🤠 Rodeo Roundup 2018 Week #21

🚜 On the Farm

With everyone gone for the 3-day Memorial Weekend, we needed an automated solution for our chickens. They need to be locked in at night to be safe from predators. So we installed an automatic chicken door opener from Chicken Doors on Friday before our departure.

The battery pack and solar panel are still held in place with duct tape for the time being. I'll make a proper shelf for the battery pack and will route the wires more out of sight when I get a chance.

⛺ Big Sur Camping

Our dog, Honey, had her first camping trip this Memorial Day Weekend. She came camping with Tatyanna & me.

Given how busy Big Sur was going to be on a holiday weekend we prepared to "camp" in the car. With the back seat folded down and foam mats on top, we created a comfortable bed. So comfortable that Casper and Honey used it during the drive to Carmel.

We dropped Casper off at Victor & Sandra's house and the two of us continued on along the coast. As expected all campgrounds were packed to the gills. Even the handful of dirt roads leading up into the hills from HWY 1 were littered with campers. Especially the Tepui car tents proved to be very popular. I still find them rather ridiculous but they certainly are well suited for camping in a small pullout along a dirt road.

Luckily, we still had an ace up our sleeve: the campsite at Seven Stairs^[1]. This campsite is hidden in plain sight on HWY 1. It looks like a picnic site but I'm told is —in fact, a campsite on National Forrest land.

Only a few miles before the road closure due to the landslide just past Gorda, this spot doesn't get a lot of road traffic. All we heard at night were the barking seals on the rocks jutting out from the ocean across HWY 1.

Our free campsite was not far from Treebones, the Premier Glamping Experience in Big Sur. We stopped by to check it out. They offer yurts for $320/night, or you can bring your own tent and sleep at a campsite with the above pictured Human Nest for $175/night. Their grounds are lovely, but we preferred our private site a little way up the road.

Sunday morning we visited Sand Dollar Beach for some Jade hunting and ball throwing for Honey.

The morning at the beach was still cloudy, though cloud cover thinned as the day progressed. To get some sun, and to hike somewhere that offered enough clearance to hike with Honey and not get Poison Oak, we drove up to the Cone Peak Summit Trailhead.

Contrary to our expectation, the trail to the summit was also single track. Tatyanna remembered it as a fire road from when she hiked up Cone peak from HWY 1 several years ago. To avoid Poison Oak we skipped the summit and walked the fire road to a 2^nd trailhead at the end. This trailhead doesn't lead to Cone Peak and gets a lot less use. We followed the trail for about 1/2 a mile before we returned. It doesn't appear to get much traffic or maintenance.

Occasionally we would see these pink flowers along the road. We tried to transplant one or two, but each time the stem would break underground before I could get to the roots (or bulb?). Tony later identified them for us as Calochortus albus.

On Sunday we picked Casper up from Sandra's in Carmel where he and Victor had great time.

We admired his purple hair and continued on home.

👍 Baby Thumbnail

I have a new thumbnail on my right thumb. José, you were right after all and my nail did come off after I dropped a brick on it.

The nail had been hanging on by a thread. It was so loose I had to use a band-aid to prevent it from snagging constantly. But it wasn't getting any looser and I had to resort to surgery to get it off. Feeling so much better now.