Saturday Adventure

It was almost 11am when I left this morning out of town. I took a map that was printed out a while back to find my way to find the so called Chumash Indian Rock Art Cave in the Santa Barbara mountains. I've been putting it off for a while now and decided this was going to be the day!
Honestly, it was not a long trip. I think I found it in about an hour. It is some what high on a side of a mountain and the road is only big enough for one car. I will be posting pictures of the place as soon they load up from the camera. When I was there a group of students from an Archaeology class was taking place. Been there, done that! Mr. Robinson was my teacher and he taught well for an old perverted man. (No offense) He's a cool guy.
The art was a small hike up the side off the road and nestled inside a cave. There was also two more drawings that were outside of the cave and higher up on the side of the cliff.
After this, I headed back towards Solvang on the 154 going North. I noticed a sign for Cachuma Lake and Campgrounds, so I pulled over and checked it out. The place is pretty large. They have many full pull ins for RVs and have areas for tents and those tepee tents too. They also have a pool and lot of activities to do! I could only spend 15 min in the park and had to leave or else I would have been charged 8 dollars for a day use pass.

After that, I went into Solvang, parked and walked around. There were many shops! The Dutch Village has a lot to offer any type of shopper. I even saw performers dressed up as gypsy bellydancers giving a show and a small car show off to the side. I ate a light lunch at the Belgain Cafe and found an awesome antique store that was two stories high. I picked up an old 1908 postcard that had a Franklin perforated postal stamp on it. I was hoping it was the one that was worth $50 but after looking it was only worth 15 cents. I kept it anyway. There was a superb bookstore and lots of niknak things. I picked up something for my mother in law and my mom.
I did check out a Cheese and Chocolate shop. I was very tempted to pick up some real Danish Gouda. After about shopping and walking around for about 2-3 hours, I walked over to the Santa Inez Mission dated 1802. I took several pictures around it but they do not allow flash inside the building. I did not get to go inside the church area since Mass was about the start at 5.
I left at 5 so I could get back on time to get dinner started. It was nice. Randy grilled up the steak for me while I fixed up some broccoli.
I'm looking forward to next weekend!

Current Projects

1. Still collecting postal stamps - I finally bought a 3 volume heirloom book set to put my stamps in. The nice thing is that Mystic sent me about 100 free stamps to go with it.

2. Drawing - I've picked up the pencil again and lately changed perspective. I'm trying out mermaids. One of my favorite fantasy creatures.

3. Good Reads - I've been reading a lot more this year and finally added some older books as well. I have a box full of new books from Florida to add and read.

Whats going on for the past months.....

Just for the record, I will be blogging a little bit more since I have a tendency for having memory failure from time to time. The memories are there but I have trouble remembering the details and sometimes I miss an entire memory. I have to have someone tell me the things I have done as a child. I used to have great memory and stranger yet is when I remember things that other people don't remember.

From the 16th through the 30th of March, I spent time with my sister and her husband in Florida! I had a Grand time and of course did not want to leave. I mean who would want to leave Florida! Hahaha! If you were a person who was born and raised there and moved half way through your life, it is still called Home. I am a absolute water baby. The ocean there in the peninsula and further south is all warm. I got in and stayed in for a long time! Just a playing in the surf, pretending to be Superman letting the waves carry you and send you flying forward. And then your butt hits the sand floor and sand gets in places you didn't know you had!
Destin was pretty awesome. I ate at Hard Rock Cafe with Sarah and ate at The Bread place with my sister. I don't remember the name of it. I went to several antique shops, a few books stores, and even to a flea market.

Crestview (the place I grew up in) has grown very much so. Ed and I went for a drive one day and he treated me to lunch and we drove around some. At first, I didn't recognize the streets nor the area because over 20 some odd years the city is going to change. The old house I used to live in is now trashed and the area is the bad side of town now. I remember my friend Sarah and I used to play at the house with Barbie dolls and once we buried a time capsule under the tree in the side yard. I do not know if it is still there. Building a time capsule sounds like fun, I'd like to do it again. We drove by Grandma Orene's house that we used to visit a lot. Her house is over by Crestview High School. I have a lot of good memories from that house. It was upsetting to see that a Realtor lady had the place remodeled. The shape is the same in general but you can tell the difference and from the orange paint job. That house used to be brick with cute little bushes running down the sides off a paved little walkway to the road. There were pecan and fruit trees in the back and a huge gate section on the side of the house that had vines crawling all over it. It had roses and grapes covering it.

