2 Hikes and Knitting Spoor

This hike happened on Saturday, December 30. I am finally getting the time to do a post!



Here are Bruce, Anne and Jaya, getting ready to walk out to the Quarry Bridge.



On our way, we saw a couple bridges that got washed out in a flood, something like 20 years ago. The water was an amazing green color. I don't know what it is that makes that beautiful green, I suspect it's mineral. Possibly copper.



Here is the Quarry Bridge from a distance. It's an old railroad bridge, built in 1912, for the railroad to get to the Quarry. This bridge is still standing, while the two that washed out were built more recently. The railroad doesn't run here anymore, but you can walk out on it. We went across and down the trail a bit.



On our way back, something shiny caught my eye. It was a strand of sari silk! "A knitter has been here!" I cried. "It's knitting spoor!" So, of course, we had to take a picture.




When we got back to the road, I saw this sign. Cool is a town not far from Auburn. We took a drive out there a few days ago. Blink, and you'll miss it.



After the walk, we drove up to the bridge on 49, and we had this view of the other bridges.



Then we drove out to Lake Clementine. (We were actually in search of a bathroom.) Here are the falls.. very beautiful. See the rainbow?




Jaya had me take this picture of him scaling the fence. Looks like it's been done before.




On January 1, Jaya and I found another trail. This one was called Stagecoach Trail. It started out as a nice easy walk, and then we decided to turn onto Flood Trail. Then things got a bit more challenging! These trails were way up above where we'd been before.



At one point, we had a view of the Quarry Bridge from way up high. Just look at that green water!

Janet, Jeff, Bruce and Anne came up on Friday for Christmas/New Years.

We spent some significant time taking pictures of each other.

We exchanged lots of Christmas presents. Janet and Jeff gave the America's Test Kitchen cookbook to Jaya, to his sheer delight. He had spent the night before and that day in the kitchen preparing the pork shank roast from that series. Here are pictures of the preparation. The recipe called for coca-cola to brine the pork, but as Jaya is a Pepsi fan, that's what he used. I have dubbed this the pepsi-pig.

We brined it overnight in Pepsi, garlic, pepper and bay leaves. The next day we rubbed it with a puree of sage, parsley, pepper and garlic, and roasted it, basting every 45 minutes with a mixture of Pepsi, brown sugar and jalapeños.

The roast took longer to cook than we thought it would, but it was bigger than the one used in the recipe, so we should have expected that. We had a wonderful meal of roast pork, collard greens and cream biscuits. Janet brought black-eyed peas, which were absolutely delicious. We barely had room, but managed to have some pie for dessert.

The Auburn house becomes a Home

Slowly we are turning the house into a home. Here's the bedroom. There's not much in the bookcase yet. Because all those boxes are still in the big room, waiting to be unpacked!

We decided, that since we are using the big room for live music and dancing, we would put the E-NOR-MOUS home theatre in the master bedroom. There's plenty of room for it back there, and it's nice to snuggle in bed and watch a movie.

If I'm too tired to stay awake, it's more comfortable to fall asleep there than on the couch. I do need some large pillows to use in here, to make sitting up in bed more practical, and staying awake a little more possible!

However, purchases are going to have to wait awhile. Moving expenses were substantial, so we'll have to fill in the extra's gradually.

Our big room is still crowded with boxes. We did not get it cleared out this weekend as planned. But we did get the office set up.

There is too much furniture in the office right now. But we are moving some out to the massage room as soon as we rent a hand truck.


And the kitchen is all unpacked and even semi-organized. At least the part where the pots and pans go. The pantry is still quite haphazard... I will need to spend several hours getting that in shape. But it's big enough that I can still find what I need, mostly. I made cookies today and it took me ten minutes to locate the brown sugar!



It's fun cooking in the kitchen, but it is a bit spread out. Not that I'm complaining, but I haven't found the most efficient way to do things yet.