Saturday 4/16

"Ahhh, a good place to hide from everyone..."

"Can I ride in the saddlebag, Grandpa? Huh? Please?"

Steven crushes a piece of charcoal for the water filter he's making.

He cut the top off a 2-liter drink bottle, put some gravel in the bottom, then a layer of sand. On top will go the charcoal. He punched several small holes in the bottom of the bottle before he started putting the gravel, sand, and charcoal in it.

Then he hung it on the back of the uhaul and poured lake water into it. He put a bowl on the bumper underneath it to catch the water. When it was done dripping there was a little bit of sand in the bottom of the bowl, but the water looked clear. We would still boil it before drinking.

Steven teaches the dog about 'siesta'!
(Talk about preaching to the choir!)

"Okay, Hanna, tell me where you buried the kitty..."

Is this an exotic foreign city? an oasis in the desert?

No, it's Echo Bay on Lake Mead. Steven and I rode the motorcycle over there this afternoon. We stopped at the ranger station but no one was there. We hoped to see if they had any interesting maps or books about the area.

There's the floating marina and boat slips. Steven bought a fish scale (for weighing fish) at the marina store.

Lots of beggars hang around the marina store, but usually it's Carp, seagulls, and ducks. This time it was a crow.

On the way back to Stewart's Point we stopped at the split-canyons-in-the-notch where we hiked earlier this winter. These orange flowers were nearby.

We climbed down into the canyon so I could gather some "mormon tea" (Ephedra) to take home. It was in the 90's and in the canyon it was probably hotter. Steven rested in the shade of the canyon wall while I gathered the plant. In the picture above you can see the small flowers that form on the joints of the needles/leaves. They're little yellow nubs.

When we got back to camp Becky and I went for a swim. Hanna helped Steven bring up driftwood for a campfire tonight.

This is from the back door of the uhaul. Tonight was the full moon, and it was high in the sky as it got dark out.

I walked out on the sand bar and took a picture of the sunset. I was trying to get the reflection on the water, but I couldn't get any farther to the left, where it would have had more water to reflect on.

Becky helps Hanna put together a s'more near the campfire.

Friday 4/15

This morning after breakfast Steven and I went for a bicycle ride. The desert was bursting with wildflowers.

Here's a close-up of those yellow flowers.

One of the prettiest flowers in the desert is the Beavertail Cactus

The Greasewood (Creosote) bushes are covered with small yellow flowers.


The desert floor is carpeted with these 3" tall purple flowers.

More Beavertail cactuse. Most of the plants are 12" to 18" tall in this area.

Ocotillo, with flowers on the tops. These plants are about 10' tall.

It was 96 degrees today, a good day for lethargy. We played around the campsite and in the water, staying mainly in the shade. This evening after the sun got lower, Steven and I went to Overton on the motorcycle to get another bag of ice for the cooler. The ride back in the dusk was absolutely beautiful, flying through the warm desert on the motorcycle. A memory to treasure.

Thursday. 4/14

We had french toast for breakfast, then Becky and I loaded the kids in the stroller and went for a walk. We had to carry the stroller up the hill to get out of the deep, loose gravel. It was still pretty bumpy and hard on little Logan, so eventually we took him out and traded off carrying him. Hanna entertained herself with buckling and unbuckling the restraint strap!

Kids aren't as cute as grandkids (just kidding!), but here's Becky with a flowering bush!

In the afternoon Steven made a fire and cooked hamburgers. I sliced up potatoes and made french fries, and we opened a can of pork & beans.

Steven in "time out"! Actually, he'd just finished brushing the dog and was pulling the hair out of the brush. Odie loves the brushing but takes off like a torpedo for her next adventure (real or imagined) as soon as the brushing is done.

Evening, Hanna in her jammies, playing in the stroller. It kept her entertained for over an hour!

Grandpa's hat is still amusing, too!

I went up to my cell phone rock to check for messages. The lighting was pretty.

The cat (left) and the dog go along...to protect me? Nah, they go to make sure they don't miss anything fun!