My favorite memory though was when Grandma and one of my mom's sister had steamed a large amount of shrimp that looked like to me at the time were the size of baseballs. I knew then shrimp is going to stick to my four food groups always. I loved to hear Grandma talk and she always called me Jenny. I still can hear her sometimes calling my name kind of like a tape recorder repeating itself. Sometimes, I feel like she comes back to visit and to see how her family is doing. I don't know if God allows them to come back and visit us but only he knows.

My sister and Ed cook quite a bit in their new home he had built. Most of the meals are healthy and tasty. Ed took me fishing a couple times and I love doing that. I love fishing! In the front of the house is a pretty good size lake with a Bass, trout and brim. Ed says he has seen some gator in there too but they are about 4 foot long. I caught two bass and Ed caught two as well and we all ate them for dinner one night. He showed me how to clean them too. I just need to learn to cook them now. We talked about going to the movies to see "Coraline" but are plans changed. We ended up watching American Idol, a lot of House shows and a movie called, "Carnival of Souls."
One weekend we had a storm. At one point, lightening came down the chimney while we were trying to watch TV. It was a quick flash and a boom and we were surprised it came down that close to us. We were sitting on the couch and the fireplace was in front of that.

Sarah and I got together a few times. We either had lunch together, went shopping at The Commons in Destin and went to the beach. We went into Crestview one day and spent time eating pizza, checking out both of our old houses and the places we used to go to as a kid. That has been one of my favorite memories I made with her that day. It was nice to catch up on old times. That evening we went to a gathering that Sally Yozviak invited is to. It was a great memory too! We had went to a church potluck at the Jordan's house and was able to see people I haven't seen in ages. People like Mrs. Philpot, Steve and Sally, Margie and her husband. There was another couple but can't remember their names. It was nice to find out what happened to my old buddies that I grew up with are doing ok and living in other areas of Florida. But it would have been more memorable if they were there such as Sam Yozviak and Maleah Jordan.


Another great memory was with Aunt Lottie. My sister, Ed and me all set up time to go see her. It ended up being a happier reunion than I expected. It was a wonderful surprise to see she planned out a potluck and invited others to come over. I was able to see my cousin Winston and his wife and 2 kids, Aunt Polly and her daughter Pollyanne and uncle Brenton and his wife. I hope I didn't forget anyone else. The food was great! They had the best green bean casserole I've ever had. And all the deserts were delish! The next day I spent time with Lottie and she took me all over place and went to visit several cemeteries, including Grandma and Grandpa's. It was neat to see Yellow river Cemetery since some of Grandma's mother and her family was buried there. I had taken a ton of pictures of the Barrow family until I tried to recently move them into my mini SD card in my cell phone. I learned the hard way even if you move them and thinking that deleting them from the cell phone that they would would be in the SD Card by then right? Not! So I lost almost all of my pictures! The only surviving ones are on the waterproof camera which are now in Walmart being processed. A few survived that are left in my cell. I've been after Randy to get a new camera for a while. Our current digital is big and bulky and getting old. It is having problems keeping the batteries charged and with that the pictures are unable to load using Vista on the computer. Anyway, Thank you to Lottie for just being there. It is so nice to get to know family again I have not seen in a long time. They show true southern hospitality.


Lets see....For Easter, I went to several practices for choir and we performed on Saturday night prior to Easter and we also performed on Easter morning for 4 different service times. After such, I ended up with a sore throat leading some kind of allergy - running nose, nasal drip backwards creates mucus and phlem....goes into chest area and creates some kind of yucky cough and hacks.
Well, I have had this problem for about a week and a half now. It is not as bad right now and is slowly dying off. Thank God!But I'd say that is my main reason why I did not go to the Easter gathering this year at the Grandparents beach house.

