"When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result his men were well motivated."

Each step is bringing us closer to moving on to our property; whether it is throwing the moldy old mattress out of the bus to be replaced by a clean, functional futon, or working towards developing our property through cutting down brush and trees and digging up mud. We march forward to our exciting future and enjoy the journey. 

First try with the strap

When we last left off, there was a 'widowmaker' hanging over our future home that wouldn't come down. We finally decided the only way left to try was using straps and the excavator to pull the thing down. 

Second try with the strap a little higher

Ariel was recording a video of the momentous tree felling, but we pulled and pulled and it didn't come down! ...So Tim moved the strap a little higher...  

Third try with the strap higher still

...and a little higher. And finally the tree came right down! No there is a big pile of a dozen trees sitting right on the (future) fence line. Clean up is a project for another day.  

The gate in and survey line strung to the South for fencing (right)

While Tim was focusing on tree-clearing and land-clearing, Ariel was focusing on putting up a front gate to make our property safe for all our animals. Some neighbors came by and exclaimed "We've lived on Whidbey 35 years and don't even lock our front door! You don't need a gate!" I explained the goats and dog and chickens might think otherwise when they saw all those cars zipping by. Unfortunately, our neighbor was wrong about Whidbey and we noticed some things missing from our woodshed a few days later.

Tim installing surveillance

We got busy increasing our security measures, which ended up not revealing any intruders but being a great way to document our work on the property.

A "before" picture of our property pre-gravel in the driveway

Our next big goal (aside from those falling trees and the gate and related fences) while waiting for the electric company to get back to us about installing power has been to work on extending our driveway around to the future home-site.

The mud pit that was the entry of our property

Tim did some initial mud-making/road clearing with the excavator, then we called in the gravel trucks.

The first gravel load arriving in a very big truck

The gravel man took one look and said "No." then put the gravel in a pile at the top of the existing driveway, passed on some instructions for leveling the road before spreading gravel, and left. Ariel was home alone for the day and got busy trying to use the excavator (second time ever running it and the first was only for a minute on that first day...) to further flatten the driveway. Minutes later Eldon The Hero arrived; Ariel's fire station lieutenant and a frequent co-contractor with Tim's work. Eldon had been told by his truck driver that we had no idea what we were doing and desperately needed help, which pretty much summed it up.

Eldon scooping gravel directly from the back of his truck - definitely an expert-only move

Eldon demonstrated the proper and expert maneuvers for spreading gravel, left Ariel briefly to practice while running for more gravel, then came back to fix what Ariel had done and continue the excavator lessons. With this demonstration and supervision, Ariel has been improving steadily with the excavator from the initial stress and self-doubt to smoothing out the road bed in ways that don't need fixing and redoing.

Tim's time-lapse video of the driveway project

After three days of working together, the road is drive-able and looking like a driveway! Houses need driveways. It is far too easy to under-appreciate a driveway, but it is such an essential thing. What good is a house you can't get to without sinking knee deep in mud?

Driveway to road (right) and future-house (left) meeting at turn-around (foreground)

Finished-enough driveway, park-able and drive-able for the week while we wait for the rest of the mud to settle

Mama Hen (right), chick (center back), and Speckled Hen (left)

Back at the Honeymoon Point Farm across the road, there were too many hens in the nest. One nest in particular. Dear Mama Hen did all the good work of sitting on some eggs for nearly three weeks, then days before hatching, speckled inexperienced hen stole the nest! With chicks potentially in peril, it was too dangerous to try to switch them back. The white mama tried to stay close to the nest for the next week, especially when she heard a chick peeping, and briefly it looked like they might be sister-mothers and raise the single chick together, but then the white mama gave up, the speckled mama was still focused on the eggs and not the lone chick. 

Speckled Hen being very broody and the lone-chick

Tonight the chick has vanished. Our next barn will be rat-proof, and our next barn will have a separate area for broody hens and new moms. 

Dad-Rich in the workshop building a laundry-center platform

Dad-Rich was here since before Christmas and here more than in Juneau for the last six months, but finally finished with appointments down here and got the all-clear to head home. Before leaving he accomplished a great deal around the house like chopping up trees, building new trellises, installing a full set of blinds upstairs, adding a new washer and drier, moving the old washer and drier downstairs, and building a platform for the new set.

Dad-Rich's lattices

The last day Dad-Rich was in town, Joe-Dad and Roni came for a visit as well. Grandpa taught Roni how to play bridge. Rowdy has now returned to Alaska as well, leaving Nemo to no-longer need to compete for Grandpa's attention and hot dogs.

Can you spot the arborist?

Also at the big house, the arborist has been back to hide in trees and make them healthy and strong through selective pruning.

Excavation and Deforestation

While Dad Rich has been down visiting, he decided to start an excavation corporation. Currently the business has one client (us) and one digger, which was delivered right to the client's property. 

The digger was delivered while Tim was at work, giving Ariel the first go as operator. The man delivering the excavator ran through the controls: "Just start pushing buttons and pulling levers and see what happens. You'll figure it out!" And it really isn't so hard to figure out. Getting good with moving many directions at once, getting things done quickly and well, that will take hours of practice. But making the parts move - only requires pulling a knob. 

