Celebrating early.....

 7:27 am - Tuesday - August 25th - LPG&RVR - 63° F, humidity 26%, cloud cover 54%, wind 15 mph out of the south by southwest.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 88° F.  On this date in 2022 TLE and I were in Tahoe City, CA.....

Anniversary dinner at Christy Hill

....celebrating our 51st wedding anniversary.  We had to celebrate early as the hotel we wanted to stay in had no availability on our actual anniversary.

The fourth day of any 4 day work cycle always seems to pass by quickly, and Monday was no exception.  I haven't cleared the driving range of range balls on a Monday in quite some time, and usually Mondays see the most range balls harvested, but the range has not been very busy since last Thursday.  At any rate, I always allot an hour to clear the range, whether there are a lot of range balls, or just a few like Monday, as it always seems to take an hour to walk the course retrieving the balls.  On this particular day I garnered about 2/3's of a five gallon bucket. It's the last thing I do before TLE's lunch break on Mondays and Thursdays, and that hour always seems to pass by quickly.  

Initially I staged the five Club Car electrics, but we only rented two early on, and by 10:30 am we had still only rented to of them, so I put the last three away and staged three Yamaha gassers in their place.  Why?  Well, we don't rent the electrics after 10 am, because if we do they will not all return before I leave work at 3:30 pm, which would mean I would have to return around 4:30 pm to wash, stow, and plug them in to recharge.  Ultimately we rented 9 golf carts.

I ran two sprinklers down at the 'Night Office' for much of the day, and to keep busy, mowed the small gazebo grass, the large grass area by site #30, and the group fire pit grass between 10 and 11 am when I headed out to clear the driving range.  By 3:30 pm only 3 of the 9 rented carts had returned so Steve will have 6 to wash first thing Tuesday.  

Speaking of Tuesday, we are heading up to Klamath Falls for two days to celebrate our 55th wedding anniversary.  We're celebrating early this year, because our next four day work cycle includes our actual anniversary.  We'll be leaving here in about 3 hours to make the two hour drive north to Klamath Falls, where we'll have a view of a lake, just not Lake Tahoe.

Anyway, I headed for home at 3:30 to begin our four day weekend.  By the time we finish our next 4 day work cycle we'll have around 4 weeks left in our sojourn here at LPG&RVR.  Our last work day will be on my birthday, and within a week after that we'll be heading south to our third winter at The Wilson Wilderness.

Thanks for stopping by!

Biggest day in weeks....

 5:53 am - Monday - August 24th - LPG&RVR - 56° F, humidity 35%, cloud cover 64%, wind 14 mph out of the south....cloudy today with a forecast high of 86° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were near Coupeville, WA....

Chilled Rose

....on Whidbey Island taking an e-bike ride to Greenbank Farms where we had a picnic.

As you know, I had issues with a program on my computer Sunday morning which I use to compose my daily blog, so I didn't publish about Saturday's shenanigans until late Sunday afternoon.  I had time after work to fix the issue that I did not have Sunday morning.  At any rate, all is now well again in the blogosphere world.  I really hate when my stuff doesn't work....lol!

Sunday was a typical laid back Sunday.  By 11 am around 12 RVs had departed.  Golf began slowly, but by the end of the day we had had our biggest cart rental day in quite a while, which saw 17 of our carts rented.  By 3:30 pm only 9 had been returned, so I'll have 8 to wash first thing Monday....a nice problem to have.

In between all of that I set one sprinkler to run most of the day down at the 'Night Office', made several repairs to our drip line system which we use to water trees other than junipers.  As you know the junipers are an invasive species, and are water hungry, so in order to keep our non-juniper trees alive we must irrigate them once a week during the summer.  That took most of the morning.  As I made several runs back to the 'Caddy Shack' for needed replacement parts for the drip lines I continued staging more carts.....two, or three at a time because I was skeptical that we would rent as many as we did.

Soon it was 12 pm, and time to give TLE her 90 minute lunch break during which I answered a couple of phone calls, sold a visor to one of our members, checked in one RV, and sent 3 folks out for 9 holes of golf.

