Wild Happenings

My house is a fairly normal house.  There is nothing fancy about it.  For 50 weeks of the year there is nothing out of the ordinary about my house, as you can see.

Very ordinary, very plain.

But once a year in the fall, something wild happens to my living room.  I can't explain it. Don't ask me what I am thinking.  It's just there one day before the annual Halloween Party.  People come home from school and there it is.  This year's party, hosted by Janae, it tomorrow night.  We will be invaded by all sorts of strange beings, stranger than normal, yes.  And this is what they will come to.

 

 

 

And then, one day they come home from school and everything is gone and the house is back to normal.  It happens every year.  Wild isn't it?

Autumn Leaves

This is the first year that we have had enough leaves to rake.  We didn't even have to ask them to do it.

How old are these girls anyway?

 

You've heard of Where's Waldo.  Well, Where's Kristine?

 

Don't look at this one too closely.  It's too funny.

My Visit with a Lobster

I opened the door on Tuesday afternoon, expecting Eric, Angela and Adam, but instead I got a lobster.

The cutest lobster ever!

With his chef.

Then we had a visit from Super Hero Janae.

And then the cutest baby in the world.

Lehman Caves and the Quest for the Bristlecone Pine

I have wanted to go to Lehman Caves for a long time and we finally found the time to go.  If I had known how great it was going to be, I would have definitely gone sooner.  We left Friday afternoon.  It was the deer hunt in Utah, so we felt like it would be a good time to get away.  It's about a 3 hr. drive from Mt. Pleasant.

We camped in one of the campgrounds that is close to the caves.  We went with the Stakers, so of course we had a good time.  It was fun to sit around the campfire and just visit.  We took the 90 minute tour the next morning.  What a great cave!  I couldn't believe all of the neat formations.

Amy, Sara, Anna, and Janae

Ed and Jim

The natural cave opening.  There is about a 60 ft. drop to the cave floor.

 

A few cool formations.

After the cave, we went up the mountain to hike to find the bristlecone pines.  Janae can use them in her leaf collection for Biology. 

The bristlecone pines are the oldest trees in the world.  They have found some that were "born" about 1700 BC.

Anna, Amy, Sara and Ed Staker.

Jim, Janae and Shauna

This was a great area to camp and hike.  We would love to come here again. 

Next trip: probably Grand Gulch or Kartchner Caves.

It's Not Rocket Science

When I'm not out on thrilling hiking/camping adventures, I sometimes help Jim with his piano rebuilding business.  That involves working on piano actions and restringing pianos.  This past week I have been working on a Steinway grand that we have had in our living room for almost a year.  It required almost a total rebuild and we needed to store it until it was time to go to the refinishers, which will be next week.

We waited until it was closer to the time to send it out to the refinisher to do our work.  So this week I have been restringing this piano.  Like the blog title says, it's not rocket science.  Each treble note is made up of three strings and depending on where the note is the strings are different thicknesses.  I say strings, but it's really a special type of wire. 

I've got about 1/4 of the treble strung here.  This part takes the longest in stringing because the wire  is so long.  The bass strings go over the top of these treble strings.  They are premanufactured in Europe and are easy to install.

There are a ton of tools that piano technicians use.  Here are some that I am using for this job.

I use a chart that tells me what gauge of wire to use for each note.  I unwrap enough wire from the coil it comes in and then feed it through the a-graf and then wind it on a dummy pin.  I remove it from the dummy pin and place it on the permanent tuning pin.  I loop the wire over the top pin, through the bridge pins, through the next a-graf and wrap it around the dummy pin, then remove it from the dummy and place it on the permanent tuning pin.  I tighten the wire and make sure the coils are where they should be.  Thread, wrap, loop, thread, wrap, tighten, repeat.  It's not hard, but it is tough on the fingers when working on the heavier gauges.  Another thrilling day in my life.  Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

 

Jim and Shauna's Excellent Adventure, Part III

We got to Roger's Trough Thursday afternoon at about 5:30.  It was much later than we planned to get there.  We hurried and set up the tent and put all of the sleeping things in so it would be ready when we got back.  We intended to to hike to the Indian ruins which is about 5 miles round trip. We weren't too worried about it getting dark because it was almost a full moon that night.  Jim had been to the ruins before when he was a scout and they hiked most of it by moonlight.

So we started out and got about a mile down the trail.  We stopped and looked at some cactus and at some mistletoe.  We got talking and for some reason we decided to go back.  We didn't feel good about going in the dark, especially with Kristine having knee problems.  She was wearing her brace, but the terrain was much rougher than we expected.

So we stopped here and there and checked out the cactus, including the prickly pear apples.  We cut one open and tasted it.  Jim's mom used to make jelly out of the fruit when he was younger.  I think it would have made great jelly.  The fruit was quite tasty.  We also saw several growths of mistletoe.  Mistletoe is a parasite and attaches itself to trees and bushes and uses them for its nourishment.  (I think it was Janae who commented that mistletoe was appropriate for lovers if it was a parasite.)  We were going to pick some the next day on our way back to camp.  We wanted it as fresh as we could get it.

