Leaving California, Headed for Home

At Sister’s House in Citrus Heights, CA

We entered California four months and 15 days ago for our yearly visit.  This year, besides visiting with family in the Sacramento area, we visited the Santa Cruz, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Alabama Hills, Carson City, and Truckee areas, along with a six week trip up in the Northwest portion of California, and Southwest portion of Oregon.  We celebrated Dad’s 90th birthday, Mom’s 88th birthday, both of their 70th anniversary, and the marriage of my oldest son Michael to his lovely bride Anna.  Tomorrow morning we head out…at this time tomorrow we will be somewhere in Nevada along I-80 headed to the Salt Lake City area to visit with my daughter Stephanie.  It has been a wonderful 4 1/2 months here…despite the hot hot hot weather, and the fires which are a yearly occurrence here in the west.  The Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys have always filled with smoke…accounts of early settlers talk about smoke layers due to winter fires used to keep people warm to wildfires which broke out from what is believed to be lightning strikes.  As a kid, I remember the heavy smoke from the burning of the dry rice straw left over from harvest each year on the western side of the Sacramento River, a practice which is less common now days.  And I remember many large wildfires, some in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and lower foothills, which others were in Southern California or along the Coastal Ranges.  It is a part of living in the west.

    

Sacramento is a wonderful place for flowers.  It is the Camellia Capital of the World…just ask the Camellia Society of Sacramento.  They use to have a Camellia Festival in late February or early March--which ran from 1955 to 1993 which featured a debutante ball, princesses and a parade with flower-covered floats.  I think in 4th grade we had to make a Camellia Poster as part of a city-wide contest to help promote the event.  My posters were only good enough for the trash can…  I don’t know why they stopped the huge festivities…but they do still have a yearly Camellia Show, this year was the 94th year, still held by the Sacramento Camellia Society.  Not sure, but I think the parade probably stopped due to the Naked Ladies.  All I know is that the Naked Ladies appeared again yesterday, and we are headed out tomorrow!

Naked Ladies are also known as Belladonna Lilies…and they appear each year in Sandy and Arny’s backyard.  In the spring they appear as a green, leafy plant, which lasts for 4-8 weeks before they seem to die off.  Then in July or August a single stem starts to sprout upward…and lily opens up.  In the picture above, the short ones will be as tall as the lily that is open in just a few days.  The lilies will last for a few days, then die off.  It is an amazing show…  I am glad we were able to see a few of them bloom before we leave.

     

These two fur kids are not going to be happy campers tomorrow…especially the one of the left.  Bubba (upper left) absolutely LOVES being at Sandy and Arny’s house.  Arny is Bubba’s best friend…and outside of our trip to Oregon for six weeks, and the three weeks we were sightseeing California, he has been here at their house for the past year.  However, we were here for all but three months of that time…this time we will be gone for 7 or 8 months…so Bubba is coming along with us.  Boy, he is going to be one depressed dog for a number of days…perhaps a couple of weeks…but he always adjusts to it.  We just hope that at 15 years of age, he has a few more visits back to see his buddy Uncle Arny, and also Aunt Sandy.  Skruffy, on the other hand, is fine as long as she is with me or with Marcia.  But she too LOVES Sandy and Arny’s house…the daily small treats of fried pork that I cook up and give them to hand out twice a day, the squirrels, the lawn, being in Sandy’s lap every now and then…she too will miss them.

  

For us it is a two-sided sword.  We have had some meals with mom and dad, including finding a great breakfast/lunch place called Annie’s right near to their Assisted Living facility.  We LOVE visiting family out here, we LOVE staying in Sandy and Arny’s backyard when we are here, we LOVE the sights we can explore getting here, short trips we take while here, and on the trip home.  We also LOVE our friends and family who don’t live here…and we miss our friends and family back home.  Next year my youngest son Ryan is graduating from Chiropractic School in the Kansas City area in April…and our plans will be to return to California sometime after that.  When, How Long we will stay is all up in the air for now.  But the Lord willing, we will return, and seeing family out here is always a wonderful thing.

Back to the map…this is our proposed route.  It will take us through Salt Lake to see Stephanie, through Kansas City to see Ryan, Aunt Vera and other relatives in the area, then down to Arkansas, and finally back to Florida.  I am not going to see my doctor until next March or early April since we pretty much will be going through Arkansas again on our way to Ryan’s graduation.  We decided to NOT go through the Chicago area, probably saving that for next spring.  Marcia’s driver’s license needs to be renewed in September, and they will require her to take a vision exam…otherwise we could do it over the Internet.  We want to take a bit of time going through the northern portion of Colorado, so we are not ready to set time periods for our Kansas City or Arkansas Visits as of now.

Shasta Dam, HOT Weather, Naked Ladies & TV

Citrus Heights, CA

On our way back to Citrus Heights on Thursday, we took a side road over to Shasta Dam…not for a tour, but just to show Marcia what it looks like.

