HOW ABOUT SOME TIRES FROM CHINA AND LED LIGHTS

A quick continuation of my rant about China imports.  Check out the East's blog about their tires from China.  The saga continues.  I think I'd be pulling my hair out if I had two blow outs within eighty miles of each other.  And to add insult to injury, there is damage to their rig that needs to be repaired.  


We had another restful night here in John Bryan State Park.  Today, we are one of two campers.  Talk about quiet!  The only thing we hear is the chitter of one bird and the caw of a crow. 

 

The shelter house is a bit from here, but you can see how nice the area is.  The park is located on the Little Miami River.  In addition to camping, there is rappelling, rock climbing and mountain bike trails.

We are going to Clifton to visit the Clifton Mill.  The mill is one of the largest water powered grist mills still in existence. The first mill at this site was built in 1802 by Owen Davis, a Revolutionary War soldier and frontiersman miller.  The mill was built in it's location to take advantage of the natural power of the concentrated water funneled into the gorge. 
This is a photo I captured from the Internet.  We are looking forward to touring the mill and having our lunch there today.

Lunch is over and we are back on the road exploring the back roads.  The mill was a nice place to visit and to have good food. 

Gas has dropped forty cents a gallon since we came in on Friday!  Now, that is a very good thing!  Good ole Gas Buddy made us aware of that. He's truly our buddy.


Since we boondock / drydock some of the time, we are always looking at ways to conserve our electricity and have been considering LED lights.  


I have looked at them while visiting camping world, but keep wondering if we need to purchase new light fixtures.  Have any of you out there had experience with the lights?  


Well, we are off towards Cincinnati...I wonder what we will see next?  


For now, be safe out there and..........


God bless

WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR COOLER TEMPERATURES???

For the last week or so, it has been so comfortable around here.  Temperatures have been great.  But today, the heat is back with a vengeance.  The high today was ninety eight.  Now that in itself would be tolerable, but I have been busy dyeing fiber (roving) for upcoming fiber festivals.  

The dye pots have been brewing for the last three days and will continue through the weekend.   The colors are bright and cheery with thoughts of approaching fall and winter.  In addition to dyeing, I am assembling felting kits, doing some felting and the normal things I need to complete before leaving for fiber events.  

The best thing about these events are seeing our fibery friends again.  Some, we see just once a year.  Others vend at the same shows where we are.  

Thank goodness it is supposed to cool down after the first of the week.  If the forecasts are true, the highs will be in the seventies!  Now, that is something I look forward to.  

John is getting the motor home ready for travels.  The new floor is down.  The new faucet is installed at the kitchen sink.  Cabinets have been cleaned.  He in our nephew, Fred installed the new television and fixed the water heater problem.  


In June, the pilot light failed to ignite and we have had no heated water since then.  That was fine during the summer since the hot daytime temperatures made the water hot enough for our showers.  But, fall and winter are approaching, so working on that problem became a necessity.


I posted our problem on the Winnebago Yahoo group list and there were two suggestions.  One person suggested that we check the igniter.  Another person said to look for insect nests.  It turned out that a spider has woven a web and it was preventing the ignition.  There was also a mud dauber building his mud hut in the compartment.  We really do not welcome hitchhikers!

The last things that need to be done on the motorhome is installing new driving lights to brighten the highway at night, clean and lubricate the leveling jacks, and check the undercarriage for anything loose.  We have had a rattle under there and want to make sure everything is road ready.  

The Robins have left us.  And that seems strange as Al of the Bayfield Bunch was telling in his blog that the Robins there in Canada are gathering in flocks for their southerly migration.  I guess our place is not the gathering place this year.  

Now, we just need to be on the look-out for lower gas prices.  We use Gas Buddy 
and they do a good job pointing us to the lowest gas prices around.  I am surprised that the prices have not jumped back to the $3.70 range, but right now it is in the $3.50 neighborhood.  It's crazy how we can be happy with $3.30's.  And the people in Canada pay even more than we do.  Go figure.  

I'm off to check the last dye pots of the day.   Be safe out there this week end!  


God Bless!

Trying Tuesday

First, I want to welcome new followers, dewelldesigns.blogspot.com and John and Ellen to our web site.  We are so happy to have you on board.  John and Ellen, I cannot locate your blog.  If you want, would you please send me your blog address?  Thanks...

