Farewell, October 10/31/22

Happy Halloween!  Jimmy and I failed to dress up in costumes today, but that's okay.  After hiking this afternoon, we stopped at a grocery store for a few things -- many of the check-out clerks were costumed, so I told our checker that I dressed up as "an old lady."  She had the grace to smile.

Evie had a sleepover with us Fri/Sat, 10/21-10/22.  On Saturday, Jimmy and I took her to Bierwagen's "punkin patch," like we did in 2020.  They had quite a crowd of folks, big and small; it's a nice family outing.  This year there was no riding in the wagon for Evie, she was old enough to walk.  The day was pretty cool and turning cooler with every moment we were outside.  But we had fun, and everyone picked out Their Favorite Pumpkin.

Nice autumn display!

That big boy moocow with-horns-out-to-HERE was intimidating!  Evie thought we should moove right along, giving the big guy plenty of space.

Jimmy picked out a cute li'l green punkin.

Ahhh, five-year-old Evie found her perfect pumpkin.

My punkin was the big orange dude in the wagon.  Before we left the house, I offered to put Evie's hair in a pony tail, but she said, "no, I don't want to."  You see how long it is?  Her Mom took her to a salon recently and had the length cut.

Best pose I got from her!  When I was a kid, I made faces at any camera aimed at me.  Evie stuck her tongue out while Jimmy was trying to get a pic of me and her together, but I'll spare you.  Typical kid stuff.

Instead, let's make a funny face on the pumpkin!  Evie wanted to see/feel the insides and then she wanted to help scrape out the seeds and strings.  Here she's saying something like "how do I get this slimy stuff off my hands?"  We made a trip inside to the kitchen sink and took care of it.

She watched her Pop-pop carve the sorta scary face.

Here's the final product.

Cool beans, Jimmy!

Her daddy came to pick her up Saturday evening, and Matt said she fell asleep in the car on their way home.  Guess we wore her out (we usually do), but we all had a great time!  Come back soon, Evie!

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The fall leaf color is at its peak right now, brilliant reds and yellows.  I wish I could post 100 gorgeous photos, but I won't.  Here's a sampling, but in person the colors are much more vibrant.

Sunday, the 30th, we went for a little hike on the Hirschman Trail near downtown Nevada City.  We were here once before a number of years ago, but didn't remember much about it.  We were sort of surprised to see the signage below, wherein the area is also called Hirschman Diggins.  One of the earliest hydraulic mine operations began here in the 1860's.

Can you see the white dotted line above, just below the red checkmark?  That line shows where the slope (pre-mining landscape) used to be before miners cleaned the hill away with hydraulic water monitors.  "The miners washed away entire hillsides, leaving other areas untouched.  The aftermath was a surreal hummocky landscape framed by sheer cliffs and speckled with bedrock boulders."

This pond is what's left all these many years later.

Surrounded by these monster boulders.

Surreal is right.

You can see the cliff in this photo.  Imagine how this looked before the gold rush -- the slope would continue and Hirschman's Pond would've never formed.

So many options to title this pic.  Jimmy pulling open a drawer?  Jimmy feeding pine cones into the rock's mouth?  A pine file drawer?  What's yours?

This is part of the water monitor (cannon) barrel, used here as a display.  Aim it at a hill (like the one in the background), and using tremendous volumes of water under high pressure, blast away. The water was brought in via flumes. Miners must have netted gold from this area or they wouldn't have bothered ruining the hillside.

A grouping of rhinos?  Bedrock boulders just sitting around?

They are really big.

We enjoyed walking on this fairly-level trail,

especially when we were in the shade.

Aha!  A doorbell.  Jimmy rang it.  No one answered.

You have to wonder how this happened.

As usual, I was overdressed for the afternoon.  It's chilly at our house, so I dress accordingly, and never remember that it's warmer down the hill from us.  Oh well, we were happy to get some steps in today.  Nannie, how about you join us on this trail?  It's only a couple of miles.  We saw ducks and (ubiquitous) Canada geese, and also an otter swimming across the pond!

* * * * *

Today, Oct 31st (booooo), we took Tergel down to an RV shop to have her brakes worked on, so we won't be on the road for a while.  We took water and snacks because we knew the trail to Fairy Falls was nearby.  Rain is in our forecast (oh boy!) for tomorrow, and we wanted to get in a nice hike while we could.  And it was a lovely day, somewhat overcast, which kept the temp down, but being Out and About in these golden rolling hills was simply The Best.

