More in August

 We were able to get together with some of my family members one weekend. My sister and her husband were in town, so we went out to see my mom while they were there. My brother and his kids came out as well. Christian stayed back home to continue working on the JK or there was no chance of finishing before the kids go back to school.

We went to hang out at a nearby park as some of the members of my brother's family was either sick or getting over sickness but we left after a while when we all started getting bit up by mosquitos. We returned back to my sister's house to chat some more but my brother and his son were hesitant to come inside. After a while, we decided to go out to dinner. We went to a Toisan Restaurant in Hacienda Heights. It was pretty good and we all ate way too much. We brought some of the food back for Christian. After dinner, we returned to the house once again to chat. My sister wanted Emily to try this weird roller thing for when her back hurts. It was uncomfortable, but it seemed to help afterwards, so she gave her one to use. It was a good visit and the girls and their cousins did a lot of catching up since they hadn't seen each other for a while and probably won't see each other for a long time after.

We stopped by the craft store to get a few supplies and look around and Caitlyn found some yarn that she absolutely loved and wanted to make a blanket out of. She ended up buying a whole cartful of this thick chenille yarn to finger knit a blanket. She finished it in less than a week. She has mixed feelings about how she made it as it seemed a little loose to her but she said that she is going to live with it until the winter and see how it performs and then she can decide whether she wants to take it apart to tighten the stitches. It is pretty big, so I think it should be fine whatever she decides. It is very fluffy and soft. 

Both girls are still working on their cross stitch. Emily is dabbling into embroidery a bit to make me some neat kitchen towels.

Caitlyn and Ty seem to take turns visiting each other nearly every week since they have come back from college. Caitlyn has also reconnected with her best friend from high school, Aubrey. Aubrey was out of the country when they initially came back from Idaho.

During most mornings and weekends, work is continuing on the JK. Emily had to change the fluid once again in the transfer case since they had topped it off with the wrong fluid, we replaced it, ran it going to Oregon and then they wanted to dump it once again to fill it with clean unadulterated transmission fluid. She also had to drain the transmission again and change out that fluid since it was old and burnt. When you drain the fluid, you only get about a third of the fluid out before replacing it with new stuff. You can't get all the fluid out unless you have a super expensive machine to simultaneously pull out the fluid while filling it with new stuff. So after the Oregon trip, she drained it once again to infuse the tank with some more new transmission oil. It's starting to look much better.

The other big thing they had to do was to bleed the brakes as it looked pretty dirty as well. In doing so, Christian found that they probably topped it off with window washing fluid as it looked green and should be a light yellow at most. And her window washing fluid reservoir was just half filled with water. It just gets more and more ridiculous as they work on it.

In fact, after we came back from Oregon, she noticed that the light bar seemed kind of loose and wiggly. It was irritating her because we could not wash the windshield when we stopped at gas stations as the light bar would get in the way of the squeegee so she took a look at it when we got home and ended up taking it off. She doesn't like the look of it anyway and it is just a nuisance. When she unbolted it, most of the screws were just finger tight and apparently, the original bolts were not quite long enough to hold it in place so instead of getting longer bolts, they filled the cowl with some janky spray foam to try to reinforce the bolts that were too short!!!

Christian's dad and his wife drove up to visit with the girls at the end of the month. We made them lunch but his dad barely got to eat anything before feeling sick. He was having trouble swallowing and kept wanting to throw up. We found out that he has been sick on and off for a couple of months now. He went to see a doctor and found out that he had kidney stones or something a while back. Then he went up to Oregon some weeks before we did and he ended up in the Emergency Room or Urgent Care. They seemed under the impression that he had food poisoning or something, but it didn't just pass in a day or two, he was sick for some time and was finally able to make it back home again.

The long and the short of it seems to be that after his last episode with his heart some years ago, they restricted his water intake but the lack of water damaged his kidneys because he was constantly dehydrated. They have him on new medication now and they have removed all restrictions on his water intake and he is feeling much better. He has some additional tests they want to do, but so far so good.

The girls took a day off to go to the beach while they are home. They went to Crystal Cove. It wasn't too crowded so I think they had a good day out.

Marian also came out to see the girls. We actually met up with her after work (she went in for half the day) in Ontario. She took us out for all you can eat lunch at El Torito and then we did some shopping. We brought back this giant box of crabs for dinner from Costco. It was pretty sweet and tasty but so much work to get into the shells! We only managed to get through a little more than half the box. She had also gotten a bunch of snacks and some food stuffs for the kids to take back to school with them.

And speaking of food poisoning, I don't think that the AYCE Mexican food agreed with me too much! I definitely prefer quality over quantity.

August

Christian had to go back to work at the start of the month. The girls and I had things to take care of. Caitlyn and I had to get our SMOG checks on our vehicles. We all had to go to the dentist. 

