Saturday, May 23, 2009

Kelso and Zzyzx


We have been on many adventures in the past I will post them from time to time.
This one for instance. I think it was back in early February we had a few days off together so we went to Stateline, on the I-15 before Las Vegas, so we could have an adventure. We went to one of the casino/hotels there so my fiancee could have a bath. The short story to this is that we only have a shower here at the cabin and my cute fiancee is a bath person, so we need to get her in a tub often or I'm in trouble. Our intention was to go on an adventure on the way back home. So after several good soaks in the tub and putting some money in the slot machines, we made a hasty retreat back to California after cute fiancee won several hundred on some slots. Run fast if you have won kinda big at slots is our motto. Crossing back into California was the start of the adventure. the intention was to make our way to the old railroad town of Kelso. The route had to be altered when some road work on the I-15 cause a detour, and boy was the route we took much better that the one I had mapped out. It is at this time that I must tell you that any time I set out on an adventure I have looked over the area's on a map, preferably google maps or google earth using the satellite options. I can see land marks on the satellite view and find alternate routes if needed.
The I-15 detour made it so we had to go to another off ramp, my alternate route, and we are happy we did. We ended up on Cima Road, which as you head south takes you through one of the few Joshua Tree forests in the world, and the weather was such that it was starting to snow. It was beautiful




We pressed on down the road and came to the intersection at the old railroad town of Cima.
This town is almost deserted, miles from nowhere, now mostly ranch land in the middle of the Mojave desert. The day was cloudy so it made for a different kind of California desert experience.
Turning west from Cima we headed to Kelso. I have been wanting to go to Kelso for some time and with the pictures on the internet I talked my fiancee into it. The real draw to Kelso is the Mission style railway station. Ok so I'm an architecture geek...grin, you can see by the pics.
If you like Mission style and Craftsman style architecture then this place is for you.


The interior decor is wonderful.

Inside the station is basically a museum, with exhibits for the local area and the use of the station up to the present. We spent over an hour there and I took tons of pics. The history was great, if you like those kind of things. It was interesting how much steel came out of the hills to the south that went on to make the Liberty ships of WWII. It also had a display for our next stop in the adventure.

more in the next post.

I can't believe people do this


My fiance'e and I saw something rather stupid the other night.
If I get into a rant please forgive me, but I just can't believe that people are this stupid.
I drive my fiancee' to work and pick her up on my way home from my job. We leave early in the morning and get home later in the evening. we are usually getting home too late to cook a meal so we eat out a lot. Once or twice a week we like to grab some food and take one of the many mountain roads that eventually get us to our wonderful cabin in the woods. We have this one road that is our favorite. It takes us down a tree covered dirt road that crosses a steam. The crossing is a wide concrete ramp that makes it easy to cross the water. The place is strewn with huge boulders and water falls and many trees that make it all shady and beautiful. We wanted to picnic here the week before but some creepy looking character and his buddy were there "smoking" something, so we passed on by and went up another trail and found a "ok" spot to eat our meal.
Well the other night we get to our favorite spot and we are the only ones there, whooo hooo , I park the truck on the ramp and we set up our chicken meal on the tailgate and listen to the water babbling and the birds in the trees. In the middle of the meal The Fiance'e points at a rock across the stream and the word "idiots" comes out of her mouth. There was a pile of scrap wood next to a large boulder, which a fire had been built under, directly under a large tree. How easy these idiots could have lit the forest on fire. We had a huge fire up here a year and a half ago and we had to evacuate for a week, and some knucklehead or a whole hurd of them had a fire burning under a tree in the middle of nowhere. GRRRR.
I'm going to stop by ther Ranger station up the road and tell them to keep an eye out down there.
Anyways we had a nice meal in the woods and a wonderful setting. Little adventures like that make the long hot job days have a welcome ending. I will post some pics of our favorite place.
Kris
Side note: LOL I didn't know there was two different words for fiance'. I'm not the best speller (thank god for spell check) so I looked up how to spell it on google. I found out that a common error in spelling fiance' is that the female version of the word has and extra "e" at the end of the word. Well we all know that spell check only tells you if you spelled the word correctly not if it was the right word.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

LOL Third post: I got side tracked on the adventure with my neighbor and didn't get into what this blog will be about. I was going through some pictures today and thought it would be nice to share them, and tell about what happened on the adventure. I'm also going to post about things that we are dreaming or planing on doing. The adventure may also be commenting on current events and my or our take on them. In the near future I will be talking about my Teardrop trailer project I will be starting. I'm not sure if the posts will be regular but I will try to keep it current as best I can.
Second post: I got called away from some thoughts on my first post by my good neighbor Jane.
She had some heavy potted plants that needed to be moved and had called me while I was posting.
Speaking of adventures my neighbor Jane is a great example of what life in general has to offer in the way of dishing out adventure. Ms. Jane was well out of her comfort zone when I was going to buy this cabin, as a mater of fact she was rather persuasive in trying to talk me out of it...grin
Jane at the time was trying to write a book, I think it was, and the thought of the young kids that I was bringing over to invade the area between our two homes was over the top unsettling. (Jane if you read this I could always see that you were the best of people.) I could see that she was nice but that she was facing an unknown that was too much for her. When I moved in I decided to be a stealth neighbor and keep my kids from in between the houses and to not bug Jane. I put a long rope swing in the back and to the other side of the house to keep the, at the time, rug rats from being a distraction. I decided from the get go that I was going to do things around her house so that little things would get fixed or done and she would be puzzled who did them and be happy that it had happened. The main focus turned out to be shoveling snow. I live in the mountains above San Bernardino Ca. at the 5700' level and we get snow up here, sometimes in the deep and heavy variety. So on our first snow after moving up I snuck over and cleaned her stairs up to the gate. I think I made it to the 4th snow before she caught me. She thought she had snow fairies taking care of her walk...lol
She insisted that she pay me for my labors but I told her that it was not needed. She asked me why I would do this, I told her that it is just what good neighbors do and went to work.
We moved up in late August and by December she had actually found that she liked us....grin
She was inviting the kids over and doing Grandma type things with them.
Jane and I have done many project around her house and we keep and eye out for each others houses when needed now. Jane and her fear of us was the adventure and we all conquered that and have almost become a great family unit of sorts.
Now Jane will be moving to another part of the mountain, she told me last week. I will move her of course, she won't be far. The house she is in now is getting to be to much for her and she found a nice manageable one here on the mountain. She told me she had been wanting to move for a while now but was always not following through on that because I wouldn't be around to help. I'm proud of her she made the leap and she knows she can call me anytime if she needs something.
Funny thing is now it is my turn to worry who will move in next door...grin
Kris
First post: It is a nice sunny day here at our mountain cabin slash home. I was going through some pictures today and thought I should share them with friends and relatives and any other adventurer that would like to see them. Kris