Saturday Morning, August 22, 2009
Tofte Ranch
Chicago Park, CA
We have now been at Tofte Ranch for 18 days. We are near Colfax, CA working on a small ranch. Our big project since arriving has been painting the barn. Actually, getting the barn ready to paint was the big job; power washing, scraping, wire brushing and then caulking. We are happy to report that the barn is almost done. We only have about 30 minutes of trim painting on the barn and we will be finished!!!! Yahoo! We'll do that tomorrow morning, when it is cooler. It has been a long go to get it done, especially in all of this heat but then we knew it would be hot when we agreed to come down and work. It is still morning and already 91 in Colfax right now. Add to the barn, dealing with a pig dying - pig hospice, harvesting crops 3 times a week for the Grower's market, moving sprinklers in the pasture, weeding, weeding and weeding. At least we know that we are in pretty good shape for our trip now. The pasture out front is a beautiful emerald green and when we arrived it was brown. Larry has done a wonderful job with the watering program. He's been running about 12 - 15 sprinkler heads a day plus watering in the garden and he moves all of those lines every day. He has also prepared and planted a huge raised bed of chard for fall harvest. Oh, 3 calves were born since we arrived; Panda, Bear and Black Jack. We are now calling them the 3 musketeers. They are a frisky fun group. We have put in some long hard hours and know for certain we could not have done this without our Ambrotose, Sport, Bounce Back and Firm....... had to throw in some Advil from time to time.
We just got back from Auburn where we picked up the last of our gear for the great Gold Adventure 2009. We purchased 2 garden kneeling pads ( a great tip from Jay and MaryAnn from their kayaking adventures). They'll soften those gravel bars and rocks where we'll be sitting. They were laughing at us at K-mart because we tried all the pads to see how they sit. We picked up a couple of blue graniteware cups for water and tea (yep, we are leaving the coffee behind and wine). We picked up some great treking poles at Big 5. I got a great windup LED flashlight - very light and compact for those late night trips to the potty.
Larry's pack is all loaded up except for a few small incidentals. It weighs in at 70 pounds with the raft and wet suits. My gear is almost packed up. I am carrying the food and clothes, first aid, supplements, etc. Thanks to MaryAnn's suggestion, everything is in zip lock bags and neatly packed and organized. Everything that we want to keep dry will go into the dry bags at the river, once we start floating. We are taking journals but no reading material and there will be no computer, email or cell phone. That's quite a few changes to our daily routine.
Our friend, Arlene, will drop us at the Stevens Trail in Colfax about 8 AM Monday morning and then pick us up the following Saturday at about 4 PM at the Iowa Hill Bridge at Mineral Bar. It is 4 1/2 miles down to the North Fork of the American. The trail ends at Secret Ravine. The good news is that we think we were given the wrong information about the distance we will be traveling down the river. We were told it was 7 miles and we now believe that we will only be floating about 4 miles. That means we won't have to break camp every day. We thought about going down to the next bridge but that would add on another 5 miles to the float trip. We want to spend most of the day sniping on the river. Extending our trip would require we move camp almost every day. We agree this shorter trip is better. We have never traveled this section of the river so every day will be something new. I'm one of those folks who likes to have everything planned out but we have no idea where we will camp, etc. It'll be nice if we only have to break camp and move a couple of times - more time for sniping.
Well, that's about all I know tonight. It feels good to know that we are almost to departure time. I wish I had taken photos of all of our gear and supplies layed out because I can't believe it is all packed away. We are glad we have tomorrow to rest up a bit before we leave. We will take photos on Monday before we head down the trail. Well have a still camera and a video camera and will document our adventure. We are already planning our next backpack/float trip.
Why are we going on this journey?
