Almost the Final Leg

Its such fun to go on a road trip and visit places we've only seen on television or movies.  They become more real somehow.  We've talked about going overseas, and maybe someday we will, but in the meantime there's so much to do and see in the Americas.  We've been across Canada many times, having lived from the east to the west coast, and now we're seeing more of the US.  And there's just so much to see...such changes in climates, topography, scenery and people from one place to the next.

We stopped in Sacramento, CA, for two days to visit with Joyce's son and his family, and explored the historical "Old Sac" part of the city as well as the State Capital area, where Arnold Schwartznegger used to live when he was the State Governor.

Watching the rail transit go by in downtown Sacramento.

In the center of the city is the State Capitol complex...a beautiful peaceful parklike area  of town. There was some kind of activity going on down there...high school students were there performing in the large open area but we never did figure out what it was all about.

                               

Embedded in one of the walkways was a replica of the Great Seal of the State of California.

  Less than a block from the Capitol was this beautiful cathedral.  As we stood there taking pictures the doors opened and a bridal party came out and posed on the steps for pictures before getting into the black limo parked in front. What a lovely place to get married.

This huge structure in downtown Sacramento is a drawbridge called Tower Bridge.  It would have been interesting to see it in action.

Then we left the modern city and went to what the locals call "Old Sac", a renovation of the oldest part of the city with as much of the original structures as possible left intact.  It is very 'touristy' with lots of quaint shops locatd in the old buildings.

Interesting No Parking sign.

I could have watched this puppeteer for a long time.  His marionettes were
works of art.  This pianist sat playing the piano pounding out tunes from the
1920s and 1930s.  A wonderful performance.

Horse drawn carriages vied with the cars for room on the streets,
a nice way to tour the old city.

To finish our tour of the city, Lloyd and I found a quiet park by the
river and sat for an hour or so watching the boats of every size and
shape cruise, or race, by.  A lovely peaceful time.

Well, I was going to combine Sacramento and San Francisco into one blog, but that would have made it too long, so SF will have to be done all on its own.  It was my favorite stop of the trip so far.

Points West...Then East...and Always South

Lloyd, his sister Joyce, and I started out on a road trip last week...It has taken us six days to arrive in Surprise, AZ because we went south, then west to California before heading south and east into Arizona.

So much to see, so much to do, and people to see.  I'll give an abbreviated story of our trip so far.

After a late start from home, we drove all day and stopped for the night in Reno, Nevada, "the biggest little city in the world".  It has grown a lot since our last trip there almost twenty years ago.  No casino visits for the three weary travellers though.  Just check in to a motel and go to sleep.

The next day we decided to tour the old west town of Virginia City, Nevada.  Fans of the old TV show Bonanza will remember that this city featured prominently in the lives of Ben Cartright and his boys, Adam, Hoss, Little Joe, and Candy.  What a trip to get to it though!  The road winds up and around a mountain, with long drops over the side, narrow road, sharp curves, etc.  I don't know how the silver miners ever found the place, let alone brought their billions of dollars of ore down.

The city is home to just 1,000 people now and the mines are all closed.  The main industry seems to be tourism.  It's fun to walk/drive around and see the old sights.  The huge profits from the old mines were used to finance the building up of a sleepy little harbour town which we now know as San Francisco.  More about that place later.

SIL Joyce and Me in Virginia City

 The old Fourth Ward School is in the process of being restored.  It is the oldest school of its type in the country that is still standing.  The interior is now a museum, complete with lovely old desks.

At the site of one of the old silver mines we came across the most interesting 'garden'.  Dead trees were decorated with bottles, wood carvings, bits of machinery, and anything else that could be found laying around.

Lloyd found an old car that had been decorated.

 One of the features of the mine site was this old car, with a decorated tree coming out of its back seat, two window boxes sporting dead flowers on the side of it, along with a watering can.  A real work of art???

The main street of Virginia City is pretty typical of an old wild west town, fixed up a bit to be safe for the businesses they house.  Of course the power poles and cars weren't there originally.

Downtown Virginia City

 Some remnants of the original businesses still exist of course...the Bucket of Blood Saloon among them.  I'm sure there's a history behind the name.

Local color abounds

The beautiful Court House is still standing.  An interesting point to
note here is that Lady Justice here is not blindfolded as she is usually
portrayed in courthouses throughout the country.  The idea being, I
suppose that justice isn't blind in Virginia City.

I think I'll leave you in Nevada for now.  Next time I'll show you our next stop in Sacramento, the Capital of California, and San Francisco.  Happy travels.

