The Dance's Excellent Adventures: 2013-05 MAY

Dance's Excellent Adventure - Lone Pine Ranch 2nd Installment

Those of you who know us well won’t be surprised that we immediately began working in our “yard”. It’s spring and that means weeds to be pulled. The path to the river was barely defined, the rock garden ignored by previous workampers, and the fire pit was full of ashes and topped with misplaced boulders. Compared to the park setting down at the main house, our hilltop site was lacking visual appeal. Dixie had planted some annuals for us and a few of the flower beds had iris and tulips waiting to bloom. Here’s some before and after pictures.

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Dance's Excellent Adventure - Lone Pine Ranch 1st Installment

We (Bob) accepted a workamping position in Likely, California for six (whole) months! So here we are at Lone Pine Ranch until the end of October. It’s likely you aren't familiar with the town of Likely. It’s small. Only around 100 people (spread out). It is north of Reno on Hwy 395 by about 165 miles. So call it extreme northeast California. What’s here? Cattle and sage brush mostly. Now up in the hills toward the Warner Mountain range you’ll find some heavily wooded areas and box canyons with cool rock faces. Blue Lake is a 20 minute drive up the mountain and West Valley Reservoir is larger and closer but access is via a 5 mile gravel road. Oh, and let’s not forget the south fork of the Pit River, which just happens to run through Lone Pine Ranch!

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The adventure continues PART TWO

Back home to Sparks on April 22^ndfor a week of appointments which included doctor, veterinarian, financial planner, and lab work, how fun! Much more pleasurable was all the visiting and eating out at favorite restaurants. We met up with Daniel, Josh and Jene, Paul, Krystal and Ron at Sage Machine, Bob Hall, Rick, Keith, Fred and Bekki, RJ and Maureen, Chuck and June, and Mo and Quinlan. Favorites restaurants; BJ’s BBQ, PJ’s, Black Rock Pizza and a new one, Sparks Café on Oddie (thanks Keith!)

Without going into detail I want to say how very much we enjoyed seeing our good friends again!!!

An unexpected development resulted in Foxie coming back to live with us. Foxie is our first dog and is now fourteen years old. We left her behind with Daniel when we went on the road as she is not the best traveler. Think panting, drooling and shedding, poor thing… But Daniel spent a lot of time with her, taking her along on short drives and she does much better now. She still won’t lay down and rest but she is much calmer overall.

Well it was time to move on before we knew it. As always we were a little worn out from the whirlwind of activity and were happy to be “on the road again”. First stop Janesville! It’s a small town just south of Susanville, on the way to our next workamping job. Our new friends Mike and Denise live in Janesville (when they’re not wintering in Arizona) and had invited us to visit for a few days. They have a good size place with plenty of room to park our big rig! What a lovely spread; tall trees, green grass, and a comfortable home, complete with gracious hosts. They live with two parrots, Widget and Sassy, but apparently they love dogs too because they gave Willie and Foxie the run of the house while we were there!

It seems I don’t have any pictures, thought I did, but I can’t locate them. L

Maybe it’s because Foxie about ripped off one of her toe nails the first morning we were there. A blood trail from the door to her bed after she had tripped coming up the metal steps alerted me to the problem. As I put on my nurse’s cap and was assessing the situation, Bob (from bed) asked if everybody was okay and I said no, I have a bit of an emergency here. Well, he didn’t respond and he didn’t come to investigate. So there I was holding a paper towel to Fox’s paw to staunch the bleeding and the next thing I know there’s Bob standing naked in front of the shower! Communication fail! But that’s typical for us… So I told Bob that YES I have an emergency going on and to go put on some underwear and COME HELP ME! Anyway we got her bandaged up and made a trip to the local vet that afternoon. We settled on hoping the nail would die and fall off versus surgical removal mainly due to her advanced years. A shot of antibiotics, a bottle of pills and a $75 bill and we were good to go!

A couple of days later we left Janesville with promises all around to get together again soon. It was another 88 miles north to our current workamping gig. We arrived at Lone Pine Ranch, four miles east of Likely, California on Thursday, May 2^nd and promptly started getting settled in.

Day of arrival. That’s Freckles, one of the ranch dogs.

Ah but that’s enough for today! It’s likely you’ll hear all about Likely soon!!!