The girls liked the sweat patterns on Jim's back, caused from his pack.

We went back to the tent and settled in.  Party-pooper that I am, I went to sleep at 8:30.  The others weren't up much later than I was.  We wanted to get an early start.  We decided to go to the Reavis Ranch and then see if we still wanted to go to the ruins.  We were so funny.  We had no idea what was in store for us on the Reavis Ranch hike.

We started off around 8:00 am.  We had a little bit to eat, filled our water bottles and packed our cold powerade into Jim's backpack.  The hike starts off going downhill for almost 2 miles.  We went a little further than that and stopped to have some energy snacks.  We passed by the trail to the ruins and the place that leads to old man Reavis' grave.  The trail was so rocky that it was difficult for us to walk on it.  I had left my pain meds back at camp.  I could have really used them many times over by the time we got back.

The 2 miles down hill are followed by an uphill climb.  This was mostly switchbacks that led us further and further back into the mountains.  We passed around several mountains while going up and up.  The trail was on the southward face of the mountains and it was hot.  We finally got to the top which is called Reavis Saddle.

Looking back from Reavis Saddle to all the mountains we had hiked up and around.  Camp was behind the furtherest mountain and to the right, out of the picture.

We were feeling pretty good at this time, thinking that we were almost there.  We started down into the valley and walked and walked and walked and walked.  It was supposed to be about 2.5 miles from the saddle to the ranch, but it was much further.

We came to this tree, an old alligator juniper.  It's the biggest one in the world, about 7 ft in diameter.  We thought that the tree we near the ranch ruins, so we kept walking.  The tree wasn't near the ranch.  The area was very pretty and we saw lots of interesting things, but no ruins or apple trees.  According to our pedometer we should have been there, but we weren't.  We sat down in the shade to rest.  We decided that we would go just a little further and if we didn't find it, we would go back.  We hated to go back without seeing the ruins and apples.  We had come so far and I didn't want to have to do the hike again.  We were getting pretty tired.  Kristine's knees were both really hurting her.  My knee hurt.  Our feet were beginning to hurt.  Then, we heard some horses whinnying.  Just around the bend was an open field and the ruins were just past that.

The floor of the ranch house.

The old well.

Some old farm equipment.

And the apples.

The trees were loaded, but only high up.  The animals had eaten everything on the lower branches.

Jim with his beloved apples.

We didn't stay as long as we would have liked because it was almost 2:00.  We wanted to get back and drive down the awful road before it was dark.  We were already hurting when we left.  We had gone more than a mile farther than we had planned and the trail was rocky and harder to walk on than we wanted.  But what can you do?  We just kept walking.  The girls are not complainers, but Kristine did voice some concern when we found bear tracks on top of our inbound tracks.  A bear had passed within an hour of us.  Luckily we didn't see him. 

I didn't take any pictures on the way back.  We needed all of our energy just to get back.  That last 2 miles uphill was almost the end of us.  Even Janae was having a hard time. We didn't pick the mistletoe.  Jim figures that we hiked about 15 miles that day.  I later read in our book that it's supposed to be a 2 or 3 day hike.   I didn't cry when I saw the truck, but I thought about it.  We had packed up camp before we left that morning.  We also had cold drinks in a cooler that were the best tasting drinks I've ever had.  We did get down the bad road before it got dark, but just barely.  The rest of the trip was made in the dark.

We stopped at McDonalds because they have the best coke and we were too smelly and tired so we needed a drive thru.  Jim and I ended up getting out anyway and both got charlie-horses in our legs.  We drove to Max and Lynne's house, where a hot shower and the princess bed were waiting for us.  By the next morning, Jim and I were feeling pretty good.  The girls said never to ask them to go with us again.

We wanted to listen to Conference as we drove home, but there wasn't a single station in Mesa/Phoenix that carried it.  Part way between Phoenix and Flagstaff is an Indian ruin called Montezuma's Castle.  It's just off the freeway and there was no hiking involved.  We stopped there to make up for not getting to see the other ruins.

This is high on the wall face.  The only way up was a series of ladders.  The public isn't allowed up anymore.  If I had lived there, I would never have come down after I got up there.

 Another view.

On the way back to camp from Reavis Ranch,  we all said that we were never doing that hike again.  But time has a habit of helping us forget pain.  Now Jim and I are saying that maybe we would go back.  I do want to go back to the Indian ruins that we didn't get to see.  There is another road that we can take to get to that so I won't have to go back on the scary road.  We are planning trips to Lehman Caves and to Grand Gulch in the near future.  Don't ask me what we are thinking.

Jim and Shauna's Excellent Adventure, Part II

Jim has heard about Reavis Ranch his whole life.  His father was the foreman of a huge ranch near Florence, Arizona that was owned by Twain Clemens. (Yes, he's  a grandson.)  Twain owned the Reavis Ranch at one time and Jim's father had been there several times.  He said he had never tasted apples as good as the Reavis Ranch apples.  Jim has always wanted to go there in the autumn and find the treasure of "Gold-en" apples.

