There’s Been Another Sighting!
Posted by: Gwen on: November 9, 2009
I belong to a forum on the Internet called Campground Crafters. The group is about 2 years old now with over 100 members. Those who have joined are mostly crafters who are RVing. We not only share our love for our specific craft, but we share RVing tips, recipes and where we are parked now! Those that participate have grown quite close and have made some good friends.
An exciting part of this group is meeting each other face to face. There have been several ‘meet and greets’ over the summer between members of Campground Crafters. And we were one of them.
Evie and Jorge have been working up at Stanley Lake in the Sierra-Nevadas. Since we were in Reno and heading to Arizona, we would be taking Hwy 395 and we would be going right by where Evie and Jorge had landed after their work season was completed. We couldn’t miss this opportunity!
We stopped in at Mammoth Lakes, California looking for the campsite where they were parked. We asked the ranger at the Visitor Center and he directed us to the only campground still open. The name was different from what Evie gave us, so we were anxious to find out if they were there. Yep! There sat Mr. Crafty. It was so exciting knowing that Evie and Jorge were inside and waiting for us.
I walked up to the door of their RV, knocked and waited for them to come out! Jorge was out the door first and we shook hands. Then came Evie and it was soooooo good to finally meet her. We chatted like old friends do.
We stayed the night at the campground and went out to dinner with Evie and Jorge. We decided on pizza and they took us to a great place. We found a booth to sit in with a high round back made for 4 people and we were so cozy. We chatted with each other and got to know more about each other. It was a great evening.
The next day we met up and took a tour of Mammoth Lakes. First on the agenda was coffee. We went to the ski village in the new part of Mammoth and found the “Side Door” espresso, latte and just plain good coffee. This shop was also a wine connoisseurs place. Dale wanted to get some of their decaf but they were out and roasting it that day.
Pandora Dome over looking Mary's Lake
We then jumped in the Dodge Ram and headed up the road to Mary’s Lake. The campground host told us where to go and what to look for. This is what we found. It was also chiller up here than down in Mammoth – which wasn’t all that warm to begin with.
Twin Lakes just above Mammoth
When we returned to the rigs, Dale went to hook up and I scooted over to Evie’s rig so check out her latest projects. I also got the priviledge to see one of Jorge’s quilt he had made. Fantastic.
As we waved goodbye, I thought of how the Internet brings people together in print but it is so much better meeting them face to face! We both can add one more couple to our “meet and greet” journal.
A New Craft
Posted by: Gwen on: November 6, 2009
This past week I learned about “no-sew” blankets. Yep, you heard me right. Make a blanket without sewing. This facinated me. And since we have a new baby in the family this would be a great gift. So, as I was doing the weekly shopping I picked up a yard and a half each of fleece material – for the top and for the bottom. There were many patterns to choose from for children. In the end, I chose Winnie the Pooh. Every child needs to know about Winnie the Pooh, don’t you think? 
So yesterday morning I got out the material. I opened up our dining room table to the farthest length it would go. Not big enough. Next biggest space is our bed. So we used the bed and it was perfect for this project.
If you are interested in making one of these blankets, there are many websites to 
help you do so. First, I cut off the salvages. I didn’t measure the blanket but just used the material I had. Then I put the two pieces together – backs to backs, pinned them and got out the scissors. To begin, a square needs to be cut out of each corner. Whether you use a 4 x 4 square or other measure, this needs to be done first. The next step is to cut strips along the sides, top and bottom. These strips need to be 1 inch thick and as long as your square. In other words, our square was 4 x 4. Therefore, our strips were 4 inches long. After cutting the sides and a few strips on each corner, we begin tying. We had a big debate as to whether to tie both strips in one loop and knot or to tie them together. We decided on the first thought and it 
looked pretty good! Yes, Dale helped. Thank you, honey!
