Jones Valley

(Edited April 24, 2010) Bailiff (trusty canine companion) and I arrived yesterday about 6pm. Jim Bowman and Larry Braswell had already left, but in came Austin and Peaches and today Ryan and Sheila arrived. So it's not lonely, but is very quiet. J.D. and his crew were completing the demolition of the Diffie cabin -- here's a photo by Larry earlier in the process --  and I watched as they used old logs to build a bonfire in order to start the wooden flooring (and supporting timbers) to burn. I guess scooping up ashes is easier than wrecking out an ancient floor.

Bailiff and I took a hike up to the solar house. Nice hike in perfect weather. By the time we returned around noon I'm guessing it was 65 deg. This evening we took a trek up the mountain overlooking the cemetary. Just polished off a steak and sweet potato and settling down to enjoy the cool of the evening and the fire in my new fire ring.

There is a beautiful yellow flower ... perhaps someone can tell me what it is ... which is abundant in the midst of the lingering grey of winter.

There were isolated plants, sometimes with only two flowers, and in other places there were small fields of them.

There is quite a lot of water flowing and the stream crossings on the way up to the solar house included a couple of challenges, one of which I lost ....

That's ok, a foot dipped in the stream has quite a cooling effect and it kept my boot from catching fire due to my rapid ascent up the road. Yeah, right.

Here is the deep pool near Nelson Cameron's place. I liked the stick protruding from the moss-laden rock. There were many fingerling bass in the pool. Hopefully they'll grow up to be big ones.

As I said earlier, the Diffie house is down and the de-flooring of it was interesting. Here is the result

of the bonfire. All but a little of the floor is gone and mainly concrete slab remains around the perimeter.

I took a few photos this afternoon but have not processed them just yet. I'll upload more later. You can see the full set on my Flickr site (as this is written, they're not all uploaded so check back soon).