Ravens And Jam

 Well I must say that today was an odd day.

I'd stopped off at Jacobs Family Berry Farm for some locally-grown raspberries and blackberries for jam making.

Yum!

Family sternly warned to leave them alone until after I'd measured out what I needed for jam, after that they could lay into them.  I must say, that was difficult because they smelled amazing.

But a small batch of each jam was made, yay!

Even better, I got to talking with Jack, the owner, and he and I have a 'swap fresh eggs for berries' agreement!

Later on that day, we got a visit from a neighbor, who used to work for a local pizza joint and had delivered to us in the past--he remembered Nadine yelling 'Hello!' at him when he had been here.

He told my husband that he had a very tame raven in his yard and was worried that his dogs were going to get it, and asked my husband if he'd take a look at it.  My husband suspected that it was the same tame raven that had wandered into our house back on August 18th and when shooed back outside, had allowed him to hand feed it.  So he grabbed a small birdcage and went back to the guy's house...low and behold, same bird.  The neighbor calls the raven into his pickup truck, then they are able to pick it up and place it in the cage.

My husband brought the bird back here, where we all take turns scratching it on the head and feeding it goodies--it's completely tame and was obviously someone's pet.  We decide to post some notices online, husband gets on Facebook and I get on Craigslist.

After about an hour we get two calls:  one from a very nice licensed wildlife rehabber/falconer in Yerington who offers to give the bird a home, the other from a guy named Joel a few blocks away from us, saying the raven is his--kinda.  Seems it was an orphaned baby that he raised and released, it's been hanging around for months.

Joel invites us over to his house, a 5 acre spread, so we grab the raven and go--we figure it'll be pretty obvious if it's his bird or not.

Well, without a doubt he raised that bird, they know each other well.  I ask Joel if the bird has a name and he tells us, 'None that can be pronounced in mixed company.'

Sounds like a raven owner, all right!

Ravenbuddy is released from the cage, and he walks around the yard begging from everyone as we stand there talking, Joel eventually giving him a Ritz cracker from his pocket. Ravenbuddy immediately goes over to a planter and caches it.

He's still a youngster and loves attention and messing with people, but is clearly healthy and able to hold his own, so we don't worry about him.  We suspect he will continue to hang around.  While we all talk the bird takes off and makes a beeline for the neighbor's yard, who Joel tells us own dogs that Ravenbuddy loves to tease--he sits in the trees and barks back at them.

We spend about an hour visiting with Joel, who is a cool dude with an awesome house that he partially built himself and has decorated with stuff from his travels around the world.  The kid is fascinated with his fish pond, and he tells her that she came back and fish in it for catfish and the like any time she wants.

I tell him I'll be back bearing fresh eggs and we say goodbye.

I'm sure we'll see our raven around again, and we let the pizza guy know that we found the bird's owner and that he should expect to see the bird around, too.

Road Trips & Stark Terror On The 8th Floor

Had to make a quick trip down to southern California to see my doctor, also to grab what I could from the storage unit. On the way down I stopped at the Coso Junction rest stop to toss some pork rinds to the resident ravens, which they LOVED. They hopped around jamming as much as would fit into their beaks. Also wandering amongst them in fine 'Which Does Not Belong' style was this little guy:

He completely ignored the ravens and the people who glanced his way and then did a double take. He just dashed around grabbing bugs out of the grass, perfectly happy.

Further down the road at Kramer Junction was this poor Arco sign, twisted and thrashed by the wind.

Somewhere along the line I left this little guy, who's crazy eyeballs were a happy accident and go with the quote perfectly.

I finally got into town and checked into my hotel, where I stayed on the 8th floor. Driving for 10 hours is tiring, so I was sleeping like a dead thing when I awoke to the clock radio's alarm, I'd drawn the blackout curtains so the room was full dark as I groggily sat up and reached for the radio.

It wasn't the radio making that noise.

Only one other thing in a hotel shrieks like that. The fire alarm.

As soon as I realized what it really was, and remembered that I was on the 8th floor, all my best cuss words started flowing. It's 5AM and I was more irritated than anything at first, griping, 'Of course. Of COURSE this would happen now' as I stumbled around trying to do all the right things you are supposed to do in a fire.

