Sunny Cheyenne

Wednesday:
It’s been an interesting trip. Snow, Ice, and rain all the way here after leaving California. How pleasant to arrive in Cheyenne, known for its cold weather, to see a sunny sky and 70 degree weather. Wonderful! Unfortunately, it won't last.

We're staying at the AB Camping RV park at 1503 West College Drive, Cheyenne. It's just East of I25 about a mile. Nice park. It hasn't fully opened yet so we're getting a discount

Thursday:

Woke up to a nice white blanket of snow. Of course. Snow everywhere we go recently. Today the high is supposed to be 37 degrees than it is supposed to start warming up after this, I hope.

It's very blizzard like here, especially to a Californian. White stuff everywhere, no sun, blustery wind moves the snow around when it isn't being added.

We went out to breakfast at the Village Inn. Pretty good grub. Nice visit with the relatives.

Went shopping at the local mall to get a little exercise. It was thrilling getting from car to store to store with the high wind and blowing snow. Just why do people want to call this home?

We returned home early in the afternoon to find all DC power dead in the RV. No heater and no refrigerator were the special concerns. The batteries were fine and charging, due to the solar and inverters charger. The disconnect switch clicked when pushed to disconnect but only flickered the power. I suspected a fuse but which one. Out came the manual. Little help. It is a general terms manual without a wiring diagram. It didn't say which fuse corrected this problem. Due to the position of the panel, the weather (blowing snow) and very cold, and how packed together the fuses are; identifying the defective fuse took a while. Finally the culpret was found and everything was back to normal. Fuses must be dying of old age.

All the trucks have hunkered down. The Flying J about a mile West of us is packed to about triple ocupancy. Brother Ernie pulled in there Wednesday morning so he has a nice close in spot. Late arrivals are double parked and or parked up to a 1/2 mile away. Yesterday afternoon we got trapped there for a while while, due to the mis parked trucks, no traffic could move.

We had dinner at nephew Larry's house. When we left about 11:30 pm, the wind had stopped and the sky was clear. That happened sometime after 9pm. With clear sky's and no wind, maybe it will warm up.

All this cold is after the 10 day weather.com forecast before we left had said we were in for nice reasonably warm weather 20 degrees warmer than we've been having. Our gray cloud seems to be following us.

Friday:
15 degrees at 7am this morning. Once the sun rose, the radiant temperature did likewise so the window thermometer said it was the mid 50's but the actual temperature was quite a bit lower. Most of the snow melted off but at 3:30 pm it was 30 degrees. Actually it must be that it is such a dry cold here that makes these low temperatures bearable?

We had breakfast at the Egg and I near the Capitol building. Again a nice visit with the folks.

After making a bunch of copies at Kinko's and then a little shopping with Ernie. We returned to the RV. The Motosat worked today, I assume, because of the warmer temperatures. So I spent a little time posting to the blog.

Saturday:

A bunch of the family at Larry's house. Lou and Keigan's dog Doc relaxing.


Virginia had a huge collection of Owls.


There was a nice photo board at virginia's services. Larry's cat Tigger had more visitors than he could handle. We lounged around a bit in the morning, what was left of it when we awoke, anyway. We prepared our duds. We don't normally dress up when traveling in the RV, nor much any other times. We picked up Ernie and went to St Marks Church for Virginia's service. Nice service. Good to see the family dressed up. We took advantage of that to take some pictures. they all cleanup pretty good.

After the services and reception, we undid the dudss and went over to Larry's for the evening. One of the main activities, other that watching games on TV, and conversations was playing Yahtsee.

Sunday:
We met Ernie and most of the family for breakfast at the Flying J restaurant. It was a buffet and was pretty good. Ernie then departed to Salt Lake City.

Lou, Nephew John, his wife Judy, and I went down to Estes Park. On the way we looked around at a nice park with a lot of bronze statues in Loveland, Colorado. John used to teach art and some of the artists were once his students. We looked arounf the shops in Estes Park. We especially liked the glass blowers shop, one of the best we've seen. We had dinner at Momma Rose's then headed home.




We visited a park in Loveland that had lots of statues. Don's nephew John taught art and some of his former students have statues here.