I didn’t time us on this but I think the whole project didn’t take more than an hour if that. The blanket turned out so cute! And easy. I am thinking this would make great Christmas presents. You know, a throw for when you are watching TV and want to snuggle in for the evening. It was also a lot of fun to make – especially with a friend.
Two Days Till Lift Off
Posted by: Gwen on: November 4, 2009
I’m up early. Lots to do today, getting ready to leave. Most important is visiting the new granddaughter. Isn’t she a precious miracle!
Mom and Chloe are doing great. They may have gone home last night. Her parents didn’t get much sleep the night before so hopefully they zonked out last night. Dale was able to hold his new granddaughter for the first time yesterday. I think she has him wrapped around her little finger already. He was in awe! 
Read here what he had to say http://rvecafe.com/cal01.html#1103
It seems it is a month for birthdays and we are adding Chloe to the November calendar. Today is my daughter’s birthday, but she is way older than Chloe! November 1 was my oldest grandson’s birthday. He was 16. Gulp! His sister celebrated her birthday on October 28th. Next is my oldest granddaughter who will be 15 on November 11th. Dale’s mom and our beloved Morgan share the same birthday on the 13th. One of my best friends has her birthday a week before mine – November 15 and 22nd respectively. Then we are done with November birthdays and move right into the December birthdays. February and March must have been cold months in our families!!!!!
I wanted to share a site I use. Being in an RV we don’t have much wall space for calendars. We have a small one that is magnetic but the only thing it sticks to is the fan hood over the stove. So calendars are not present in our home. I found this site that gives a new desktop for the computer every month and they put a calendar on most of their free offerings.
The site: http://www.crosscards.com/ Now I can keep myself straight about what day it is. Well, if I know what week it is! This RVing messes up time and dates!
And now to the projects. Here is what I have been doing with my time the last few weeks. Trying something new with the knitting needles and I have to say “Making caps is a lot of fun and can be addictive.” Have a wonderful and blessed day!
- Dustins Beanie
Daily Life
Posted by: Gwen on: November 3, 2009
It’s time to bring this blog up to date! I have been so busy just enjoying our time here and knitting (we have many, many birthdays this month) that I have let the blog lapse. We have also been watching a lot of football games (wasn’t that Oregon Duck/USC game awesome!) and also the World Series. (Go Yankees!)
Well, I am here to bring you up to date on
the lives of Dale and Gwen Prohaska!!!!!
Smoke filled the valley today.
Chloe Grace arrived last night (Nov. 2). She weighed in at 6 pounds and 13 ounces. That’s all the info I have right now. Mother and child are doing fine. Hopefully we will get to visit today and get some photo’s!
We did move out of Boca on Friday last. It was sad to leave this beautiful area. Morgan and I had some great hikes. It was time to go as Ben and Kim were going to induce labor on Monday and we wanted to get the weekly rates at the RV park in Verdi. We figured if Chloe Grace was coming on Monday then we would be leaving on Friday.
While here at the park, Morgan and I have continued our daily hour walk. We ventured up into the mountains beside us and found a great trail to follow. Plus, the freeway noise isn’t as bad back there! The creek that is behind our RV is also up there, well of course it is, but we found it. Morgan gets her drink and maybe a lay down too.
Yesterday we ventured out and found Jimmy Beans Yarn Shop. Nice little shop. I did find some yarn to make a special birthday present for a friend. Now to get on that project. We took on a challenge and shopped at Win-Co, at night. Whew. They were busy. Their isles are like a mine field – dodging this way and that way. I have learned to park my cart out-of-the-way and walk the isles, carrying my purchases! Makes it simpler to maneuver around people.
Today is clean the house day. So I better get on it. I hope all you lovely folks are well and happy.
Bummer
Posted by: Gwen on: October 30, 2009
Well, something went wrong with my laptop. I downloaded an update on my anti-virus and then it wouldn’t connect with the network so I could get on-line. Don’t know what is wrong – whether the update or the network card. Laptop is still under warranty but who wants to wait for it to be sent and then sent back! I am patiently waiting for my son, David, to rest up from his trip to Chicago and getting ready for Jake’s playoff game tomorrow so he can come look in my laptop to see what is wrong. He has this nifty program called “Login” where he can come right into laptops and see what is going on from his house in Idaho. I am in Nevada.
