Pullin' Chocks: April 2022

The title says it all for this post. We finally started to get some good traction this past week as it quit snowing and raining everyday for a little while.

It all started the day we rode into Idaho Falls for supplies and a dentist appointment. We passed over the Snake River Bridge at the edge of Swan Valley on our way. The river is low right now and we think this time is some of the best fishing.... maybe next year for us...

We returned from Idaho Falls (IF) late that same afternoon to see 8 loads of 3/4 gravel at Eagle View. Troy our sensational excavator was busy while we were away! Now we can get the concrete pad foundations started! Hooray! On the east side of the Shop there are 5 of the 8 loads.

Behind the Shop to the south there are 2 more loads. We will spread this gravel with the Kioti (Coyote) tractor. He's a South Korean tractor. We like him and have named him (Red) Rover.

There's the 8th load of gravel somewhat spread out from the truck. This is our premiere guest parking spot and we wanted to improve the level from side to side.

Below is the guest spot after the final spreading. It is much more level side to side now.

Same spot different view looking south.

We also started filling in the wrap porch for the porch concrete slab foundation.

North side porch filled in, Check. Sheep Creek Peak in the background, Check. Still some lingering snow in the foundation crawlspace, Check.

Garage area before adding 3/4 gravel...

Garage slab area after filling with the 3/4 gravel base.

Dusty showed up with our first load of construction materials. It consisted of most of the engineered lumber; I-Joists, Glulam Beams, and LVLs, and the pressure treated lumber for the sill plates.

Dusty lines up on our sticker boards to drop the load.

We covered up the lumber with vapor barrier provided by our neighbor Rick. It started to rain and Rick's offering saved the day! Thank you Rick! We have plenty of rocks to weigh the plastic down and prevent the wind from taking it up, up and away.

East porch filled with 3/4 gravel. Gari shows the reveal outside the frost wall foundation. We plan to add a 6 inch wide strip of gravel outside the frostwall and extend the porch slab the same distance over top of the frost wall top.

Anybody know what this is? If you didn't guess, it's the exposed base of our RV toilet. The bone colored thing at frame left is the foot pedal; that's the flush and fill mechanism. We had no plans to do this repair, but when you live in an RV these things happen and your entire schedule changes by necessity. This time it was the spring cartridge that snapped off. The spring cartridge is what moves the pedal back to the off and closed position. It's important.

Inside the foot pedal housing is the water control valve, and the spring cartridge is mounted behind the valve. We have the two mounting screws loose in the picture below. That story ended well, all back together now with a functioning spring cartridge.

We also found time for a hike and saw this small group of large Sandhill Cranes. This is about a quarter mile from our spot at Eagle View and they pretty much live there. We saw 3 or 4 babies hanging with the group now. We didn't catch the babies in this shot.

With that, we wave goodbye for now.

Big changes and events for us in the last couple of weeks, very exciting to us.

We will start in Pahrump, NV just before we departed at the end of March. We decided that we would walk out behind the RV park all the way to the mountains. On our way we passed this little Joshua Tree plant that we had passed before. This time it had two blossoms on it! Very beautiful, we had never seen a Joshua Tree in bloom and didn't even know that they flowered. So magnificent! Gari marks the GPS coordinates of this little treasure.

The full bloom.

The second blossom just budding and ready to open up.

We made it to the foot of the mountains, about a 3 mile walk from the park. I was finished by the time we got back to the RV.

Gari skips up the mountain a little way... I watched from below saving the remaining energy for the 3 mile walk back.

March 30 and time to depart Pahrump and head out for Swan Valley, Idaho. We frequently consult the Motor Carriers Atlas. It's like the regular Rand McNally Atlas, except this one is for big rigs. It shows you the highways that have diesel fuel and services for 18 wheeler big rigs. We know that we can find everything we need on the 18 wheeler routes.

Inside the atlas the highways with big rig services available are highlighted yellow/orange. It also provides low over pass information which is also extremely useful to us.

Departing from Pahrump, NV, we headed north on Rt 95 to avoid going through Las Vegas. It was an extra 50 miles or so to Ely, NV, but missing the traffic in Vegas was well worth the detour. Plus, we like to roll through the quaint little towns along the secondary routes. The exciting bonus this time is that we went through the little town of Goldfield, NV and this is a very interesting artsy town that we have passed through before. We made a note that we wanted to go back through Goldfield and stay for a few days and just knock around this interesting little town. Trouble was, we forgot the name of the town and exactly where it was! We are very excited that we have rediscovered Goldfield on this trip north and now it's in the blog and we can look back and find it with ease now! Coming into town from the south there was a nice locomotive train mural on this building.