Some wildlife near Estes Park Colorado.

Monday:
We really slept in today, rising about 0930. Breakfast was leftovers from last nights dinner. The weather was nice again today even though ocassionally brezzy.

I decided to fix the windshield so the crack stops growing but my glue that was left over from the previous damage repair leaked and wsn't good. We stopped by a local auto parts store for a new repair kit.

Other projects for the day included replacing Lou's electric blanket, getting haircuts and filling the water bottles. We also copied a couple of cookbooks from Virginia's collection for Dawn.

John, Matt and Kegan went fishing and had great sucess so dinner was fish at Larry's house. We went home earlier that usual to do our laundry.

Tomorrow we depart headed South.

Over Hills And Dales

On the road to Cheyenne. Snow all the way.

The Motosat was no better in the morning. Over night, it had really snowed. The hills were very white and we were a little iced up. About 8:00, we hit the road after checking road conditions the old fashioned way, by phone. Not very informative but we decided to move on. About 5 miles West of Carlin, there was a chain requirement. We pulled in and waited around. While we have chains, I really was not interested in putting them on. After a while, the snowing stopped and the plows had made several runs through. We watched as many trucks and cars ignored the chain requirement and finally we followed them through. No problems, road clear and mostly dry. It did snow most of the way on to Wendover but there were no other chain requirements.Somewhere before we stopped for the chain requirement, we evidently broke the right windshield. There is something wrong with this part of the world. Last October on our way through here, the left windshield was broken. We finally got that replaced in January and this is the first trip with the new one. At least I now know what to expect in replacing the second one.
The temperature trough Nevada seemed to stay at 30-32 degrees. After we left Wendover, it finally went up a bit making it all the way to 50 degrees for a short while in Salt Lake City.
After a short walk on which we stopped by a British Pantry and picked up a couple of Beef Pasties for a dinner. I called My brother Ernie who had been in Salt Lake City. He was now East of Evanston headed for Casper to WalMarts with a load then he would be headed to Cheyenne.

We again checked the weather by phone and decided to head on. Ernie had said the best way out of Salt Lake East was not to take I80, but instead to head North on I15 then take I84 thus avoiding the mess and potential of snow around Park City. The grade is so much easier. He was right, It was so much better. Traffic was very heavy on I15 at 7:15 pm. Don't know why. We exited onto Hwy 89 North which connects to I84. Much better! There was some rain but really quite nice.

We stopped at WalMarts in Evanston, Wy, our home away from home, for the night. I tried the Motosat and discover the GPS was dead. After about 10 minutes it sprung to life and I got a connection to the Internet. Relief at last. That's the first time the Motosat has been used since December. I think it forgot how to work. It's now snowing in Evanston. Is it really spring? The trees sure thought so, being in full bloom, under their coat of snow.

We should make it the rest of the way over to Cheyenne tomorrow.

Off We Go, Suddenly

We had planned a short excursion starting Tuesday to Santa Cruz and the Pinnacles, however, plans change.

I received a call from my nephew John yesterday that my sister isn't well so we're on our way to Cheyenne, Wyoming to see her instead. Dawn doesn't get to go so her vacation will have to wait until we return. The weather looks good except for a little storm tomorrow morning as we depart. I hope it's just a little storm and the wind isn't too bad. East of Reno should be no problem.

Since we're so far out, after our visit, we'll do some exploration on our return trip. Luckily, everything I undid rebuilding the arbor is now restored, I hope. If not, there will be a little dead lawn and plants on our return.

It is nice to have the freedom to travel on the spur of the moment and to be able to change plans even faster.

We left Palo Alto about 9:30, just in time to miss most of the morning traffic. Also, that's when we were finally ready to roll. The weather was cooperative over the mountains to Reno. It evidently started snowing just after we were across and snowed about a foot causing a chain requirement. Glad we made it through before that. We stopped at Boomtown for a late lunch about 2:30. While there I received a call that my sister had passed away. Services are now Saturday so the rush is reduced. When we came out the wind was really blowing. It wasn't too bad though as we headed East finally stopping for the night at WalMarts in Winemucca, Nevada. We took our usual walk inside and did a little shopping and when we returned outside we found that there had been a little snow storm. Most of it melted off the ground but the windows were still caked a little.