Recent events take us to Yosemite National Park this past weekend with Randy's mom Jeannie and her husband Ken. Lil and Todd went with us as well. I've posted pictures on my MSN Live Spaces and on Facebook. That was a fun trip. Me and Randy stayed the weekend with his mom and step dad in Coarsegold. It is about an hour to Yosemite. We spent the Saturday all day in the park walking around seeing the waterfalls and famous points of intrests and the tall trees. We had dinner in a nice restraunt with a large window view of Lower Falls. I ate swordfish for the first with cuscus and a type of tomato sauce with pilaf rice. Jeannie and Ken bought everyone us dinner. Thank you!!!! That was an awesome meal. I bought a few small things at their shops. A book, a new green hook with a compass on it, some postcards and a new link for my Italian charm braclet. It is almost complete, just need two more to go. I'd like to find one that has an "I love fishing" kind of thing to it. I'm hoping to return to Yosemite to do some real hiking and camping sometime!

Well it is time for me to close. I've been typing this up for a few hours and have to stop for now. Laundry has to be done, lunch time is coming soon which means Randy will be back for lunch in 40 minutes. Currently, we are staying on the Vandenberg FamCamp. We had to leave Lompoc for a week since they shut down RiverPark RV Campground to RVers for a Wine Festival. We are returning there by this Wednesday. Got to run now!

Dreaming!

The room was pretty dark but not super dense. I could see a ton of rubbish that created mountains and small hills. Upon closer inspection, these mountains and hills were only made out of people's things like bikes, dolls, an old car and much more of the sort.
My husband and I were in a truck and driving through this maze of ugliness as if we were on a quest for treasure. He found old ramps that were half way buried in some of these heaps and upon looking up at the point of where we were there was no ceiling. We reached some sort of open old building and the only way to get up there was to climb on the hills of trash. Randy spotted an opportunity with one old ramp ahead of him and gunned the truck! We only flew a few meters but it sure felt like we were flying. The exhilaration had not ended yet. We both got our of the truck as it landed on an old floor being barely supported. We could have easily fallen over the old wooden planks. Surprisingly, the truck landed on a portion of the floor where a pedestal was holding it up. We both walked around and we had to climb a little higher and found rooms with more junk all over the place. He took one side of the room and I had taken the other. I finally stumbled upon a larger pile of books and thingimabobs and climbed as far it would go. This room we could not see a ceiling because it was the same color as the room blending in its own colors high above. I finally found a landing above this mountain and pushed myself to sit for a moment. I could below Randy was in some far corner looking for what we thought to have come for. Maybe we could follow an old legend and come across some secret money or a hidden stash of gold but instead we listened to an old wives tale about the place.
It was unbelievable where the story had lead us to. This stinking old place with junk piled high as the eyes can see. We heard of treasures but did not know what to expect. I stood back up and found a small path that lead to a giant chest of drawers and a room full of antiques. I had to push away a pile of junk to find this entrance! I saw things of all sorts on the table top of the dresser and most of it glittered. There were old indian relics, some sparkling diamond jewelry, some gold doubloons ( not many) below in the drawers there were money bills halfly crunched sticking out. There were much more than that just from looking at the antique dresser. You can see smaller drawers on the top of the desk. Each one had some kind of treasure sitting inside. The mirror that sat behind it all was filthy and everything sitting on the desk was dusty as if left to disentigrate.
My eyes widened from all the goodness that laid upon there and nearly fell backwards of shock.
I stepped back to the doorway and called down to my husband.
"It's here! It's here!" I knew he was down there and heard his say ok and after that was a tumbling of books and things being strewn everywhere. He was making his way to where I was up top. All I could find was a bag of cloth and started tossing the trove of assetts in the bag, carefully for the older items. Randy finally joins me and finds a cloth bag as well. We both are smiling as we had found a massive amount of riches.

The next scene appears as though we have returned to someone house and my husband has disappeared. I am on the run with my bag of goodies in one hand and fear sweeping through my body. There are men on the other side of the house talking.
"Find her! She can't be too far. Ya better hope they didn't find the Crown we've been looking for." Then the feet shuffled off. I thought I could hide the bag under the porch but one could see it from the angle I was at. So I picked up the bag again just in time as one of the men was rounding the corner. I darted around a rustic 50's GMC Truck and peered around. Coast was clear so I hopped in truck and put my bag beside and tore out of the property. The men came around the the front of the house as they watched turn up dirt revving out into desert country.

BTW - Into books and like reading you can find me as a member of Goodreads.com :
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2183226