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I spent the day, yesterday (3/2/15), with my Sister-in-Law out and around Solvang, CA.  We went to a great lunch place  – Industrial Eats in next door Buellton.  We had a great pizza and salad (plus take home prosciutto and a baguette).  Very fun place!

The weather yesterday was on again/off again but with neat clouds.  Tenley took us over to a new client’s winery to see if the light worked for some photos the winery wanted taken (name with held for pub launch purposes!).  She used her full rig – I used my iPhone 🙂

a neat place and a great location – Happy Valley Road – Santa Ynez Valley.

If you are reading this blog, you probably have figured out that I am intending on making my way across the country from San Francisco along the northern part of the country via Oregon and Idaho.

So of course, I am taking the ‘direct’ route and immediately headed south to visit family – in Solvang CA  (Pete and Tenley).  The drive down was easy, but I did get hit with sporadic showers, heavy down pours and one time really heavy hail which slowed traffic on the Interstate down to a crawl – I was able to see over an inch of ice accumulation on the road – then “poof” and we came through the other side.  Any rain at this point in California is welcome but I don’t think the sporadic nature of this particular storm will put much of a dent in the drought.

Photo below is of the morning fog here in the Santa Ynez Valley – a great way to greet the morning with a cup of coffee!

Ha –

properly quoted or not, I am hitting the road today.  Had a wonderful dinner with Jacque, Pat and Gina last night at McCormick & Kuletos  – Thank you very much guys for taking me out to dinner – it was really fun.  AND we got to see all the paper sky lanterns flying away (not sure who was launching them from Aquatic Park, but they launched probably 2 dozen up into the night).  Sort of like launching your trash into the next county – but still very pretty as well

Here is a photo of my last stuff before it got put in the moving van and also sunrise behind the statue of Juan Marichal at AT&T Park near my old apartment

My property in Carlisle is the site of a historical colonial era water powered mill.  The town records indicate that the there was a mill on the site on or around 1660 – which is only 30 years after the founding of Boston.  I will need check this but I believe the mill burned down around 1904 – so almost 250 years of milling!

If you check on the web, there are still a few operating water powered mills in the USA.  I am going to try and visit a few as I drive across the country from San Francisco to Carlisle.

• First up:  Butte Creek Mill (http://buttecreekmill.com/ ) just north of Ashland OR on Highway 5 ( 402 N. Royal Ave., Eagle Point, Oregon ).  http://buttecreekmill.com/contact-us/directions/

• Second up:  Thomson Mills State Heritage site in OR    on Highway 5 (Park: 541-491-3611 )  http://www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=186

• Third up:   Willamette Heritage Center  near Salem, OR on Highway 5 (1313 Mill Street SE Salem, OR 97301   Ph 503- 585 -7012)
• http://www.willametteheritage.org/plan_a_visit.html

 

I am flying today (Saturday) back to San Francisco in order to help pack my stuff out onto the moving van this coming Wednesday.

At 6:50am on the front porch – as the sun is rising – the temperature is a stunning 18 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.  As in -18!

Yikes!  Good thing it is is clear and sunny and should warm up some this weekend  (clear being how we radiated away all the heat along with another arctic air mass that moved in yesterday)

My mom found some old photos that we received from Alice Koford when they bought the land on South Street – my dad just scanned the two black and white photos below.  When the spring comes, it will be neat to try and recreate the photos today.  We are having a bit of a debate on the extent of the stone wall in the middle ground – how much is still in place or was any of it moved?  Where the barn used to be is now a new elm tree  – my mom placed it there a few years ago at my prompting – under the assumption that there is a lot of good fertilizer in the ground 😉

My dad and I tag teamed on clearing snow – we decided not tackle things from 2 days ago yesterday because it was so windy.  Today was negative ten degrees below zero (-10 below 🙂  on the porch -when the sun was shining on the porch.

We got the snow blower going and cleared the walk, the car parking spots, widened the driveway, cleared the mailbox for the mail and dressed up the exit to the street because with the snow banks now head high, it is hard to see out for oncoming traffic.

Below is the finished product and ready for the next storm.  It was pretty cold – the blowing snow (very dry fine champagne powder) froze my scarf completely solid – as well as my fleece mittens.  One of two scarves I got for Christmas served me well!  (the other is in San Francisco – staged for my jaunt east in a month or so).  Best Made makes some good stuff – my cheeks were cold when I had a 1/2 inch of snow frozen to them – but the areas where I had my scarf were toasty!

  

  

 

Other stuff we did today was discuss the merits of standby generator sets – the pluses and minuses of a propane system or a diesel based system.  Propane/LP seems WAY more prevalent, but I am leery of having gases around when I intend on doing a lot of hot work in my shop (blacksmithing, welding etc…).  Having a big gas tank nearby under pressure makes me a little leery.

Finally – Tenley (my S.i.L.) graciously gave me a number of photos to use here on my blog – I’ve got one up on the header right now.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  Her website is here http://www.tenleyfohlphotography.com/

… Update my website structure to make it easier for me to update and use – instead of still being in the 1990s and coding everything by hand in HTML !

My old site and content is still available at my old site

I am soon going to be driving across country and I am hoping to remember do some posting and add some pictures as I go.  Especially since I am hoping to stop in at some water powered mills along the way (in Oregon).  My property in Carlisle was a former sawmill for about 240 years  (ca 1660 to 1904 or so when it burnt down).  There is not a lot of published materials about early water powered mills in America that is easily found – I am hoping to be able to pick up an idea of what the old mill could have looked like