Hawaii Day 5

Today was a road trip day. We drove south and then east around the island to Waimea canyon. Our vantage point near the end of the road was at about 3500' above sea level which provided a pretty spectacular view of the canyon. The actual view was much better than any of the pictures that I took. We tried to go up to the actual end of the road at about 4000' but the extra altitude put us above the cloud layer so visibility was next to zero.

After spending time up in the clouds we headed back down to sea level. A bit of shopping and then we headed for our resort and enjoyed the pool and hot tub.

Ain't life grand?!

Hawaii Day 4

Hawaiian Monk Seal lounging in the sun

Snorkel area at Poipu Beach

View up coast from Poipu Beach

One of the many local 'wild' chickens

Today we headed up the eastern coast a bit to spend some time at Poipu beach which B says is the best snorkeling beaches on the island. We dropped K off at one of the local resorts so she could pick up on their WiFi to prepare for an interview she was having this morning. As we were heading for the beach, B looked off to the side of the road and saw a group of 5 or 6 big sea turtles just off one of the smaller beaches. We stopped to watch them for a while but unfortunately did not get a great picture of the group of them. They were fun to watch though.

On to the beach, which was very nice and very spread out. Cecile headed out to the water to do a little snorkeling, B took little W out to one of the calmer more protected coves off the beach and I stayed under the shaded canopy up from the beach to watch our posessions...and do some reading. After B and W came back, I took a walk out to the beach and walked in the surf a bit. I did come across a roped off area where a Hawaiian Monk Seal was relaxing. Apparently there are less than 500 of these gentle creatures still alive in the wild.

After K came back from her interview and the rest of the gang wore themselves out in the water, we took a ride further up the coast to check out the local botanical gardens and see a rather interesting blow hole. The hole itself is less than a foot across but, under the right conditions, the water spurts up 15-20 feet in the air.

We came back to the resort where some took naps and some sat and read for a couple hours. Then it was time for the trek to the pool area. Another great day.

Ain't life grand?!

Hawaii Day 3

Wailua Falls

Opaeka Falls

This was pretty much a kick-back day. We left mid-morning on a short road trip to a couple of the local waterfalls. One of them was the waterfall that was always shown on the TV show Fantasy Island. The falls were nice but the lush vegetation was even more impressive. Near the end of our road trip we stopped at the Coconut Mall and browsed in the various upscale shops there. Cecile says that we will be going back there again.

The afternoon found us again at the pool. After pruning up there for several hours we headed back to the room to settle in for the night. Mom & Dad went out to a well deserved dinner while Cecile & I stayed home to watch a movie with little W before putting him down to bed. He is such a cutie. More later.

Ain't life grand?!

Hawaii Day 2

Little W playing in the resort wading pool

View of the Kiauea coast

Beautiful cove near the lighthouse

The lighthouse

The front of our resort

We started the day out by taking little W out for a walk to give Mom & Dad a little break. This started about 6:30am and those who know Cecile should be appropriately awed by now. We walked around and explored the grounds a bit and then headed across the street to the Starbucks and hung out for a while...little W loved his pieces of scone! The local variety shop next door to Starbucks opened early so we went browsing for a while there.

We returned after about an hour and a half and made plans for our day's road trip. We headed up the east coast of Kauai toward Princeville. Our first stop was at the Kilauae lighthouse. The lighthouse reminded me a bit of the lighthouse just north of Mendocino...it was built about the same time, around 1907. The lighthouse was nice but the grounds and coastline surrounding the lighthouse were absolutely beautiful. There were also quite a few birds with nesting grounds in the area.

We then headed a little further north to Princeville, which it seems is the ritzy area of the island. There were several beautiful resorts and lots of nice homes.

We continued on north and then west to literally the end of the road at Ke'e beach and the start of the Napoli coast of Kauai. The only way to continue on to the Napoli coast is on foot. We found a parking place and packed out our picnic lunch (and stuff) and headed for the beach. This place was fairly crowded but turned out to be a great place for Cecile to go snorkeling. Cecile said that this was the best place she had ever snorkeled. After spending a couple of hours at the beach, we started working our way back to our resort with plans to take advantage of the pool.

