On June 6, 2020 we had an awesome adventure ride with the California Quad and SideXSide Meetup Group out of the Sacramento Area. We did a loop of approximately 93 miles into the Lassen National Forest starting from Butte Meadows. We visited some very cool geological sites along the way ! Spoiler alert, and I get hit in the face with freezing hail as our windshield froze over! Yeah….roll-up windows and windshield wipers would have been nice!
Category: Random Shenanigans
Momma Nature: Better than Netflix
So, early this morning I was awakened by a series of flashes coming through my window. Flash, flash flash flash flash. In most parts of the US, lighting storms are common and happen frequently from spring to fall. However, in the Sacramento Valley of California, lightning storms like this are an oddity. We will get the occasional thunder storms in the spring that will produce a couple of flashes and a few rumbles, but we hardly EVER get an event like this! As a matter of fact, we don’t get any rain in the Valley for 6 months! So, in my jammies, I scramble for my GoPro and head for the back porch to binge watch this epic event. The show went on for about two hours. Here are some of the highlights!
A Mask Making Factory, AKA my Sister’s house!
When my fashion designer sister got the call to make masks, she immediately went to work to produce thousands! She is currently shipping hundreds of masks to the Navajo Nation. Here is her story (filmed me)
Riding the Pacific Crest Trail on Horseback with a Wild Donkey
We adopted our little Donkey Mija as a 2 year from the Bureau of Land Management back in 2001. Before I adopted her, I called up BLM and asked them what it took to train a donkey and if they were anything like the wild horses. (I have one of those too) The ranger at BLM told me to get a donkey, take it home, and within a week of us being around her, she’ll be completely trained. I’m IN! So, we hitched the trailer and headed for the fairgrounds in Vallejo where they were holding the wild horse and burro adoptions. There were so many cute long ears, it was hard to choose. We eventually picked out a little 2-year-old female who seemed pretty docile. When it came time to load her up and take her home, it took about 6 rough cowboys to get that wild donkey into my trailer. She was having none of it. She sat down, pulled back, and fought like crazy. When they eventually got her loaded by pure force, I thought I’d been dupped by the BLM ranger I spoke to on the phone. Oh well, this was going to be an adventure in donkey training.
When we got home, I opened the trailer door, and Mija wouldn’t come out. We left the door open at the corral gate, and after about an hour, she finally decided to meander out. It took only a couple of days for Mija to trust us. We only had her for a few months when we took her on her first high country trip on the PCT near Carson pass. (10K feet). This is a pretty rough and shakey video as this was 2003 and its 8mm. Imagin Alex (my husband) riding a horse carrying a pretty good-sized video camera. This section of trail is steep with loose shale that was pretty scary at times and the wind wanted to blow us off of the ridge. Mija did great. These days, at 20 years old, Mija is quite a character and a huge part of the family. She chases my car down the driveway, blocks my car in the garage when she hears the door go up, wants to lay her head on my shoulder, and lives for treats and ear rubs.
When Your Horses get old, you do This!
Bald Eagle = Great Year
Every year a group of friends gather their fuzzy and fat horses for a ride on New Years Day in the Spenceville Wildlife area. And we see a bald eagle! Does that mean good luck for 2019?? I sure hope so! Take a ride with us!
Re-Learning to Draw- Timelapse
So, in the video below is a timelapse video of me drawing Legendary Actor, James Dean and the story of my re-learning something with something special thrown in at the end.
We Met our Strange and COOL Neighbors today!
We live right next to Beale Air Force Base! Our property is just outside the back gate! Living next to an Air Force base can be weird at times. We hear all types of strange announcements over the loud speaker, weird sirens, and see odd planes coming and going. There is also a gigantic over-the-horizon radar structure that we immediately get asked about by friends who come over for the first time. The radar was built in the Cold War to give early warning of a nuclear attack. I guess that’s a good thing? When we first moved in 18 years ago, we couldn’t use our VCR or analog answer machine without hearing pops and static over our movies and messages because of this radar!! Thank goodness we are all digital now! However, it still interferes with some of my recording equipment and camera microphone on certain days.
The military has its secret,s and when they are your immediate neighbor, it spurs your imagination and sometimes paranoia. I can’t just go walking up to their door and say “howdy neighbor what’s going on here” without a large – fully automatic rifle pointed at me! I better have good reason to be there!
A few years back, there were 5 large planes from the base that circled our neighborhood at about 2000 feet for several hours every night! These planes carried a crew of six and were outfitted with equipment to listen in on phone conversations. We were told they were just training and not really listening to us.. hmmm…….
Our neighbor also has the U2 Spy plane that takes off like a rocket daily, flying to foreign lands to see what’s going on. The U2 can go check out the happenings in the middle east and be home by dinner! When it takes off, we can hear it climbing to its 70 thousand foot cruising altitude for a good 15 minutes! The pilot has to wear a space suit! Oh and our neighbors have a really REALLY cool drone called the Global Hawk!
Today our mysterious neighbors invited the public to enter this secret-mysterious land and treated us to an airshow free of charge!
With the Sutter Buttes as a backdrop, the show was pretty spectacular! If you are into airplanes, you are gonna LOVE this video!
My Big FAT Laundry Room Makeover!
We’ve lived in our house for 18 years and the laundry room was NEVER finished! It was one of those projects that I wasn’t motivated to get done. I was busy working, having fun on the weekends and that laundry room was just a place to wash clothes. BORING! Well, I GOT MOTIVATED and after I tackled a bathroom and a toilet closet, it was time for the next big fat makeover! The Laundry Room! Now I can’t wait to do laundry! Well maybe that is a big fat lie… but the laundry room turned out GREAT!
Check it out and please let me know what you think!
A Train, Cool Cars and a Spooky Bowling Alley!
On February 5, 1994, I married my best friend and for our honeymoon we took Amtrak to Truckee and rented a house in North Lake Tahoe for a few days of skiing. It was a big snow year in 1994. We decided that after 24 years, it was time to take that trip again.
This time we took some very good friends and rode all the way to Reno. If you’ve never done this trip you are missing out! The Sacramento Railroad Museum has volunteers that ride the train from Sacramento to Reno and give commentary on all of the places we traveling through as well as very interesting railroad history over the Sierra.
This year the snow levels are pretty low so we didn’t get the epic white that we saw in 1994. But the ride was still a lot of fun, and the lunch and Bloody Marys were delicious!
Also, when in Reno, stop in and see the Car museum and stumble upon the biggest bowling alley I’ve ever seen and we were the only ones there!
I also came back 60.00 richer from playing a few slot machines! 🙂
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