I tried to use the Motosat to check the weather and get email but it would not rotate. I figured it was just iced up and gave up on it for the night.

More Fun In The Yard

My computer is still in the shop. I feel sort of lost without it. I want to get going with some work that requires it. Fortunately, Lou's is available so I can still make the occasional post.


Arbor utilities before on left, after on right.


Arbor utilities before on left, after on right.


Another view of the electrical being installed and on the right, a view of the decorated arbor. Plants rehung for Spring.

I keep making progress on the arbor replacement. I didn't want to leave until I got the yard sprinklers working again. Everything that was, is back now, even some that wasn't. Basically just the deck to do now. I picked up some plywood to make the forms for that last night. It's going to sit a little higher in the yard so a little retaining wall is needed. I do get carried away, don't I?

We were planning on getting away for a few days to Santa Cruz and the Pinnacles on Tuesday. I have a dentist appointment Tuesday and we'll leave from there. But, it looks now like a storm may be coming so we may reschedule until it passes. Dawn wants to look around Santa Cruz. it's just over the hill, but we haven't been there in a while.

I'm a little torn between my big desire to get back on the road and a little desire to stay and finish a few more improvements. I do need to paint this house and I need to pour a little concrete walkway in San Jose at Dawn's place. I'm still not sure what will win.

Bicycles and Traffic Signals

Sometimes I do still think about "work." Not often, but occasionally. Today was one of those times.


Today, there was a meeting of the Traffic Signal Association that I belong to. It was being held at my former "work" site so I went. Even better, it was pertaining to a project of interest "Bicycle Adapting Traffic Signal Timing." Ananth Prasad, one of the County's engineers presented the information. The project won a state award. Basically what it's all about is providing special traffic signal timing to bicycles because of the differences in speed and acceleration between them and cars. Longer initial green, longer extension green and longer clearance intervals are the result when a bicycle is detected. You can see a video about the project here. Before I retired, I was involved in the preparation for this project getting the traffic controllers and vehicle detection systems to be able to do this neat thing. More of my thoughts about this topic are here.

Now back to our regularly unscheduled life.

Where Are the Pics?

Sorry, I have taken  a couple of pictures recently, however, I haven't uploaded them from the camera because my computer is in the shop. I don't want to mess up my system, so I'll wait until it's back to post any pictures. A couple of weeks until it returns. Aren't warrantee repairs neat. I wonder if they would be completed more quickly if they provided loaners until it was repaired?

Something New

One of the demonstrations at the Apollo event demonstrated a nice free music player they developed. It's from FineTunes.com. You can add a playlist to your website like I did on the bottom right of this site, or you can even place a player on your desktop. FineTunes has a lot of music, it's free and licensed, as in legal. They don't have everything, but there is a lot of music there.

My playlist is kind of eclectic, don't hold it against me.

A Night At The Apollo

I went up to San Francisco last night to see the introduction of a new product from Adobe. It's project name is Apollo but the name will probably change when it's released. Someone evidently owns the name Apollo. Anyway, Apollo is cool. It allows rich internet applications to be developed and then they work on any platform, Windows, Mac's, mobile devices, basically anything. They also can run as a desktop application without the need for a connection to the internet or with an ocassional connection. This is powerful stuff.

There were lots of demonstrations of things being done with Apollo. Ebay seems to like it. Abobe is a good host and provided all the usual stuff, pizza, sodas, beer, cookies, etc. there were a couple of hundred folks there, all seemed impressed. Of course, the real "piece de resistance" was that each attendee received a free copy of the Flex Builder 2 software (a $799 value) along with the Apollo app. That's everything needed to make some great aplications. It's too bad I already ordered Flex builder 2. Oh well, two is better than none?

I've been busy recently trying to learn to use Flex and now there's more, to learn and that can be done. If I'm going to learn something new, I'd prefer it to be something that will be around a while. My other tools may be fading away.