(Warning: History Lesson)

In the 1874 a rancher named Elisha Reavis built his home along a creek that runs in a very isolated area, deep in the wilderness of the Superstition Mountains.  The creek fed a 140-acre ranch and watered fruits and vegetables grown on the property. Reavis would cart the produce down long, winding hills to sell them in nearby mining communities. In the winter of 1896 Reavis died along the trail while making one of his countless trips to town, and kind passersby buried him right where they found him. His makeshift grave remains to this day, near one of the trails that leads to the ranch.

After Reavis’s death, the ranch passed through many hands, including Twain Clemens.  Clemens planted 600 more apple trees in addition to the 300 trees already there.  The Department of Agriculture eventually acquired the property in the late 1960s as part of Tonto National Forest and subsequently closed the dirt road. Today only the apple trees, some rusty farm tool, a filled-in well, and the foundation of the farmhouse remain.  The house was destroyed in a fire, which some believe was started by the Department of Agriculture to more quickly return the ranch to a wilderness area.

So on with our journey.

West view of the Superstition Mountains, as seen from the Museum.

To get to the Roger's Trough Trailhead, which is where we were going to begin our hike, we had to drive from Apache Junction to Queen Valley, drive on Forrest Roads for 15 miles and then on a terrible, awful, hidious, scary, bumpy, horrible road for 4 miles.  We missed one of the turnoffs and went down the wrong road and got stuck in the sand. 

We pushed the truck out and then got stuck on a cattle guard.

The back wheel axle got wedged between two of the rails of the guard.  Jim had to jack up the truck and then we found this railroad tie.  We backed up and then used the tie to get over the guard.  Then we figured out that we were on the wrong road and had to go back over everything.  Jim must have been a stunt driver in a former life.  We got out without getting stuck again.

We got to the last 4 miles and that's when I read in the book we had bought at the museum, that we needed a 4-wheel drive to get up the last bit of road. I said to Jim, "It says that we need a 4-wheel drive for this part."  Him: "We were supposed to have one for the last 9 miles too."  Me:  "You didn't tell me this part."  Him: No answer.  Me:  "Did you know we needed a 4-wheel drive for this trip?"  Him:  No answer.  Me:  "When were you planning on telling me about these roads?"  Him:  No answer.  The ride on this last road was a combination of "Indiana Jones" and "Big Thunder Mountain Railroad", only much more intense.  We had to go fast enough to get some traction, but the road had all kinds of twists and turns on the edge of high mountains.  Big drop-offs.  Rough road.  Big bumps.  Huge rocks.  No 4-wheel drive.  No front-wheel drive.  Everything flying off of the dashboard.  White-knuckled hands hanging on for dear life.  Too scared to shut my eyes.  And then finally, we were in the parking lot, safe and sound.  I didn't kiss the ground, but I thought about it.

Return tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of "Jim and Shauna's Excellent Adventure".

Jim and Shauna's Excellent Adventure

I call this Jim and Shauna's excellent adventure.  Kristine and Janae came too, but they didn't think it was so excellent.  Our adventure began on Wednesday at about 2:00 pm when we picked Kristine up from Snow College.  We had the truck packed with all manner of camping equipment, including sleeping bags, pillows, ice chest, etc.  Janae wanted to ride in the back of the truck, so we installed the two girls and went on our merry way.

Perhaps you think we were mean putting them back there, but the fact is, we had two twin mattresses back there also.  We gave them a walkie talkie so they could talk to us if they wanted, plus they had all the food back there with them, so they were quite comfortable.

Within a few minutes, it started to snow.

We had looked at the weather report and knew that snow was a possibility.  We also knew it was supposed to be good weather the further south we traveled.  By the time we go to Richfield, about 70 miles from Mt. Pleasant, the snow had stopped.  A check on the girls showed they were in good spirits.

Aren't they precious?  We continued on our way and eventually came to Glen Canyon Dam.

We stopped in Page and ate at Subway.  The girls were now riding in the "back seat" of the truck.  I use that term loosely.  It's not as big or as comfortable as a real back seat.  We drove to Flagstaff, where we spent the night at a cheap hotel.  Janae thinks that our tent was bigger than our room, but the tent doesn't have a shower.

Motel 6, Room 221.

And following tradition, we breakfasted at Denny's.

We drove to Phoenix and over to the Superstition Mountain Museum.  Thank you Lisa for helping us find it in spite of incorrect google directions.  The museum is kind of a tourist trap, but had some interesting things there also.  There was a small museum and a gift shop.

Then there was the Elvis Church.  This church was in the Elvis movie Charro.  We went inside and much to our pleasure, we found Elvis himself.

Elvis has a motion sensor and talked to us.  He said, "Thank you, very much."  Apparently, people come and actually get married in this church.  Don't ask me why.

They had this authentic stage coach, hitched to some authentically fake horses.

There was a jail with a cute, real criminal in it.

And an outhouse with advice on how not to use it wearing spurs.  It was out of order at the time.

After visiting the museum, we drove towards the Superstition Mountains, the object of our trip.  Come back tomorrow for a continuation of "Jim and Shauna's Excellent Adventure".