Many of our trees were not so lucky.
If you think I’m exaggerating, go look at a map of the tornado path. Far too close for comfort.
Our trail camera caught a glimpse of the chaos after some limbs fell in front of the motion sensor.
There are trees fallen every which way. That might go to show how close we were to being in even worse shape, if the wind was whipping around like that.
The important thing is everyone is OK, including the bees. Nothing was lost that can’t be replaced.
This blog post is dedicated to the mushrooms I am finding in my back yard. I don’t know what kinds of mushrooms these are. Photogenic ones I suppose.
I’ll update this page periodically if I find additional good ones.
In our preparation for a grand adventure we took our camper trailer to Spring Valley for a weekend.
The night before we left we brought the trailer home to charge the batteries and load up. Then came the big day. We set out early to go de-winterize the water systems.
We partially filled our fresh water tank and flipped the water pump on to start flushing the lines and… nothing. The lights dimmed as if it was pulling power, but the pump didn’t activate. Bummer.
So, we drained the fresh water. We came prepared with bottled water for the weekend just in case, but it was really a bummer that we wouldn’t be able to test the water features of the trailer this time.
The next step was to head to the park. We were all loaded up and the weather was pleasant. We got to the park in good time with nothing unexpected coming up. Until we got to the park.
Spring comes a little later at Spring Valley, there was still snow on the ground. The camp host, in plowing the roads, had completely blocked off the RV sites with snow banks. Seeing that we were not competing with anyone else for space, we backed the trailer as close to the snow bank as we could and started the camp setup process. We honestly thought the camp host would tell us we had to move so we waited to fully commit, but we were out of the way and the camp host was away. It ended up being OK.
Having set up camp (and after a quick siesta) we decided to go on a hike with the pups.
We went around the north end of the lake, got some pictures, then turned around and went back. We didn’t know the state of the whole trail and figured we could do the entire hike another day.
Here’s where we encountered pitfall number two. We discovered that although we had packed all the food we could possibly want over the weekend, we had forgotten to pack any seasonings. We didn’t even have salt or pepper. That is, with one exception. My Dad had gifted us some fancy hot sauces for Christmas. So for dinner we had our steaks well seared and cooked with a lovely red pepper sauce and garlic. We packed our baked potatoes with some melted pepper jack cheese. Overall it was a good meal with great company.
The next day we had pancakes for breakfast before going back out to explore and get more pictures.
We decided to come home Sunday so we could pack up the trailer at home on Monday, before returning to work on Tuesday. Everything packed up as easy as it put down, the most difficult part as always is lining up the trailer hitch.
It was good to unplug for a weekend and stretch ourselves. Being uncomfortable is good for growth, and facing the unknown and all the challenges therein is definitely uncomfortable.
We already have a replacement water pump ordered and we are thinking there should be one more outing before our big trip. Stay tuned for more adventures.
It rained for a few days and these appeared apparently out of nowhere. Wild that they can grow so late in the year.
Also featured, puppy snoots.
While out with my family gathering firewood, I stumbled upon some real nifty mushrooms.
There must have been a hundred or more all growing out of one dead tree.
Tiny mushroom.