The pool area here is huge and gorgeous with hot tubs, wading pools for kids and three slides that wind their way down into the pool. I'll include pictures of that in the next blog. Later Mom and Dad left W in our care and they headed out for a dinner together. W was exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately after they left so it was an easy night for us. More later.

Ain't life grand?!

Hawaii Days One & (early) Two

Mt. Wai'ale'ale - the wettest place on Earth

A view from our balcony

One of the local date palms

Another view from our balcony

We woke up at 3:00am so that we could make the 6am flight out of Fresno. Since we were very excited, the early time did not make much of a difference...not much. The flight was on time and we quickly completed our 29 minute flight to San Francisco. BR, KR and little W came in on a later flight from Portland and met us at the gate to wait for our 9am flight to Hawaii. We were really looking forward to spending the week with them.

Our flight to Hawaii was a direct flight to Lihue airport on the island of Kaua'i. The flight was almost six hours longs, which is a long time to be crammed into United Airlines 767 sardine can. Little W was one of the lucky ones as he slept for almost five hours of the flight. Our room was not ready when we arrived so we drove south a bit and stopped at one of the local hot spots,Dukes, for lunch. Theis is generally a very popular place but since it is off season here we got in and served very quickly. Nothing spectacular but after the long flight, it tasted great. Being out of sorts from the lack of sleep and the long flight, we didn't do much for the rest of Day 1 except relax.

Our condo complex is a really nice, upscale place. We are on the 4th floor with a great view of Mt. Wi'ale'ale which is supposed to be the wettest place on Earth (500 to 600 inches of rain per year). The view also includes the local Safeway and shopping center but the price was right. Apparently the weekly price for the ocean view side was $1800 more. We like this place a lot.

I nodded off shortly after 8p (11p in Calif) and Cecile went out before she could finish watching the finale of one of her favorite shows.

Woke up before 5 and ended up watching the Little W show as he had a very restless night and was out in the living area shortly after I got up. It looks like Cecile and I are taking Will to the pool this morning so that KW and BW can relax, take a shower, etc. The plan is to go out exploring a bit today. More later.

Ain't life grand!

Getting Ready

We've been spending the past few days getting ready for our Caribbean cruise...plus getting Pegs & Jokers sets ready to fill some last minute orders. We are really looking forward to relaxing on our balcony while we sail in WARM weather. When we leave Park Sierra at 5:00am the temp will be in the low 30's. By the time we land in Ft. Lauderdale it is supposed to be in the low 80's. I'm hoping that we don't see a temp below 65 for at least seven days.

Cecile is already worrying about missing the cat but I keep assuring her that Aunt Patty O'Hare will take real good care of her. I won't miss the cat as I'll have other things on my mind...being warm.

A check of the weather along our route looks pretty nice with our last port, Nassau Bahamas, being the coolest of all the stops. Cecile is hoping that the water will be warm enough so that she and the Ryders can go snorkeling. Since I have been a stone all my life (I even sunk in salt water when I weighed less than 200 lbs), I will be enjoying other activities while they swim.

Less than 48 hours until our ship leaves Florida! You can tell that I'm not excited...yeah right!

Ain't life grand?!

Site Warming Party

Mittens enjoying her new hunting grounds

Resting after the meal

We had our best friends over to our site warming on Monday afternoon. We fired up the smoker and smoked some salmon, ribs and a whole chicken. The chicken turned out great but the ribs were a bit on the overdone side. That aside, with the side dishes that our friends brought, everyone had a great time...enjoying the good food and the good view.

Ain't life grand!

We've moved!

The view out to our "back yard"

Our grassy side yard and the rock grotto

Our finch feeder

View from behind site

Shed view

It's been a long time since this blog has been updated but there hasn't been much new to report. We have been busy...finishing Pegs & Jokers sets and now, moving to a new site here at Park Sierra. The previous site we were on was on the edge of the Park but was a little too close to our neighbors on either side. Our new site, 529, is on the creekside edge of the Park with a great view. We both are enjoying the more secluded nature of our new site. Our closest neighbor is at least 50 feet away. The pictures I'm including here give you a good idea of our view and seclusion.