Since my carpool buddy has moved from the area, I now take the Caltrain up to San Francisco for these things. The Adobe building is only two blocks away from the station. This event really pushed the limit though, It lasted from 5pm to 1130 pm. The last train out of town is 1201am.

Now I really need to start doing something with this stuff and quite acting retired, or something like that.

Maps

There are three types of maps.

1. Our Current Location



This link goes to a map of showing our current location (#1265 on the map)




2. Camp Maps


There is also a page with links to similar pin maps and route maps for each or our expeditions here. Each time we leave home, a new set of maps is created which shows all our campsites until we return home. There are links on the page that lead to more information about the campsite, and to the Travel By Desine blog entry related to the visit.


Samples of the pages:


These samples are not active maps but if you click on them, you'll go to a map that is active but may not be the most current expeditions map.

Site Map






Route Map

3. Post Maps






Temporarily not working.
More recent posts have a Google Map button near the bottom of the post if I've added the lat & lng for the post. If you click on the button, you will be shown a Google map pinpointing that location. You can also see a map of all postings below. You can then click on any map pin and go to the posting related to it. You can navigate around the map using the navigation buttons and zoom control on the left side of the map. If you click on any pin then a link to the most recent related posting will be shown along with the date of the posting. If you click on the link then you wil go to the posting. You can also change the view of the map from map to satellite to a hybrid of both views using the buttons on the top right.

Reno Success

There was some snow on the way to Reno


Arriving left and departing right, at Reno.

We made it to Reno. The train left Emeryville on time and arrived only one hour late in Reno. Not sure why other than it appears to be the way things work. Most of the snow is gone but there was some at the top. Nice views, great weather. We enjoyed a late lunch about 2pm in the dining car.

It's nice taking the train "to" Reno. It's the "from" that's usually the problem. The station is right by the casinos, only two blocks to ours, the Silver Legacy. We had dinner at the Cafe Napa at Harrah's. Very good.

Neither Lou nor I are big gamblers, probably don't even qualify as little gamblers. We looked around a lot.

Monday we walked out to the Atlantis Casino from downtown. On the way we had breakfast, then stopped in several antique shops, various other stores, and the Peppermill Casino. It was only three miles to the Atlantis, but then there was the inevitable three miles back. A nice walk. We had dinner at the Silver Legacy buffet. Only OK.

Tuesday we took the river walk out to the Grand Sierra Resort (the old MGM Grand / Reno Hilton). Only 2.6 miles. We had lunch at Johnny Rockets sharing a milk shake and onion rings. We're getting smarter. We bought day passes for the bus for $4 each. When we got back downtown, we caught a bus to Sparks. Looked around the Nugget and Silver Club and the shops nearby. We then returned to our casino and had dinner at the Brew Brothers pub in the El Dorado Casino. Quite good.

Our train was scheduled to leave at 9:14 am. We had to do the unthinkable. We set the alarm for 6am. I called Amtrak to check on the train. It was running 3 hrs late so there was no hurry, back to bed we went. We had breakfast at the Circus Circus then called for the train status again. Their system wasn't working so we stopped by the train station. The train was now expected about 2:30 pm.

Since our day pases for the bus were good until 3pm, we rode the bus South on Virginia St. to see what there was further out. We stopped at the huge Meadowwood Mall, checked the place out and returned downtown via a different route going up Keitzke Lane. When we checked the train status again it was now expected about 3-3:30. We had lunch at the Silver Legacy's Sweetwater Cafe. Lou had a good cobb salad and I had a cashew chicken. Good place.

We headed for the train station about 2:30. At about 3pm I called for the train status and it was now expected about 4pm. They finally got it right, it arrived 3:59pm and departed abut 4:15 pm only 7 hours late. We did enjoy daylight through the area with snow but most of the ride was after dark. We arrived in Emeryville at 11:30pm. One nice thing about the delay is that we avoided the rush hour traffic. We got home about 12:20 am. All in all, a nice trip.

P.S.

The day after our return, there was a big fire that burnt hundreds of feet of trestle just East of Sacramento. No trains will get through between Sacremento and Reno for weeks. Just made the trip in time!

