Ovens in the Desert

 

On the second afternoon of our trip to the Southwest last December we arrived in Ely, NV. Since we had booked our hotel while on the road we decided to go to the Ward Charcoal Ovens first as long as we still had some daylight.

Why charcoal ovens in the desert?

Lots of charcoal is needed for smelting ore. It takes 30 to 50 bushels to reduce one ton of ore.

Beehive-shaped ovens are a more efficient way of reducing pinyon pine and juniper to charcoal than the earlier method of piling wood in an open pit and lighting it on fire. The ovens allow control over how hot and how long the fire burns which is important when producing quality charcoal.

Building the ovens here, close to the source of building materials, the timber needed to make charcoal, and within three miles of the smelters, was a matter of convenience and efficiency.

After only three years of operation (1876-1879), the silver boom waned, the trees were gone, and the need for charcoal ended. People found other uses for the Ward Charcoal Ovens. For prospectors and stockmen, they were shelters in harsh weather. It is also said  that one or two stagecoach bandits hid from the law in these ovens.

(from the information plate of Ward Charcoal Ovens State Park)

We could easily picture the "harsh weather". It was quite cold, there was snow on the ground and the little creek was covered with ice.

On the plus side, we were the only people there and could explore to our hearts' desire. Then the afternoon light started to change.

The sky changed color in a rather dramatic way. It seemed the yellows and oranges got more and more intense by the minute.

We finally left when the sky turned red. By that time, I was already half frozen (the ovens didn't help).

Since this is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday, I need a drink. Last Friday our friends invited us over for a pizza dinner and some delicious wine. Can you see their sweet dog in the background?

Maybe you remember that a few weeks ago I wrote that I had made a raspberry-almond clafoutis. A that time I thought the recipe was asking for too little flour and too much half-and-half which needed a much longer baking time than mentioned. So this time I added another quarter cup of the almond flour and reduced the half-and-half by a quarter cup, scattered some sliced almonds on top and voilà - it turned out perfectly! I was also able to reduce the baking time by ten minutes. I'm glad that I was experimenting with the recipe a bit. This was our contribution to the pizza dinner.

Have a good week, everyone!

Visitors from Germany

 

The weekend before last the Geek received a WhatsApp message from his cousin Matt, telling him that he and his wife will be in our area sometime the following week and whether they could stop by for a day. Of course we said yes - we always enjoy having relatives and good friends come visit. The visit, however, did last longer than just one day because we enjoyed each other so much. They arrived on Wednesday afternoon and left on Sunday morning.

Matt and Bri are on an extended journey through Canada and the US. In May they had shipped their Mercedes Unimog Camper to Halifax in Novia Scotia and had toured Canada for three months before they entered the US about four weeks ago. The Unimog just fitted into our driveway - and we were the talk of the town. 

It is a big vehicle! Of course we had to take pictures of all of us and the Unimog.

Both Matt and Bri are super nice and really easy guests. I often had to smile about the similarities between Matt and the Geek and the Geek's brothers. You definitely couldn't deny that they're family.

One day we took them to our favorite winery in the Anderson Valley, Navarro Vineyards.

We had made sandwiches, meatballs and pumpkin bread for a little picknick at the beautiful winery. Two bottles of wine rounded it out. This is my ticket for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday.

This winery is off the beaten path which means you don't need a reservation and they also don't ask for a tasting fee. Sadly, this is unheard of by now both in Sonoma and Napa County. We bought several more bottles of wine that we took home with us. 

Of course we had to take pictures.

Usually we are at this winery in late spring or early summer when there still aren't any grapes on the vine. This time, however, the grapes were hanging ripe and full on the vine, ready to be harvested very soon.

On another day we took Matt and Bri out to the coast. It was sunny and very warm in Santa Rosa, but when we came to the coast, it looked like this.

A very typical weather pattern in my corner of the world.

But - the fog burnt off and we enjoyed a pleasant sunny day on the beach.

I had never seen that many Brown Pelicans at the beach.

It was truly amazing. We stood for a long time and watched the birds as well as a couple harbor seals playing in the water. It was mesmerizing and we didn't realize how quickly time passed.

I always love to see the Brown Pelicans gliding just above the surface of the water. They are so elegant.

Driftwood could be found all over the beach. This particular one served as the backdrop for Kaefer's photoshoot at the same beach a few months ago.

Matt the rascal has to climb on a different big piece of driftwood.

And reflections in sunglasses are always interesting.

We packed a lot in those four short days. For us it is always wonderful to spend time with people we like AND who speak our native language. The conversations are just different, there is more humor involved and it's just so much easier for us to express exactly what we mean. We shared so many laughs together which we desperately needed. We didn't watch any news, didn't read the paper - it was pure bliss, like a mini vacation. 

Too soon it was time to say goodbye.

And there they go down our neighborhood street, toward their next adventure. They still have five more months of traveling.

Along the Loneliest Highway

 

Last December when I was asking the Geek whether we should invite some friends over for New Year's Eve he responded "What about if we take a road trip - to the Southwest?". I was completely surprised since we had just come back from Germany a few weeks before, but then I quickly became very excited. We used to go to the Southwest fairly often, mostly in the winter or early spring. We hadn't been there since 2019 and we were both eager to see one of our most favorite parts of the US again.

