Month: July 2015

Ranger Creek – Friday July 31, 2015

Nice SUNNY morning,  57 inside 47 outside

Warm day, 90 in and out, being in the trees is nice.

The runway looks like is was 15 and then 17 placed over the 15.

It will be interesting to see what is marked this time.  I will have to go back to google earth and see what the history bar has to say.  If I remember correctly the difference between magnetic and true north is 22 degrees here.  I will have to look on a Green Trails map when we get home.

By the way we have not seen a cloud all week.

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Ranger Creek – Thursday July 30, 2015

Nice sunny morning, 57 inside 49 outside.

Most of the day in camp and it was a warm day.  Nice thing about mountains is it cools off at night!

They brought in two sani-cans today.  So this weekend is officially a “Two Shitter” weekend.

Later in the evening I found out this is the trail rider’s horse weekend.  Since we have been coming to Ranger Creek we have three levels:
Four Shitter – bike riders
Eight Shitter – 50k runners
Two Shitter – horse riders, this weekend should also include an additional trailer.

The garbage left behind in this camp area is not to bad.  Their are individual groups who make a significant mess while they are here, litter, toilet paper and horse shit.  Some campsites are full of glass most don’t.

Somewhere I read the state is going to repaint the runway this summer.  In the middle of the runaway it say’s “RANGER CREEK” and the ends are painted the runway’s compass reading.  The interesting think about the compass degrees is you can tell they were painted once while the governor was a democrat and once when we had a republican.  The north end says 15 and 17, for compass reading of 150 degrees and 170 degrees.  I think the 15 was put down first ( I’ll have to check on this tomorrow ).
A state truck and one state employee got here about 7:30 and then four other people ( more than likely private contractors ).    Maybe two people for the numbers and two people for the letters.

They measured the existing numbers and left at 10:00.  Why two trips to paint a simple job.

By the way the airstrip is at 150 degrees magnetic.

Got to 91 degrees today.

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Ranger Creek – Wednesday July 29, 2015

Nice sunny morning, 53 inside and 46 outside.

Hank and I walked the road south of the airstrip.  This road is a loop which runs south to about Silver Springs Campground.  It was a nice walk and Hank was tired the rest of the day.  I took him for a walk after dinner however it didn’t last very along, he (Hank) wanted to go back to the motorhome.

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Ranger Creek – Tuesday July 28, 2015

Left home just after 10:00, got gas and got here at 11:15.  We are in our same site with one other small tent at the far end of the runway.

While we were home I spent some time playing with my InReach GPS and got it pared to my Facebook traveling page.  It will only stay paired to a Facebook page for 90 days and than you have to re-pair the account to Facebook, kind of irritating. I sent my location to Facebook and when the longitude and latitude was pasted into google earth the location pin was only one or two feet from my actual location.  I was impressed.  I sent our location when we got here today.  I could not figure out how to add a comment to the automatically generated location script before it was sent.
I would like to add something like “Hank and l are out hiking and this is our turnaround point for the day”.  I could send an additional Facebook post however the two posts would not stayed pair in people’s newsfeed stream.  I’ll have to send this suggestion to InReach.

Here is InReach information put into Google Earth, this is the exact location.

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Ranger Creek – Friday July 24, 2015

Yesterday two young Forest Service guys stopped by to see how long we had been camped here.  There is a big event going on here this weekend and they wanted to ensure we had not overstayed our welcome.  The event is a fifty (50) mile run, up to Suntop and back then to Coral Pass and back.

Link to the trail they are running.

They anticipate a large number of people and wanted to free up as many camping site as possible.  At this point us and one other group at the far end of the runway are the only people here.  Not sure why they stopped, us being here would not make much difference in the areas camping capacity, not like there are a lot of people here during the week.  The funny thing is they didn’t even  check to see if we had paid for the time we have been here.  I did ask them what the camping restriction are for this area, it is 14 consecutive days and then you have to be gone for 2 days and the 14 days starts over.   We have decide to go home for the weekend and come back on Tuesday, I will go fishing Monday morning.

At 7:30 this morning the Honey Bucket guy drove by with eight Honey Buckets on his truck, you know that has just got to be a shitty job.

When Hank and I got up this morning it was 57 degrees inside and 48 degrees outside.  We have noticed the catalytic heater is putting out more heat here than it did during our Memorial Day trip. This one is over 10 years old and I was beginning to think about buying a new one.  At this point I think it is just an oxygen levels thing.  We are at 2500 feet here at Ranger Creek and during our trip we were at 6000 to 9000 feet, that is a big difference in the percentage of oxygen in the air.  I don’t know how long these are supposed to last, I do know that dust on the mat is what kills most of them.  When I got this one I found a big plastic container at WalMart which the heater just fits in and slides under the couch this keeps it pretty clean. It might be worth making a cover for it so it is also covered during the day when we are in the desert this fall and winter.  I could use a pillow case for a cover, that might work.
Here are a couple of trail pictures from this week.

Ranger Creek – Thursday July 23, 2015

Stayed around camp all day. Worked on photos for a while and than worked on Photo Elements 10 lessens in the evening.  I purchases a Lynda.com DVD a couple of years ago and I have started to work back through this course.

We did have 4 Chinook helicopter visit.
Here you can see the pilot.

One of the crew member’s waved to Jean.
I still don’t understand why they have to kick up so much dust.  If he would stay 25 feet higher there wouldn’t be any dust.

Ranger Creek – Wednesday July 22, 2015

We were the only people here  at Ranger Creek for Monday and Tuesday night with only two other groups here Sunday night.

Hank and I hiked the trail towards Suntop today.  Just a short hike so Hank did not get to tired.  He has slept most of the afternoon.  We covered 4.0 miles.
You can see we didn’t go as far up the Suntop trail as we did the other day.

51 degrees outside this morning, 56 inside. Sunny all day with cool breeze.

Ranger Creek – Monday July 20, 2015

Hank and I went for a walk today up the hill on the west side of the airstrip.  We followed a road up the side of hill leading to where I think the Coast Guard Station’s head works for their water system.  Last week I found an old pipe in the ground made of flat steel rolled and riveted into a pipe.

See the rivets in the flat steel which was rolled into a pipe.

We found a spot where at sometime in the past had been a water collection dam.  We spent some time looking around and found a newer pipe going further up the creek to another water collection spot.  It looks like the newer pipe is cast iron.
A trail continues past the end of the road up to the trail which runs from the airstrip to Suntop.  We continued along this trail for a while.  Looking at this trail it it is evident there was a mountain bike rally here on Saturday.  The trail was soothed out from all the bikes running down the trail and at trail junctions orange surveyor’s tape attached to limbs with clothes pins.  I am guessing someone we’ll come back later an take these down.

Here is a InReach map of where we hiked.  When we get home I think I will pair my InReach with my traveling Facebook site.  This way I can post locations from InReach to Facebook via satellite.

Friday 7/24/2015  I figured out how to post to Facebook from my InReach, posted the location of our house.