Yes, that's part of our trail.

Albeit, we were not REAL close, but can you find Fairy Falls?  Seriously, can you?  Dead center of the photo.  Well, after all, California is in a severe drought, so it might be a miracle that any water is falling, period.  I wish you could see how beautiful this region of NorCal is, truly.

A small pond below the falls.

Nourishing water for wildlife.

Amazingly, we encountered no one else.  No one!  We had this entire section of Spenceville Wildlife Area to ourselves.  Very peaceful ... and a terrific 5.3 mile hike.  So be it.  Looks like our dry season is ending.  Hopefully we'll get a full complement of rain/snow in the upcoming fall/winter.  We surely need it.  We're ready.

Sawdust Alpacas, Mon/Tues 10/17-10/18, 2022

 

Yesterday we sent a request to Sawdust Alpacas in Fallon, Nevada, asking if we could overnight with them.  Their answer was yes!  This is another great Harvest Hosts locale, and we were looking forward to stopping there.  Sawdust Alpacas even offered a 30amp hookup for $10.00, which we gladly paid.  It didn't take us long to get here from Pyramid Lake, and once set up, we met with our hosts, Glenn and Carolyn Waddell, for a tour of their farm and all the alpacas.  Plus, Abbey the Great Pyrenees guard dog.  

Glenn and Jimmy and one of the cute li'l ones.  They have four "babies," all of them around one-month old.  They don't much care for being picked up, but Glenn knew how to do it.  Isn't this guy adorable?  I mean the alpaca 😊.

Glenn and Carolyn have about 40 alpacas, girls in one pen, boys in another (so fights don't erupt).  They're fun to watch, will move away if you try to touch them, but don't bolt, yet don't mind you being in their pen with them.

All the alpacas are named, but gormed if I know how Glenn or Carolyn can remember each one's name.  I suppose it's like naming your kids ... but 40 of them?  The Waddells show their alpacas, and ribbons adorn their shop's walls.  They're sheared once a year and the fiber is sent off to be processed and made into wonderfully soft sweaters, socks, scarves, stuffed animals (uh-oh, we have a five-year-old granddaughter), and more.  I mean, who can resist?

I took so many pictures and it was really hard to pick which ones to show you ....

So darned cute!

They make a gentle sound, they're cute, gentle,

and have loveable personalities.

There's Tergel in the background!

Awwwwww

They also make me laugh with the funny faces they can make.

Even Glenn had to work to lift this little guy --

he did not want to be held.

Another couple -- on holiday from Great Britain and touring the US in a camper van -- drove in just at dark and parked on the other side of the shop.  We met Suzi and Russell briefly before everyone retired to their homes, and we got together the next morning (Tueday).

Glenn gave us a tour of the barn, with its bags of fiber, the following morning.

Nine-year-old Abbey is the alpaca guardian dog.  She stays in the pens with the moms and babies 24/7.  Now, mind you, she doesn't look like she's guarding anything in this pic, but she is always on alert, and is awake most of the night (or all night?) and can fend off any threat to the alpacas that we might not see.  She was relaxing while her people were in the pens.  She's also a sweet dog.  

Glenn took our pic in the morning.

One of my favorite pics.  I'd just missed, by seconds, the mom and little black "cria" (which is the term for baby alpacas), touching noses.  But I think her baby is the one lying on the ground.  Last evening at dusk, we watched as the little ones got frisky and started running around from one end of the pen to the other, chasing each other, and I'm sure they were having fun.  Sure of it.

As we stood at the fence, this guy (all the babies are boys) came up to Jimmy, sniffed his jeans (top), and commenced biting or chewing on them (bottom)!  Jimmy pulled away before the cria chewed a hole in the knee of his jeans.

Suzi and Russell left and we followed shortly thereafter.  Thanks to Glenn and Carolyn for an excellent visit, both playful and informative.  Jimmy and I fired up Tergel and started toward Silver Springs.  We kinda thought we'd spend a night at old Fort Churchill St Pk and do some exploring. 

But first, we discovered this on our way, Lahontan State Recreational area, aka Lahontan Reservoir.  The sign above says we can camp here, but no thanks.

Oh good grief, this is the boat ramp ... to nowhere.  The reservoir water level is so far down as to be almost disappeared.  Scary.  After taking these pics, we returned to Tergel and continued on.