Sunset

Sunset

Wednesday 4/13

It was still windy this morning, but it was supposed to pick up to howling by afternoon, 25 to 35 mph with gusts to 60 mph. Becky needed some groceries from town, mostly snacks and milk for Hanna, so she suited up in my helmet and jacket and rode the motorcycle with Steven to Overton this morning. When they got back they realized they forgot ice for the cooler. It was getting awfully windy now, so Steven went alone back to town for the ice.

Since Grandpa (Steven) had his motorcycle helmet on, his regular hat was sitting around unattended. Hanna looks pretty cute in it!

By noon it was definitely a howling wind. After Steven got back and we had lunch we decided to do some kayak-surfing. The waves were tougher today than the last time we played in them. Instead of just swells, these had choppy cuts between the swells. One time, Steven was skirting along the side of a 4' swell and it was getting pretty tall, so he decided to turn into it and it dumped him over in the water. His kayak was full of water and heavy. He swam for shore with it and I paddled over and grabbed his spray-skirt and paddle. When I got those to shore I waded over to where his hat was bobbing in the water near the shore and rescued that.

Steven drained the water out of his kayak and went back out for a while.

Tuesday 4/12

I'll try not to over-post pictures of the grandkids...

Logan, happy and slightly sunburned!

Becky helps Hanna walk down the ramp. The first day she sat down and inched her way down the ramp, but was okay going up. By later the second day she was running up and down it like she'd done it every day of her life!

The dress Hanna is wearing is one I made her for her first birthday last fall. It was too big until now. It has elk and deer on it, and looks very cute on her.


After breakfast Steven and I decided to go kayaking. I had to go back to the camper for my camera, so I took a picture of Steven playing on the water in our little bay.


Willows in blossom, as seen from my kayak. They're so pretty I never got tired of them. I love the faint 'lilac' smell of them. They're interesting, too. They bloom dark purple and over the weeks they slowly lose their color until the blossoms are white. I thought at first that separate plants were purple and some were white, like lilac bushes.

The reflectoin of the clouds make me think at first that Steven was leaving some weird kind of wake in the water from his kayak!

A real pretty picture, with Steven on the lake (left), our campsite behind him, and mountains behind the ridge.

Hanna meets the cat.

They don't have a cat at home, so this was a new experience for her.

Hanna and her dolly sit in Logan's bouncy chair.

It was a clear, sunny day so we made chicken and dumplings in the solar cooker.

After I got dinner started in the solar cooker and Becky's kids were asleep for their naps, she and I went kayaking.

"What do you do with these things anyway?" ponders the cat.

When we got back, Steven was laying on the floor of the uhaul reading a book, and he had moved Logan to the floor on one of the beanbag chairs. It was around 90 degrees outside, and it was reasonable cool on the uhaul floor.

Odie searches for lizards to chase.

Becky and I went for a walk along the rocky shoreline. The cat accompanied us and checked out holes and tunnels.

Odie likes to swim out and get sticks from the water.

The cat looks...comfortable?

Like I said above, after breakfast Steven and I went out in our kayaks. We paddled northeast along the shore to the place where we camped when we first came down to Nevada in February. Steven stayed on the beach but I walked up to our campsite and stood there for a little while. It was a nice site, although more than twice as far from the water as where we are now. That matters when you're carrying a kayak up and down it, scrambling over rocks and plodding through the sand!

We paddled back to camp. In the afternoon when both her kids were asleep, Becky and I paddled over there too, and I showed her the site. The wind came up and the water was choppy as we paddled back. This was Becky's first time in a kayak, so it was quite an initiation to kayaking! When we got back to our beach we swam around in the water for a little while.

The wind stayed steady all evening, so we didn't have a campfire tonight. Steven and I had a campfire this morning while we were waiting for Becky to wake up. We let her and her kids have the bed in the uhaul and we slept outside. We made our hot chocolate with the one-burner propane stove, outside on the picnic table, and sat by our fire to drink it. It wasn't real cold, it was just nice to have a fire and we have an unlimited supply of driftwood.