We left on a Saturday late in the morning because our first destination - Fallon in Nevada - is only a five to six hours drive away and we figured we would still arive by daylight. I had had a very annoying cough, but was pretty sure that I didn't have COVID. However, I decided to do a test just to be on the safe side and as I expected it was negative. 

Once we had passed Sacramento, traffic became significantly lighter. The drive on I-80 over the Sierra is always beautiful, no matter the season. The rain eventually turned into snow once we were at almost 5000 ft (~1520 m) altitude. Driving down to Reno is simply spectacular. We arrived in Fallon in the early evening, checked into our hotel and found a Vietnamese restaurant where we had some delicious Pho.

The following day was spent driving NV highway 50, the supposedly "loneliest highway in the US". It sure is pretty lonely, but that is something we like a lot. No tailgaiting cars - there's enough space for passing. It's very relaxed driving. The weather wasn't so wonderful, though - we had rain, snow and very low clouds. Sometimes the sky was rather dramatic. But who is looking for gorgeous weather in December?

Even though we had often taken this highway, there were still places we hadn't seen before. Our first stop was at Sand Mountain.

Sand Mountain is not a mountain but an enormous sand dune that unfortunately showed a lot of ATV traces. It is so sad that everything needs to be accessed by people in obnoxiously loud vehicles. Thankfully at this time of year no one was here, the RV campground was deserted, but there was still a lot of garbage lying around. It is so sad that you find trash almost everywhere in this country. What is so difficult about putting it in a trash can or taking it home again?

In the distance we could see a salt lake.

Then it was back on the highway again, an endless line to the horizon.

Whenever we stopped - either for nature's call or just to enjoy the view - I was delighted by all the desert plants.

On the side of the road we came upon a shoe tree. Now I admit that I don't understand the sense or meaning of a shoe tree. Can someone help me out? Why toss shoes in a tree? Or let them rot at the base of the tree together with lots of garbage? Ugh!

However, the area near it was quite nice with beautiful views to the mountains in the distance.

On we went toward these snow covered mountains.

A few hours later, these mountains were in our rear view mirror. Oh, there's even another car on the road!

We arrived in Ely in the late afternoon, checked into our hotel and then drove out to a site that I will write about in my next post.

Now I need a drink for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday. We enjoyed a Hefeweizen yesterday with dinner. Now that we're getting closer to Oktoberfest, Costco is carrying Bavarian Weißbier again. We bought several cases...

Prost!

Little Wonders in the Garden

 

Whenever I go outside and spend some time in my garden, looking at my plants, I often see a lot of "small stuff" that I call the little wonders. It can be a spider web, an insect, a seed. Whatever it is, it belongs in my garden and is just as important and interesting as the "showy" bigger things. Like that beautiful Flame Skimmer (Libellula saturata) in the top photo. It is a dragonfly that is the most common in my garden.

This spring I noticed a higher number than usual of emerging crickets. They are always stunning when they just emerge - look at those beautiful turquoise transparent wings. It doesn't take long and all the brilliance is gone.

I wasn't successful in figuring out what kind of caterpillar (if any) this one was that I discovered on my lupines (Lupinus). I first thought it might a Painted Lady caterpillar, but I am not sure at all. A couple days later the leaves of the plant looked like in the right photo. The entire plant slowly died.

Neither could I identify the little visitor on my red-flowered Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande). Small feathers like the one in the left photo I found throughout the garden, and bigger ones as well.

St. Catherine's Lace (Eriogonum giganteum) attracts all kinds of insects. Bees love it, but so does the Elegant Grass-carrying wasp (Isodontia elegans).

When you start to look for bugs, you see many of them. From left to right: Cribate Weevil (Otiorhynchus cribricollis), Largus californicus adult and as a nymph. I also call them love bugs because they seem to mate all the time. Quite a suprise to find a solitairy one on my sliding door.

Ladybugs are always welcome since they are hungry for aphids and eat lots of them. I think that's some kind of hoverfly on my ground morning glory.

More bees, this time on my Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa). I don't know the exact identification of the flies in the photo after that.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. I saw this amount of (dead?) bees only on one of my Verbena bonariensis.

And look at those beauties here - California pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor hirsuta) and Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) in top photo and Mournful Duskywing (Erynnis tristis).

There are many many spiders in my garden, but most of the time I only see their beautiful artwork and what they catch within it.

Garden snails, on the other hand, are not turning up in big numbers. They have proven to be quite the climbers.

This year there are more Western fence lizards than usual sunnying in my garden. This one scaled up the screen on our sliding door.

A decaying pine cone. I don't have pine trees, but years ago, when we were still living further up the hill, my neighbor brought me a bag of pine cones from the Sierras. I believe this is a Jeffrey pine cone (Pinus jeffreyi).

Last but certainly not least, these beautiful seeds are found hanging in different locations, where the wind has blown them. I think they might be seeds of Salsify - and hope that I'm mistaken

I had Salsify in my garden three years ago and since then have worked hard to get rid of them by either digging up the plants or cutting off the truly showy seedheads as soon as possible. The flower is star-shaped, but the seedheads are real showstoppers. Unfortunately they are very invasive in a garden setting, even in a native and/or wildflower garden. You can see a photo of both flower and seedhead below.

Hopefully with all these tiny faces, this post qualifies for Nicole's Friday Face Off.