The Ranch 2015 Part 2

10/19/2015

Just pulled in after our 6 hour journey. Bs delivered home safely. Harold the Betta survived his two nights alone. Wendi has declared she is tired of acting sociable (that's a word, right?) and having bad hair and so is spending the next 30 minutes in the tub. Nobody is to talk to anyone during this time. 

So I will write.

Yesterday, I got up at my usual hour: too early (hence, email part one) and then waited around for others to get up. While eating breakfast; both early and mid-morning types.

By 10:00, the Bs and the rest of the Hardys were up and about, and after a late morning breakfast, L and I drove up to Hart's Pass and Xander and J went riding on the quad. Actually, Xander and I went quad'ing before that 'cause Xander would have just died had he not gone first thing. Took us a while but we did figure out how to start the damn thing. 

I can say that X and J won the prize for most stylish off-roaders.

The trip to Hart's Pass was nice but unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy up there. We got some nice photos of the signs.

 When we returned, the girls were shopping in Winthrop and the son and Mother in Law were watching cartoons. Mr. B and I grabbed a quick late lunch and went out into the cold and rain to try to find our property boundary markers. Wendi and I have aerial photos of our 28 acres but have never actually found its corners. So that's what the boys spent the next 2 hours doing. Some markers were easy...ish to find but some were downright camouflaged.

 (One of the easy ones.)

Each of the corners had a metal spike driven into the ground with surveyor information stamped on top. Add to that was a wooden stake with red and yellow ribbons tied on. Well, the last official survey was done about 6 years ago so many of the wooden stakes had fallen over and everything was overgrown. Fortunately, I had L along who seems to possess a super-human ability to find stuff like this. 

On the other hand, he also had an endearing tendency to point to a huge stand of trees 400 yards away and start trying to point one specific tree out. 

The pine. 

The one by the water. 

Next to those trees with the yellow leaves.  

I just nodded a lot. And was grateful since there was no way in hell I would've found anything on my own.

One very interesting thing we found was that one corner of our property was within the fence that surrounds Tina's house. Well, that won't do. Maybe I will want to put a burn pile at that spot. 

So, when I got back to the house, I explained the situation and asked Tina if she knew of any lawyers specializing in property disputes, but she couldn't think of a single name. Weird. 

Wendi and J got back hours after we did having shopped out the towns of Winthrop and Twisp and explored various points of interest in the Valley. 

The rest of the evening was Wendi cooking dinner, J and L watching the Patriots win and me watching J drink out of her Clint Howard mug. The tension was tough but I finally asked her to give me her opinion of her drinking vessel. At that point, she finally looked at the darn thing and then started laughing uproariously. I captured the moment on video which sadly means I don't actually know how to share it with anyone short of just handing them my phone. 

Should probably investigate how to do this.

This morning, which was very foggy:

It was eating another 1.7 breakfasts and then hit the road. Well, we all had to drive to Tina and Xander's Captured Chipmunk Release Zone, which was way up the Valley. Unless that little furry bastard learns to hitchhike, he ain't getting back to the Ranch.

(The little furry bastard is the one in the cage.)

Well, I hope it's been 30 minutes because this garage is getting cold and I am getting hungry. Time to see what sort of leftovers Tina snuck into our bags.

See you at school tomorrow. 

Chow! 

Brian