into context of being on a city bus and trying to remember which stop you need, how to tell the driver that you need to stop, and then, after getting off the bus, knowing which way to turn.  I have been in similar predicament when in Chicago or New York while attending an American Library Association conference…they spread the meetings all over the Hotels that host it because it is the only way to accommodate 20,000 attendees.  Except I know where to get off…just don’t know where to go after I get off…and trial and error sometimes was the only way to find it.  But for her, this is an EVERYDAY thing.

Yet other parts of her brain work much better.  For instance, her ability to write is still very remarkable, especially when, and despite, all the other things that the injury has done to her.  To the left is a quip of an article she wrote back in January.  If you want to read it, and I urge you to do so, just click here.  Now you may or may not agree with what she is saying…but the way she writes, how she was able to compile her thoughts and express them, that is her.  Yes, she had a person or two proof read for her…normally her older brother is one of these people, but other than grammatical changes, they don’t change the thoughts she expresses.  She still attends BYU, but can only handle 2 classes at a time with special tutors to help her. 

Yesterday I drove down to Salt Lake and picked her up from the U of U where she had an appointment early in the morning.  From there we drove over to a theater where we had a quick lunch, then into the theater to watch the newly released Cars 3 movie.  In this movie Lighting McQueen finds it hard to keep up with the new, younger, stronger race cars, but in the end finds the real purpose to life…helping others.  After an afternoon nap for Stephanie, we went to dinner, and then I went back to Jordanelle where Marcia and the puppies were all happy to see me return…well, the doggies were because it was 10 minutes past the dinner bell.

Not sure what we will do this morning/early afternoon…but while she is napping I will come back to Jordanelle and pick up Marcia so that we can all go to dinner…just as long as we are back by 8 to make the dinner bell for the dogs that is.

Sheep Creek Canyon, Flaming Gorge

Today we took our scenic drive along Sheep Creek Canyon, a 13 miles loop that we took about 5 miles south of Manila (Manila is 8 miles south of where we are camping) off highway 44, and it loops back to highway 44 about 7 miles from where we exited the highway.  In total, it was just about a 50 mile ride.  It is known for two things…great Geological formations and changes, and wildlife.  We saw the first, but other than little creatures (rodents) skirting across the road and some birds, we saw nothing of the wildlife.  In fact, we liked it so much, we did it twice…first from 11:30-1:30 and a second time from 5:30-7:30, but in the opposite direction along the loop.  As I have said before, be sure to click on the pictures to see larger ones…especially this one above…the swirls in the mountain and various colors are a sight to see.

First, last night Skruffy and I drove west from the campground towards the highway, where there is a scenic overlook looking over Linwood bay…where the town of Linwood once stood until the government bought all the land so that the reservoir could fill the area where the town once stood.  This town was a border town…half in Utah and half in Wyoming.  The school was built right on the state line, so funding came from both states.  By the early 1950’s, the town was pretty much drying up…although the post office operated until 1958.  They demolished or moved all the old buildings, and it is now covered by Linwood Bay, part of the Flaming Gorge Reservoir. 

      

I always look to the east (picture left) and to the north (picture right) or south to see if the sunset is bringing color to the areas surrounding where I am…hit two of three with this sunset…the view to the south was a bit boring.

11 of the 12 miles is paved…they are working on paving the final mile.  There are a few areas where you have pot holes, but very few.  For the most part, it is a very good road to drive on, don’t expect to go over 25 mph on most of it.  There is a climb, or drop depending on which way you go, of nearly 1,000 feet which covers about 2 miles of the route.

   

   

There are various signs which talk about the type of rock/dirt/sand formations, and there are online travel guides that you can get to take with you…but don’t expect any cell reception along most of the drive.  I am just going to post some pictures in the order we took them to give you an idea of how rapidly, sometimes, the look of the rocks change.  Sometimes it was drastically different on one side of the road from the other.

       

The weather was a calm 70-72 degrees, it was cloudy, but no rain…not even a sprinkle.  Unlike yesterday, we did not turn on the A/C in the motorhome, and for the most part, had the windows down while we drove through the canyon with the car.  Motorhomes “could” make the drive through the canyon, Class C motorhomes would have no problems, but anything over a 40’ Class A could have trouble with a few turns…but with little to no traffic it is doable.  We took the car.

    

    

Coming in from the direction we did (north entrance of the loop), you enter the canyon fairly quickly, and there is little elevation change.

As you come out of the canyon, you start to climb, and of course, the road zigs and zags.  About half way up there is a large pullout, and you can look down into the valley and the canyon below (top picture above), or look up at the mountain which you still have to climb part way up before you go around it (bottom picture above).

Soon you come to a dirt road turn off, and you have multiple choices of places to go.  We could have taken it to Browne Lake, but I was told at the visitor’s center at Red Canyon that Sprit Lake still had snow…4 wheel drive was advised for anything beyond Browne Lake.  Being that this was a dirt road, we did not take it, and continued on our loop trip.

Back on highway 44, we start back for home.  There was one vista point that we had not visited yet, it is the Sheep Creek Overlook.

