Breezy, and delightfully balmy.....

6:32 am - Tuesday - June 7th - Likely, CA -  38° F, humidity 66%, wind - CALM.....mostly sunny skies today with a forecast high of 80° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were finishing the last few days of our time at Tahoe Valley Campground....within days we would pack up and head for a summer working at Yellowstone NP......↴

I got up a little late this morning (Tuesday), and don't have time to write a blog post right now.  Essentially Monday was a lot like our other 3 days off work.....we did put up our sun shade for the first time since arriving here, and there were at least two nice naps taken in one of the anti gravity chairs.  Charles and Phyllis arrived around 1:30 pm for their return engagement, and we spent the evening out on the 'lido deck' talking, and sipping some great wines until almost 8 pm.....

....the weather was breezy, and delightfully balmy all day.

Thank you for stopping by!

Walking and riding......

8:15 am - Monday - June 6th - Likely, CA - 54° F, humidity 57%, wind 2 mph out of th3e southwest......mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 72° F.  On this date in 2021 TLE and I were walking on the beach at Seal Rock, OR......↴

....the view this morning.....↴

Sunday was a mixed bag of weather ranging from chilly and blustery in the morning to still, and warm during the middle, back to chilly and blustery late afternoon to balmy early evening.  TLE and I took another 1.75 mile loop walk out to the end of Likely Place Road, and back averaging 3.5 mph.....TLE declined the post walk 'usie', so it was just moi at the end......

....later in the day I decided to get out the Haibike SDURO and take a long ride out Likely Place to The Indian Road west to the Rails to Trails bike path which parallels US-395.....

Rails to Trails

.....I faced a headwind all the way out The Indian Road, then a side wind all the way to Jess Valley Road, then a tail wind back east on Jess Valley Road.  The views were large, and stunning....

The old Modoc Railroad water tower in Likely, CA

....I covered 10.68 miles in 56+ minutes averaging 11.4 mph......

.....we were going to grill a London Broil steak on the Sea-B-Que for our dinner fare, but the wind came up around 4 pm, so TLE seared it in a cast iron frying pan, then finished it in the Breville.  I neglected to take a picture of the beautiful, medium rare meat, but I did get a picture of the wine bottle.....

Châteauneuf-du-Pape (Château of the Pope) - 2018

.....one of the best Châteauneuf-du-Papes of this vintage we have ever had.  Bought it at COSTCO months ago.

To round out our day we took a post dinner 1.25 mile loop walk around the park, then settled in on the 'lido deck' to read, and listen to music.....

TLE joined me for our evening post walk 'usie'

....the sunset was beautiful, and magical......

.....I turned on the portable gas fireplace as the chill of the evening descended.  Eventually the freshening winds chased us back indoors for the balance of the evening. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Putt, putt.....

 8:03 am - Sunday - June 5th - Likely, CA - 54° F, humidity 73%, wind 7 mph out of the south.....very cloudy today with a forecast high of 68° F, but no rain. On this date in 2019 TLE and I were in Ramona, CA at Rubio's Coastal Grill for Taco Tuesday.....we love their fish tacos.....↴

Saturday began cold and blustery, and ended that way, but in between we got a little sun.  We finally slept in until after 7 am....always our goal on our days off work, and lazed around until around 11 am when we took one of our 'loop' walks around the park, but extended our walk all the way out to the end of Likely Place Road, before turning around.  In all we covered 1.75 miles on our walk....

Another cold, and blustery Likely day....when will summer arrive?

......after our walk I used our electric Toro hand blower to clear 5 days of wind blown detritus off the 'lido deck', and moved the 1UPAmerica bike rack outside the trailer interior to sit upon the tool box mounted on the trailer tongue, as it was taking up too much room inside the trailer.  I did, however, use a Kryptonite cable, and lock to secure it, even though I'm not really concerned about anything being stolen here at LPG&RVR.  Often we leave the Newell unlocked when we take our walks, and even the trailer on occasion, but when you have grown up in a large metropolitan area (SoCal) the urge to lock everything up all the time dies hard.  There is something to be said about being consistent when locking things up as you travel around the country....in the 10 years of our nomadic wanderings we have not had one single thing stolen.  Others we know have had bicycles stolen on a regular basis, and other valuable items, so we know it happens.  Our advantage in this area is we have a large enclosed trailer in which to secure things, and I believe that is why we have never had anything stolen.

