Adventure's in Weddings

It is about time I post this. My daughter was Married, on a very nice day, November 6th, near Calico Ghost Town. It was held at a Restaurant Called Peggy Sue's in Yermo Ca. This place is a cool stop to get a burger on your way to, or coming back from Las Vegas. It is kind of a 50's Dinner set up.
They are not too far off of old Route 66, so you see links to that in there as well. At the back of the place is an area that is set up for gatherings. It has a stage that is mocked up to look like a giant Juke Box. There is a wandering path that crossed a couple of times over a water course complete with ducks in it, and at the far end is a large gentle waterfall/wall which the ceremony was held in front of.
Let's start at the beginning. My Daughter met this guy in High School. He is a nice guy, and respectful, so I think he will do. I'm not sure what my daughter would say to any of the boys she would introduce to me. I remember one of them came up and shook my hand, and he looked like his fight or flight instincts had kicked in and he was about to bolt at top speed away from me. His voice was wobbly and cracking, He said some pleasantries and patted my daughter, saying good bye and that he had to get to his bus, or something like that. Poof he was gone. I didn't like some of the boys she would talk about. At least the wobbly kids introduced himself, some wouldn't. My daughter must have been telling these boys I was going to kill them and hide there bodies in the woods and make it look like a bear got them or something...lol Well she decided on this one. Like I said he is a nice guy, and he does take good care of my daughter. Ah youth. They have been together for a few years now and it was time for a marriage.
They would have liked to get married at Calico Ghost Town but I think that is more complicated now a days than it use to be. Many moons ago I was married at Calico and it was pretty easy to arrange.
I got an invite early, it was a rainbow type thing, as was the theme of the wedding. I was to be at Calico Ghost Town on the Friday before the wedding for a dedication. I took the day off from work and got there early. My Aunt was down from Washington State, lack of money and too much work means we don't get to see one another very often. It was great to see her. We made it to Calico and friends and family gathered around for this pre-wedding ceremony. The sun was setting it made for a very beautiful back drop.
The X and beautiful daughter arrive.

In the next photo you will see a man with a guitar, he is the preacher, JD, that will do the "I do's".
He also has a little Bluegrass band,The Cornbread Washtub Band, hence the guitar...lol and he does DJ work. In the desert you have to be versatile. The Groom is next to him and one of the Bridesmaids is sitting.

The Bride and her Father.



Next the Bride and Groom.



The Dedication was held at the Old Well in front of the Pottery Shop, near the top of town. We are good friends with the owner and my daughter works there from time to time.

Part of the ceremony was pouring of different colored sand into a small bottle so it would be layered. It is called "blending of the sands". It represents the blending of these two lives and involves the the witnesses and the Best Man, and Bridesmaids all pouring sand into layers to form their new life together.

The sun was setting and I was trying to get a halo effect off of my daughters veil. I wish the last one wasn't so blurry.



I got a snippet of video from the dedication. Amen

From there we moved on down to Peggy Sues for the rehearsal.

Above, the Preacher JD, Bride and Groom, and Best Man, the Groom's Brother.

And the Maid of Honor on the right.

In practice they are now Married...almost. After that we had Pizza. Luckily Peggy Sue's has a Pizza Parlor at the back as well, so we all sat down to eat there without having to move the party.
My poor daughter was recovering from some surgery here and was being a trooper about all the moving around.
The next morning I had breakfast with my brother and his kids, then went and got into my assigned duds, time to give away the bride.
There was some rain coming in that night, so there was a little cloud cover in the morning, but it didn't make it look gloomy. It was actually good. Calico is in the desert, and it can get warm pretty quick. The clouds kept the heat off us until after the wedding. By wedding time it was pleasant and the sky was blue. I took some pictures of the Bride in her dress.
Here with her Grandmother.



Here with her mother.

Sniff...my beautiful baby all grown up.

Like I said this was a Rainbow Themed Wedding. Here are some pictures of the ceremony.
Here is the Groom walking down the isle.

My Niece, a Bridesmaid and her Groomsman counter part.

Another Bridesmaid and my son a Groomsman.

The Maid of Honor and the Best Man The Grooms Brother.

Here comes the Bride, and the proud Father. I'm Walking her down the isle to the guy who is stealing my baby away from me, I mean taking my baby's hand in Holy Matrimony. Grin

She was feeling a little woozy so I had reached across and was holding her hand.
She was so Beautiful.

The start of the Ceremony.

The Bridesmaids, including my niece in black.

I have wonderful shot of my niece. I love this shot.

The Groomsmen, including my son.

The Bride in the sunlight. It was funny, those bridesmaids fussed over that dress the whole time....lol

The Groom.

Them almost Married.

With this ring.

You may kiss the bride.