Catch Up - Sort Of

It feels like I've been away from the blogosphere for a long time...not because nothing's been happening, but because too much has been happening!  Summer tends to be like that.

Our garden was a major success for us, although because I neglected to thin the carrots, our harvest there was thin and spindly.  Never mind.  Our beans, tomatoes and onions were a major success, by our modest standards.  I made half a dozen batches of green tomato chow chow, which we love, as well as my grandmothers recipe for onion sauce, a lovely mild mustard pickle.  The veggies have all been harvested and uprooted now and we are down to our flowers...which were hit with a frost the other night which pretty well wiped them out.

I love the pattern of the frost on the edge of the petals

Each marigold petal was outlined with delicate frost patterns

The leaves took on an added frosty beauty as well

But Lloyd's beautiful roses withstood the frost.

And the perfect rosebud lived through it.

We had lots of company over the summer...most of our kids and their kids came to visit and we spent some time in Edmonton as well.  We're heading down to Arizona via California on Tuesday, taking six days to get there.  We'll spend Canadian Thanksgiving down there and head home at the end of the month.  Now that Lloyd has officially retired we're hoping to spend lots more time down there.

I'll be back.

Thumbs Aren't Green Yet!

Lloyd and I are not gardeners.  We've made a half-hearted attempt a couple of times over the years.  We love fresh produce but just didn't have the time or inclination to make gardening a part of our lives.  This year, for the first time in over 44 years, Lloyd is not working, we don't have a bunch of kids around making demands on our time and energy, and there was just no excuse for us not to try to grow some stuff.

Not wanting to dig up our yard in case this foray into earthiness didn't 'take', we opted for container gardening.  And since arthritic knees don't like to be crawling on the ground planting, weeding and harvesting, we were thrilled when we found some hip-high planters that I could plant, weed and harvest without even bending over (it pays to be short too).

Here's what we came up with.

These are my yellow beans...lots of yellow beans.  On either
side of them are tomatos in large pots.

I kind of went overboard on the beans. I thought that if I bought a packet of seeds, I should plant them all.  So I did, and they all grew.  Luckily they'll freeze easily.

They're already flowering and starting to produce little beans.  Its a very exciting process, don't you think!

Green beans are growing here.  That little green gauge in the center lets us
know the state of the soil - dry to wet.  We water accordingly.

Our third container is growing carrots and onions.  I know, I know...the
carrots need to be thinned.  But I hate pulling the little babylings out.
Every time I go out to admire them I take a few out so maybe soon
there'll be room enough for some nice sized carrots to grow.

Our three tomato plants are doing very well, each one producing
multiple fruits.  I'm in a quandry though.  Lloyd and I love green tomato chow.
Should I pick the tomatoes while they're green and make some of the
delicious pickles, or let them ripen up.  It's early in the year so there's
lots of time for them to become red, but then I won't have my chow.
What to do, what to do...

We have two pots with strawberry plants.  The one on the left was pretty
much destroyed by hail several weeks ago, but it's trying valiantly
to make a comeback.  The smaller pot contains strongly, healthy
looking plants which are starting to produce berries.

Lloyd and his friend spent from 10am one day until 2am the next day
builting this brick planter, lined with a wooden box.  It's a beautiful
piece of work.  Next year Lloyd wants to grow squash in it, but for
this year we decided to add some color to the yard by planting some
bright and happy flowers.

Purple Petunias

Beautiful Geraniums

Black Petunias, which look purple to me

Pink Petunias

And sunny Marigolds

We also had some beautiful multi colored begonias in the planter too but they didn't fare well during the
hail storm and sadly are no longer photo worthy.

All of these planters are located along our fence where they get plenty of sunshine.
Next year we'll add another one or two along the back of our garage you can
just see there in the lower right, behind the new pink hydrangea bush.  Assuming,
of course, that we want to continue this venture next year.  I rather think we
will.

To the left of the first planter here, Lloyd planted two rose bushes, flanking a potentilla which we thought was dead.  Lloyd went to work cutting all the dead branches off and came to the center of the bush where there was some green showing so he left it there and it seems to be making a comeback.

Pink rose, potentilla and red rose

And last, but not least, my hydrangea.  I've wanted one of these since I first saw them years ago on a trip to Vancouver.  They seemed to be growing everywhere but I had never seen them before.  I sure hope this one survives.