Merry Christmas

Our three grandchildren playing together

David & his special quilt

Getting ready to open those presents


The Christmas tree before the presents are opened

I was going to post this yesterday but between having too much fun with the comings and goings of family, playing with grandkids and taking a nice long nap, I just couldn't squeeze it in.

We have had a wonderful few days here, topped off with a great Christmas day. Because we were so focused on making sure the Christmas tree lot was running smoothly we lost focus of what Christmas is all about. Basically the Christmas spirit slowly drains out of us during the tree selling season. It takes a combination of things to bring it back. Getting to spend some time with our family is the first ingredient. The next is our tradition of going to Christmas Eve church services at the church where Gary was confirmed back in 1966. We have been doing this for the past five or six years and it is so wonderfully festive and reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas. The final ingredient is watching the grandchildren open their presents on Christmas day and all the family coming and going. A nice treat was having our son and his family visit. He was driving down from Portland, OR and we were concerned that all the snow they had been having would keep him from making it down. Our Christmas spirit is now back in high gear. A few more days here playing with grandkids, taking in a movie or two and culminating with the birthday celebration for our youngest grandchild and we will be ready to head back to the country.

Ain't life grand!

All Done

The last of the Christmas trees went out the gate today. We still had quite a few left but probably sold as many trees as last year. The 100 or so trees we had left were split between being taken to the local recycler and being taken to another lot where they will be sold to all of those last minute bargain hunters. We had enough of those this past week to last me a lifetime. It's hard for me to be civil to someone driving up in a Mercedes and demanding (yes demanding!) a tree for half price. But I suppose that is how they could afford that Mercedes.

I'm not posting any pictures because it has been too wet and cold for me to even think of bringing out the camera. We have most of the sales trailer packed up (yes, everything on the lot fits in the trailer) and will finish tomorrow. We just got tired of getting soaked.

We will be leaving here on Tuesday morning and head across the SF Bay to our daughter's place in Walnut Creek where we will stay until Dec 29. We normally wouldn't be staying that late but our son and his family will be having a first birthday celebration on Dec 28. His birthday isn't until January but they will be heading back up to Oregon so decided to celebrate early with all of the California family before they left.

We can't wait to get back to the peace and quiet of Coarsegold! We've had enough of all the planes trains, automobiles, ambulances and the millions of people!

We're done with the Christmas tree season so...ain't life grand!!

The Beginning of the End for Christmast Trees 2008

After the trees have been unbundled

Looking toward the cashout booth

Lot as the trees are coming in

Cecile & Betty keeping the count

Yes, we got the entire truck load

We have been very neglectful of this blog for the last two months. We have been busy but the biggest reason is that nothing much has been happening with us. We have been parked at the Pumpkin/Christmas tree lot since late September. Pumpkin season was, as usual, pretty boring...although we were busier than last year. Since pumpkin season finished we have mainly been working on setting up the lot for Christmas trees and doing the finishing work on our pegs and jokers sets. Sales have been fairly brisk for the pegs & jokers. We have been having a tough time keeping up with the demand for the standard sets. If we were not going to be busy running the Christmas tree lot for the next three weeks, selling a bunch of P & J sets would be a very good thing. We will have to wait and see what happens with the sales.

On Tuesday, Nov 25, we received our first load of trees...650 altogether which represents about 20% of what we will sell all season. The trees look much better this year than they did last year. It probably has to do with the fact that they have had more rain up in Oregon over the past twelve months. Hopefully people will appreciate the improved quality. Today was our first day of business. Still not very busy but sales were up from last year. We sold several of our big trees. Most of the big ones will be gone within the next six or seven days. Since the season is a bit shorter this year, we are expecting much busier weekends. That's a good thing as it makes the days go by so much quicker. I look at today as the beginning of the end...of the Christmas tree sales season, of course.

Tonight we go over to the owner's main lot at the San Mateo Expo Center for a Thanksgiving dinner put on for all of the managers. I say I'm not going to stuff myself but I probably will anyway. I do like a good Thanksgiving meal!

Happy Thanksgiving to any and all who read this!!!

Gary & Cecile
ain't life grand!!

A Gazillion Pumpkins

The pumpkins are delivered in these large
containers by a big semi

There were only two containers of these smaller ones

A Gazillion pumpkins!