Actually, we just moved today. Our time was up at Boca, so we hooked up and guess what? It was a beautiful day for solar. Yesterday was overcast and we didn’t get much. So we went to the Truckee Library for internet service in this very small room with 3 other people and two outlets. Oh, that was fun.
We have a nice spot, between two other RV’s and the freeway and train tracks are just south of us. It will take getting use to after being out of civilization for the last 3 weeks. ARGH….
I have been knitting for birthdays and will post some photo’s. Just not yet though.
Have a great weekend. We are going to.
The Wind Blew Today!
Posted by: Gwen on: October 26, 2009
Weather forecast calls for 30% chance of snow tonight and temps like about 19 degrees. However, Wednesday calls for “abundant sun.” So, we are staying put out here in Boca.
This morning, Morgan and I did our hour walk. It was 37.8 degrees out but warmed up pretty fast. Then about 1 p.m. the wind started blowing – very hard. It seems to have calmed down right for now. Sure hope so because I don’t want to do the rock ‘n roll 5th wheels like to do in high winds.
Dale finally got his movies uploaded. The train video took most of the day to upload. It kept timing out on him. To view click on the links.
Amtrak Train Ride:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr05uI9Px2g&feature=player_embedded
Boca Springs:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RVeCafe#p/a/u/0/A_96WjPCWnk
This is the local coffee shop hang out! Free Wi-Fi! While stopping so Mindy could get a latte, Dale a pumpkin spice coffee and me a Chai Tea, Mindy bought Dale is Birthday Present – a pumpkin colored T-shirt with Tuff Beanz on it! He was happy.
We decided to stay home today. I finished a winter cap and started a beanie. All birthday presents for the grandkids. My fingers are feeling the many hours of knitting right now. Think I will go soak them! We are off to Reno tomorrow to visit Ben and Kim (still no baby yet) and do some shopping. I am going to a cool yarn store, so stand by for photo’s!
Hikes and Sushi Makes Life Fun
Posted by: Gwen on: October 24, 2009
My daughter and I had a talk. She is walking two hours a day and losing weight. This sounds good to me. She explained to me that exercising before one eats will burn the stored fat on the body. So off Morgan and I went for an hour walk. It was a foggy day out but we were able to hit some sun half way up the mountain. Boy, did I feel that stored fat start to melt!!!! 
After walking we had a breakfast burritos with eggs, peppers and spinach. Yummy. When Mindy called she was ready for a hike. She took us to the Sawtooth Trail. Now Morgan and I was not sure about this since we already walked for an hour and about 2 or 3 miles. We went anyway. We stopped at the viewpoint overlooking the Truckee River and the Granite Campground. We had considered moving here after Martis Dam
Campground but this campground is right on HWY 89 to Tahoe City. Not good. Back at the truck, Morgan and I collapsed! However, Mindy wasn’t done yet. She took us to Bass, a store in the outlet malls. Did we have fun. Who wouldn’t! First everything in the store was 50% off. Then they took another 10% off. At checkout they took another 30% off. Dale purchased a pair of pants and I chose a pull-over shirt and a summer tank. The summer tank was $1.39 after discounts. Can’t beat that. I promptly came home (after dinner) and threw out two old tops!
And that brings me to dinner. Mindy wanted to go to the Drunken Monkey. They serve sushi. I was on the NO side of the fence but did not throw out any objections. I am so glad I didn’t. The food was delicious. Absolutely delicious.
When we entered the restaurant we saw a small dining room. Each table had place setting for 2 or 4. On each table was a black folded cloth napkin, a small square bowl and a small square plate – all black. Resting on top of the plate were wooden chopsticks. We noticed that our table was a slab of some kind of wood and the waitress said it was cottonwood. It was beautiful. We begin our dinner with drinks. Mindy ordered some fruity drink and I zeroed in on the Mojito drink with strawberries. We 
didn’t know what kind of alcohol was put in the drinks but it was good. Dale and I share the Mojito.