So, with the exception of a few shrubs, that's the extent of our garden this year.  I feel pretty sure that next year will see it expanded and enlarged, with greater varieties of flowers and vegetables.

How does your garden grow?

Sinister Seven 2014

No, the race was not named for my kids...although it does seem like a good nickname for them collectively.

The Sinister Seven Ultra Marathon and Relay is an annual event in the Crowsnest Pass in the Canadian Rockies.  Its a killer of a course where the runners go up and down and around mountains, splash through multiple river crossings, often run into cougars and/or grizzly bears, fight pain and fatigue and finish on an incredible endorphin high that only an ultra runner can understand...so I'm told.

When some of our kids decided last year to take on the challenge of this year's Sinister Seven, I cringed and started to worry.  Some of them had never run before...of the team of seven, three had never raced.  But they all started training...running through the cold of our Alberta winters, the heat of the summer, and everything in between.  Here's the lineup before the run began.  I was reminded to mention that the team got their name from my blog, Pat's Ramblings.  They called themselves the Ramblers, knowing full well I'd blog about them.

Our nephew, Noah; SIL Greg, Daughter Mary, Daughter Sara,
SIL Curtis, and son Michael.  For Noah, Curtis and Mike, this was
a first-time run.

Lloyd and I weren't there to see the first three runners off so I don't have pictures of them except for some I stole from Facebook.  Noah did the first leg, running 16.5km (10.25 mi) and got the team off to a good start (they did the Sinister Seven as a relay).

Noah

 Second up was our big chiropractor Curtis who looks like he'd be more at home on a wrestling team.  He completed his 16km (9.94 mi) in great time.

Curtis

We arrived just as Mary completed the third leg of 35km (21.75mi) and Sara set off on the fourth leg (17km (10.56mi).

Mary finishing with daughter Amy photographing

Mary had the most frightening encounter of the day.  As she was running up her mountain, a huge grizzly bear came out onto her trail about 30 metres ahead of her.  Mary immediately turned around and started running back down the trail (they were told never to turn your back on a bear but fear takes over reason).  She met three male runners coming up the trail.  They formed a group around her and making as much noise as they could the four of them went back up the trail, effectively scaring the bear off.  She said that really got her adrenalin going and she made excellent time finishing her leg of the relay.

The best picture of the day is the one of Mary finishing her leg and passing off to Sara, and telling Sara about the bear.

"You saw WHAT???"

Sara's expression (turquoise) says it all.

I'm going to say right now that I have more pictures to post of Sara than of any others because with the length of the legs and the timing, hers was the only leg Lloyd and I were there to actually see coming in.

She did two legs, the first one was 17 km (10.56 mi) followed immediately by a 29.6 km (18.39mi) leg. She ran from around 5 pm until 1:30 am, through mountains and rivers and mud.  She relayed pictures to us via her cell phone along the route.  She was still fresh after the 17 km and after five minutes of blister bandaging, shoe changing (running across rivers tends to make them wet!) and gulping down orange segments she was off again.

Surrounded by family and friends, Sara is getting her blisters treated

because running in wet shoes is hard on the feet.

Fresh oranges and she's off again.

She almost lost her shoe in the sticky muck.

It was very frightening having her out on the mountain in the dark.  The runners had small headlamps on their foreheads that just allowed them to see the ground immediately in front of them.  They didn't see a hill looming until they were on it, a river in front of them until they were in it.  And of course the light in the middle of the forest attracted all the bugs in the area.

This is a selfie she took.  It's incredibly dark except for the light on her forehead.
Not my idea of fun.

 When she made it to the transition area after midnight, Greg was waiting there to begin his grueling 36.2 km (22.49 mi) leg.  I can't imagine beginning a race on a mountain in the pitch dark.

This picture was taken while we were waiting for Sara to
return after her first leg.  Greg is pointing over his shoulder at 'his' mountain.  

His run took him around the base of the mountain, up into the forest and beyond, into the snow that you can just see above the trees, and around the smaller mountain behind the first one.  When he finished just after 6am he claimed it was the best run of his life.  Runners!!!

Greg finishing 

Then it was Mike's turn to finish up with the final 10.7km (6.65 mi) leg.  His run started with a steep long climb and an even harder run down into the valley but he did it like a pro in great time.

A colorful finish to this year's Sinister Seven

And congratulations from those who matter most.  He's his
boys' hero now.

Our Super Seven Sinister Seven Runners with their medals
Curtis, Sara, Mike, Mary, Greg and Noah
Way to go guys!

This final shot sums it all up.