Of course, Saturday is 'Putting Contest' day, and I entered once again.  I have never gotten past the first round, but I was determined to get to at least the 2nd round this time, so I headed over to the putting green around 12 pm to spend some serious time working on my putting stroke, and distance control.  I putted each of the 5 holes from several different angles, and was determined to keep it up until I could putt two consecutive balls to the same spot on each hole.  By the time I left at just before 2 pm I was putting the best I have putted since arriving here at LPG&RVR.  In spite of that I still had a lot of self doubt.

Well, fast forward to 4 pm.....as I approached my first putt I felt pretty calm, and relaxed, and just tried to emulate that putting stroke upon which I had worked for two hours, and what do you know?  I put the ball within 2 feet on every single one of the 5 holes, and won my first round.  I managed to win my second round handily by doing the same thing, and in my third round I sank two consecutive 25-30' putts to pull into a dead heat with my opponent as we began putting on the 5th hole.  My putt was about 3 feet wide of the hole, and I missed my second putt, whereas my opponent did not.  So, I played three rounds this time, and the guy I lost to ultimately won the whole thing, so I don't feel too bad about losing to him.  I was one hole away from beating the ultimate winner, and moving on to the 4th round.....yay for me!  By the way, we had over 40 contestants at the putting contest, and an even larger crowd of spectators, which made for a very festive time.

We didn't get home until almost 5:30 pm, and as I noted earlier, the cold, blustery conditions continued into the evening, and all night long. It was never very windy, but you could hear our windchimes rattling all night long, which, by the way, I  love.

Thanks for stopping by!

Order restored......

 7:43 am - Saturday - June 4th - Likely, CA - 51° F, humidity 62%, wind 9 mph out of the south by southwest.....heavy cloud cover today with a chance of rain, and a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2011 TLE and I were riding our bicycles along the Santa Ana River in SoCal.....yes, there is actually a flowing river in Southern California.....↴

.....our view this morning.......↴

It seems, pretty much, that we wake up too early on the first of our four off days, and Friday was no exception....we were both awake around 6 am, and couldn't go back to sleep.  Oh well, there are always naps.

I had a 9:30 am appointment at Kaleidoscope in Alturas to get my ears lowered.  You may recall I just got my hair cut on May 18th when we were down in Carson City.  I did so then, because I couldn't get an appointment for one in Alturas until June 3rd.  I decided to keep the appointment get onto Sheila's monthly calendar, plus I didn't want to cancel on her, and then try and get another one later this month.  At any rate we were in the VW and on our way into Alturas by 8:55 am.  We arrived at Kaleidoscope at 9:15 am where TLE dropped me off to go shopping at Rite Aid while I got my coif attended to by Sheila.  As it turned out her 9 am appointment was a 'NO SHOW', and she was glad I was early. 

Within 20 minutes she was done....only $20 for a haircut....not too bad....I just paid $28 in Carson City a few weeks ago.  TLE was in the checkout line at Rite Aid (I know because I called her), so I decided to walk the two blocks to meet up with her....along the way I snapped a picture of the fuel prices at the local Pitstop.....$7.09 for diesel, and $6.69 for premium unleaded....Let's Go Brandon....lol.  Thank goodness for the local Indian casino where premium unleaded is a 70 cents less per gallon, and diesel is over a buck less per gallon.....

.....TLE was just walking to the car when I arrived at the Rite Aid parking lot.....perfect timing!

From there we drove over to Holiday Market to do our main grocery shopping, then back into town where we stopped off at one of the numerous thrift stores to check it out, then on to our weekly visit to the local Ace Hardware store where we had three additional house keys made.  You will recall I discovered our emergency key was missing from its hiding place under the Norcold refer when I forgot to grab my keys on the way out the door to work, and I had to walk over to the Clubhouse to get TLE's house key.  We used to have a lot of house keys, so I'm puzzled as to where they all went.

We were home by 12:30 pm.  I spent the rest of the afternoon tinkering around in the trailer, and working on a few small projects on which I have been procrastinating.  Oh, by the way, I received and installed our new Sirius/XM receiver for the Newell....the old one was having serious issues, one of which was I kept getting the dreaded "NO SATELLITE SIGNAL" message, which I knew wasn't the case as we have an excellent view of the southern sky here at LPG&RVR.  I was able to decommission the old failing receiver, and commission the new one all online the other day, so all that remained was to install it on the side of the center console, which I finally did Friday.....

 

....up until then it had been sitting on top of the console taking up valuable space.  Now order is restored in my Sirius/XM world.

There was, by the way, a nice, long nap taken by moi mid afternoon in between projects, so I got that extra hour of sleep I lost because I woke up too early....once again, order restored.  As the afternoon wore on the winds freshened a little, and the temperature began to drop in advance of the storm system moving into the valley.  It began to rain shortly after TLE and I went to bed Friday evening, and rained on and off all night.  In drought ridden California you never complain about rain.