Remember that bush I trimmed a few days ago?  Well, the owner's wife decided she really wanted the bush cut down, so Dennis (owner) cut it down himself (thankfully), but asked me to haul away the cuttings to the burn pile.  That was a big bush, and it took three large trailer loads to get it all removed.  By the time I finished it was almost 3 pm, and I had those 9 carts to wash/stow before quitting time.  I managed to park the final cart in the cart shack at exactly 3:30 pm....perfect!

The day time high was forecast to be 90° F, but due to the cloud cover late in the day it only reached 86° F.  I'm fully acclimated to the higher temps now, and really don't notice the heat unless it gets well over 90° F now, which is great, but now we're heading back into the lower 80's and high 70's between now and early September.  The morning chill is lasting longer, and the sun is not rising until after 6:30 am now.

Thanks for stopping by!

Two rounds and out.....

 6:04 am - Sunday - August 23rd - LPG&RVR - 48° F, humidity 28%, cloud cover 18%, wind 13 mph out of the west.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 90° F.  On this date in 2011 TLE and I were in Dallas, TX....

.....at a college reunion....we were so young then!

I was just beginning to compose my latest missive this morning when I ran into a problem with a program on my computer that allows me to connect to my cell phone and retrieve pictures stopped working.  I didn't have time to fiddle with it so I decided to wait until after work to figure out what was wrong when I had more time.  I was able to fix the issue, so here goes with my post about Saturday.

 As is our daily habit when working we were up at 5:30 am to get ready for our 2nd of 4 workdays this 8 day cycle.  It did not cool off much overnight, at least not to the degree to which we are accustomed.  It didn't get under 70° F until very early morning, so I did not sleep well, and neither did TLE.  Nevertheless, the 'show' must proceed.  I left the Newell about 7:15 am (about 10 minutes early) to turn on the irrigation for the 10 back in sites, and the 10 tent sites.  We haven't done it for a couple of weeks, so it was time.  Once I did that and flipped the sign down at the 'Night Office' I returned to pickup TLE and deliver her to the Clubhouse.

As I had on Friday I staged the 5 Club Car electrics, and then the 6 EZ-GO gassers.  We ended up renting 14 carts in all.  I spent part of the morning moving sprinklers around the 'Night Office' grass, staging more carts, and mowing the parking lot grass, but that was about it.  I gave TLE her lunch break at 12 pm, and then washed 9 carts before heaving for home to change clothes and return for the weekly putting contest at 4 pm.

A number of people who signed up for the contest did not show, so I had several 'byes' and didn't hit my first putt until the quarter finals around 5 pm.  My lack of taking even a single putt while others putted through several rounds turned out to be a disadvantage.  In my first match I was down 2-0 after two holes, and then I began to putt better tying the third hole, and winning the 4th hole, but failed to win the 5th hole so I went from the winners bracket to the losers bracket....

....I putted well in my second round, but lost the 2nd hole to go down 1-0, only to pull even on the next hole at 1-1.  I tied the 4th and 5th hole with my opponent, so we went to a one hole putt off to break the tie....one putt, closest to the pin.  I made a terrible first putt, and lost the playoff hole....doh.  Two rounds and I was out.

TLE made stuffed mushrooms again for dinner....so delicious!  We read until around 9 pm and then it was time to hit the sack to rest up for our third day, which I have just now completed.  Thanks for stopping by!

Hard to believe.....

 5:56 am - Saturday - August 22nd - LPG&RVR - 64° F, humidity 25%, cloud cover 25%, wind 17 mph out of the south by southwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 89° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were near Vancouver, WA.....

....riding our bikes along the Columbia River....the Washington/Oregon drawbridge across the river from Portland.

It was back to work Friday for another four day shift.  The weather forecast was guessing that the temp would get as high as 91° F, but we had very heavy cloud cover all day long, which suppressed the temp enough that I do not believe it reached 90° F.  Every little bit helps.  

Initially I staged the 5 Club Car electrics as there were only 8 people signed up to play golf.  Then the walk in folks began to arrive, and before we knew it we had rented 11 carts.  Not a very busy Friday by LPG&RVR standards.  Once the carts were staged I grabbed the cordless hedge trimmer and headed up the hill to the residential area to trim a large bush between two of the houses.  The last time I had to trim that bush was our first year here, so it is not really a very fast growing bush.  In all I spent about 30 minutes trimming that bush, then raked up the clippings and hauled them to the burn pile.

