Another "How Hot Is It?", Toys For Indy, LED Lights

Seems like every year we run into a HOT week, especially while we are in the Sacramento area.  Well, this is the week...and when I say the week, I mean 8 days.  Yesterday it was 102, 107 now (5 pm Friday), and the forecast is...well, pictures tell it.

And DON'T believe it when it shows possible showers...there are NO showers in sight!  Thank goodness we have this nice tree throwing shade on us, along with the neighbor's Italian Cypress.  But around 3:00 we are halfway in the sun, and as any RVer knows, the AC will only cool it so much.  The other bad thing is that the nights are not cooling into the 60's like they usually do.  Any breeze we have is coming more from the north than the cool delta breeze which comes from the west.  There is always hope for that breeze...

I have taken Indy for a ride in the car five or six times now.  Twice to PetSmart for exam and then haircut, twice to see mom, and today to see mom AND another trip to PetSmart.  She tossed up her breakfast the first three times, the last very little since I did not feed her much.  The last time she did just fine, but without breakfast...today she did fine with breakfast.  She wants to sit on my lap while I drive, but that can only happen on a few non-busy residential areas.  Saw mom first (she is doing fine and there is nice shade if you get there early enough...she looks down from her balcony as we park just below), then I found some shade when we got to PetSmart.  Got her on my lap and out the window her head went.

She sure looks like she wanted to jump down, and I think she would if given the opportunity.  "Don't worry little girl, this trip is for fun...", I tell her.  I got my new mask on, and we had fun looking over the many chew toys, tossing toys, etc. etc.

 

I got her two new toys...the red ball with all the holes, and a squeaky squirrel.

So far, it has been too hot to play...sleeping is the order of the day.  In the photo above you can see a smaller ball, that is her favorite toy.  It is called a "Nobbly Wobbly" Rubber Ball, but PetSmart did not have any.  This one is just starting to come apart...so it looks like we have another Amazon order.

 

I did change out our two living area fluorescent lights with LED lights.  I did not take pictures, but I did use a video as a guide.  Once I understood what I was doing, it only took about ten minutes per fixture to change out...and we LOVE the brighter light that it provides.  Below is a link to one of the videos I watched.  Essentially it was cutting a few wires, removing that circuit board, connect a few wires and insert the LED lights.  

Back on July 7th I did a online order with the USGS for a National Park Senior Pass.  On July 30th I called and the nice lady told me that they were processing July 1st orders, so it would be another week or so.  Well, I called today and a different nice lady, after having a few "Oh No" and "I can't believe this..." type of conversation with herself told me that there was a mess up with the order...a mess up which many others have faced too...and that she was going to FedEx through two day shipping a card to us...but being Friday, it was too late for FedEx so she "HOPES" it ships Monday, and we should get it Wednesday or Thursday.  "IF" I don't get a shipping confirmation email by Wednesday, I need to call back.  Our fingers are crossed.  Truckee has temps in the mid-80's, with mid-40's at night, and it would have been nice to be up there this next week.

Six Week Trip to Southern Oregon + a Wedding

At Sister’s House in Citrus Heights, CA

So we came to California this year, as we have each year since 2012, to visit family.  This year, there have been a few special events that went along with it…dad’s 90th birthday, mom’s 88th birthday, and mom and dad’s 70th wedding anniversary…all of which have taken place.  In July, there is another special event, my oldest son Michael is getting married to his longtime girlfriend Anna.  That takes place west of Santa Rosa near the end of July…so we have nearly six weeks from now until then.  This weekend Arny and Sandy, at the urging of my sister Patti and myself, and headed out for the weekend…destination “Who Cares, because we are GETTING AWAY for the first time in many, many months”.  Patti, Marcia and I will be taking care of Arny’s mother Euleda.  Monday will be laundry day, packing day, and on Tuesday we are headed northwest back to southwestern Oregon.

Our first stop Tuesday night will be at a National Forest campground along the Trinity River in what we think will be in a cool location…at least we “hope” that is where we can stay because it is a first come, first serve campground.  I hope to pull in there around 3 pm, no later than 4 pm…if it is full, there are some other alternatives westward, but I don’t think we will have any problems.  By-the-way…the little balloons on the map are different colors…blue for campgrounds, gold for gas stations, black for dump stations, red for laundromats, purple for campgrounds that we will use more than once, grey for possible stop at a commercial campground in Gold Beach, and a dark purple for wedding locations.  I put down the price of campgrounds, dates we will probably stay, etc, and furnish a link to Marcia so she has a map and agenda too.  It works for us.