We had a hard time deciding how to use the menu so we had lots of questions for the waitress. She was patient with us and shared what she liked on the menu. We wanted to make sure we ordered enough food for the three of us. We had four dishes of sushi – some raw fish and some cooked. Dale ordered a side of salmon that was out of this world. To go along with it all we ordered a side of veggies and soba noodles with tofu. Oh my gosh! Fantastic. We did have enough to eat and we sat back satisfied and a bit in awe of how good the food was. The waitress brought us a dessert menu and we kindly declined. Then Mindy got a look at it and decided we just had to have the Pumpkin Ginger Cake. We decided to share it three ways and was our taste buds surprised. It was excellent. The cream cheese frosting add another dimension to the pumpkin spice. Yummy. I recommend this restaurant highly! They made my first experience of eating sushi and tofu a delight.
A perfect ending to a perfect day!
Reservoir Sitting
Posted by: Gwen on: October 23, 2009
When we moved from Martis Dam Campground we found a Forest Service campground about 10 miles to the east of Truckee at Boca Dam. About a mile up is the campground and it sits back aways from the dam so that we are on the reservoir. However, where we sit the reservoir is empty. Prosser River runs just below us but looks more like a creek.
Each morning this week we have gotten up to fog. Of course, being on water doesn’t help. It burns off anywhere from 9 to 11 and the sun comes. We have a picnic table and fire pit and the whole campground to ourselves. We found water up at Boca Springs. The springs is enclosed so no animals can defile the water. I 
have also found some back roads to get in my daily walk. The fall colors are all around us and the scene is just beautiful.
The road beside us, though, is more busy than we thought. Yesterday, Dale rode his bike up to Stampede Dam while I drove. I was going to go riding with him but my tire blew out just sitting outside. I was sitting out in our lawn chairs knitting and when the tire blew I had thought someone was shooting at me. In fact, my ear rang so much I thought someone had discharged a gun right beside me. I ran out of my slippers into the trailer dragging the dog with me – it scared me so much. Dale looked around and then found the back bike tire flat as a pancake. The tires are really old! I think I sprouted more gray hairs over that one.
We had a wonderful time exploring the dam up the road and the surrounding area. We found 3 more wonderful campgrounds but all in the trees. The reservoir behind Stampede Dam is huge and there were boats fishing. We did see several cars parked along the river and knew there were fishermen down there hoping for dinner.
We did find a sign that said “Verdi” 10 miles. Verdi is where we will go when the weather gets bad enough that we can’t take the cold anymore. We also get propane there. So we thought, lets take this road and see if we can pull the trailer that way instead of going through the 9 foot construction lane. Well we got so far on the road and it turned to dirt, gravel, rocks and is not even possible for a car let alone our trailer. I guess we will have to brave the very narrow lanes the construction people have erected on I-80 to Reno when we move. We have to go that way to get down to Barstow and then Arizona.
We did find a Wal-Mart SuperCenter and had dinner at The Crazy Chicken – El Pollo Loco!
All Aboard!
Posted by: Gwen on: October 22, 2009
My Wednesday begin rather early. Like 1 a.m. I couldn’t sleep so decided to come out to the living room and read on the book that has kept my interest all day. I am reading “Good In Bed” by Jennifer Weiner. It isn’t what you might think so don’t go there. Ms. Weiner wrote “In Her Shoes” which was a motion picture. I was almost done with the book and you know how towards the end the heroine encounters myriad problems and the action gets moving and you just can’t put that book down. That was me!
