The rest of the trip

 After the kiddo's graduation, we helped move a ton of his stuff up to the mountains.  Naturally we used it as an excuse to camp our way up 395.

If one is toting furniture along, one might as well set it up at the Whitney Portal campground.

The living room again, this time in a random National Forest campground.

We did enjoy our time in Downieville.  The travel bikes did surprisingly well on the trails up there.

Good summer hiking in the Lakes Basin.

We eventually headed over to the Bay Area, where we reconnected with friends,

hiked,

and I participated in the very last Early Music Singers under the direction of Bill Mahrt, who retired after more than 50 years of leading the group.  (several of us who had moved away were invited back for two rehearsals and the concert)

After the long many-faceted trip, we headed back towards home.  But we weren't done.

Never good when a belt flails around inside the engine compartment, taking many things out with it.

We were only about an hour and a half into the trip.  The only shop we could find to fix the van on short notice in the entire Bay Area was back in Mountain View, so we got a tow back to where we had started that morning.  Thank you Mercedes Doctor of Mountain View!

Kiddo graduated

 May 12. Mothers Day.  Kean graduated from Otis College!

Still life with cheesecake

As has become our tradition, I made a cheesecake for Anna for her birthday. Also lamb chops, with grilled asparagus etc.  This version was lemon, and went nicely with the lamb and a nice Rhône!

Stove story

Our kiddo went camping in the Mojave with a pal for spring break, and had trouble with the newly-acquired stove, which led to Dadly guidance relayed by text message. I drew up these IKEA-inspired instructions for future reference!

Ride Up a Hill

I always need to do a somewhat foolish hill climb around my birthday.  This year is no exception; Pacheco Canyon is usually partially snow-covered in spring.

 

Snowshoeing here and there

We got out for some snowshoeing in the good weather - first up the hill behind Santa Fe, and then a few days later over at Valles Caldera with our friends Robert and Kathleen.

Plumbing

 We discovered that we do, in fact, have water down at the barn; unfortunately it was not in usable shape and I managed to break the pipe in the process of excavating enough to determine how it was put together. We took it as an opportunity to install a proper freeze-proof hydrant, and in the nick of time too as the temperature dropped and we got snow the next day!

Weekend jaunt

 We wanted to camp for a long weekend, but it is winter, so we headed south.

First stop: Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.  I love that the monuments no one has heard of are not crowded but still cool.

Later we found good BLM camping at Three Rivers Petroglyph site.  We enjoyed the full moon and poking around the 21,000!! petroglyphs scattered among the rocky ridge. 

White Sands the next day was, of course, unreal.  We had good clouds, which made everything more photogenic.

Given that we spent quite a while at White Sands, we decided to stop at City of Rocks to camp, a little short of the next day's destination.  Fortunately there was a good site left amidst the rocks.

The next day Gila Cliff Dwellings was well worth the long windy drive.

And if that weren't already enough weekend fun, we headed over to to see friends just over the Arizona border.  Retirement treats us well.