Looked out the window and listened. I DID hear a fire truck siren wailing, great. But don't see any flames or smoke. OK, that side of the hotel is likely not involved, that fact filed away in my head. I went to the door and felt it--it wasn't hot and no smoke was issuing from under it. I stood behind the thing and gently cracked the door, ready to slam it shut again. Nothing except the hallway fire alarms also screaming their brains out and the strobe light flashing. The hallway is murky with something hanging in the air, which is good enough for me, I'm outta here. No one else is around. I go to the phone and press the 'emergency' button...and get a recording which says cheerfully, 'Your session has expired' whatever the Hell that means in an emergency. When you think death is threatening you, 'expired' isn't the first word you want to hear.

So I break the world record for getting dressed and cramming my few things into my overnight bag. I grab everything and go back into the hallway, which by now is quiet and there STILL aren't any people around. Either everyone else is already out or they aren't bothering to evacuate. I decide to get my tail downstairs and after looking out the two hallways windows for signs of fire below, decide to chance the elevator, which works fine.

The lobby is quiet and no one is running around on fire and screaming, so I go to the front desk and inquire as to whether there is REALLY a fire on the 8th floor.

The guys actually laughs and says casually, 'Oh no, that's just the fire alarms in room 820 and 825--the steam from the showers sets off the room alarms and then if it gets into the hall the entire floor goes off.'

Oh. Ha, ha. How perfectly droll and amusing. Someone a few doors away from my room takes a hot shower and the fire system goes batshit.

I'm not laughing, and by now the adrenaline has well and truly kicked in and I'm shaking. I ask him how often this happens and he says that he's worked there for 6 months and it happens 1-2 times each and every week. He says, 'We're working with the fire department' because by now he's caught on that I'm NOT pleased and he's seeking to placate me at this point.

Since I've already had a middle of the night, honest-to-God fire scare in my own home, complete with a house full of smoke and having to haul my unresponsive child from her bed, I'm FAR from placatable. They hadn't even sent an employee up to check and see if it was just the fire alarms crying wolf, they just assumed it was the steam causing it again. The guy tells me I can go back up and go back to sleep. Ha, ha. Noooo, I think I'm awake for the day.

Suffice to say that when I returned home I emailed the hotel chain and let them know what was going on at this particular property.

Dunmovin? Well, Yes And No...

After 3 glorious days of assorted chores, we leave once again to go back down to southern California to tackle the dreaded garage. This time the kid stays with Grandma, tasked with remembering to feed and care for the animals. Over the last three days we've supervised the unloading of the moving truck into the storage unit--thankfully only two boxes and the carved wood framework for my bedroom dresser mirror suffered any damage, and I didn't hear any sounds of anything broken rattling around. Unfortunately we won't know for sure until we move the stuff again into our new home and unwrap everything. But the guys worked hard to stuff everything into the storage unit, telling us they still had to drive to Sacramento at the end of the day, more than 2 hours away. We also opened our new P. O. box and did some grocery shopping, and unpacked some things into our temporary digs, a small one bedroom cottage in back of my mother's house.

So today found us once again going down highway 395. I love the drive anyway, and never tire of seeing scenes like this unfold ahead of me.

Ya gotta hand it to the engineers and road planners, to create roads that allow views like this to unfold. It's pure poetry. Further along, near Mammoth Mountain, humoressly enough is a California Welcome Center...nowhere near the border, by now you've been driving through the state for hours.

I've always been curious about this place sitting alongside the road near McGee Creek--it's been in this exact same condition ever since I first laid eyes on the thing in the early 1970's.

DH and I stop for a few minutes to check it out and stretch our legs. As for as we can tell, it appears to be some sort of official building, it looks very office-like inside rather than homey. It's now home to an army of rats, apparantly.

The exterior is weathering hard.

Whoever made the sign created it by taking a blowtorch to a chunk of plywood--no measly spray paint here! Creative spelling of the word 'acres' thrown in as a bonus.

A sign next to it is normally turned away during summer, otherwise tourists become easily confused.

Nearby is yet another EVC marker, this one talks about the McGee Mountain ski rope tow that used to be on the site in the '30's.

