A Very Happy New Year!

We celebrated the new year with a fabulous road trip to Red Rock Canyon.  On our way there, we stopped and hiked along Hot Creek, in Mono County, California.  Hot Creek's source is a geothermal spring, and it runs through the Long Valley caldera.  Somehow trout thrive there, despite scalding water temperatures.

My first jog of 2016 was sunny, with panoramic mountain views.

Next stop:  The Buttermilks

The Buttermilks are a climber's playground.  They are located within the Inyo National Forest, and are considered BLM land.  There are no gates, no restrooms, and very few signs.   Instead, there are boulders.  

We played in the Buttermilk boulders until sunset, then headed south across Death Valley.  I pictured Death Valley as being flat, but the highway through it was full of twists, turns, climbs, and falls.  Death Valley contains the lowest point in North America (282 feet below sea level) yet also contains Telescope Peak, with an elevation of 11,043 feet.  Death Valley is also one of the darkest places in the United States (it's certified as a Dark Sky Park), and Andrew stopped periodically and turned off the headlights so we could stare at the stars.

When we neared Red Rock Canyon, we pulled into the Inyo forest to sleep in Toyota Lodge.  It was very dark, so we didn't realize until the next morning that we'd parked next to a Joshua Tree!  Hello again, Joshua Tree!

That morning, as the sun rose over the red rocks outside Vegas, Andrew started wondering if we should have moved to Vegas instead of Reno.  When I lived in Vegas, I hiked in Red Rock canyon almost every weekend, and it felt wonderful to return after a decade away.  I remembered hiking there with my girlfriends in my early twenties while we lamented about the difficulty in finding a good mate, and now I was sharing my favorite hikes with my wonderful husband.

Andrew helps Halo hydrate in the desert. 

We rested in the lodge between hikes.

We hiked in Red Rock Canyon until sundown, and then drove into Vegas. It was Andrew's first time driving down The Strip, and he felt much better about Reno afterwards.

We headed north that evening, into rural Nevada.  It was easy to find a place that night to sleep, because central Nevada is so empty.  67% of Nevada is open BLM land, and another significant percentage is ranch land.  The towns between Las Vegas and Reno are tiny and sparse.  A few of them didn't even have a gas station or grocery store.

The next day we headed back to Reno.  We drove long stretches of highway without seeing another car, but we did pass a couple of herds of wild horses.  Nevada is a truly unique state, and I'm definitely growing to love it.

Adventures in Homemaking

Andrew and I sold the house and bought this sweet van.  This blog is going to be a lot more exciting now.  We're going to spend all of our non-working hours on adventures, and will retire early because we're saving so much money.  

Or...I can lead with this picture of our trash and recycling cabinet.  I love our trash and recycling cabinet.  It's an ideal space-saver for a small kitchen - except that you have to  give up precious cabinet space.  

We have not yet abandoned our house for a van, but we do discuss that option daily.  We still have a house, but no longer own a wet bar.  Andrew had to do more plumbing than he expected to remove it - something to do with sewer gas - and he and Kitten spent a lot of time in the crawl space together.

Andrew and I spent our first Thanksgiving together in Reno at home, preparing for our new floor.  The downstairs of our house was very uneven, and we used five bags of leveling compound and a few sheets of plywood to straighten it out as best we could.  Our Thanksgiving dinner was simple, but delicious.

Katherine, Randal, and Milo stopped by Thanksgiving weekend on their way back to Klamath Falls.  Milo already has a great sense of humor and helped us pose with my favorite Muppet Tree.

Andrew and I really enjoyed the first couple of days of laying the floor. We started with the biggest rooms, and the work went quickly.  Halo enjoyed the amount of time we spent on our hands and knees, and Kitten loved all the new boxes and scraps.

I took this picture at the end of our first night of working on the floor.  Laying floor is a piece of cake.

Halo thought we were giving her a new rug every time we spread out new subfloor.    She enjoyed each new layer before we covered it up.  It took us about a week to make it to our guest rooms, and then another week to finish those, because small rooms require a lot more work.  We haven't done any of the trim yet, and enjoy looking at camper vans while we procrastinate.

In addition to looking at camper vans, we've had a fabulous time playing in the snow.  Winter here is so beautiful and fun, and we've made most of our new snow shoes.