Once Tim came home, he started putting in an hour after work every day until it was too dark to run. The trails that took hours to make with a machete have been run over with the excavator in minutes. Our future home-site is transforming from a blackberry patch to a mud pit. 

Between the time after work every day and some late night excavator simulator programs, Tim's getting the hang of precision work. He has put in a bridge from the top of the driveway towards the lumpy home hill. 

Our other new toy this week is a bigger chain saw and safety chaps to match. There are a lot of small alders growing like weeds on our once-cleared land, but also a few larger hazard trees that need to be dealt with. 

The first tree to take down was a rotting alder towering over where we hope to park the bus. It must go! Tim chopped the tree down and got busy splitting 8 inch rounds into slivers of firewood for our tiny wood stove.

Ariel ran the wheelbarrow, hauling the split wood back to the woodshed and stacking it. The woodshed, made of lashed alders and a tarp, is as of yet the best structure on the property and where we store all the good things handy to leave up there while working. 

There is still plenty more tree to chop up. I don't think we will be wanting for firewood for many years to come, especially in the moderate Whidbey climate where even in January we don't need the heat every day. 

Our next tree project has been to try to deal with a large "widow-maker" above our future house, above where we are working with the excavator...

We tried cutting down a large nearby alder to fall onto and knock over the caught tree. The alder fell, the whole thing shook, but now there are two trees stuck half way over instead of one. The problem has grown. 

Next strategy: distance chainsaw. After brainstorming the options, we decided rigging up a remotely controlled chainsaw seemed the easiest, safest, most legal option and we went to work on the Rube Goldberg contraption. 

With the chainsaw pivoting on a bolt, supported on a sawhorse, staked to the ground, with long lines running to control it from 100' away, Tim cut right through the supporting alder, holding up this mess of trees. The tepee of trees groaned and shook and swayed a bit, but still did not fall. Now we are waiting for a windstorm to finish the job. 

In other news the goats had their first visit to the property, now that they have been cleared of having the same ailment as Dad Rich, and decided they really liked the property better pressed up against our legs than tied out to the long run lines we've rigged up for their grazing pleasure. They will get used to it and stop crying when we are out of sight eventually.

We wish you many marry Christmases and a happy new year!

 

After an early Christmas dinner with the Lyon clan at Ivar's, an early Christmas with Alice, and a lot of packing, we hit the road for our traditional mobile Christmas.

We started off after work on Friday, December 18, with only a few hours of driving to Olympia where we visited our fishing friend, Lanny.

Lanny and his wife and their two Airedale-mix dogs live on beautiful acreage with chickens, gardens, wild bird habitat, and miles walking trails near by. With an Airedale-mix her age and a little puppy to contend with, Tilly got a thorough work out and we got to visit with Lanny, enjoy bird-watching and a home-grown rabbit dinner, and a long morning walk before getting back in our car for many more miles of driving. What a great start to our trip!

12-week Airedale-mix puppy leading grown-up Tilly by the leash.

For the second night, we only went a few more hours to Eugene. Our friends Gina and Asen just bought a half-acre lot and house in Eugene and we were granted the honor of being the first over-night guests. Asen has recently started as an electrical apprentice, so Tim got to share the tricks he's learned and swap stories while Gina and I enjoyed delicious pizza, having met each other wile both vegan in college. 

Gina and Asen's new house

The next day was our first long day of driving, switching off as we made our way down I-5, starting early in the morning and driving until after dark through snow and ice into the mountains of North-Eastern California.

On our way to Quincy, over the passes

Without having to put chains on or call for a tow, we made it up the mountains to the rural town of Quincy to see Joe and Roni's new house.

Our family Christmas photo

The view was spectacular and their house is one of only a few on the whole hill, allowing us to let Tilly out the door with no leash or fence and hike through the thin forest without any driving necessary. Roni's brother and sister-in-law were also at the house.

Roni and her brother surveying the scene

Roni told us about the area on our hike down one of the many emergency fire evacuation trails and Joe took us for a walk half-way down the road to see the corners of the property and all the clay drain pipes under the road.

Roni out on our hike

After celebrating another early Christmas, Tim provided evening entertainment by disassembling and reassembling his entire lap top - screen and base - to make some successful repairs.

Joe watching Tim's computer project

In the morning we started off at first light to get going on our longest driving stretch of the trip in hopes of making it before dark, or at least in time for dinner. We were glad to be leaving the mountains before the predicted snow came. Even if we are seasoned Alaskan drivers, making our way through high passes with California drivers and semi-trucks in a blizzard didn't sound too appealing.

Morning view from Joe and Roni's driveway

The drive was long, the pictures of landscape passing out the window are many... But also got a little political. We hear about California's water crisis all the time, but driving through it was another matter.

