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.  😉

4th of July, 2017

The Burdick-Cline heritage has seen its fair share of fireworks throughout the years.  Dad’s people came over on a boat named the Mayflower…the first Burdick, Robert Burdick, came over from England to what is now Rhode Island in the mid-1600’s.  The first Burdick in California, at least first within my linage, arrived in San Francisco on a boat in 1850…having left the east coast in 1849, perhaps before he even knew gold was found.  He was a farmer, not a prospector, and settled in what was then Newark California.

On mom’s side, the Cline side, her people, on her mother’s side, came to America about the same time Robert Burdick did…but they settled in Delaware, then Maryland, then Pennsylvania, then Ohio, then…well…mom’s folks liked to move a lot.  Take her mom, dad and eleven children…the birth place of the children is as follows:  Selma, Kansas -- Bucyrus, Kansas -- Niangua, Missouri -- Peru, Kansas -- Niangua, Missouri -- Adrian, Missouri -- Kenneth, Kansas -- Williamsville, Missouri -- Kennett, Missouri -- Dinuba, California and Dinuba, California.  That is a bunch of moving around…but grandpa, who died when mom was a teenager, worked for the railroad and moved from station to station…at times, the family even lived in train stations.  Had to wait for trains to cross the tracks in a few places just to be able to use the outhouse.

All this background information just so that YOU KNOW that when I say, “I hope EVERYONE has a wonderful and safe Fourth of July,” that you know where I am coming from…from nearly 400 years of history as a resident of this land which we now call America.  I am proud of this heritage, proud to be an American, proud of those…even family members…who gave all they had to make America what it is. Seeing the turmoil that goes on today, seeing the backbiting, the bickering, the foolishness, the out right hatred with our politicians in Washington DC…it brings tears to my eyes.  Never the less…it is our nation’s birthday…Happy Birthday America, let’s celebrate that which is still good in our wonderful country.

Marcia and I had a bit of early fireworks this past weekend.  On Friday night I went to flush the commode…and it did not flush.  Push down the foot pedal only filled the bowl with more water.  Our commode works differently than most motorhomes.  Most work on gravity, where the contents fall into the black tank when you flush.  Ours is more like a boat or a train or a plane…we hit a “on” button, pressure builds up, when the green light comes on, you flush, and the air pressure that has built up moves the contents to the black tank.  One good thing is, all the contents pump through Macerator to break everything up into tiny little pieces…so no chance of the infamous Toilet Paper Pyramid for us.  However…the pump IS just one more thing which might go wrong.  Knowing this, I have had a plan “just in case” the toilet ever went out on us so that we could still live in it until it was fixed.  I hope any of you who travel extensively in a RV have a plan too…because you never know when a foot pedal might not work, or a back-up might occur.  And our back-up plan, no pun intended, could work for just about anyone.  It has to do with putting a garbage bag liner into the toilet, and empting as needed by sealing the bag, remove from toilet, put in another bag, and dispose of properly.  Lucky for us, I was able to move the “ball”, as they call it, turn on our pump, and let things flow down and through the system.

Saturday I called Camping World, and the guy said, “Well, we carry that type of toilet (Dometic 310 Series Low Profile), but don’t have any in stock.”  “How about surrounding stores?”   “Nope, it is something you have to order…we can put the order in on Monday, and it will be here on Friday..”  “Never mind, Amazon can get it to me by Monday…”, click (he hangs up).  Put the order in with Amazon, and by noon yesterday it was here, by 1 pm I had it installed and working.   Not a “fun” thing to have to face, but it was made easier with a good plan.  That plan also included having lots of 13 gallon garbage bags.

Today’s menu includes….BBQ Tri-Tip, Lemon Shrimp, BBQ Corn on the Cobb, and Mashed Cauliflower, along with a few other things.  Although, because of our diet, we can’t have the corn…nor the Tiramisu Dessert that I bought for the family, the rest of the dinner is part of our diet.  YUM!   Hope you all have a nice 4th of July BBQ too.