On The Way

This morning, we went over to the "airport" (Gunn High School), to fly our RC planes. There were a bunch of dogs with owners on the soccer fields, our usual spot,so we went over to the footfall stadium to fly. It's a bit tighter but the goal posts give us something to aim at. Lou and I did a little gardening but mostly took it easy today. 

Tomorrow, we're making another attempt to take the train to Reno. 

This afternoon, when I tried to check email on my laptop, it was dead. The power supply seems to be dead. It's a good thing the 3 year warrantee is still good until the 29th of this month. I'll have to get it into the shop when I return. Good thing is, Comp-USA has opened their store in East Palo Alto which is a lot closer than Burlingame or San Jose, the other locations. 

Friday will be a geek day. I'm headed off to a seminar at Adobe in San Francisco on their new Apollo software, a product that allows a web application to work without a web connection. It sounds interesting, and I certainly have the time. 

What a time to have daylight savings time swing into gear. We have a train to catch early so the clocks are already set for tomorrows time. I hope the train crew gets it straight as well. Is it true the only real reason for the change, especially the recent change to being three weeks earlier, is for commercial reasons, so they can sell more candy, etc. There has never been any benefit for the supposed reason of saving energy. Many people do like a little more sunlight in the afternoon when they get home from work. I just wish they'd quit playing with the clocks and just change the work and store hours as desired.

Movie Night In Redwood City

We went to a new mega-Plex theater in downtown Redwood City. It's a 20 screen complex the Century 20. So many choices. Interesting thing is, Redwood City has a total of 32 screens, That's a lot for a little town. Actually, it's usually easy to eliminate 80-90 percent off the top as junk, then hope some of the rest are worth seeing. We chose a winner, The Bridge to Terabithia. It was a great move, well acted, an excellent production. While it's distributed by Disney, it was at least partially a New Zealand film but the story was based somewhere in the states. There was a lot of imagination in this film along with a good story. It was fun.

Maps Working!

The new look here at Travel By Desine (TBD) was necessary in order to get the maps working on this site. Now if there is a map link associated with the posting, then there will be a "Google Map >>" button at the bottom of the posting. You can also use the "Google Map" to see a map with all the Geo Coded map pins for associated posts. Just click on a map pin and then you can click on the link and go to the blog post related to it.

The blog theme has the layout I like but the colors and banner image will need to be changed when I get a chance. I can live with the island look for a while.

I've also updated the Campground Reviews (CR) site as well. Now you can select the campground of interest using a map. In order to do so, I had to upgrade the blog software on the CR website because it was necessary to allow the map to appear on the home page. Eventually, I'll have to upgrade the TBD and the other Wordpress sites I'm running.

The CR site will also allow you to click on one of the random images shown on the home page and go to the review for the campsite. I haven't enabled that yet because I have to make a new related image for each campsite or do some other trickery to display the images at the appropriate size. My head was hurting after doing the upgrade last night so the images will have to wait for another time.

If you like or dislike the maps or the new look, let me know. Use the Contact Form.

Two Down, One To Go

I've been slogging away at the plumbing projects. The leaking pipe has been fixed. The main shut-off valve replaced. And a little progress on reworking the arbor plumbing as well.

The water main shut-off was fun. Couldn't turn off the water at the meter so had to install another valve after the existing shut-off valve. The original was underground level and had no handle any more. I wanted the new valve above ground so leaving the old valve in place was no problem. Getting the old pipes to cooperate was, but all ended up well in the end.

Lou's been continuing the spring cleanup and installing fake flowers everywhere. She picks up really nice fake flowers at the garage and rummage sales. She's also tweaking the fountain. For some reason water keeps disappearing from it but we can't see where it goes and it doesn't do anything when watched, just suddenly not there. Must be a giant flock of thirsty birds visiting occasionally.

The weather has been great, blossoms appearing on all the trees.

Sunny Day

Today was rummage sale day for Lou and Dawn. I was lounging around when I got an urgent call from Lou. They had some tools that looked good to her and I should come down to see them. I went but anything of interest was gone by then. Thank goodness. We don't need more stuff really.

I was now awake and alert when I got home, not what I intended for my morning. I had been up last night upgrading a website and intended to relax this morning. Not to be.