That morning, we were up early and off to Truckee to catch the 9:37 a.m. Amtrak California Zephyr to Colfax. Why? you might ask. Well, we rode the train for the fun of it! We like trains. And 
we would probably never have the opportunity to take a real train ride so we decided to see what this one was all about. We had a great time but were disappointed because they went only 30 mph through the Serria-Nevada Mountains. The scenery was awesome and we went through many tunnels. We were treated to a running commentary the whole time of the history of the RR and the surrounding area.
Dale and Mindy watch the Amtrak come into Truckee Station.
The Amtrak is being pulled by two engines. We were totally surprised by the amount of people who were using this service. The Amtrak that comes through Reno to Truckee originates out of Chicago and goes to San Fransisco. The photo’s will be a
little murky because the windows were spotty and dirty.
This shot is of what they call the Horseshoe Bend. We were going West and now we will be going East for a spell and then West again. They had to do this so they could climb into the Sierria-Nevada Mountains.
Here we are going into a tunnel
- one of many.
The tunnels were given
numbers as to when they were built.
Once inside a tunnel it gets very dark. Like when at the Oregon Caves
and you can’t see your hand in front of your face dark. 
The lights remain on inside the coach though. This photo was
taken as we were coming out of the tunnel.
This is Donner Lake. You can see I-80 across the lake.
It was fun to look down on sites that we would view at
eye level in a vehicle.It was foggy when we left Truckee
and when we got above the fog we could see how socked in Truckee was.
Donner Lake had a lot of fog on it in the morning when we passed by,
but it was free of fog in the afternoon, of course.
This is Colfax – as far as we went for our fun ride. The train was pretty much on time so we had about an hour to grab some lunch. Colfax is very small but cute. We found a coffee house open that served up some great lunch. We walked around town looking in windows. They had 3 hair salons and 3 antique shops in one block! Then we walked across the street (train tracks) to catch our ride back to Truckee. Dale has made a movie and I will post it as soon as he gets done doing all this nifty stuff to it. He purchased software off the internet to be able to upload a video to YouTube.
Fall Colors with Donner Lake in the background.
Ok, we all look dorky! We were squeezed into this really small space 
and the conductor just had to take our picture!
On the way from Colfax to Truckee we sat in the Sight-Seer Lounge.
Windows all around. The views were incredible.
But all good things come to an end.
We arrived back in Truckee on time.
It was an awesome day! Especially with family!
Skies Are Blue
Posted by: Gwen on: October 20, 2009
The clouds have left for the time being and the sun is out. We have a full charge from the sun rays. Yahoo!
Dale has wandered off to Reno to buy propane and other stuff, see Ben and maybe do something with him. I have a headache. I don’t do headaches so don’t know what this is about. Other than that malday, today is an awesome day. Morgan I just took a walk out where the water behind the dam use to be. There is a river running through all this now. It was very soft ground we walked on but I enjoyed seeing what people lost out of their boats this summer.
Since we are way out in the forest lands, we decided to shot the shotgun my son David gave us this summer. We wanted some home protection and decided upon a 
shotgun because it makes the loudes noise cocking it and a big boom when firing it off. Dale did pretty good with it and shot the bottles down. He is using buck shot for target practice. I was totally afraid of shooting it and that isn’t like me. I was raised with guns and raised my kids with guns so shooting off a rifle or pistol is no big thing. So putting this gun to my shoulder and then wondering what the heck it was going to do to my shoulder – well, two different emotions! I did shoot it off and in the end probably shot the clouds or the sun. It wasn’t that bad though and my armpit only hurt for an hour or two.
Mindy, Dale’s daughter came over last night to see us. Dale was very excited about this turn of events. So, he talked her into firing it off and she was so freaked out. But she did it – two or three times. Here are some photo’s of her! We had such a good laugh. It was fun.
I love where we are. We are out and by ourselves. There is more traffic on the road next to us than we had thought. I guess this is a great recreational area. And the camping is free for 14 days. Now, if only the sun would stay for the next 2 weeks and the temps in the 60’s I would be very happy! Oh, no baby yet. Still waiting on her to make her entrance into the world.
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