I have not seen so much water in Shasta Lake for I don’t know how long…it felt good to see it full again.

This is the place where I attribute my “fear of heights” to.  Back in the mid-1990’s my children’s mother’s family was having a “family reunion” near Shasta.  It was August 1993 if I remember…because I was named the Interim Library Director while I was away on this trip as the previous Director was….how does one say this nicely…given the chance to find employment elsewhere.  Anyway, as ALL my previous wife’s family and I were visiting Shasta Dam, we were looking down over the spillway…and one of my nieces jumped up onto the top of the railing to look over, and in my mind, I saw her going over…and since I was right there, I grabbed the seat of her pants and pulled her back…and her mother was not too happy with me.  Ever since then I have had an extreme fear of heights…can’t look down out of a hotel room window which is a dozen or more floors up (I can look out, just not down).  Can not look down from the Golden Gate Bridge (I had no problem doing so before this), and I have a HUGE problem flying in a plane.  Had nightmares of her flying off the dam for many years after the event.  And I NEVER did get a thanks from the parent, although we did come to an understanding when I said, “Perhaps I should have just let things take their natural course…” (which, for those who know me, I could have never done).

A look of Shasta Lake…lots and lots of water behind the dam!  Too bad there was so much smoke in the air.

Just had to show a picture of this Motorhome which we saw at the Pilot Gas Station south of Corning California…A porch, on a old Winny Chassis.  I don’t think he drives it much on the freeway, but they do seem to live in it around the area. 

Made it back to the Sacramento Area just in time to see the Naked Ladies, enjoy the 105+ degree weather, celebrate both Sandy and Arny’s birthdays (day apart from each other…mom and dad no longer have children who are ‘in their 50’s’ anymore, and enough time to install a new TV and a new Controller in the Solar Panel.

The “Naked Ladies” are a type of plant that grow outside my sister’s house near our RV door, and in other places in their backyard.  The Belladonna Lily is called the “Naked Lady” because the stem is leafless, tall, and pretty flowers on top.  In the spring there is a very leafy plant…which seems to die off, then in late summer, this large stem grows, and then the flower blooms out.  They are very pretty, and all of theirs are a lavender color but other varieties include orange, pink, red and yellow.  Marcia saw some orange ones up along the coast of Oregon, but we did not get pictures of them.

Our main living area TV gave out on us while up in Oregon….not unexpected as it was acting up since we left Florida.  Got a ‘SuperSonic’ 12volt TV, although for some reason it did not come with a 12v plug, just the 110 converter plug…but that will be easy to take care of.  A 24” HD-LED TV for $135, and we really like it.  Smaller, lighter, and for $10 more I got a wall mount so that we can adjust it to our liking.  The board behind it was not painted behind the TV, so I also painted that board…still have another coat which is why the hooks have take over them.  Also installed some eye hooks to strap the TV down while we travel with bungee cords. Once I get the plug, we will be able to watch a little TV without turning the generator on…nice for when we are in rest areas, Walmart parking lots, Cracker Barrels, etc….especially when strong storms are in the area as we faced in Arkansas earlier this spring.   As for the Solar Controller…so far I really like it.  Will write up it once we boondock again.

Flying Coyote, a Nudist Colony, Garden and Complaint Dept.

Saw this “lime green” plane flying overhead today, this is the best picture that I got since I sat there looking at it for many minutes before thinking, “Hey idiot, why don’t you get your camera out….”.  Then it took a good hour or more to try and identify it, but I finally did….

This picture is from Wikipedia, and although the “rear end” looks a bit different, the insignia on the tail is pretty clear-cut.

  

The picture to the left is a blow up of my picture, the picture on the right is another picture that I got off the Internet.  The plane is a Rans S6 Coyote II, perhaps a S6-ES.  So had I not got my camera out, I would have missed out on getting a picture of a flying Coyote!

A little over a week ago I talked about the Naked Lady outside the door of our motorhome….now it has turned into a Nudist Colony!!!  

Mom told me that a few of the relatives who live outside of the area had asked about her front yard, and specifically the garden.  Well, this is the front yard…

And a closer image of it. The flower garden is along the stone wall, and you can clearly see that the Marigolds are doing well along the left side, and you can see a few of the other flower plants on the right side.  The ones on the right have a bit of a struggle when the temps climb to 100 or above, and I need to water them twice a day when it is that hot.

Ok, in my last post I complained about how HOT it has been….well, someone was listening because Sunday and Monday have been GREAT!  Sunday only got to 85 degrees, and much of the day it was under 80.  Today the high was only 80 degrees…. and tomorrows forecast is 85 again.  Also, there was some nice rain up in the foothills and in the Sierra’s, which will help with the dryness and the fires.  The worse fire in the state right now is 4 miles Southeast of Burney, just north of Lassen National Park.  It is larger than the city of San Francisco, and pretty much no containment, and they expect it to last for another few weeks before it is contained.  Other fires, however, benefited by the rain and cooler temps, and one reached 100% containment today.