Some of the old pulleys are part of the marker. There isn't much to see of the rope tow other than some faint trail marks on the mountain.

A bit farther down the road, everyone slows to watch some military helicopters flying north, following the highway.

There were three of them, very impressive-looking. Since this was coming up on the 10th anniversary of 9-11, we watched them a bit apprehensively, hoping nothing was happening that required such a bristling show of force.

Later on we stopped to stretch again at the little ghost town of Dunmovin. We are always very careful to leave it the way we find it so that others can have the fun of discovering it. I've always had the urge to take a place like this and restore it, and live the rest of my life running my own little countryside cafe/store.

The place is in it's usual state of mystery and closely-held secrets., and we wander about wondering who lived here and why everyone left.

A sample of the wallpaper...

The sunlight makes interesting patterns.

An old Los Angeles DWP envelope from 1983.

HAVE A SEAT! Uh, no thanks, I'll wait...

In another building there is a flow of mid-1970's deitrus. See that Avocado Green, kids? Thank your lucky stars you didn't have to dress in an era of this hideous color, PLUS Harvest Gold and Burnt Orange. What they euphemistically referred to as 'Earth Tones'.  Ugh.  It's no bloody wonder that the '80's were a rebellious burst of neon colors.

My husband finds a newspaper covering the 1976 Olympcs. Love the shades, Edwin Moses had style!

Stairway to Heaven, Owens Valley style. Only two steps.

This program brought to you by...

This old fridge was lying on it's face the last time we came through, some enterprising soul had set it upright. The resultant rust left an interesting pattern on the front.

I walked by one of the long-broken windows and spied this sink.

Then I saw this lying in it, so we gently took it out. It's a catalog/almanac for 1955 from the Rawleigh company, who sold all sorts of household foods and products.

The 1955 artwork is awesome.

Another building has some brush practically fending you off.

After we leave we run into one of many summer rainsqualls.

We stop at Coso Junction and as always, toss some bread to the ravens that live there. The ones that see us feeding the others fly over, the adults with their deep croak and the juveniles a high-pitched, silly 'Caw!'. The one on the far left was just landing when I snapped this, so he looks like he's levitating.

This guy was a pure pig, and yes he did managed to pick up that 4th chunk of bread. Afterwards he took it over to the grassy area and cached it all.

We were startled to see a CHP officer pulled off to the side of the road north of Kramer Junction...he was off next to the barbed wire fence with his arms around two big sheep, obviously trying to keep them there and off the road till back-up arrived. Cue a whole bunch of bad puns about 'baaaad sheep' and wondering just how badly the guy was gonna get teased by his buddies. He looked in control of his small flock so we didn't stop.

Near Pearsonville we stop at the site of the old Blue Max mine, home to this Joshua Tree sculpture made of horseshoes.

It's a lonely spot.

The artist thoughtfully included a small metal box at it's base for anything comments or contributions people want to leave--contributions go towards a local charity. As we left our own we saw this in the box:

Awesome, I hope he gets the commission!

THIS.

Dear GOD in Heaven, what IS this thing?! I suspect it floated to Earth from outer space and is only now forming it's pods. The thing is sporting pods.

We give the pods a wide berth and go up the hill to check out the old mine buildings, part of the exhibit.

Official government language has gotten much less flowery since 1983.

The interior is the usual cast-offs, this one with snazzy 1970's furniture.

Although the old bathroom cabinet with the pastel blue & pink swans was unexpected in such a butch place...

My husband spotted this rather large pink snake resting with it's head down a gopher hole, snoozing away. I suppose it's some kind of rat snake. We let sleeping snakes lie.

This old Kelvinator was still in place.

My husband popped opened the door to find this, and snorted, 'Oh hey look--Owens Valley ice.'

You know, I miss the days when you had to deal with refrigerator baffle-flaps. Whatever the Hell they are.

The outside of one building sports a patch in the proud tradition of Sierras, using anything: 'Good God, PATCH THAT HOLE QUICK TO KEEP THAT ICE-COLD DAMNED EVER-PRESENT WIND OUT.'

And lastly we find an old miner's cap for the place. Cool!

As we pass through Red Mountain again, this time headed south, this seems to sum it all up nicely.