Around 10:30 am I hopped on the 2 bag Husqvarna and headed down to the #4-10 tent sites to finish mowing them before proceeding to mow tent sites 1-3, and then all 10 of the backup RV sites along the meadow.  That took me to TLE's lunch break time.  I do not believe I answered a single phone call in 90 minutes, and sent out just one couple to golf; that was our 11th cart.  By the time I returned to the 'Cart Return' area after TLE's lunch all 5 of the Club Car electrics had returned so I began washing them, and while I washed them 2 of the 6 EZ-GO carts we rented had also returned.

In between washing carts I ran 4 different sprinklers down at the 'Night Office' grass, and one at the parking lot grass, and made multiple trips down to the 'Night Office' to move those sprinklers  from place to place.  By the time 3:30 pm rolled around I had washed all but 2 of the 11 rented carts, so I'll have the final two to wash first thing Saturday.

The 15 day weather forecast shows no more temps in the 90's, just 80's as far as the eye can see.  There are just 9 days left in August, and then we will have just 4 the weeks of September left in our sixth summer sojourn here at LPG&RVR.  Hard to believe, but there it is.

Thanks for stopping by!

No cigar.....

 5:52 am - Friday - August 21st - LPG&RVR - 58° F, humidity 23%, cloud cover 73%, wind 14 mph out of the south.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 91° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were in Oregon.....

.....checking out Mt. Saint Helens, some Dick's Lava Rock Porter, and that smile!

The fourth and final day of our four day weekend arrived Thursday.  The daily high was forecast to be 94° F, and I'm pretty sure it go there.  Jose came by with Club Car Villager #20 saying it was fixed, so I took it for a drive to verify it.   Regretfully, it was not fixed, and within 10 minutes it quit running again.  Same issue....it would turn over but not fire.  I left it where it died, called Jose to let him know, and headed back to site #55.

A while back our reverse osmosis ultraviolet water filter died, meaning the ultra violet light bulb had burned out.  I ordered a replacement and received it some time ago, and assembled it, but was quite certain that the rubber gasket which seals the unit to keep water from leaking out would not do the job.  I decided to attempt to install it to see if I was right, or wrong.  Unfortunately, I was right, so I had to reinstall the old ultraviolet light filter, and go back to the drawing board.  I found an exact match to the old one on Amazon and ordered it.  It comes sealed, and requires no assembly....just connect the two small hoses, and plug it in.  I should have gone with that one in the first place, but it was twice as much, and the one I chose came with a second UV light bulb making it possible to just replace the bulb if first one goes bad, and they always go bad eventually.  Should have gone with the more expensive OEM one....doh!

By the time I reinstalled the old, defunct ultraviolet filter it was after 11 am, and time to get out to the 'lido deck' to spend some time reading before it got too hot.  By 2 pm it was getting too warm on the 'lido deck' (no breeze again), so I headed inside to finish the book I was reading.

Since I had given Jose back the loaner cart I was using when he brought mine back I needed to walk over to the Clubhouse with TLE when she went to pickup the cash drawer from Kathie to get another loaner.  We did that around 4:50 pm.  As we walked up I noticed Jose and Claude were working on my cart so I went over to see what was what.  They had just replaced the coil, and were reassembling the cart, so I hung around to see if they were successful in fixing my cart.  When Jose went to test the repair it started and ran fine, just like it had previously, however, within minutes it stopped running again....doh.....so no cigar....lol!  About that time TLE was walking over from the Clubhouse with the cash drawer in her hands so we picked up Club Car #11, and headed home, while Jose and Claude went back to the drawing board.  And with that day four of our four day weekend came to an end.

Thanks for stopping by!

It's been a month already?!

 7:49 am - Thursday - August 20th - LPG&RVR - 65° F, humidity 16%, cloud cover 64%, wind 11 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 94° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in Coeur d' Alene, ID.....

The view

Our RV site for a month

....staying for a month at River Walk RV Park right on the Spokane River, which is a drainage for Lake Coeur d' Alene.

