Our RV Adventures

I thought we had used the last of the blueberry muffins that our friend Gina Ellis had given us, so I was really delighted to have Jan fix the ‘real’ last two for breakfast this morning. Along, of course, with a big pot of hot coffee.

And the hot coffee was really needed. It was COLD this morning, in the 40’s, and it wasn’t supposed to get that much warmer during the day. And to top it off, it was very windy, with gusts in 30-40 mph range.

Saturday’s weather just gets worse. The high tomorrow will be in the mid-40’s with rain, and the low tomorrow night in the low 30’s with possible SNOW! I want my Global Warming, now.

But I would settle for just some Global Warmer.

Lunch was a little after 12 with a rerun of cheese toast and chips.

I know what you’re thinking. Boring, you say. But it’s quick, easy, and we both like it. And of course, it’s Miss Terry’s bread.

Later in the afternoon, I drove up to the Guard Shack at the park entrance to pick up a package waiting for me from Amazon. It was our coffee order, and just in time too, since we were about out of our favorite flavors.

A little later, our SIL Lowell sent these pics of Landon ‘Crockett’. I think in this first one, he’s thinking “I’ve got WHAT on my head?”

Nick had been a hermit all day working on the next issue of the Gypsy Journal, so we didn’t see him until about 5 pm when we all headed out to supper at Sizzler Steakhouse. We liked it enough last week, we thought we’d try it again. And still good.

Getting back to the rig, we took the last of yesterday’s ice cream over to Nick and Terry’s to finish off the evening and the ice cream.

I’ve reposted our visit to the La Brea Tar Pits last April.

More tomorrow.

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Thought for the Day:

A dog may bite you in the ass, but he will never stab you in the back.

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The The Tar Tar Pits . . . 

Posted on April 19, 2010

Today we visited the La Brea Tar Pits, which strangely enough, is in the middle of Beverly Hills. And even stranger, or maybe funnier, The La Brea Tar Pits, actually translates as The The Tar Tar Pits, since “La Brea” means “The Tar”’ in Spanish. Thus the title of this blog.

Anyway, we got there about 11 and decided to eat lunch first at a Marie Callender’s right next door, or as they call it in Beverly Hills, just ”Callender’s”. Apparently ‘Marie’ isn’t fancy enough for Beverly Hills.

And this is not your average Marie Callender’s.

The food was really upscale too. We both had the Trio lunch plate, which consisted of a gorgonzola-pear salad with walnuts and cranberries, a choice of soup, (Jan had potato cheese, I had chicken tortilla) and a warm turkey/cheese sandwich on focaccia bread. It was all really good. And we were so full we didn’t even have room for pie…then.

After lunch we walked next door to the Tar Pits. Before we even crossed the street we could smell the asphalt in the air. And walking into the park we could see the results of the asphalt, or al least, the simulated results.

The tar, along with methane gas, bubbles up from the ground and forms large pools. And it’s been doing this for tens of thousands of years. The oldest fossil found here has been dated to 38,000 years ago.

Then rainwater and dirt/grass/leaves accumulate on the surface, masking the tar. Animals come down to drink and get mired in the muck. And sometimes predators come to feast on the “stuckees” and get stuck themselves. Thus a wide range or predators and prey have been excavated from the tar here.

Here is an excavation that’s been under way for years, and tens of thousands of fossils have been found.

Here are the bones of a sabertooth cat that are in the process of being removed.

Many of these animals were much larger than their contemporaries. Here is a medium-sized sloth. And being medium-size, this sloth was only 7 feet high and weighed 1800 pounds!

And again,this ancient bison was much larger than the ones that live today.

This is an American camel, that become extinct over ten thousand years ago.

This is a mother Mastodon and her baby, found together in the tar.

And this is “Zed”, a 13 foot tall Columbian Mammoth, bigger than any elephant alive today

These are the bones of an American Lion, that was larger than any lion or tiger of today, and larger than the sabertooth cat from its own era.

This is the skeleton of a horse. What’s different about this is that horses died out in the Americas thousands of years ago, and didn’t return until brought over by the Spanish explorers in the 1500’s.

This short-faced bear was enormous. Larger than any bear today, it was a foot taller than any grizzly and probably weighed a thousand pounds more.

And this is the sabertooth cat. Sometimes incorrectly called a sabertooth tiger, it is actually closer to today’s housecats, rather than tigers.

This diorama shows a sabertooth trying to munch on a short-faced bear. I think the cat will probably end up as bear chow.