Geez, If I thought Saturday was hot, I underestimated what the weather was to do.  The ultra sultry Temperatures are here in full blast.  Walking outdoors is like opening an over and stepping inside.  At one time today, the "feels like temperature" was 117 degrees.  I wonder if we could fry an egg on our drive?  Maybe if it were asphalt instead of our concrete.

Today was a day of errands.  We took the Miata and had the top down with the air conditioning blasting away.  You know, we must (hehe) get our daily dose of vitamin D.  The top down with a.c. on scenario worked just fine.

One of our errands was to purchase food for Noah our cat.  I can't believe it, but the price is up to just under fifty dollars for a fourteen pound bag!  Did you see what I wrote????  FIFTY DOLLARS FOR FOURTEEN POUNDS!.............  OF CAT FOOD!  That comes to $3.57 a pound!  We have got to find a better way to purchase the cat food.  Noah need low ash because the poor boy gets kidney stones on regular cat food.  Bummer.  And he is a big eater....this big boy weighs twenty pounds!

We are waiting for the temperatures to come down.  The floor in the motor home is prepped and ready for installation of the New Allure Floor Covering.  I'm so eager to see it down.  I don't want to pressure John to do it since he does have the breathing issues.  I'm just ready for a blast of wind from Canada to push this air from the Gulf of Mexico back south, where it belongs.

We did extend the motor home's awning, allowing it to dry out from the rains we have had.  It was a real chore though.  The strap that we hook into became entangled in the awning.  John had to get on top of the  motor home and manually unroll a little and feel around for the strap.  After about four unsuccessful tries,  he went to the front end of the awning and pushed on the support that rests against the motorhome.  I know, the instructions say that is a no - no, but he was extremely careful and the awning unlatched and gently came away from the motorhome just enough that I could go to the other end and coax it open from there to lessen the bind.  Voila, the awning rolled opened as if we had written a script.

I found that missing strap.  I tend to believe that the last time John raised the awning to storage position, he did not have a firm hand on the strap.  It was wrinkled as if it had retracted in wads.  From now on, we will do the awning together, work slowly and holding on to that strap with all our might.  I might even put an extension on it just for extra insurance.

One of the blogs that I read had something very interesting.  It is a web site that calculated miles per gallon for you.  Now, I know, I could do this myself, but why bother now that I have found this site.  We are going to go back to the beginning of our time with the motorhome and calculate all the mileage.

I did read that fifty-five miles per hour is the best speed for the greatest gas mileage.  Is that what you have found?  Last winter, it was my understanding that the ultimate speed was sixty to sixty five miles per hour.  We will try anything to increase our MPG!  Here is the link for the website  http://mistupid.com/automotive/mpg.htm

Speaking of gas, what happened to the gas prices.....again.  For about three days, the prices fell rapidly.  I filled the Miata for $3.17 / gal....then ran home and had John go fill the motorhome!  As he was filling it, the gas rose thirty cents a gallon.  Whew, he just made it under the wire!  That is a hefty savings for a seventy five gallon tank.

Wow, it is seven o'clock and the temperature is down to a whoppin ninety three degrees.  I'm off, to do what, not sure right now... till next time ` ~ God Bless!

A Day of Challenges

Today's challenges have not been monumental.  They are just challenges.  But for some reason, they bug me today.  The heat, the air quality, the sock machine, the silk worms, the grass to cut, the weeds to pull, the motorhome floor to finish, the kitchen to finish as well as painting the house so we can sell it.  That's all. 

Today, the heat has been oppressive and the resulting air quality has made for a difficult day for John with his emphysema.  Working on the motorhome floor is impossible after about one o'clock in the afternoon.  He is so eager to get the flooring down and it is discouraging for him.  He pushes himself further than he should and this is a concern for me. 

The sock machine and I had a round today.  I am using a new / different yarn and am having a terrible time making all the adjustments.  I've knitted and ripped out more times than I can count!  As I have said before, this is a HUGE learning curve.  On the positive side though, I have found the perfect number of rows to fit my foot.  The first socks were too large for my feet, but the last pair.....just right.   What is so funny is that as I was ripping out a sock for the umteenth time, I was thinking that maybe I should get my spinning wheel and spin.  I had to laugh at myself.  When I was learning to spin, I would think that maybe I should just go felt something.  Nothing like wanting to take an easier road.  