Emily has to go up to Oregon to visit her grandma and get things settled a the DMV for her JK, so she and Christian had to spend a bunch of time prepping the vehicle for another long trip. First and foremost was changing the transmission fluid as it is black as soot and smells burnt to boot. We don't know if they have ever changed it. While they were down there, they changed the transfer case fluid as well. They found out that the idiot mechanics at the Jeep dealership put the wrong fluid in it. They did not drain the fluid, they just topped it off or something and they obviously put the wrong fluid in it. Her transfer case is supposed to be filled with transmission fluid, which is red. They obviously put gear oil in it (which is yellow). It didn't mix very well as you can tell some of it has a reddish hue, some of it was thick and yellow and some of it was orange. The viscosity was all wrong. Some fluids don't mix at all and turns into a thick sludge. Luckily, hers did not do that and we got it out, but she drove nearly a thousand miles on it. 

Also, on their way home from Idaho, they noticed that the lights would flicker on her vehicle. She thought that her headlight was going out and got a new bulb, but when she took it apart, she found that the connector of the wiring harness for the light was actually broken and had been replaced but the bulb was fine. So, she had to order a new harness along with some bulbs for the interior that was also flickering because they replaced several of them with LED lights that were not working well with her system.

With some of our housekeeping items completed, the girls and I headed to Oregon for a few days. Emily drove her JK up to get her plates and take care of some things there. It's a grueling fourteen hour drive to get there. When we got there, we had a late dinner, chatted for a little while and headed for bed as we were all pretty tired.

In the morning, we went to the DMV to add Emily's name to the title of the JK. That took longer than anticipated as no one was aware that the DMV wasn't open until late on that day of the week normally...which was strange. Afterwards, we picked up some lunch and loaded up the kayaks to take the girls to the river. That also took longer than we thought because we loaded up and headed to the river, only to realize that we forgot the paddles! We had to take both Jeeps as we could only fit one kayak in each Jeep. We dropped them off. Caitlyn had her lunch when we were loading up the kayaks, so she was fine, but Emily had waited and she was hungry by the time they got in the river and was trying to eat her sandwich while we were casting her off.

We then drove the Jeeps 25 minutes down river to meet them. We set up chairs at the edge of the river to eat our lunch while we waited. After the drive and settling in, the girls were not that much longer before they came paddling over. We had the whole place nearly to ourselves. There might have been one or two other small groups there and the girls didn't see anybody on their journey down the river, so it was really nice. Plus the weather was nearly perfect as well.

We hung out by the river for a bit afterwards. The girls got snacks, skipped rocks and tried to catch one of the many fishes that were swimming around our feet as we sat at the edge of the river.

It was a pretty relaxing and pleasant afternoon. We went home to unload the cars and clean up. Cheri made us dinner and we watched a movie to end the night.

The next day, Cheri had booked us ride that afternoon on the Hellgate Jetboat Excursion. It's a two hour, 36 mile trip on one of their giant speedboats. We had a pretty leisurely morning except for when the girls helped clean her back windows since the house painter had just finished before we got there. The girls had been working on learning to cross stitch and had brought their projects to work on during the downtime. Cheri decided to take the girls to JoAnn's to get more supplies as she thought it was pretty neat and wanted them to continue. We ran a few more errands and had lunch before heading over to the boat dock.

The Jetboat Excursion was pretty interesting, because the boats glide over just inches of water in some places. It proceeds down the Rogue River to the Hellgate Canyon. It speeds along fairly fast, but they will slow down in certain areas to give us some history of the area, show us some of the wild life living there or when they get near others along the beach or in the water. In some of the wide open spaces, they will do  some tricks spinning around 360 degrees and splashing through the water with some of the other tour boats we are traveling with. The splashes were always fun, but you are never quite comfortable pulling out the camera when we are moving along. 

Cheri had dry sacks for us to use, so I brought my camera but only pulled it out when we were drifting along looking at the wildlife.

We left early the next morning to head back home. Caitlyn slept more than half the time, drinking and eating almost nothing. She seriously stressed me out. She finally took a few sips of water when we were back in Southern California but complained of a headache after. When we finally made it home, we got her to eat a little bowl of food. She cleaned up and went to bed after. She seemed pretty normal in the morning so not sure what was going on with her.

That same morning, Emily had to go a second time to get a filling and repair a chip on her tooth from her accident. They are also having her get a mouth guard to where at night. 

The next week, Caitlyn had to go back for a consultation from the surgeon as they want to take her wisdom teeth out. They have not progressed much from last year and she doesn't have much time left, so we are just going to keep an eye on it and check again next year. Plus, it's going to be pretty expensive so I think we will have to save up for it. Originally we thought maybe she could keep them but the surgeon doesn't think that she will have enough room in her mouth even if it does come out straight. At this point, he is worried that they won't actually come out at all and the root will just grow at hit a nerve in her jaw. So we are pretty sure she has to get them out in her future.