The Happily Married couple.

Hey now stop that you don't get to kiss her again!

The new Mr. and Mrs. near the waterfall.



They really need to stop that kissing stuff...!

Family photo, I'm not sure why my son can't smile, must be a teenager thing.

Dad and his newly married cute daughter.

My brother and his newly married cute niece.

Groom and Bridesmaids.

Bride and Groomsmen.

Now some video of the ceremony.
The I do's.

With this ring....


Ring fits...

It was a wonderful day, all turned out well and I now have a new son-in-law.
The reception was fun and the food was excellent.
My son was the DJ, I remember back in the day when a DJ spun records, now it is on an Apple Laptop.

The Bride and Grooms first dance.

Bride, Groom and Dog dance.

Father, Daughter dance.

And now it is time for the cutting of the cake. I like this part because cake ends up everywhere.

Or maybe not...lol

Not even a bit of frosting on a nose..sigh Oh wait that was it!

Some Family pics. The Bride, our Aunt Sue, my Brother and I.

This is the third take for my brother and his family, my son was in the pic and needed smiling lessons again.

I'm not sure I want to tell you what my new son-in-law is doing here.

Garter?

The Bouquet Toss.


The Dancing continued. My Brother and his Bride.

The Reception wound down and we moved to a friends house to open presents.
On the way out of the parking lot This beauty was sitting for all to see.

Our friend lives near a lake, and the kids got to do some fishing.

Here is the Bride and my Aunt, about to open the presents.

They got some nice stuff.

The Girlfriend and I got them some cool stuff for a trip to Disneyland.
The girlfriend had to make the grooms hat, they had run out at Disneyland.

It included some passes to the Disneyland Resort, and some Micky and Minnie, Bride and Groom mugs.

They also got some house money.

The cooking gear is a must for Newlyweds.

All is good in the world on days like this. Daughter is happy. She has a nice man at her side.
Besides no Wedding Cake rubbed into anyone's face it was a great wedding.

Death Valley Adventure Part II

So, a long time ago, Memorial Day, 2010, we went to Death Valley. When last I wrote we had been at the Amargosa Opera House in a little place called Death Valley Junction. It was starting to get warm out there when we left the Junction. It was still early in the day when we started our descent down into Death Valley and spilling out of this arroyo at a sign that said Sea Level.

This is at a place called Furnace Creek, and you can see why it is called that with this picture.

It wasn't even noon yet and still May and it was already this temp. I took some video of a view from that location. My intent was to show the heat waves on the Playa (the sometimes wet floor of the valley), and the snow on the mountain in the background.


The Peak in the background is Telescope Peak, the top is at 11,043' it says in the link.
Considering the fact that just down the road to the left in the video is a place called Bad Water that sits at -282', that is below sea level, and those two points are about 15 miles apart that is a very health rise in altitude.
There is a resort here, The Furnace Creek Inn, looking back at my thermometer I think this is a winter resort...lol

We Drove a mile down the road to Furnace Creek Proper, passing the Timbisha Indian Reservation. Those Indians have been there thousands of years living in a place we find a waste land. Interesting how versatile, and adaptable humans are. We found a National Park Museum there and went in. Very interesting stuff about Death Valley, the local animals and inhabitants, the poor immigrant wagon trains that made it into the area and almost melted there, and the Silver and Borite mines, and the Twenty Mule Teams pulling ore out of the Valley.
I think the story went that one of the wagon trains that was stuck there for a while, when they finally left, someone looked back and said "good bye Death Valley" and it stuck. We stopped at a place that was like a Trading Post, mostly filled with Tourist stuff and cool western and indian art things. We had to start making our way home soon so we started towards Bad Water Basin, the lowest point in the US. We travel down the road and came across this weird weathered black rock.

We are notorious rock hounds, and the cute fiancee wanted me to put it in the back of the truck.
There were signs for a place called "Artist's Drive", so when the sign said turn left we did.

As you can see from these pictures there is all these reds, greens, yellows, blacks, whites, and even purple in the rocks.







It was a very nice natural display. It was very hot and the truck temp gauge kept climbing. (I think the thermostatically controlled fan is turning on at the wrong time or is going bad, must fix before next summer...lol) I would turn off the AC and we would drive uncomfortably for a while then turn the AC back on and keep and eye on it until it got warm again. On our way out cute fiancee spotted this cool rock formation. I think I would title this picture "Frog on a Frogs back".
What do you think.?

We finally came to Bad Water Basin. The temp had gone up to about 105 by then and the cute fiancee wanted nothing to do with that.

There was a breeze when I got down to this sign. It was like a wave of heat hitting you when you open a hot oven. Brave tourist from car, buses, and motor homes were walking out onto the playa. What a moon scape.