We drive into Alturas once every 8 day cycle (4 days of work, 4 day weekend), and Wednesday was that day this cycle.  We like to make the drive early in the morning, usually no later than 9 am, as there are still ample shady parking spots at each store we frequent in which to park our VW while shopping.  It's kind of funny to say, but regardless of the time of year whether here n the summer time, or in northern Arizona in the winter, we are always looking for shade in which to park.  We were in the VW heading north to Alturas by 9 am, arriving at ACE Hardware around 9:20 am.  

You will recall that a month (I originally thought is was like 2 weeks ago, but I looked it up on my blog and found it was July 18th!) ago we had the issue with our Splendide washer/dryer combo machine where the drum would not drain.  After working backwards in our trouble shooting of the issue from the most complicated to the most simple solution we discovered the issue was a Band-Aid clogging the drain hose as it entered the gray tank....

.....when we removed the fitting to unclog it we discovered it was rotting away, but since we did not have the necessary replacement parts we cleaned them as best we could and reinstalled them.  Before heading into town I removed the old fittings to be sure we got the CORRECT parts we needed.....

.....it has worked fine since then, but I wanted to replace it with new parts as the old parts had a very limited lifespan left, so after some help by the ACE Hardware staff member we bought the replacement parts....

.....a brass 3/4" to 1/2" diameter male to female reducer and a 1/2"diameter male to barbed hose fitting.  This new fitting will probably last longer than I have to live.  The barbed section of the new fitting is over 2" long, so that slight split you see in the drain hose will not be an issue.

Next we shopped at Grocery Outlet, then finished at Holiday Market before heading for home where we arrived without incident around 11 am.  After helping TLE unload our purchases form the Beetle I set about installing the new drain parts, which took about 10 minutes, as it should have.

The forecast high for Wednesday was 96° F, so I knew I would not have long on the 'lido deck' this day.  I got my book, and headed out to the 'lido deck' to read, and managed to endure the heat until 2 pm before heading back indoors.  Had there been any kind of a breeze it probably would have remained pleasant for another hour, or two.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mechanical issues......

 7:38 am - Wednesday - August 19th - LPG&RVR - 61° F, humidity 29%, cloud cover 11%, wind 10 mph out of the west by northwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 96° F.  On  this date in 2018 TLE and I were near Bar Harbor, ME....

At the start....Cadillac South Ridge Trail

Almost there

The reward

....hiking to the top of Cadillac Mountain.  We hiked both the north and south trails that summer.

We slept in until after 8 am Tuesday, and that is easy to do when it is so quiet.  Sunday my Club Car Villager #20 began to give me problems.  It ran fine driving over to the Clubhouse at 7:30 am, but when I went to drive it about 30 minutes later it would turn over, but not start.  I called Bob, our former mechanic who still lives here, and he came down the hill to help me diagnose the issue.  He got it running again for me, and I drove it around the park taking care of a few errands.  It ran normally the entire time.  Then I parked it again at the Clubhouse, and 5 minutes later it would not start again....same issue.

Later in the day I noticed there was no fuel in either of the fuel filters so I called Bob again, to tell him what I discovered and he suggested the fuel line might be clogged at the gas tank, so I blew compressed air backwards through the line, but it would still not start, so he suggested I replaced the fuel pump, which is easy to do....maybe a 20 minute job.  I did that and it began to run again, and ran well.  I headed for home at 3:30 pm thinking I had fixed the issue, and when I returned to pickup TLE at 5 pm it was still running fine, but as we were driving home it stopped running again....doh!  I managed to get it running and drove home and parked it.

Monday morning I went out to see if would start and it didn't.  First thing Tuesday morning I decided to walk over to the Clubhouse and get another Club Car and the tow bar to tow my cart over to the 'Caddy Shack' so Jose could work on it when he has time.  I'm now driving Club Car #1, a two seater, until Jose can get it running again.  

Upon my return to the Newell I retrieved my book and headed out to the 'lido deck' to read, and listen to music, and that is what I did until almost 4 pm when the heat of the day, and lack of a breeze drove me inside where our AC was keeping the interior at a comfortable 76° F.  

Claude's freezer stopped working in the past couple of days so he had some defrosted Top Sirloin steaks he gifted us to grill that evening.  Around 5:30 pm I lit the Sea-B-Que and grilled them to a perfect medium rare.....