The silkworms.....I have three very stubborn fellas.  They just don't want to stop eating those mulberry leaves and make their cocoons.  I have had cocoons for four days now, but these guys keep hanging on and eating.  I still can hear these three chewing on the mulberry leaves.  At first, as wee babes, they needed the youngest, most tender mulberry leaves.  Now they enjoy the large, mature leaves.  When I go out to cut more branches, I see those young, tender leaves and thing, ooooh they will like these.  I put the leaves in the silkworm container and what do these fellas want?  The old, hairy, tough leaves.  I guess my love of the spring mix for salads does not equate here.  I love the young and tender.

You can see the two coocoons and the worms here. 

I am tempted to reduce the amount we are cutting.  With the price of gas, I feel it is a waste of money.  It takes a lot of gas to cut 5 acres every 3 or 4 days.  The grass is still growing at a speedy rate and with most of our grass being out of sight, why not? 

And the weeds.  I just wish everything were level and we could just cut it all down....The woes of summer and home / mini farm ownership. 

We did have a cool visitor today.  I really do not know what it is.  It looks a bit like a dragon fly, but I don't think it is.  "He" was resting on the side of our house and I saw him as I was sitting at the circular sock machine.  Maybe you will be able to tell me it's name. 

Dinner is ready, time to go.....God bless all tonight~!

We Have a New Great Grand!

New babies are so precious.  Especially when they are our grand children and great grands.  Today, Harper Howe entered the world at 6 pounds 7 ounces and she is just beautiful!  I even have the photo to prove it! 

We have been waiting with a bit of anxiety.  She has created a stir for the last 2 or 3 weeks.  There was an irregular heart beat.  Cause for concern!   An ultrasound showed that there was an umbilical aneurysm and the physicians were fairly confident that the increased pressure created by the aneurysm was pumping too much blood into the heart creating the heart rhythm problem.  But we had to wait until delivery to be sure.  On top of that, our little darlin decided to present her tush, rather than her head.  Therefore, a Cesarean delivery was scheduled for this morning. 

The parents to be were to be at the hospital at 9:00 this morning.  The hospital personnel told them that it was "all clear" for their delivery.  When they arrived, they went through the registration process etc.  And then they waited, oh, oh,  the OR was needed for an emergency delivery.  Then another emergency... they had to wait their turn for the operating room.  Finally, it was time and Harper entered the world, easing every concern we had about her health. 

Megan had visitation all planned.  First she and Adam wanted to be with her for the first hour.  Just a nice quiet time to bond with their loan from God.  Next they wanted the grandparents for the next hour followed by the greats!  We calculated that if Harper was born between nine and ten o'clock, that would mean Meg and Adam would be alone with her from say, ten to eleven, followed by grandparents from eleven to twelve o'clock.  Then, last but not least the  greats at noon.  Now, I added about ninety minutes to that schedule based upon past experience.

I passed some of the waiting time reading and then I decided to spin some yarn.  But when the ninety minutes stretched to two hours, we decided we would make our way toward the hospital, hoping that we would get a call and we would be close by. 

We went to Camping World to make a couple purchases for the motorhome, then drove by Sam's Club. We decided that since it was a Sunday crowd, we did not want to stand in line, so we just moseyed on down the road.  While driving, we called daughter #1 - Karen to see what the progress was and she informed us of the delay, but said she was on her way to the hospital.  We knew from that it was going to be a bit longer, so off we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant to wait.  The good food helped distract us and made the time go quickly and suddenly, we get a text from Meg telling us to come meet our new little one. 

She is so petite and cuddly!  The hospital has swaddling blankets that make them feel nice and secure.  She looked so cute in her white blanket and her pink and white hat.  She's just a "knock out".  Can you tell I'm a bit biased?  Oh well. 

Well, the rest of the day is history. 

Yesterday, we spent time spring cleaning the motor home in preparation for next week's trip to the fiber festival in Wooster Ohio.  I was amazed at how much dust and grit there was from the desert of California.  Now all the wood is cleaned and polished, mirrors are shiny, windows are clean, exhaust fans are cleaned, etc, etc.  I even cleaned closets and drawers!  We are ready to roll and are looking forward to meeting up with our friends that we have  not seen since last fall and those we have not seen for the last month or so.  This begins our busy time with art shows and the fiber festivals.  Having our home on wheels makes our travels more comfortable and we are looking forward to hitting the road on Thursday. 
The gas prices have gone down fourteen cents a gallon.  Nice timing, don't you think? 
Well, it's been a great week and a marvelous weekend.  Till next time....God's blessings to you....

Happy Birthday Ross!