However, our plans are made of “Jello”, they can easily change and conform to the situation at hand.  We MUST get into a park a week before the 4th of July so that we are sure to have a spot over this very busy weekend.  Nearly all of the places we are planning to stay at are ones we stayed at last year, except for this first stop, and the last stop where we have a commercial RV park near the wedding venue.  We really enjoyed our trip to southwest Oregon last year, and look forward to visiting the area again this year…only difference, we will have our car with us this time.

   

The average high in Sacramento for July and August is around 94 degrees.  Nine of the ten hottest days in Sacramento recorded history have been in July…but 100 degrees can be reached on any given day in Sacramento from May to October.  So when we come back in late July, it most likely will only be for around two weeks.  Then we head back east, with a lot of time spent in Colorado.  That trip will be on another map, and in another blog.  And we are lucky, local temps will be under 90 until Monday, and we will be out of the valley on Tuesday morning when temps are forecasted to by 100 degrees by 4 pm.  

More California Fires, Auto Breakdown

Summer life in California is always full of fires.  It is such a large state, with 40-50% of the land full of forests.  Despite being out of the drought, fires are still a huge issue here.  California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has over a $2 Billion Dollar budget.  The state of Arkansas only has a $5.3 Billion Dollar general-revenue budget.  Yesterday, while Citrus Heights hit 110 degrees, about 60 miles north the “Wall Fire”, which is along Chinese Wall Road five miles north of Bangor, Ca., was burning, engulfing 250-300 acres.  By midnight they upgraded the fire to 1,000 acres, and by morning it was estimated closer to 2,000 acres.  As of 2 hours ago from this posting, it is at 4,400 acres and is about 20% contained.  Thursday another fire was half way to San Francisco from Sacramento, but it was contained, for the most part, within 24 hours…but it too burned 2,700 acres.  This “Wall Fire”, however, is a real butte…seriously, it is in Butte County. 

With this heat lasting through the weekend, it looks like it will end by Wednesday…the day we are headed out of here.  In California you have two choices to cool of by…either head to the high country, or head to the coast…we are choosing the latter.  By Thursday we should be much cooler.  For 6-8 weeks we will be traveling along the coast, up into Oregon, perhaps into Washington.  We are leaving the tow car at my sister’s house.  Hope to find places that we like, camp for a few days…perhaps a week…then head on.  We have been along the coast a few times now, so we don’t need a car for day trips.  This will be different for us…just taking it one day at a time…cooler days we hope.

Took Bubba to PetSmart where I needed to buy a couple months of food…and he needed to have his nails cut again.  The PetSmart closest to us did not have the food last time, so I drove an extra mile to Roseville’s PetSmart this time (didn’t even check the one here in Citrus Heights…kind of like one of those ‘take that’ type of things).  On the way back I see these two cars on the road leading to the freeway…one hit the other from behind.  The guy who hit the couple in the car in front of him must be very unlucky…all of his airbags went off…yet it was just a minor hit to rear of the other car.  So not only will he get a ticket for hitting a car from behind, but also face a huge car repair bill which “might” total out his car “if” he has insurance on it.  Well, it was hard not to chuckle at this guys bad luck…why I do that is beyond me…I think since I have had my share of bad luck it is nice to see it is someone else and not me.  But I paid for it because I did not get halfway home and my battery light comes on.  3 miles from the freeway exit, another mile to my sister’s house, and luck was on my side this time because I made it. 

Turns out to be a serpentine belt, and our initial feelings are that it is only the serpentine belt…until we get it on tomorrow we won’t be sure.  Also need an air intake hose, which they had to order…hopefully we will have it running again sometime tomorrow (I have needed to replace this hose for a good year now).  So instead of doing laundry tomorrow, we (Arny and I) will be working on the HHR, and we (Marcia and I) will have to do laundry Tuesday morning in place of Marcia’s haircut that we had scheduled for that time period.  I’m taking dad to a Dr. Appointment Tuesday afternoon, so there is just not time to get Marcia's hair done...she is just going to go with longer hair for a few more months unless we find a place along our route that the motorhome can pull in at where she can get her hair cut at.  Still planning to leave on Wednesday for cooler pastures.  😉