....those Top Sirloins were so tender! TLE added a side salad, and some type of macaroni salad, both of which were delicious.  Thank you Claude for the unexpected steak dinner!

Thanks for stopping by!

Not the norm.....

 8:24 am - Tuesday - August 18th - LPG&RVR - 67° F, humidity 20%, cloud cover 25%, wind 9 mph out of the north by northwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 91° F.  On this date in 2014 TLE and I were in Walker, CA.....

.....having lunch at Walker Burger....best burger in the Eastern Sierra, and about 90 minutes later we were standing at the top of Conway Summit....

....enjoying the view of Mono Lake, and Lee Vining, CA.  We were on our way to Mammoth Mountain to mountain bike with friends for a few days.

We were up around 7 am Monday morning, which is kind of early for us on the first day of our four day weekend, but I had promised Claude I would drive into Alturas later in the morning to pick him up at the local auto body shop where he going to have some work done on his Chevy pickup.  I was on the road just before 9 am, and picking him up at 9:20 am.  We were back at LPG&RVR by 9:45 am....that was a quick turn around.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing on the 'lido deck', and I mean the rest of the day.  I didn't renter the Newell until after 5 pm.  Even though the high temp of the day was 89° F there was a steady, cool breeze blowing all afternoon making it possible to remain outdoors.  I read, napped, read, and napped some more.  

TLE made stuffed mushrooms for dinner accompanied by a nice side salad.  I'm here to tell you that was a restaurant quality dish.  I wish I had taken pictures, but alas I did not.  Not long after we finished dinner I noticed we were getting an interesting sunset....

Looking northwest

Looking more southwest

Looking west

Looking north

.....it's rare that we get a sunset which stretches across the entire sky.

The park continues to be very unbusy.  I do not remember an August like this the previous four summers.  Since the 4th of July weekend this place has been mostly a ghost town.  We'll get busy for a day, or two, but then it gets quiet again.  Not sure if it is the price of gasoline, or all the fires, or a combination thereof, but what we are experiencing right now is not the norm for this time of year.  Time to wrap this up, and head outdoors for another day on the 'lido deck'.

Thanks for stopping by!

Have I told you I love Sundays?

 8:14 am - Monday - August 17th - LPG&RVR - 64° F, humidity 17%, cloud cover 59%, wind 12 mph out of the west.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 89° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were in Oregon....

....visiting the world famous Multnomah Falls.....one of our bucket list items.

I love Sundays!  The rush of Saturday has come and gone, and now folks begin to pack up their stuff and return to their workaday lives.  There were very few golfers Sunday; I think we rented 8, or 9 golf carts, and all but one of them had returned by 3:30 pm.  I did mow the 'Night Office' grass around 11 am, but that was the extent of any hard work done.  

During TLE's lunch break I was able to watch a good portion of the final round of the FedEx/St. Jude Championship in which Scottie Scheffler returned to his dominant form winning by 8 strokes.  He began the fourth round just 2 strokes ahead of the second place players, but while they self destructed, he went four under par winning handily in almost Tigeresque fashion.

When I returned to the 'Cart Return' area after lunch 8 of the 9 carts rented Sunday were ready for their daily spa treatment.  By 3:30 pm I had put away the final cart, and headed for home to begin our four day weekend.  I ran the AC for short while to cool down the Newell interior while I took a shower.  I returned to the Clubhouse to pickup TLE so she could join me for our four day weekend.  Claude came over around 5:30 pm with a smoked Tri Tip steak, which we ate in our new dining canopy.  We ate and talked until close to 7 pm before bidding adieu to Claude, and heading indoors for the balance of the evening; a very nice way to end a work week.

Thanks for stopping by!

A little behind....

 7:39 am - Monday - August 17th - LPG&RVR - 61° F, humidity 19%, cloud cover 59%, wind 12 mph out of the west by southwest....cloudy today with a forecast high of 89° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I took a 100 mile round trip drive out to the Schoodic Peninsula.....

....which is at the northern most part of Acadia National Park.  We even found out there was good Mexican to be had in this lonely northern Maine outpost in Milbridge, ME.