For our biggest adventure of all, we hosted the Wissels for Christmas.  We cut down the blue spruce in our front yard because it was encroaching on our garden, and it made a beautifully rustic Christmas tree.  Andrew's parents brought his childhood ornaments, and the tree represented his interests over the years.

Andrew's sister Elizabeth is a domestic goddess, and she helped me reupholster our kitchen chairs (which a neighbor had given us for free) her first day in Reno.

Liz also helped Andrew and his dad assemble our new shoe bench, and hung our first pictures (after finding me the best deals on picture frames.)

We had a beautiful white Christmas in Reno, and played in the Arboretum on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I'm not sure why our Arboretum has a dinosaur grove, but I'm glad it does!

We piled all seven of us into the Subaru wagon for many of our adventures.  Madeline and I sat  in the trunk, hoping not to get pulled over.  A police van did pull up behind us, but luckily the driver only smiled and waved.  

We continued some Wissel traditions, such as smorgasbord dinner for Christmas Eve, and added a fantastic new one - tamales on Christmas Day, thanks to our newest member, Audi (Madeline's fiance.)  

Now that Andrew and I don't have any guests to prepare for, we're putting aside homemaking for awhile, and are spending our next two weekends camping and hiking.  We rely heavily on visitors for extrinsic motivation for housekeeping, so please come visit!

Houses are for Grown-ups.

A lot has happened since my last post, and if I try to write about everything I'll keep putting it off, so I'm going to narrow it down to 6 highlights.

1.  Lassen National Park. We celebrated Andrew's 33rd birthday at the end of September with a trip to Lassen National Park.  It was our first time sleeping in the truck, and it worked out perfectly.  Andrew found a quiet place to park along a seldom used dirt road, and there was a full moon (sadly, the pictures of the moon turned out terribly.)  We parked around 10pm that night and went right to sleep.

 In the morning, we had our first trailhead mostly to ourselves.  We had a simple breakfast tailgate of peanut butter bagels and coffee, and then hiked up Mount Lassen. Mount Lassen is an active volcano that last erupted in 1917, and is one of the largest lava domes on the earth.

 On our way up, we saw our first snow of the fall.

 We ate  burritos at the summit.

 The mountain in the background is Mt. Shasta, another active volcano, and the second highest peak in the Cascades.

 2.  We moved (again.)  Just a few days after we returned home from Lassen, we closed on our house!  Andrew and I were full of energy and excitement, and immediately got to work and pulled up the downstairs carpet.

Our first night in our house was also our third wedding anniversary - we celebrated in style with take-out burgers from a restaurant that buys all it's meat from local ranches.

Still full of energy, we bought a new sink, and Andrew replaced it after work one evening.

3.  Sierra Buttes.  After the excitement of the new house wore off, we were exhausted.  Houses are for grown-ups, and we've enjoyed being kids together.
Everywhere I looked, I saw parts of the house that I wanted to change, and I felt an overwhelming sense of buyer's remorse.  Many people told me this was a normal part of buying a house, and Andrew remained optimistic and encouraging.
Even though we have a lot of work to do on the house, we decided we needed to keep going on adventures on the weekends to stay balanced.

Our new friends Marty, Sarah, and Wilson the dog joined us for the trip to the Sierra Buttes.

Ah, mountain snow-fed lakes (Upper Sardine, Lower Sardine, and Young America)

So happy to be away from the new house!

4.  Yosemite National Park:  Reno's proximity to Yosemite was one of the top reasons we picked it, and we finally visited it together.  

We slept in the truck just outside Yosemite, and drove into the park at sunrise.

One of the perks of visiting Yosemite in October is you get the best views mostly to yourself.  During the summer, May Lake is crowded, but it's quiet and peaceful in October.

Andrew is really excited that we just hiked down from (the base of) Cathedral Peak.

5.  Weekend with Emily.  I had a week off in October for fall break, and so Emily and I met up in Ashland, Oregon.  Baby Alsea loves the outdoors, and was happiest when we were hiking or eating outside.  

6.  Mom's Visit.  My mom came out to visit at the end of my fall break...and I really regret not taking any pictures during her visit.  We drove to Lake Tahoe (mom's first time in California!) and walked along the Truckee River.  Mom also helped Andrew and I pick the new floor for our house.  We've been living on plywood and avoiding making the decision.  Hopefully, I'll have a picture of the new floor to post by the end of the month.

That's it for now.  The next post will focus more on the changes we've (ok, mostly Andrew) made to the house in between hiking and working.