Bob visits Ron in Minnesota

Bob makes a quick trip to Minnesota to visit his friend Ron and his Partner Jeff. High temperature on Tuesday was a balmy 9 degrees. But the sky was crystal clear and Bob and Ron had a nice lunch at an Eastern European Deli, featured on Diners and Dives, then toured the new Guthrie Theater complex and even saw the frozen Minnehaha waterfall. Other highlights were the collapsed (from snow) football stadium roof and the rebuilt bridge that fell into the Mississippi River.

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Cabin Life – February 6, 2011

This week there has been a lot of activity down below with bulldozing and redoing the ATV trails for Geigert Ranch (Second Chance). John was up on Friday morning and said they wanted to do a little more work on the main road to our house above the water tanks, but when we checked it out they had done work between the tanks breaking a lot of water pipes. Now Second Chance doesn’t have water until they get it fixed. Glad we have our own well. Now more equipment has arrived and we saw on our Sunday walk that they are redoing the culvert under the road for the creek by Second Chance. It also looks like they are trying to make a pond below where the road crosses.

Bob and Ginger got to walk Warner Springs hike after many weeks not being able to do it. The creek is flowing all the way to the highway like last year, even though we’ve only had one rain in January and still no rain in February. The cows were grazing and Ginger was well behaved around them, on and off the leash. They have also started framing the Fire Station at Warner Springs.

On Sunday we saw a loose bull on the regular trail we walked. The do have cattle by Mataguay and it must have got loose. We don’t have our cattle guards up yet. We also found a pretty water fall just off the trail we have never seen before. Bob heard it while looking for a stick for Ginger.

Dennis heard that they are still trying to close the deal for Pala to buy the Ranch, but with over 2,500 separate Titles to get straight there is a ways to go. There is also a lawsuit about whether the vote to sell was conducted correctly. That will be mediated, or tried next month and the deal wont be able to close until that is settled.

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Bulldozing Continues…

Nicki and John continue the bulldozing of their ATV trails. Bob saw the driver and asked if we could pay to get the top of our road cut so that maybe the water wouldn’t drain down the middle. He did it for us. Then, Dennis saw John and he said that he wanted to make the road up to our place a little wider. Wow! We thought a freeway was going in. Last night is was half done with many water pipe breaks. We are glad to have our own water, otherwise we’d be shut off.

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And no snow!

Nicki Starts up Bulldozer Again

Sorry for the slowdown in updates since our trip north. Bob’s been working a “Disney on Ice” show and Dennis is still getting extra hours at the Post Office in Ramona. Last weekend we did get the gutters up on the Guesthouse and yesterday we received our order of rainchains for the downspouts. Dennis also did some more brush clearing last Sunday. We are almost at the end of January and even though most people are having a hard winter, we have had no rain since the first of the year and it hasn’t been that cold. Things could be different in February and March.

In the middle of rainy season Nicki and John are bulldozing and adding gravel to their ATV trails that washed out during December rains.

Also the first sign of spring at Cielo Grande. Our daffodils are starting to sprout.

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More trip pics

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Here are a few more pics from my phone that I didn’t get on earlier. Ginger enjoying our room, and us enjoying a drink on the patio. We had a fun trip, now back to work.  : (

Made it home

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We made it home in good time. Ginger was happy to be home, and ready to play ball. It was 81 degrees at 4:00 pm when we got home. Needless to say, the house was a little stuffy.

Evening Fire

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Enjoying a glass of wine by the fire, in the courtyard of the hotel.

Heading Home

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Arrived in Paso Robles.Heading for a wine tasting.