I overslept Sunday morning, the final day of our four day work week, so I didn't have time to write and post for Saturday, so here goes.  Saturday was another delightful weather day with the temp in the mid 80's, and a light breeze all day long.  The two week heatwave we endured seems a distant memory now.  We actually put out 15 golf carts Saturday, so  was kept busy.  When I wasn't tending to golf carts I was watering the 'Night Office' grass, and spot watering around the parking lot grass, which does have sprinklers, but there are always a few dry spots, especially when it gets into the 90's.  It was a rather routine day with no surprises.

I had ordered some side view, and rear view mirrors for Club Car Village #20 on Amazon a while back, and they arrived via UPS late morning, so I spent time installing them....

.....the side view mirrors cost $11 each, and the rearview mirror was $15.  Very easy to install, and now I can see what's going on behind me....lol!

By 3:30 pm only 6 of the 15 carts had been returned, so I would have 9 to wash first thing Sunday.  I headed for home to change clothes, and return at 4 pm for the weekly putting contest.  I hadn't made a single putt in two weeks, so I had no idea how I would do.  As it turned out I did pretty well making it through 7 rounds before making a mistake on one hole which cost me the the match....

....so my streak of not making it to the final has been extended for another week.  The the above photo you can see Steve Whalen (lower right) who works opposite me taking care of the carts, and mowing.  He is a good putter, and made it through 8 rounds before being eliminated.  The other folks are Joel and Donna....super nice people!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cool temps speed the passage of time....

 5:49 am - Saturday - August 15th - LPG&RVR - 50° F, humidity 32%, cloud cover 11%, wind 12 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 85° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were near Coupeville, WA (Whidbey Island)....

....courtesy parked on the property of good friends Bob and Karen Fenstermacher (means window maker in German) with this view....

When the weather cools down it seems that time moves faster, at least on those days we work, and that was the case Friday.  Things are still slow here at LPG&RVR, but we did rent 10 golf carts.  The park began to fill later in the morning, and by the time I headed for home at 3:30 pm 10 of the 15 pull sites with grass were full, so this weekend promises to be a little busier than the past few weekends.

Even with a mostly empty park the work continues.  Grass must be watered, mowed and trimmed. Weeds must be eradicated.  They never stop growing, and to keep the flora under control weekly intervention is necessary, so I spent about an hour weeding around the large gazebo sites, then mowed the employee sites, followed by a trip out to the golf course to mow around those tee boxes for which I am responsible.....3, 10, 16, & 18.  I was back by 11 am, so I appropriated one of the string trimmers and headed down to the 'Night Office' lawn to trim around the hose bibs, and trees, then down to the playground to trim around the swing set, and 'Jungle Gym'.  By the time I finished it was time for TLE's lunch break.

We've been having an issue with Verizon the past couple of weeks for cell phone broadband and for our Clubhouse Verizon internet and land line phones, so no phone calls were received.  Thankfully, we also have Starlink in the Clubhouse, so we do have internet for office functions.  The time passed quickly, and at 1:30 I exited into balmy breezes, not a blast furnace like last week; what a welcome change!

By 1:30 pm the carts we had rented had begun to return, and by 3:30 pm all but one of the 10 had returned.  I headed for home where there was NO air conditioning running for a change.  All the windows were open, and it was quite comfortable inside with the outside temperature barely at 83° F.  I retrieved TLE from the Clubhouse at 5:05 pm after flipping the sign down at the 'Night Office' office, and posting the availability.  The day had passed quickly, and suddenly TLE and I were celebrating 'hump night'; just two days left in our four day work week.

Thanks for stopping by!

Back to regularly scheduled programming.....

 5:49 am - Friday - August 14th - LPG&RVR - 50° F, humidity 41%, cloud cover 8%, wind 13 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 84° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were in Yellowstone National Park.....

.....hiking the Cascade Lake Trail.

And back to work we go for another four day stretch.  Thankfully, the temperature dropped overnight from 90° F Wednesday, to a more civilized 85° F Thursday.  For the first time in a while I wore a sweatshirt to work, and wore it for at least an hour before it warmed up enough to remove it.  Wednesday had been a slow day, so there were no leftover carts to wash.  I staged 11 carts initially, and we rented 9; another slow day.

The sun is not rising now until 6:10 am, and it is just beginning to climb above the Warner Mountains to the east as I write.  Within a couple of days the sun will be setting before 8 pm, so the days are getting shorter and shorter.

