Woodcarving And A Visitor

North Ranch hosts a woodcarving gathering and workshop once a year as well as a beading week.  Woodcarving is happening this week and beading next week.  While neither Michael or I are woodcarvers, it is a pleasure to see all the displayed work as well as watch some of the students carving.  Our ATV friend Tom is a woodcarver and teaches some of the classes—he had some of his work on display along with other carvers.

The cowboy liked the cowboy!  So did I and I really liked what I think is called “relief” carvings Tom did especially the “ruins” piece! 

These birds were simply amazing—every part of these works of art is wood, even those feathers.  I wanted so bad to touch but of course it isn’t allowed—

Michael spent most of today building a shelf over the solar battery bank—he happened to read a forum comment which read something like this, “make sure your batteries are protected from falling tools.”  As in a dropped screwdriver could make a lot of sparks fly!  So, our battery bank is now protected.  We are very pleased with the system, a couple days ago we unplugged from Arizona Power and let the solar do its thing—it works!! 

North Ranch has a very nice lending library—clean, neat and well stocked.  Leave a book, take a new one.  I took two books to the library today and claimed two more.  I absolutely love to read, I am currently reading The Path Between The Seas by David McCullough—about the building of the Panama Canal.  It’s a big book—may take me a while!  Michael is reading Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen Ambrose—Geri lent it to him. 

And speaking of Geri—remember the photos of her sandwich warming on the muffler of her ATV?  Emjay left a comment on a previous blog about a book she had found detailing how two guys actully used a car engine to prepare gourmet meals, Manifold Destiny—We purchased a copy of the book for Geri and gave it to her today—we are really looking forward to these “gourmet meals” while we are out ATVing!!

Geri has a friend, Sharon visiting from Iowa and we joined them for happy hour this afternoon after they took Sharon for an ATV ride—they saw TWO Gila monsters!!  And the owl is still there—when we went back and really examined the two photos of the owl taken at different times, she appears to be in the same wall alcove.  So maybe Nancy is right and baby owls are on the way!! 

We had a visitor this afternoon—Ray of Ray and Cindy’s RV Travels and their new puppy Penny dropped by—it was good to see Ray but Emmi was not impressed with Penny taking over her blue ball !!  Ray and Cindy will be at North Ranch for a couple weeks—Cindy is a beader.

Lots of research going on around here, last night we purchased a downloadable book by the author of the blog Frugal-RV-Travel.  We’ve searched Nina’s blog extensively and used some of the links she suggests for finding the perfect boondocking spot—we are ready to try out those solar panels without Arizona Power as backup!  Our first spot will probably be somewhere in southern Utah—the excitement is building!