Kim (and Bob) Dance

The adventure continues PART ONE

It’s been awhile… A good long while since I've put together a post on our blog.

So let’s get to it! I believe we left off at our arrival in Mesa for our workamping job at Sun Life Resort last fall. The winter was spent socializing, making new friends, visiting with family, helping Bob’s parents get settled in at their new house, and of course working. At six hours per day, two days per week, it was rough but we managed through it. J Instead of partaking in outdoor activities we chose to shop and piddle about. We did however kayak once (it was great!) and hiked once. We made it to one Giants spring training game. It was good to experience a 55+ resort but we will try to avoid working in highly populated areas in the future.

Just a few of our new friends, Mike and Denise.

And Rose and Matt.

Mid February we took a “vacation” and attended a boondocking rally in Quartzsite. Remember boondocking is free or low cost camping usually without hook ups, otherwise known as dry camping. We looked forward to meeting up with Howard and Linda of RV-Dreams.com again. This was their first boondocking rally and they did a fabulous job. We spent a week and a half out in the desert learning lots of stuff with close to eighty people, many of them full-time RVers, just like us!

Valentine’s Day in the desert. I took pictures of the decorations and made a collage.

As part of the rally experience Linda taught a t-shirt braiding class and also some seed beading classes. I really enjoyed the intricate work of seed beading and am totally hooked now. I have been making and giving away bracelets and even sold a couple of anklets to Denise for her granddaughters. Here’s a few of my favorites.

We found out that I have a first cousin, once removed, living in Quartzsite. Small world? So we met up with Paul and Pat, former full-timers, for lunch and a local’s guided tour of Quartzsite. A visit to the bookstore is a must! Paul, Pat and I posed for a picture with the proprietor… Disclosure here: The guy’s a nudist so if that offends you skip the next picture!

Okay moving on…

Before we left Mesa I decided I’d like a window seat made for the back of our RV. Bob being the handy guy that he is (and a wonderful husband too!), built one for me. The cushion was made by Custom Cushions of Arizona and the arm rest storage containers were purchased at Hobby Lobby. The four doors were purchased from Heartland RVs. Bob made the rest himself! We have tons more storage and the cat box is nicely tucked away on the right side. We love it!!!

When we left Mesa on April 3^rd we spent our first night boondocking in Quartzsite! This was the view from our window.

Our next stop was at an Orange County campground up in the hills, only a hop, skip and a jump from Mike’s house in Irvine. Spent three days visiting with Mike, Julie and our grandson Caden. Went kayaking around Balboa Island!

Next stop Port San Luis at Avila Beach, just north of Pismo Beach.

Full hook ups in a tiny, tightly spaced RV park.

With a humongous ocean view.

And our favorite dog beach.

AND dog friendly pier complete with sea lions and pelicans.

Next stay was at John and Shaun’s home in Atascadero. We met this couple at the boondocking rally in Quartzsite. We took full advantage of their wonderful hospitality including dining at their café in Paso Robles, Odyssey World Café. The food was fabulous! Thanks guys, hope to see you again!

Our site at their house surrounded by very large oak trees.

Their backyard was beautiful.

We headed north for a week in Pacifica at the only RV park in town. Tight sites and lots of pavement but worth it for the proximity to Jim, Bob’s good friend from high school, and Bob’s sister and brother.

View from the ocean looking inland.

The RV park is at the ocean atop a sixty foot cliff that crumbles away every now and again. Only a year and a half ago we parked on the cliff side. This year those sites are without hook ups because the infrastructure for the sites fell off the cliff along with some of the pavement!

This is the cliff. It’s bigger than it looks!

Looking north from RV park.

We spent the week visiting with all our friends and family in the bay area. It was very nice to see everyone! Jim, Mary and Bebe, Dan and Sherry, Dave, Bing and David and their dog Koda, Leanne and John and their dog Duke, Doug and Carol, Julie, Doug and Melanie, AND Julie’s parents Bob and Karleta.

Off to Cloverdale we go to visit with Bob’s other sisters. Always a good time with lots of laughter and hugs. We spent three days with Jim and Kathy and their new rescue dog Sunny. Diane came up from Tracy for a BBQ with her dog as well and we had a grand old time! Kathy is a HUGE SF Giants fan so I made this bracelet for her.