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. I got my morning tea and was in the backyard looking around and enjoying the sun. There are several projects calling, loudly. A water line broke several weeks ago and all the faucets in the back yard have been turned off. I've been waiting for the ground to dry out. It has, so I started digging along the pipe path near what was the wet spot. A PVC "tee" broke and, after the water in the trench drys, I'll fix that. Along with that, I'll relocate the sprinklers valves that, due to some plant changes are now more exposed than needed.

As long as I had the shovel in hand, I went over to the arbor. I dug out and exposed the pipes and conduits that went to the old arbor. they need to be relocated a bit for the new arbor. I'm also going to move the sprinkler valves that are there as well and reconfigure the conduits. All this in preparation to place the deck under the arbor.

Just before this most recent storm, I exposed the water main valve at the front of the house. The handle is broken and can't be replaced. It needs to be relocated above ground level so it won't fail again. This will involve a lot of repiping to get the valve up.

Lou and Dawn also went to a big flea market at De Anza College in Cupertino. They were there all afternoon and came back complaining that it was too commercial and few day sellers.

The final thing was a trip to the hardware store to get all the "stuff" to do these projects.

So, my day was never what I intended but I did get started on these projects. Now to stay in gear tomorrow.

Every Day’s A Saturday

An observation.

Since we retired we notice that every day seems like  a Saturday. We don't wear watches and both have difficulty remembering what day it is. A common question we ask each other is "Which Saturday is this?". A typical reply is "This is the Wednesday Saturday."

Maybe we do need the retired persons clock that shows the day, not the hour.

Derailed!

Our trip to Reno got derailed. As it turns out, they had the heaviest snow storm of the season last night and when we arrived at the station to get our tickets the agent said the snow plow train had derailed and they were seeing if they could get buses. We had arrived a couple of hours early in order to avoid any traffic problems.The commute from the house in Palo Alto to Emeryville going up Highway 280, through San Francisco and across the Bay bridge on Highway 80 was easy. We were on the road at 6am. We arrived in Emeryville in about 50 minutes. If we had started out at 6:30 am, it could have taken an hour longer due to the commute traffic.

We enjoyed a breakfast at Denny's nearby after getting our tickets. While there the railroad agent called and said there wouldn't be any buses. A couple of minutes later we received another call from Amtrak somewhere else advising the same. After an unexpectedly good breakfast, we went back to the station and got our refund for the tickets and then called the hotel and canceled. All went well with the cancellations and refunds.

Amtrak does provide a telephone number to check on the status of the train but it wouldn't have helped. It the train were to go, we'd need to be there as we were, anyway. It does seem like our train trips to Reno are doomed to failure. Last time, many years ago, a similar storm and cancellation. We were younger and more determined then and caught a flight to Reno and then the train back. Since I don't fly anymore, that's out this time.

One of the nice things about not living life to a schedule is that there is no real schedule. We tend to do things on the spur of the moment most often. So, since we were in Emeryville, we looked around Emeryville around the station. There is a lot of shopping, all closed this early. There is the nice Public Market food court, all closed this early. We looked around until about 9am and then headed across the bay bridge and to the Coit Tower in San Francisco. Lou has been complaining that she has been to the base of the tower but never to the top so up we went. Great views there.

We then went over to Golden Gate Park to the Strybing Arboretum. We stopped for lunch of Gyros at a place across the street from the park at Lincoln and 9th then went through the arboretum. We explored many out of the way areas of the gardens we have either passed by or missed before. Very nice.
View fro top of Coit Tower in San Francisco.


More views from the top of Coit Tower.


Here we are at the top of Coit Tower.


Nice views of Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.


A nice pond at Strybing Arboretum and a friendly squirrel.

A little shopping on the way home and then we stopped in San Mateo at Heidi's Pies, El Cmino Real near Highway 92 for a piece of the best pecan pie we've had. A final stop at one of Lou's favorite thrift stores and we finally arrived home about 5:30.

We had fun even though we missed the train. We may try to reschedule later but may just hit the road soon instead.

We are still having a lot of rain here. The backyard is saturated. It will be nice when the sun starts drying things out, hopefully soon.