Walnut Grove

In a section of backed up traffic in Northern California, we took an exit and headed down long side streets to a very sweet town of ice cream shops and boat houses and first Friday art walks along a river. "Walnut Grove"? On our detour, there were a couple small signs that said things like "Don't drain our delta."

Walnut Grove

Back on I-5, California looked a lot more like desert than I imagined from some of the settler stories I'd read of 'lush paradise where everything grows'. Instead we saw tumbleweeds. 

California

The exception to the tumbleweeds were areas with lines of crops as far as we could see; perfectly straight and evenly spaced. The highway was lined with large signs on each of these vast mono-culture farms with signs like "Is growing food wasting water?"

Rows and rows of trees.

Having just gone through the sweet town with the "Save our delta!" signs, we had an idea of where this water for farming was going to be coming from next.

Around lunch time, we stopped off at a large reservoir, San Luis, that was looking rather low. Not many other visitors were around at the visitors center, so we took that as a sign it was okay to hike down to the waters edge with Tilly to stretch our legs. 

In the background, green tops on hills where the waterline may have been in the past.

In the distance, large water pumps on tall pilings.

After 15 hours of driving, we finally made it to Dawn's house! We arrived just minutes after the hot, fresh pizza arrived, and not too many hours past dark. Dawn got us settled in (we wen't straight to bed) and then stayed up late getting all her law office work done for the weekend.

Ariel and Tilly heading back down towards the house.

In the morning, Tim, Tilly and I went out the front door, around to the side of the building, and straight up the hill for a sunrise hike. We were wondering what 'apartment in the middle of big-city Southern California, near the freeways...' would be like and were delighted to find Dawn lives in a wonderful condo and town-house gated community, complete with parks and grassy dog areas and scenic over-looks and walking trails, nestled between the feet of wild hilltops. The view from the top showed more wild than development - or at least a near match. 

Tim and Tilly in the saddle between two hills, with dawns favorite hill-top cross in the background (it makes it easy to spot the right exit from the highway).

When we returned down from our hill-climb, Dawn had finished her work and confirmed all the arrangements for the day. We took Tilly over to Dawn's cousins/aunt and uncle Mickey and Bob's (Who we met last Christmas when we met Dawn and Aunt Sandy and Uncle Troy's house) house for the day, then followed their truck to the San Diego zoo!

Hot chocolate, mocha, and cookies at the end of the full day at the zoo. Who knew Southern California got cold?

The zoo is a non-profit that uses the money earned to create more success stories of critically endangered species getting back their foothold in the ecosystem. (Taking the bus tour around the exhibits was very informative.) We saw a baby giraffe, just a few days old, and a yellow lab. The labs are paired with a cheetah nearly from birth to help the cheetah's be more fun loving, friendly, and laid back like the lab. They go everywhere together - vet trips and all, and are never separated. A dog and cheetah snuggled up together was the most unexpected thing we saw in the zoo. 

The next day, Christmas day, we opened stockings and presents with Dawn, then went to meet Judy and Pete, Dawn's mom and step-dad, and Tim's birth-grandparents. Pete took us site-seeing while Judy prepared a wonderful Christmas dinner, then after dinner, Judy took us for a walk around the neighborhood to see the historic and beautiful beach-front Nazarene college.

Our last stop in San Diego was to see an old friend of Dawn's, Roberta, whom Dawn lived with for many years while getting on her feet. Roberta's son and daughter-in law were also there to catch up and meet Tim. Roberta's house was an amazing museum. Most of the house had been recently remodled to have granite floors and full-wall windows overlooking the valley, but one room had been left exactly as it was in the '80's: The Music Room.

Hundreds of Edison cylinders, a variety of phonograph players, a record collection wrapping around the top of the entire room, a beautiful, cozy, amazing space with a loving, wise woman watching over it. 

And with that, we were back on the road, already time to say goodbye to Dawn and start heading North again. 

Our next rest-stop along the way was to see Uncle Dave in San Mateo. His daughters were both away, leaving him on his own this year for Christmas. We were glad to get to spend a few days with Uncle Dave over the holidays. He took us to dog beaches and parks, around the neighborhood, and to a cozy bookstore cafe.

It's easy to see why so many people want to live in California, even without enough water to go around. Warm weather, beautiful landscapes, wild spaces and urban development intermingling.

We took Dave to see the new Star Wars movie in 3-D, talked about rocks and rockets, looked at all Aunt Julie's art around the house, watched a variety of Sherlock Holmes shows, and took to the back streets of San Francisco's China Town.

 We got back on the road and headed across the California border (no fruit and live plant inspection on the way out), for a night in Ashland at the palm hotel and visiting our friends Chaach and Connor, then up to Oregon City and Portland for a night apart while Ariel stayed with friends Andy and Elias and visited Uncle Joel and girlfriend Allison and Tim caught up with the boys, then New Years Eve together out on the town of Portland with Zac, Nate, Evan, and even running into Shea. New Years day, we got up early in the still-sleeping house and slipped out, stopping to say goodbye to Shea and Felix on our way out of town, then finally on towards home - very ready to be home!

If only we could sleep for a week to recover and not have to drive again for a month...