Traveling Again

We are all packed and ready to leave in the morning. We will start with a safari in the south part of the African Continent. For more information about what we will see check here. As Internet access becomes available we hope to up date this blog.

Homemade Ice Creame

Today we left mom at the Summer Refreshment table where they were going to enjoy house made ice cream. Earlier we had our quarterly meeting with staff.

At the meeting we discussed how mom was sleeping. A few weeks ago we talked with a staff member who was normally with mom at night and indicated that mom was not sleeping well at night. The day nurse Joyce, thought that mom was nodding off too often during the day. The day staff person who now works with mom thought she was doing okay. Mom has a new CNN named Marci. We noted we never have a problem keeping her engaged when we visit with her. Her weight is very stable. She eats most of her food. Carol also checked with the staff about mom's clothes. It turns out that they don't check names on socks as closely as other clothes. This means that mom may have un-named socks or socks with other residents name.

Today we printed the page from our last blog and part of the notes for Todd and Sarah's notes for their trip. Mom did fairly well in keeping it all straight. We left these with mom so she could re-read them.

On our way home we stopped at our favorite fruit farmer. We tasted several peaches, plums, asian pears. We filled a box for about $5.00. These are all ripe and ready to eat.

Huntington Lake

It is Friday already and the week is going fast. We are up at our condo by Huntington Lake. Joining us here are the Lansidels, Ken and Shirley with their children Sandy and Chris with their children Jordan and Jana. Many of our friends have also stopped by to see all of us. David and Hildy who also have a condo here have joined us for meals down at the fire pit.
Yesterday morning early Tiffany and I took the canoe around part of the lake, good exercise. Later in the day we all went Geocaching. We found three caches and hope to place one later this afternoon.
Another favorite activity is swimming. Until now this has been in the pool. This afternoon we are going to the beach we have visited over the last 30 years. I think some are going swimming in the lake there for old time sake or the youngens to experience what their grandparents and parents did over the years.

On Tuesday we celebrated Tiffany’s birthday. The meal she requested was pineapple burgers, pasta salad with chocolate chip cookies and ice cream for dessert. We tried to make homemade ice cream but it would not get hard in our hand crank ice cream makers.

We have had pleasant weather with highs close to 80. The skies have been cloudless and we have not noticed any smoke. The news says the wind in blowing the smoke north.

You can see more pictures from the week at my Flickr Site

Visit with mom 7-28-08

We had a good visit with mom yesterday. We went in the morning so it was cool enough to sit outside. We enjoyed the swing and the cool breeze blowing. We reviewed both the Exponent and the Fresno Bee with her. The big news items here are the forest fires by Yosemite.

We picked up a couple of cards for the birthday girls and had mom sign them.

Friday July 18, 2008

This morning we visited with mom for awhile before her lunch. Our visit was delayed this week because I have been down with the flu or food poisoning. It really wiped me out so I was slept for about three days. Also we did not want to visit mom if I had something contagious.

We found her in the hall way and took her to the table at the South end of the hall to show her some pictures we had from Levi's first birthday.

Mom was asking about all for her ggchildren. She had a little difficulty figuring our exactly how old Hunter and Austin are and how far they were in school. Amanda, if you will email me a few pictures from your families life, we will include these in the picture shows.

On the way to mom's we stopped at several farm stands to pick up watermelon, peaches, pluots and strawberries. We were going to have a small fresh fruit picnic in the gazebo. Unfortunately today was the day they mowed the lawn and were blowing all the clipping and dust into the air so we could not go out there.

We have found a very interesting farm stand on LacJac and Manning. The farmer Dr. Art Lange has over 200 varieties of stone fruit. He has timed them to be ripe from the first of May to the end of September.

At another farm stand they have strawberrys, squash and onions. They have new variety of strawberry that takes the heat of the valley so will have strawberries most of the year.

The watermelon farm has the sweetest, ripest and freshest watermelon around. The Willems who own the farm became notorious when the local paper did an article about the person who identified the fruit that was sweet and ready to eat. Clarence was a 84 year old black man who could pick them. He would just cut them loose and roll them in the furrow and younger men would pick them up. We have never had a bad watermelon from there.

Today we are supposed to reach a 100 again. It has been in the mid 90 for a few days and that is such a nice relief than the 112 we had last week.

July 4th Visit, 2008

We thought that we would give mom a July 4th Visit. We found her in good spirits. Her hair was still very tight and nice. Last time we were there we did not yet have our pictures from our trip to Loanna and Jon's. We took a group of pictures from Saturday, Sunday and Monday when we were with Loanna and Jon's extended families.

She was glad to see that everyone was having a good time. Although we told her several times, she could not understand why Doug and Joanie were not there.

Today was only 90, quite cool for July 4. This allowed us to sit in the gazebo. In addition to being temperate there was a nice breeze. This made it very pleasent out there.

For lunch today they had what they called an "Old fashioned picnic" Mom could not remember what they had but that it was good. Carol checked and was told that they had hamburgers, hot dogs, macaroni salad, apple pie, homemade ice cream, and watermelon.

On our way home, we stopped at a small fruit stand on LacJac and picked some peaches and plums. This farmer grows over 70 different stone fruit. Further down we stopped at another fruit stand and bought some strawberries. They have a new variety that will produce the whole summer. The watermelon farm on McCall was sold out until Tuesday. We were very disappointed because theirs are always very sweet and juicy. The watermelons we have had, have been very disappointing. So we stopped at Simonians and bought a watermelon grown in Bakersfield. and some corn.

Now we are getting ready to start the BBQ. We will have skewers with scallops, onions and sweet peppers of several colors.

From Crescent City home

We awoke very early and decided we might as well start driving. By 6 am we were out of there and looking for a place for good coffee. By 7 we were on the Scenic Hwy. to Prairie Creek Redwoods. This time we saw a large group of elk in the fields close to houses, rather than in the Elk Viewing park, and one lone one without antlers close to the park entrance. They were busy munching their breakfast and let us take lots of pictures.

Eight thirty brought us to the Ferndale area. It was very quiet, basically asleep yet, so we drove out the Petrolia road looking for a good view of the ocean. We eventually found our favorite view from a driveway on the way to Centerville Beach. We also found an abandoned house with a great view of the ocean and fields from the yard.

Back in Ferndale we found a coffee place with an inexperienced barista and dry scones. We walked the streets till things opened at 10 so we could go into the old Mercantile that we had enjoyed in years past. They now market a few things with their label which make nice gifts. In the cute shop "Times Remembered", they had great old styled wooden toys, but shockingly marked 'Made in China' on the bottom. So disappointing. Not all the stores were open and there definitely were not a lot of tourists. The old hardware store from the 80's is not a Cultural Museum, and the bakery is gone.

After a few more loops around the area and interesting photos we headed for home. The GPS says 429 miles so we should be able to get home tonight. The rest of the trip was basically uneventful. The most interesting things to note was the change in temperature from 60's and 70's on the coast and Ferndale to 102 deg. by Cloverdale; and the changes in price of fuel from $4.79 in Fortuna, and $4.51 to $4.69 in other areas. What a difference from Oregon's $4.19 and they pump the gas.

When the S.F. traffic got too heavy on the 580 we decided to stop for dinner and let the traffic let up a bit. It worked and we pulled up at our house just at 10:00. That made 500 miles on our last tank of gas and an average of 50 mpg. Not a bad last day.

Our total trip was 2985 miles with about $35 worth of gas a day, and averaging 46mpg. This is city driving and mountain driving.