Deadwood......

 8:02 am - Friday - January 3rd - TWW - 39° F, humidity 34%, wind 6 mph out of the east by southeast.....very cloudy today with a forecast high of 67° F.  On this date in 2016 TLE and I arrived at one of our favorite boondock sites for the first time....Rockhouse Road near Borrego Springs, CA with good friends Mike, Lizzie, Steven and Linda.....

....we were all lined up facing west.  Our last time there was 2021....miss it a lot!

Every day TLE and I pick a task to accomplish, and we pretty much are successful in completing each task that day.  On Thursday was wanted to trim some more dead wood off the large dead tree next to the EcoWorthy Dual Axis Solar Tracker, which was casting a shadow on the solar panels mid afternoon.  There was also a large stack of dead wood from that same tree which needed to be cut into smaller pieces, and moved away from what will be a burn pile in the near future.  We haven't used either of the chainsaws for over a week, but the 20" one started after 4 pulls.  I'm going to need to sharpen that chain again, but considering we were cutting through thick, dead, hardwood it did pretty well.  We began around 10 am, and by 12 pm we had accomplished a lot.....

Before.....

....after

.....we made a major dent in the dead wood pile, and then moved the rest to an area about 30' away from the future burn pile....

....there is enough wood there to provide fuel for the wood stove in the house, and many sunset fires for a month, or two, maybe more, and that is just a fraction of the dead wood around the property.....

....the area to the right of the solar array is now clear, and what is left will be burned eventually.  We ended up cutting more branches off some of the live trees around the front of the house, and by 1:30 pm we were done with cutting wood for the day.

The solar array tilted around 8:16 am and began tracking the sun for the rest of the day.  We only ran the Predator 5000 generator for about 90 minutes....half the time we normally run it in the morning.  By 1 pm every battery bank on the property was back to 100%, including the two 8d house batteries for the Newell.

The NCAA college football playoff game, which was postponed from Wednesday to Thursday (Sugar Bowl) began at 2 pm, and TLE and I were in our recliners just before that to watch the #2 Georgia Bulldogs play the #5 Notre Dame Irish.  With a little more than a minute remaining in the first half the game was tied 3-3.....looks like a baseball score....lol.  Then Notre Dame kicked a field goal to go up 6-3.  Georgia then fumbled the ball on their 10 yard line, and on the very next play Notre Dame threw for a touchdown to make it 13-3.  On the ensuing kickoff at the beginning the 3rd quarter Notre Dames kick returner returned the kickoff for another touchdown to raise the score to 20-3.....17 point scored in 54 seconds.  Georgia did manage to score a touchdown later in the 3rd quarter to make it 20-10, and that is how the game ended.  Another upset of a favored team.  And just like that the #1 and #2 teams in the nation are now out of the playoffs.

We decided another sunset fire was in order, so we convened to the 'sunset fire deck' around 5 pm.  I moved our small Sparkletts umbrella over to the fire pit area to shield our eyes from the glare of the setting sun....why didn't I do that sooner?....

At one time I counted 5 'contrails' headed for the setting sun

We're down to a crescent moon, and will have a new moon soon

.....we were back in doors for the evening by 6 pm where we watched another two episodes of 'Silent Witness' on BritBox....what a great series!  The weather outlook through the 14th shows a cooling trend.....

.....and it looks like the 67° F high for today (Friday) will be the last temp in the 60's for a couple of weeks.  Look at all those lows in the 20's!

Thanks for stopping by!