Thanks for stopping by!

It was our 'Friday'.....

 6:43 am - Friday - June 3rd - Likely, CA - 52° F, 59% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the south......mostly cloudy today with a forecast high of 74° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were bicycling by Spokane Falls in Spokane, WA......↴

This week Thursday was our 'Friday'.  I've always loved Fridays, even back in my workaday life, because you know on Friday morning you won't be working the next day, so you can sleep in if you wish, and no one will have any claims upon your time.  Frankly, it is the same today, 10 years into retirement....I still love Fridays, even if they occur on a Thursday....lol.

Each workday morning TLE and I have our routines.  I'm usually the first one out the door, with TLE locking the door whilst I take the cover off Club Car #20's seat.  On the way out the door I always grab my keys, but on this morning I didn't.  While I'm removing the seat cover TLE begins her walk to work.  By the time I realized I didn't have my keys she was out of sight, and probably almost to work.  I thought we had a spare key under the Norcold refer, but when I looked it was not there.....doh!  I purposely leave the Norcold bay door unlocked so we can access the house key if we get locked out, and now I'm wondering how long the house key has been missing, and how long I've been leaving the bay door unlocked to no purpose.  Anyway, I had to walk down to the Clubhouse to get TLE's keys, then walk back to unlock the Newell door, and retrieve my keys.  I don't know about you, but when my routine gets interrupted like that I feel like the rest of my day is completely out of sync, and that is how I felt on Thursday, which was my 'Friday'.

Instead of messing around with just putting out 5 carts, I put out `15 (the 5 electric Club Cars, and 10 Yamaha gassers).  Of course, wouldn't you know it, we only rented 9 carts the entire day.  Well, at least I didn't have to worry about putting out more carts as I headed out to drive the golf course to be sure there were no issues.  While I was stopped on hole #15 I spied DeWayne down on the 17th hole mowing the fairway in the big Jacobsen mower......

.....by the time I returned to the Clubhouse I found Dennis filling a 5 gallon bucket with water, and then dumping a bunch of used golf balls into the water to soak.  He's been picking up 'lost' golf balls on his daily walks for months, and what we do is clean them, and then sell them in lots of 20 for $10, and 50 for $25, or 50¢ a ball.  There must have been a couple hundred balls in that 5 gallon bucket!  They are all in pretty good condition, but there are no matched sets.  For customers it is a chance to try out different brands such as Callaway, MaxFli, Nike, Titleist, Top Flite, Bridgestone, Sriston, etc.  At any rate, I spent the next hour cleaning those balls to ready them for resale.

Once that was done it was around 10:30 am and time for me to close the driving range, and pickup a few hundred hundred range balls to be cleaned, and returned to the large trash can in the Clubhouse for future customers to 'rent'.  Usually it takes me close to 90 minutes to finish that task, but on this Thursday it only took me one hour.  Once I had the range cleared of golf balls DeWayne arrived to mow the driving range once again.  I put all the balls into two 5 gallon buckets, added some dish soap, then water, and let them soak for a few hours before I cleaned them.

Following our two lunch breaks I returned to weed whacking up on Hamel Way for about an hour....I hauled away two trailer loads of weed debris, and by the time I was finished I was in need of a shower, but that was still two hours away.  The rest of the afternoon was spent cleaning, and returning the 9 golf carts to the cart shed, and dodging rain drops.  It would rain hard for 5 minutes then stop.  This sequence repeated itself for over an hour.  Naturally, when it was raining I took shelter in the cart shed, so it took me longer than usual to finish cleaning, and putting away the carts.

John and Wendy, the owners of the home on Hamel Way where I was weed whacking, invited TLE and I for drinks after work as a show of appreciation for my labor, so after dropping off the cash tray to Kathy who will man the office for the next four days, we stopped off and spent about 90 minutes getting to know John and Wendy.  They are very sweet people, and have lived in this area for their entire lives.  John was a third generation rancher back in his workaday life, but when it came time for he and Wendy to retire their kids had no interest in continuing the ranching legacy so they sold the ranch.  In the winter they live in Cedarville, and in the summer they live at Likely Place.....it is a nice life they have.  I wish I had taken a picture of the view from their deck....it is gorgeous!

Well, that was our 'Friday', which was really Thursday....thank you for stopping by!

Expectations......

