My Life and Travels
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.
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.
We are having a beautiful sunny morning. KIRO radio says it is raining in Seattle. Stayed nice all day,
Hank and I went out for a couple of hours looking for things to take pictures of. Not a lot of wild life to see, ended up sitting in camp taking pictures of the local chipmunks.
and a bird who came by:
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.
Left home after the baseball game for Ranger Creek. We wanted to give the weekend people time to leave the campsites.
Only a few people still in campsites, the one we had last week was open so we returned to it. There are four sani-can (sometimes I hate auto correct ) set up on one of the old building slaps. Their must have been some sort of event here on Saturday and/or Sundaymorning.
It is going to be hot today 95+.
Need a picture; this is a view of the runway.
Summer is over 😦 , it was 60 this morning and it is not warming up. After lunch I got the heater out and turned it on. It was 64 inside and I was COLD, it is now 72 the and life is better. I really like clouds.
An army helicopter made three runs the length of the landing strip this morning which I see no real point in. Why on a weekend day when there are going to lots of people and their horse is it necessary to fly 25 off the the deck the length of this valley. Oh well it does looks cool.
Haven’t done much today and I think that will be the goal for the day.
Having a little rain this evening.
Still at Ranger Creek however the weather has cooled off a little. The sun did not come out until 11:30. Only supposed to be in the 70’s today.
While we were at home I added a fan to the area behind the refrigerator to help vent the heat on extra hot days. I used a 12 volt computer cooling fan. They are quiet and do not draw much power.
I spent the afternoon working on “The Room Two” and got to the end just after dinner.
iPad note writer
When I get home I going to see if I can find any pictures of Ranger Creek ( where we are camped ) when it was a U.S. Coast Guard Training Camp during World War II. This is where my Dad was stationed when he met my mom who lived in Enumclaw. He was later stationed on the Oregon coast walking beach patrol and then on a cutter out of Astoria, Oregon.
Some of the concrete building foundations are still here at the north end of the runway.
Stayed in camp all day. Hank seems to feel better today, he was outside digging a hole to lay in this afternoon, so that’s a good sign.
Yesterday evening I started to replaying the iPad game, “The Room”. I finished the first game and this morning I completed the, “Epilogue”. I’ll have to replay, “The Room Two” in the near future.
iPad note writer
Ranger Creek Air Strip
Some of the things I like about camping and hiking in the hills ( in my motorhome ).
My comfortable bed and it is not on the ground. Getting out of bed by placing your feet down onto carpet is no comparison to having to get up off the ground. Crawling around on your knees to get dressed and out of the tent. Always a joy to put your shoes on while sticking your feet out the tent door so dirt does not get into the tent.
Not having to hike a half mile just to dig a hole in bunch of rocks to deposit what is left of the previous day’s breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Things I don’t miss:
Cooking on a fire
Cooking on the ground, when using a stove
Walking a quarter to half a mile for a drink of cold water
Washing dishes standing on your head
Washing up in a bowl that is 6 inch across and 2 inches depth
I do miss multiple night hikes. We used to do 8 night hikes once a year. In my young years we would go 50+ miles. Later we would cover 30 to 35 miles. This would mean shorter distance each day carrying a pack and more afternoon and evening exploration hikes. Dinner at five, with dishes done by6:00 and we would have until 9:00 or 9:30 to explore.
I do miss hiking one direction ( not having to walk back however far I hike from the motorhome. )
Today was not much of a hiking day. Hank and I got an early start however it did not last very long. Hank was tired, he was walking along side me or mostly trailing behind. After about half a mile we turned around and called it a day. We are both getting older.
Today’s helicopter:
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Got the satellite TV dish set up this morning. Last week I had changed our physical location to Crystal Mountain which is only a few miles away and in the same zip code as we are now. Matter of fact when Google maps originally setting up zip codes 98022 (Enumclaw) was attached to the physical location of Crystal Mountain Ski Resort. A lot of databases are still this way. Most medical search databases when you search for doctors within 5 miles of 98022 the results are NONE. When you change the search to 30 miles all the doctors in Enumclaw show up including the hospital. Once a mistake is made it is very difficult to get it changed. Anyway we have local Seattle-Tacoma TV stations coming down from the satellite.
Hank and I got out for a hike this afternoon. Walked the trail along the river ( White River ) for 4 miles and then came back. We were in heavy forest the whole time so it was really nice and shady with a dirt trail the whole way. We saw two other groups out hiking in the nice weather. I took my InReach GPS however being down inside a large stand of trees it only was able to transmit our location once during the three hours we were on the trail. When we got back to camp I set the GPS out in the open so it could transmit it’s data, it will be interesting to see where it thinks we were. I also set a waypoint ( #10 ) for a point of reference. This waypoint is after we had turned left away from the river for 0.6 miles and also our turn around point.
Another beautiful with a high of 85.
Hank was tired when we got home.
We are the only people here tonight, nice and quiet.
Army helicopter came into the landing strip this evening. He came from the north, landed south to north, set for several minutes, took off north, came around and left going to the south.
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