Where is that water?

Well, I shoulda turned left, but I turned right and we ended up in Fernley.  We needed to stock up on some grub, so I turned left again, looking for a grocery store, but no luck, never saw a grocery.  We did, however, find the Pilot gas station and we filled Tergel up for a glorious $4.94/gal, so much better than the $6.15/gal in California.  At that point, we looked at each other and said, what the heck, let's just go home -- we're only about an hour-and-a-half away.  That was the beauty of this short 8-day trip -- we were always within 200 miles of home!

Except for the glitch in Goumaz c/g, we had a grand time, visiting all these new places.  We'd wanted to ride our bikes, and so we did -- here, there, and everywhere.  We were happy.

We pulled into the driveway after 4pm (Tuesday) and unloaded Tergel.  Soon, very soon, she needs a good cleaning.  The dirt, the dust, the crud we picked up in 8 days is unbelievable.  Bikes and bike rack, too.  Give it all a good squirt of the hose and she'll sparkle.  Then the inside ....

And away we go! Mon, 10/17/22

 

Oh, joy!  The morning sun beamed through our windows!  The night had been mild with a low temp of 53°, so much kinder than those freezing temps of the past few days, more like where we live.  Pyramid Lake's 3800' elevation is only a few hundred feet higher than our home in California.  

We knew what we wanted to do today, and we were excited about it.  Yesterday we scoped out the highway and pretty much knew our E-bikes could handle the long grades we'd encounter.  As soon as breakfast was finished, we pulled the bikes off the rack and pointed 'em uphill from Tergel to the road, and headed north.

This area is home to year 'round recreation activities, biking being one, plus boating, camping, fishing, hiking.  Lots to do.  We hope to return next year and bring our inflatable Sea Eagle kayak, along with our bikes -- maybe next October, it's such a great month to travel.  The paved road ends at Warrior Point, then turns to gravel.  There's very little traffic north of the marina, and we basically had the road to ourselves!

There's a dirt track below the highway, as you see in the pic above.  While we loved biking through the pine trees at Eagle Lake, the feeling of "free as a bird" might describe how we felt as we pedaled along in the vast wide open, high above the lake. 

We stopped a bunch of times to examine the tufa formations,

above and below.

The pic above shows a camper on the skinny point, and a whole lot of little fishing boats in the water.  Jimmy said, "this must be the place!"  We hit a couple of long uphill grades, knowing we'd fly down 'em on our way back.  This ride was so much fun.  See The Needles in the distance?  I took the pic below as we got closer and then zoomed in.  

We could see The Needles, in the northwest end of the lake, only in the distance.  These are in the hot springs area, a sector of continuing geothermal activity which contains more tufa deposits than anywhere else in the world.  There used to be a trail from the dirt road to The Needles, but it's closed to the public these days.  Too many people, too little respect.

At Warrior Point, we rode down from the highway to see what was going on.  The van camper had no trouble parking on the grass.  One person (at right) was already in the water, his companion was readying her kayak to join him.  Two black dots in the lake are kayakers from a van parked out of this picture.  Sue Malone, looks like great kayaking!

This was the end of the paved road.  We didn't want to pedal on dirt/gravel again, so we turned around.  We could have gone on and on if the road was paved, but we had to pack up the RV anyway and leave.

I tried to catch the hawk closer, but the dang thing flew in the other direction.  Lucky shot to include the waning moon in with the hawk.

Ah, cool beans, there's our Tergel down at the red x.  Our ride was nearly finished -- it wasn't a long ride, only like 13 miles, but we really enjoyed it.

Not much to do in putting Tergel to rights, and we were on the road again by 12:30pm.  This time we were headed south on Hwy 447, so we could pay a visit to the Pyramid Lake Museum.  So many interesting rock configurations, like the black jumble above.

This graceful building is the museum.  Admission is free and all are welcome.  We enjoyed walking through the exhibits, watching a short movie on the Paiutes of Pyramid Lake, and looking at the goodies in the gift shop.  I bought a book on The Nevada Desert.  Nice stop.

Fish art.

As we rolled along, we knew that somewhere we'd see/cross the Truckee River, and finally here 'tis.  Appears that it's carved a canyon in the desert.  You just know that water keeps a lot of critters alive.

We weren't traveling far.  Our next overnight will be outside of Fallon, Nevada.  We're on our way now.