One thing about Flaming Gorge, like the other canyons we have visited, there are so many twists and turns of the river below, that there are many many different views of the canyon below.  This area here is where the canyon starts or ends, depending upon how you look at it.  Where we are camping, it is more like a lake…where that mountain range is directly center on the other side of the water is where the beginning of the canyon is, headed to and past the dam.  Our campground is on the other side of that mountain, and a bit to the left.

On our return trip we did not take very many pictures of the mountains, but this mountain here is the same one as the first picture of this blog post, but from a different angle, and with different lighting.  I show it because this is the type of drive that you want to take going both ways, and at different times of the day. 

Tomorrow we head west to Lake Jordanelle for a few days, which makes it easy to visit my daughter down in Salt Lake City.  Then off to Sacramento for the Celebration of Life on Saturday for my aunt.

Best Dam Tour in Utah

Today we drove the 35+ miles over to Flaming Gorge Dam.  The dam was built between 1958 and 1964, and it took twelve years to fill up.  Unlike many other western dams, this dam retains most of their water from year to year…seeing a 10-12 foot drop in off years from fall readings year to year.  This year is a record year.  See that water shooting out in the bottom right of the picture above?  That water is going full bore, has been since March…where as normal years it only shoots out for 4-6 weeks. 

Our tour guide was named Carrie (I hope I am spelling this correctly).  This is her first year giving tours, but she gives them like a pro…knew every answer asked, was very informative, very outgoing, very nice, and is a local from the area having grown up here. Her mother gave tours when Carrie was a child.  When she introduced herself, she welcomed all four of us…yes, we were lucky enough to have only four people on the tour…and Carrie said, “Welcome to the Best Dam Tour in Utah!”  Of course, she added, it is the ONLY dam tour that is offered in the state of Utah…which makes it the best by default.  However, if the other tour guides are anything like her, and the other people we met, they would still be number one in the dam tours in our book. Marcia was able to use her GoGo for the tour, however “WE” did carry her GoGo down six stairs so that she could get outside at the bottom.  And when I say “WE”, Carrie and the guy pictured with Carrie (who is a fulltime RVer with his wife who is not pictured) helped me carry it down, and a dam worker, electrical engineer I think, helped me carry it back up.

The dam is just over 500 feet in height, is just under 1,300 feet in length, and has a capacity of 3,788,700 acre feet of water….it is currently at 86% capacity.  Carrie said that it raised nearly 15 feet in the past two weeks due to snow runoff.

    

They are currently releasing 6,600 cubic feet per second.  The water is shooting out of those release tubes at over 100 mph.  It is so “white” because they aerate the water so that it will spray down into the green river away from the man-made ponds needed to run the electric generators.  Carrie said the water is about 50 feet deep between where I was taking pictures, and where the water is shooting out.  Remember, the water is released like this for only a short period of time through the year…this year is much longer, one would normally not see this in a normal June time period. 

   

There are three generators that combined produce over 150,000 kilowatt of electricity, enough to supply power for around 100,000 people…that’s homes, offices, restaurants, etc.

The dam tour lasts just about an hour.  The time went by so fast that I did not even notice it go by.  It starts in the nice little visitor center, where you sign up for the tour, and there is security to man the metal detector that everyone has to pass through, with a wand to pass over people who cause it to go off.  A security guard walked by us a few times during the tour while we were down in the dam too.  You take an elevator up on level, where you can get a view of the dam below...which is where the first picture was taken.  Then you walk to the middle of the dam, and take a quick elevator down to the bottom.  As you reach the stairs, there is a wheelchair lift, but they won’t allow motorized units to use it because the weight makes it break.  Marcia's would have been fine, but we just carried down and then back up the six steps while she walked those steps down and back up later.  At the bottom near where the water was shooting out, lives a large school of fish which get fed by people who wish to put a quarter into a gumball type machine, which releases a handful of food.  The other two people on tour with us dropped some food down, and the fish acted like piranhas…gobbling up the food within seconds.  If you look close in the picture above right, you can make out the fish under the green water.  Although the river is named Green River, the water here is green due to the algae which grows up against the dam.

   

Before you get to the dam, you pass over the Cart Creek Bridge, pictured from both the west side (left) and the east side (right). 

Back to the motorhome, after being gone for nearly 4 hours, we had two very happy puppy dogs.  It was near 80 degrees, so we turned on the A/C for a few hours.  It is amazing that here in the dry heat that the A/C will run off and on, but very little water runs off the sides of the motorhome from the A/C units…and some that does dries before it hits the ground.  Had a visit from four of our Pronghorn friends…saw about eight different ones today between the entrance to the park to within the park itself.  They run away from any people, and are very weary of the dogs, of bicyclist, and especially automobiles.  Saw a lady a few slots to our north who tossed some sort of food their way…they ran.  I felt like telling her that we are not suppose to feed the wildlife…but why argue with stupid…she knew better and did it anyways.  

We arrived at Flaming Gorge on Wednesday, if you missed it, read about that and see pictures of Red Canyon here.  Friday will be a “stay around the motorhome” day, although I will probably go and get the car cleaned up for our visit with my daughter in Salt Lake on Monday and Tuesday.  Saturday we plan to do the scenic drive, and on Sunday we head for Lake Jordanelle.