Today is our grandson Ross' birthday.  You can see Ross' pictures along the side of this blog.  He is a hoot and a sweet, sweet boy!  We will be attending his birthday party Saturday.  Some of his gifts came from our travels this winter.  While at the Grand Canyon, then at Joshua Tree Nation Park, we admired the cutest Junior Park Ranger outfit - including a Ranger hat!  We didn't get it and now we are so sorry!  Next year! 

The sun has been shining all day.  Most of the ground is no longer wet so I mowed.  It was good to be outdoors and I plan on working outside again tomorrow - if the weather man will let me.  I still cannot get all the way back on our 5 acres.  A huge "pond" of standing water blocks the way.  I think we will have to bale it if it does not dry up soon.  If not, we will have to have a bush hog and that's expensive. 

What do you think about the price of gas?  It has gone down from $4.29 to 4.15 in the last two days.  Thank goodness the Miata gets wonderful mileage.  We have just parked the truck for now.  I sure wish Obama would do something about the gas prices. 

I want to knit another sock on my circular sock machine tomorrow.  Looks like I have a big day planned!  Oh, I also have a hat in the studio that I need to finish felting.  The St. James Art Show in Louisville, KY is sneaking up on me.  Art shows, fiber shows, oh my! 

Have a great day all!  Blessings....

Santa Barbara Sunshine to Sierra Mountain Winds

We left Leo Carrillo State Beach with a lot of sadness.  We had to tell Jojo good bye for almost 2 weeks.  Even though she would be working all week, just to have known that we were near would have made me feel better.  It was way too long since we had last been with her.  Somehow, I was able to let my tears go on the beach in order to not ruin our goodbye hugs.

We moved north on both the 1 and the 101 toward Santa Barbara.  This route is absolutely breathtaking.  What am I saying????  Ninety nine percent of what we have been seeing has been breathtaking.  I marvel at God's handiwork.

As we traveled north, the Pacific was so beautiful.  Every turn in the road brought new excitement.  How could the next scene be more outstanding than the other I don't know.  Not only did we see water scenes, but we saw miles and miles of fields fill with strawberries, blueberries, avocados and vegetables. 

Santa Barbara was larger than I remembered it.  We walked the beaches and took State street out to the pier where we had a wonderful lunch of shrimp, calamari, oysters, scallops, a wonderful slaw with pineapple and onion rings.  We ate outside and watched the fishing boats return with their day's catch.  Sail boats completed the peaceful scene.  A very nice day.  

We stayed at the Sunrise RV Park.    It was expensive!  $55.00 /  night but we had to hook up to electricity to recharge batteries in order to get the generator started so we could boondock during our trip to Death Valley.

Talley Winery was on our itinerary.  They had a lovely setting.  Rows and rows of vines in precise order blanketed the hillsides. After leaving Talley Vineyards, we visited the J Lohr vineyards.  Oh my!  I thought that Talley had a vast vineyard but J Lohr went on forever and as far as the eye could reach. 

Bakersfield was our next destination.  We were to boondock at the Camping World.  We had some supplies to pick up and wanted to have the oil changed.  They were unable to do the oil change which was okay since were were actually not at 3,000 yet.  They were, though able to help us with a lack of knowledge about generators.  This motor home is providing us with a HUGE learning curve.

 Our greeting to Bakersfield was oil wells.  A question I ask is why, when we have oil wells there, in Alaska, in the Gulf, just to mention a few places, are our gas prices determined by the price of oil in Lybia?  A gas station right next to an oil field and refinery was selling gas for $3.86!  Go figure.  We have read that gas in Death Valley will be over $4.00 a gallon. 

Wal Mart and Fresh & Easy were next on our list for shipping.  We replenished some of our supplies and headed for the Sequoia National Park.  The entrance to the park on  highway 178 is another experience.  The rapids are beautiful as they plummet down the mountain.  We are now in the Sierra Mountains.  What a difference in terrain.  The mountains went from lush green to brown.  This is considered the high desert.  We were planning to spend a few days in the Sequoia N.P., but a winter storm was predicted with high winds.  They said that 25 mph winds would gust to 50 mph.  The more we drove, the more the winds began to plummet us.  

We find that we have planned to much to do and see.  Anyone surprised?  We need to learn to plan our trips better so that we don't feel that we have to run from place to place.  After our "conference" this morning, we have decided to spend today and tonight here and then go to Death Valley National Park.  We are taking Las Vegas out of our itinerary.  Not only will it provide us with more time in Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Forrest, but it cuts down on a full tank of gas at the cost of over $200. 

Happy trails, to you......until we meet again....(sound familiar?)