Our monster slide...the real attraction of this lot!

Well, at least it seemed like I unloaded that many. Cecile started out helping me with some of the smaller ones but her fibromyalgia quickly told her that she probably should not continue. A gazillion is probably a slight overstatement. Doing a very rough count, it is probably more like 1600-1700. Plenty though, when you consider that you have to reach over the sides of the containers and lift them out. If I was to just pull the sides off the containers, it would cause too much bruising and breaking. Luckily that was the last heavy physical work that I will have to do...at least until it is time for Christmas trees.

Today is our second day of being opened and, amazingly enough, people are wanting to come out here and buy pumpkins and play on the slides in the rain. Go figure!

Ain't life grand?

Long Time

Yum! Nothing like fresh caught crab!

This was the big guy that I mention below. He
was probably the biggest crab I have ever caught.

Sorry that it has taken so long to post our goings on. We have been pretty busy these past couple of weeks.

We left Winchester Bay, Oregon after three fairly successful days of crabbing. Our final count was thirteen crab altogether. A lot of these seemed to be 'new shell' crab so they didn't have a great deal of meat. But we did get a couple of meals out of our efforts and, of course, nothing beats fresh caught crab. The last crab I caught was the biggest, measuring out at almost 7 3/4". He was also a pretty good fighter!

From there we spent three days heading south to our lot at Park Sierra. We had to spend a little time here to get rid of our summer 'stuff' and pick up our fall and winter stuff. Luckily we got rid of more than we loaded back on.

After spending five days there, we again hit the road heading for the San Francisco bay area. We usually don't go up this early but the owners of the pumpkin & Christmas tree business that we work for asked us to help them out setting up the lots this year. It turned out to be a lot harder work that Gary was anticipating but he survived. Cecile didn't have to do much during this time so she decided to take BART over to Walnut Creek to visit Dana, David and the kids. She had a great time but everybody decided it was much too short a visit.

Ain't life grand?

Winchester Bay

The view from outside our door

The first trap that I pulled this morning...nothing but babies and mommas

A momma...unfortunately she had to go back to make more babies

I took this picture on our last full day at Camp Cascadia...Mittens last
day of hunting in the jungle...at least for a while. She's not all
that happy right now!

We made it to Winchester Bay, even though it is only for three days. We came for the crab and were not disappointed. Since we had to be here early this year, and my water taxi has yet to arrive, I am forced to crab off of the docks. The first day turned out to be pretty good as I got six crab off the docks. I have to admit, they aren't big and huge and full of meat but, after Cecile and Pat picked the meat, we ended up with over a pound of pure crab meat. It was enough to have crab and cheese on triscuit tonight and tomorrow we will have some crab on english muffins. Hopefully tomorrow will bring me as good luck as today. It made it worth while to drive over here.

Ain't life grand!!

Family Visit to Camp Cascadia

WR and Dad...he loves the clapping

WR and Mom

WR and Grandma Cecile

WR and Janice...OK where's my shirt?

Three generations...WR, Dad & Grandma

WR brought his mom & dad to see us at Camp Cascadia on Friday, and did he ever get a lot of attention. Cecile & Janice took turns holding, hugging and squeezing this adorable little baby while Gary & Ken just made stupid faces at him to make him smile. Making him smile is not hard as he is a very happy, good-natured baby. Even while he is teething he can still manage a lot of smiles.

It was a beautiful day so we sat outside most of the time and visited. We did manage to go inside so that the ladies could trounce on us in a few games of Pegs & Jokers. When evening came, Ken & Janice treated us to a dutch oven cooked meal of lasagna, sourdough bread and fresh berry cobbler. Nobody went away hungry. We were sad to see them have to go back home but we had a great visit!

Ain't life grand?

We are sad to say that we are leaving here on Monday. It was a fun seven weeks. We will stop in Cottage Grove (about 75 miles to the south) to visit with some good friends and then head on over to the coast for a few days of crabbing and visiting with our friend Pat. Then we head south, back into California. We have to be in Burlingame on Sep 26 to start working on opening the pumpkin and tree lots. We might try to make it to Park Sierra for a few days to change versions of our stuff but that's still up in the air.