I was clicking pictures as fast as I could. This one below is of the Sourdough Saloon. Gari is not distracted by my excited clicking whatsoever.

Below is the Rt 95 Roadhouse Eatery & Saloon. Interesting American decor, but I think they missed it on the multi-color fence sign below the Eatery pole sign. It took me awhile to realize it reads, ROADHOUSE. OK, I want to go there. There are so many interesting little places in Goldfield' if you notice there is even an interesting looking place in the rearview!

Below is the Goldfield Radio Museum. Who knew they would have one of those. We better check this out and find out the story.

Oh Boy! The Dinky Diner. Looks like a must to me! Not so excited about the food, but you never know. I want to meet the people there.

This place! Art Car. We really need more pictures and angles on those cars. This was one of the things I noticed when we came through before and forgot where it was. It looks like they have added quite a bit to the cars since we were through before. Is that a swimming pool ladder on that car? I see a boat now too! Not just Art Cars anymore.

Your guess is as good as mine. We need to know more!

Not the same place, another one.

We turned off of Rt 95 north at Tonopah, NV and went east on Rt 6 all the way to Ely, NV (E-Lee). Below is our first overnight on this trip north. We have a favorite old truck stop turned marijuana dispensary there in Ely. There is plenty of parking room and we usually have the place to ourselves. This time there was 3 or 4 other RVs there with us. The word is getting out. We plan one more overnight stop in Twin Falls, Idaho the next night, before we push on into Swan Valley, Idaho.

In the morning when we left our Ely, NV sleeping spot, we saw this. There is more snow the farther north we go. It was freezing overnight in Ely. Goodbye 80 degree Pahrump! We left Rt 6 and turned north on Rt 93 in Ely, a road that we have taken north and south many times.

Then we saw this coming into Wells, NV.... Wells is a truck stop town to us.

We took advantage of the big rig hospitality there in Wells, NV and made a rest stop for ourselves.

Migration overpasses for the Elk and deer are seen along this stretch of Rt 93.

We are now east of Idaho Falls and starting to see the mountains. The overnight stop in Twin Falls was non-eventful and we took zero pictures there. We stayed overnight in the Walmart, had a good spot, did some shopping so we would not have to go shopping as soon as we arrived in Swan Valley.

Rounding the bend into downtown Swan Valley. That's Baldy Mountain that looks just about the same from our spot.

We made it in in two overnights and three days driving, arriving on Friday April 1st. Pulling into Eagle View, everything looks just like we left it.

We backed up to the west bay and prepared to back the trailer inside the Shop. We had fine traveling weather, but we know that winter is not over here in Idaho. We will stay inside for a few weeks. There's Mt Baldy in this view.

Inside the Shop. Gari is happy! The propane ceiling heater kept the Shop around 50 degree inside all winter. We ran the two ceiling fans all winter to mix the inside air temperature. All was well upon arrival. The well water pump started right up too. It was exciting waiting to find out the status of the place, and now that we know we are just happy.

Now the house project begins again... we started calling contractors and suppliers the first Monday after arriving on the previous Friday afternoon. Before we could call our house framer, we received his To Whom it May Concern email, that informed us he now could not frame our house. Thanks a lot, we've only ordered $50,000 worth of building materials, some of which have already arrived. Red Mountain Builders, did us no favors! Lucky for us our good neighbor and general contractor of 30 years in this area agreed to frame up our residence on the same schedule. Now that switcharoo was very exciting for us to say the least!

Steve even tried out the Kioti tractor advancing the rough grading a bit further.

Then this happened after about 8 days on site. We saw 11 degree overnight temps, oh yeah. I don't know if exciting is the correct assessment, but it sure stirred up emotions.

We prayed that we could enjoy the snow even though our project schedules are stopped for a few days. Our friends came over and suggested that we go hiking. We rode up to one of our favorite hikes to the Palisades Creek Trailhead. This is the beauty that we witnessed. Enjoy the snow we did, thank you God! This definitely was exciting!