 6:25 am - Thursday - June 2nd - Likely, CA - 47° F, humidity 58%, wind - CALM.....mostly cloudy today with a forecast high of 74° F.  On this date in 2014 I rode the 'Flume Trail' in South Lake Tahoe.....got this amazing shot of Sand Harbor......↴

Having expectations is a tricky thing, because most often you are disappointed when they don't come to pass, or maybe you're not disappointed, because you were hoping for something different than your expectations.  On Wednesday I expected we would not be very busy, and TLE concurred, so I only staged the five Club Car electrics, then went out to act as Marshall for the morning.  I headed first to the tee boxes at #3 to find for the second day in a row NO goose droppings.....can it be that the geese have moved northward toward Canada?  We can only hope....lol......my view at the 3rd tee boxes on Wednesday......

.....I hung out at the 3rd tee boxes until the first golfers began to arrive, then headed over to the 12th hole to rake the sand trap there, then up to the 4th hole to do the same.  By that time the first wave of golfers had passed, so I then headed to 15, then 18 to rake those traps.  As I was finishing with the sand trap on 18 I called TLE to see if she needed more carts.....she replied that she had Dennis stage most of the Yamahas, so I headed back to stage the rest.  In all we rented 15 golf carts Wednesday....way more by a factor of 3 than either of us expected.  To me that was good news, because it meant I would stay busy the rest of the day.

At the request of two of our full time (summer time anyway) tenants up on Hamel Way I took my Husqvarna weed whipper up to their home to level a few hundred square feet of weeds behind the home.  Then I headed out to the golf course to do some trimming around two of the sand traps I had just raked (4, and 12).  By the time I finished with them, plus the bridge over the creek on fairway 4 it was time to relieve TLE for her lunch break.

I usually read my book for most of TLE's lunch break, but there was a steady stream of customers checking into the park, buying baskets of range balls, or rounds of golf, so the hour passed pretty quickly.

After lunch the carts began to return a couple at a time, so I stayed busy cleaning, and returning them to the cart shed.  By the time 5 pm rolled around I was one tired puppy once again.  Charles and Phyllis had left around 11 am for the next destination on their summer tour, so TLE and I retired to the 'lido deck' for adult beverages, and eventually one of the most amazing Pastrami sandwiches I have had the pleasure of eating in recent memory....just what I needed to inject some energy back into my tired body.....

Proof of love.....a toasted Pastrami sandwich for dinner!

......we stayed outside long enough to have to turn on the gas fire place, and then retired to the Newell interior about 7 pm with smiles upon our faces.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Pavilions.....

 6:27 am - Wednesday - June 1st - Likely, CA - 40° F, humidity 57%, wind 3 mph out of the southeast....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 78° F.  On this date in 2020 we arrived at our boondock site on the Teton River replete with a view of the Grand Tetons....will will return there some day......↴

After a very chilly few days Spring agreed to a return engagement, and the temps got up to 68° F....a decided improvement.  On top of that we had an almost windless day, which we seem to be getting more of as time passes.

Somehow over the four days I was off work the carts in the shack got parked kind of askew, so I pulled out 16 of them, and staged them even though we did not have that many golfers signed up Tuesday.  After a little rearranging of the older Club Car gassers everything fit as it should once again.

I then spent about 40 minutes going through all 30 six volt batteries in the Club Car electrics to check the water levels in each cell, and added distilled water as needed.  We haven't had that much warm weather to date so not much water was added, but I can see as the temps get steadily warmer we'll need to check them more frequently.

Next up I needed to mow the grass at both Pavilions as both became empty Tuesday.  We usually have a short window of opportunity to do the mowing as new groups are usually arriving later in the day.....

....of course, no mowing job is complete until you've run the Husqvarna weed whipper around the edges.  From there I moved over to a large grass area near the pull through sites to mow it.....

....the Husqvarna riding lawnmower does a great job, but I need to empty to grass out of the catchers  quite frequently.  The little trailer into which we dump the grass can only hold two loads of grass, so I made a few trips to the cattle pasture to dump the clippings.  The cows love fresh cut grass, and they always come running when they see us coming with a load of clippings.  I managed to mow one of the pull through sites at the request of the customer in that site......

....we don't normally mow sites when they are occupied, but if the customers are staying a week, or two the grass can get long, so we're happy to oblige them.

I did a lot of mowing Tuesday, including the tee boxes on hole #10.  Right now I mow a number of tee boxes on a weekly basis, but I can see that the grass is growing much faster, and we will probably have to increase the frequency.....

....I don't I stopped moving all day except for giving TLE her lunch break, and then mine, otherwise I was doing something all day long, including washing, and putting away both riding lawnmowers, and washing all of the golf carts which were used.  My last cart came in at 4:55 pm, so I was able to get it washed, and put away before picking up TLE and heading for home.  I was one tired puppy!

Thanks for stopping by!