Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Pic-of-the-Month for June 2019

Hola Amigos,

You all get one last news flash while we're still in Baja!  We are heading out this Saturday, the 22nd, and plan to be in Oregon by June 28th.  AND....we plan on spending July through September there (or in the Pacific Northwest) this summer!  Yea!  So, if you want to see us, be sure to drop us a line and we'll try our hardest to fit you into our schedule.  



This pair was just next to our driveway, along with two other pairs of Mama cows with their new calves; they were all having their morning breakfast!  They sure are cute now, and we keep seeing more new little ones!  This is also why we have a cattle guard and fences around our property!!  Here are the first two pairs we saw on our way home.  Can you see our house just beyond this first pair?  (And yes, we took Sam for a short walk that day....very short!  He told me where to turn around!)  




We are busy getting things ready to go.  We will have a house sitter (our friend Perla) so we don't have to close up the house and empty the refrigerators (thank goodness!)  We tried hard to get our freezers down to empty, but didn't make it, in spite of having lots of company over.  We will finish the pork ribs tonight, since we've invited our new neighbors who bought the lot next to us.  Hopefully, we won't have too many long power outages this summer, and we might come home to some good stuff left over in the fall!  

We plan on taking our 1930 Roadster with us to get a few things done on it, including pin-striping.  We also hope to take the lady from whom we bought it for a ride.  Even though we didn't paint it red, I think she'll like it!   Who knows, maybe you'll get a ride, too, if you're lucky!  Maybe in the rumble seat!!  😏

Ben spent some time the last several days working on the Jeep, trying to get the speedometer out of the dash, since the indicator needle had fallen out and was lying on the bottom of the gauge!  Well....it was a bit of a problem; actually turned out to be a major project!   And it is such a long story, that it requires diagrams and pictures and lots of hand gestures, you'll have to wait until you see us next time to learn the whole story!  Suffice it to say, things are different on the dashboard now!  



Don't you love the original dashboard, the paint job, and all the holes?  Ben spent a lot of time with his head down there on the passenger side, trying to see the wiring for the gauges!  Ugh!  He did take the passenger seat out, and we padded it nicely, so that helped some.  And yes, he did fix the needle on the gas gauge!!  And yes, the pretty wood is going back on to cover up the ugly metal dash.

Before Ben took the Jeep apart, and before our friends Debi and Sandy left for their home in Washington, we all took a tour up to the San Dionisio Canyon.  We hadn't been there this year, so it was nice to drive up in the Jeep and show them around.  We stopped and walked down to the little stream in the bottom of the canyon, and it was very refreshing.  There were even little fish in there!  




No, they weren't quite as big as Ben is indicating!  Just little bitty toe biters.  

The boulders in these mountains are very impressive.  We hope they stay where they are for now!

On the way back home, we took a route we've never done before; down the Santiago Arroyo to a large cave that we can see from the main road, but have never visited.  We were quite impressed!  It was huge, it had bee hives and bats in it, and all kinds of interesting formations.  






 We were surprised that there was a little pond in front of the cave (with little fish!)



It was an interesting place to explore, until Debi saw some bats flying around further back.  Check out more photos in our June 2019 album.  

Zoey and I cut back on our walks as soon as the weather changed to hot and humid!  If we do go out, it's a much shorter distance.  Both our tongues are dragging by the time we get home on these hot days!   One of the things we can't miss on our walks is a new project on the beach.  Someone bought the piece of property right next to, (and almost in) the arroyo just to the south of our house.  They rapidly cleared the ground, took out a 40+ year old stone wall, and layed out the lines of the house.  Last time I walked by, they were digging out some soil, and it looked like sand all the way down to me!   Not sure how you're supposed to build on that, but we'll see what they come up with.  Someone (40+ years ago) had bought that property, built a really nice looking wall, parked their trailer, and then there was a hurricane which was serious enough that they moved!  (Ben just now tells me that the trailer washed out to sea!  I didn't know that part of the story!)  It's been bare ground ever since, with a "temporary" road cutting through it.  (It's one of the popular ways to get to the beach from our house.)  



The wall is now rubble.  Hopefully they'll use it to build a wall on the property line.  

I will be missing my daily walks.... on the beach....

Up the Flag Monument Hill....

And through the wilderness looking for cactus blooms....

But it will all be waiting for our return next October!  

I can't promise any letters this summer when Ben's in charge.  So....

Hasta la proxima vez,
Tus amigos en Baja for a few more days,
Harriet, Ben, Sam & Zoey

PS. Can't forget the pictures of the grandkids!