It was really amazing walking around here, thinking about all this going on right where we were standing 20 or 30 thousand years ago.

Leaving the Tar Pits we drove about a mile away to cruise the famous Rodeo Drive.

We saw a lot of expensive cars, and a lot of shops with names we couldn’t pronounce.

Guess I should have been more impressed, but I wasn’t.

Tomorrow we’ll be attending two tapings of the Bonnie Hunt Show that will be shown Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

More later…

jhkg

As hoped this morning started our about 10 with coffee and some of Miss Terry’s homemade toast.

Delicious.

Then for lunch we did it again with cheese toast and chips, again with Terry’s bread.

More good.

Then a  little later Nick came over and said Terry was fixing spaghetti for supper and we were invited. Yeah!

About 1:30 I drove into Cottonwood to check out a vacuum cleaner store I had seen.

I was looking for a standard vacuum hose to hook up to my new Eureka 71A Handheld. I had checked online and local stores, but if they had a hose it was more than I wanted to play, in some cases the hose was more expensive than the vacuum itself. So I thought I might try a small vacuum repair shop.

And I lucked out and found one. Used, of course, but only $5. Just what I wanted.

My next stop was Fry’s, to pick up some Lipton Diet Green Tea, and some ice cream for dessert at Nick and Terry’s tonight.

A little after 5 we walked next door for a supper of spaghetti with salad and bread. Miss Terry went all out and laid out a delicious spread. And lucky us, more of Terry’s great bread. Three times in one day.

After that great meal, we waddled home about 7:30, with Jan falling asleep on the sofa within about 15 minutes. After that meal it was hard to stay awake.

I’ve posted a rerun of our visit to New Hampshire and Mt. Washington in August 2009.

More tomorrow.

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Thought for the Day:

Just remember, the reason we’re all here is that we’re not all there.

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Climbing Mt. Washington and here a moose, there a moose…

Posted on August 18, 2009

We left Moose River Campground about 11 am and headed up US 2 toward Gorham, NH.

The road wasn’t too bad, a bit curvy, but OK, and we pulled into the Wal-Mart about 12:30 pm and set up house.

Actually, when we Wally-dock, there’s nothing to setup. We don’t lower the jacks, or put out the slide. The only thing we do is just unhook the truck so we can drive around.

We decided to try a place called Crabby Jack’s Mexican Cafe for lunch, since we were hungry for Mexican.

Big Mistake! The service was bad and food wasn’t any better. It was more like Crabby Jan & Greg.

After our so-called lunch, we headed down to Gorham’s Visitor’s Information booth to check out the sign that got Jan all giddy.

It said “Moose Tours”

After signing up for the 6:30 pm tour that evening, I noticed a brochure on Mt. Washington. I knew it was in New Hampshire, but I didn’t know it was close by.

Turns out that it’s right down the road. It’s about 8 miles to the base of the mountain, and then about 8 miles to the summit, all 6288 feet of it.

We decided we had plenty of time to do the mountain before our moose tour, so we headed out.

And it is a heck of a climb. During the 8 miles, you climb over 5000 ft. And it seems like it’s straight up at times.

But, although it was a little hazy, the view was spectacular.

The Mt. Washington Auto Road gave birth to the oldest man-made tourist attraction in the US. When it was built in the 1861 (Yes, 1861), it was called the Mt. Washington Carriage Road. And stagecoaches took visitors to the top.

It’s still the same road, and not much improved, it seems.

And then in 1869 they built the Cog Train. It runs on a train track with a cog track in the center that lets the train climb the steep grades like a roller coaster does…clack, clack, clack.

That little yellow dot is the train coming up the mountain. It takes about an hour to come up and an hour to go back down.

It only takes about 20 min in your car.

“I think I can, I think I can…”

This gift shop building dates from 1878. Note that it is chained down!

And here’s why!

231 MPH !!!

I think they need more chains.

The new buildings are built to withstand 300 MPH winds.

And, of course, we got our official bumper sticker for our trip up.

I’ve seen these on cars before, and now I know how they got them.

About 6:30 pm we board our tour bus for our “moose tour”.

And we actually saw moose, 4 of them, to be exact. 2 sets of cows and calves. No bulls, unfortunately.

These pictures were taken about 9:30 pm at night, lighted by spotlight.

These moose were about 30 yards away at the time.

We also saw an osprey, 2 foxes, a deer, and 2 loons.

And some pretty scenery earlier in the evening.

Tomorrow morning we head out to Bangor, ME for a few days before we trek further north to Canada.

More then…

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