Thursday I needed to clear the range balls off the driving range for mowing, but before I did that I did some mowing with the Husqvarna 2 bag mower.  In all I mowed both group gazebos, the parking lot grass, a few of the pull throughs, the large grass area next to site #30, and the group firepit grass.  By the time I finished, and cleared the grass off the mower deck of the Husqvarna it was 11 am, and time to clear the driving range before TLE's lunch break.  I all I harvested just 2/3's of a 5 gallon bucket.

Lunch passed quickly, and suddenly it was 1:30 pm.  Instead of the usual blast furnace I had faced the last four day work week I was greeted with balmy winds out of the southwest; what a nice change!  I set some sprinklers to run while I washed the returning carts.  By 3:30 pm only 5 of the 9 carts had returned, but I headed home anyway for my usual cool shower, and nap before returning to the Clubhouse to give TLE a ride home.  Thursday was a nice first day back to work.

As I write the Salon electric heater is running as it was only 55° F inside the Newell this morning.  That's the first time we've run the heater in a couple of weeks. 

Thanks for stopping by!

And on the fourth day you shall shop....

 5:49 am - Thursday - August 14th - LPG&RVR - 53° F, humidity 30%, cloud cover 38%, wind 14 mph out of the southwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 85° F. On this date in 2012 TLE and I were on the Oregon Coast.....

....traveling south on US-1....Nehalem Bay is in the lower left corner, and the long beach is Manzanita Beach.  One of the most amazing views along the southern Oregon Coast.

We often make our shopping run on the first, or second day of our four day weekend, but on this occasion it was the 4th day of the four day weekend due to my previously scheduled haircut appointment at Kaleidescope.  The appointment was for 9:30 am, so we were in the car by 9:10 am to make the 20 minute drive into Alturas.  We arrived at 9:29 am....perfect!  Within 15 minutes Sheila had restored order to my coif, and we were on our way to ACE Hardware for our first shopping stop of the day.

We like to go to ACE Hardware on Wednesday's because they have free popcorn.  It's a great idea for them.  You get a bag of popcorn then walk up and down the aisles eating the popcorn looking for whatever you are wanting to purchase that day.  Since you're walking slowly so you can eat the popcorn the odds are that you will see something else you want to buy, that you did not have on your list.  Get people in the store, then slow them down by giving them something to eat, and enjoy.  You end up with more sales; at least that is my unproven opinion....lol.  As anecdotal proof I had intended to purchase one item, and one item only, but as I was strolling around eating my popcorn after finding what I wanted I stumbled upon something else I had forgotten I needed; so there you go!  

After ACE Hardware we stopped at Modoc Family Pharmacy (used to be Rite Aide) to see what was what there, and we found out that Coffee Adventure (Canby, CA) is expanding to Alturas, and will have a booth inside the pharmacy building, so we won't have to drive all the way to Canby to get our Coffee Adventure fix in the near future.

We made our usual stops at Dollar General, Grocery Outlet, and Holiday Market before beginning the return trip to LPG&RVR.  On our way out of town we decided to stop at a new local eatery (Double A Cafe), which is next to the UPS/FedEx store, to check them out.  It is an upscale coffee house serving all the usual coffees (hot, iced, blended, and otherwise) plus a great selection of Paninis....

....I ordered my usual Mocha Frappuccino, and TLE an iced Americano.  For our lunch we decided to split a jalapeno, bacon, cheese Panini; basically a deconstructed Jalapeno Popper.  We added a bag of salt/vinegar kettle chips for good measure.  The place has that funky vibe we love, and they even have alfresco dining options if you are so inclined; we were not so inclined on this 90° degree day.  What a pleasant surprise Double A Cafe is!

We were home around 12 pm, emptying the day's purchases from the rear of the Beetle, and carrying them into the Newell interior to restock our pantry and refrigerators.  It wasn't long until I was in my anti gravity chair for the next few hours to read my book, and enjoy the occasional nap.  I managed to make it to 4 pm before the heat of the day changed my mind.  And with that day four of our four day weekend came to and end.  We're both looking forward to working the next four days in much cooler temperatures.

Thanks for stopping by!