There is water that seeps from out of the ground and collects into these brackish pools.


The water evaporates and leaves the ribbons of salt (shown above in the moon scape).
The name at this place says it all. Lots of water but none that would be drinkable. I walked a little way out onto the playa. Out there was a load of Asian tourist off the bus that was in the parking lot. They looked like they were going to melt. I took a picture of the hill that backed up to this place.

There is a sign on this hill, not that it is big enough to see in a pic like this, so as to get perspective. Off the back of the bus, slightly under the half way mark is a black sign with white letters that says, SEA LEVEL.
We started down the road a ways and came to a road sign. It was a good place to eat the sandwiches we brought. The sign was about an ancient lake that once filled Death Valley.
It was named Lake Manly, after one of the gentleman that hiked out of Death Valley around 1849 when his wagon train that got stuck down in the Valley. He went all the way to the LA Basin to find help. Some geologist named it that after looking at this formation that is now called Shoreline Butte.

If you notice this butte has a kind of layered look to it. 15,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, water filled Death Valley. As a matter of fact what is now a arid desert was at this time chocked full of lakes, most of them eventually draining into Death Valley. If you follow the Lake Manly link above there is a map of what all those lake looked like. If you look at a map and follow the course of the Mojave River which has it's head waters in the San Bernardino Mountains, near Lake Arrowhead, you can see that if water actually flowed in the Mojave it would go all the way to Death Valley, after puddling a couple of times near Baker Ca.
From hear we navigated out of Death Valley, out through Baker, and headed home. It was a great adventure. There is more out there to see, and I hope we can get out there again this winter. There are Borax mines to see, Scotty's Castle, and a place called Racetrack Playa, where rocks appear to move all by themselves.

Christmas is a good time to finish blogs

Here we are, Christmas, I'm home alone because cute fiancee is up north with her grandchildren, and it has been bothering me for months that I haven't finished the Death Valley Adventure. So I'm sitting down here on Christmas night and getting this done....lol In the mean time many things have happened and I need to get those posted too, including my Daughters wedding.
Back to Death Valley.

Count your blessings Adventure

A funny thing happened on the way to work.

This was not the adventure we had wanted this morning. We got up this morning and we loaded into the truck this morning so that I could pick up my son this afternoon. We stopped for coffee and headed down the road. Not a mile out of town we befell a large chunk of mother nature.

We were heading around a blind inside corner with steep slopes on the uphill side. Something large and brown lumbered down this steep hill. I sent my brother a text with this picture and said. "Biggest F'ing Bear I ever seen".

I estimate we were doing about 30mph when we saw this large male brown bear. It looked about 400lbs, cute fiancee thinks it was more of a 500 pounder. I edged to the middle of the road, thank goodness there was no uphill traffic, and had slowed down some but the animal had come down the hill and had too much momentum, and couldn't help but get in front of us. Blam, lucky for us and the bear we shoved him down the road instead of pining him under the truck. The bear went skidding down the road on it's side. I edged the truck back to the right side of the road, and saw out of the corner of my eye, the bear clawing over the guard rail. We pulled into a turn out that was right there and I got out to see the damage. I could tell there was some because I could hear the edge of the front bumper rubbing on the tire.

I got out of the car and I could hear the bear going through the brush below. I do damage estimates on cars all day at work and started looking over what was damaged. There was a hissing noise and green fluid coming from the front of the vehicle so I piled back into the car and drove it back home so I didn't have to tow it.

When we hit the bear, the cute fiancee said "that is the ugliest brown dog I have ever seen", no honey that is a big damn bear.
I can see it in slow motion in my memory now, and how odd it was to see this huge bear sliding head first down the road. I doubt that the bear went unhurt but they are pretty stout animals.

At odd times last summer we had bears in the trash outside the cabin. This one looked similar to the big male I shoo'd out last year.

Cute fiancee tensed pretty good so she is sore tonight.

I wonder what the CHP officer thought as I told him the story of us hitting a bear. I had the feeling the lady at my insurance was thinking "yeah right" when I told her the story to make arrangements for repair.

I also had a study in human thinking today as I carried my camera around showing the damaged truck. The ladies at work would look at me and say "you hit what", or "NOO??" then they would all ask how the bear was. The guys would go to the primal instincts side and say "mmm bear jerky", or "bearskin rug"....lol

We are counting our blessing in this. I have a $500 deductible that I barely have, but will gladly pay, because if we had been driving our low to the ground Geo Metro that bear would have been in the car with us, and this story would have a different ending.

I should never have gotten that "bear claw" pastry, this morning at the convenience store when we stopped for coffee this morning. Cute fiancee just said "thank goodness the insurance policy doesn't have a 'bear clause'.." lol