Meanwhile, Emily and Christian needed to continue trying to get the maintenance done on her JK since the Jeep dealership in Oregon was so inept (or criminal) that we can't rely on them to have actually done anything on the Jeep (certainly not done right if they did). Emily changed the differential fluid in both her axles. They were clearly not done. Christian worked on changing the spark plugs. That opened up a new can of worms since you have to take the intake manifold off in order to get to half the spark plugs. In the process, he found out that they removed a big insulation/spacer under the manifold which supports it and keeps the air intake cooler. The spark plugs looked like they have never been changed out as they were in pretty bad shape and were all gapped wrong and different from each other. A wire on her main wiring harness was damaged because some insulation was removed. The drive belt was cracked and near falling apart. We had to stop working and change gears continuously to search for and buy replacement parts. He ended up replacing her tensioner and idler pulleys as well. She needs new timing belts as well, but you have to take apart the entire front end of the engine apart to get to them. We just don't have that kind of time so we left that alone for now.

Summer Trip

Now that the kids are home from school, we have exactly five days before Christian has to go back to work. We thought we would have at least a week. We hoped it would be about a week and a half actually, but Rialto is starting a week earlier than last year. I don't know how they get away with that. I remember when our girls had to go back to school at the end of August instead of September and they just keep moving it back. Summer vacation is no longer almost three months. It is only two months now. Why are the kids and parents, not to mention the teachers up in arms about that?! Between Christian's dwindling summers and BYU Idaho's weird schedule, we barely have time together anymore. We are not very happy about any of it.

Anyway, on day one, we spent the entire time getting ready for our big summer trip. Caitlyn had to change the oil on her XJ. Christian walked her through it last time, but she never actually did it herself, so we saved that until she got back to do...under Christian's supervision, of course. Our plan was to drive both the XJ and the TJ on this trip. They are the most capable vehicles but do not fit a ton of gear. Christian also wanted to take the the TJ with the top and doors off.

The rest of the day was spent packing and preparing meals and stuff for the trip. It's quite an ordeal.

On day two, we got up and packed our remaining items, namely personal items, refrigerated items and snacks. We then drove to Lancaster to pick up Ty, Caitlyn's boyfriend. We met briefly with his mother. Unfortunately, because of our tight schedule, we had to start our trip on Sunday so we missed his father who was at church early for meetings. 

We then headed up to Coyote Flats. It's the same place we went last year, but we really liked it and it met most of our other requirements. It is relatively remote, not too far, and fairly high in elevation so that it would not be too hot.

When we got near the trailhead, we had Caitlyn and Ty take turns driving the TJ as we knew they would have more fun in it. Ty was a little wary of driving it as he has never been off-road in a vehicle before and he also was afraid of damaging her dad's vehicle. The road itself was pretty uneventful. The trail is supposed to be rated "difficult," but since it was so damaged last year, the forest service must have fixed the road because now I would rate it as "moderate" at best and barely that. I think they fixed it a little too well because the other downside with the trail being easier is that more people find it now accessible which makes it more crowded, which will eventually make it more polluted and damaged.

Overall, it was a lot dryer than last year, so there were less wildflowers, but also less mosquitos! We camped at our old campsite, which is nice and big, but unfortunately not quite as flat as we would like.

Since we weren't doing much except traveling this day, we went all out on dinner. I had made Indian curry and some rice back at home a couple days before and froze it to help it travel for the trip. The night before, I made the dough for naan and retarded it in the refrigerator. After setting up camp, Christian helped me to portion out and then flatten out the dough to cook. Unfortunately, we forgot to pack our cast iron pan, oil and flour, so we had to make due. It was a pain in the butt, but surprisingly, they turned out pretty good!

On day three, we kind of had a mixed bag of activities. Originally, the kids were supposed to go on a hike, but no one was sure of what they wanted to do. We were really feeling the high altitude and wasn't sure if we should just acclimate for the day. We wanted to leave our camp ground set up but quite a few vehicles were milling around and driving by, so we were afraid to leave it unsupervised. 

In the end, Christian sent Ty and Caitlyn off to scout out a trail by themselves in the TJ. I guess they turned around when they hit someone else's campsite. After they came back, the rest of us took off in the Jeep while Caitlyn and Ty stayed behind to watch the camp. We took a different trail as we didn't want to run into the people at the campsite. We took a loop to scout out the lakes I wanted to see. It was a lot longer and rougher than we had expected.

The first lake we came upon doesn't really have a name. There were little frogs all around it. We continued down the trail a bit and ran into another lake. This next one was super neat. It's called Funnel Lake. The snow falls on the surrounding mountains. As it melts, the water drains down and fills the lake but at the edge of the lake, as it overflows,  a small waterfall is created and the water streams down the rocks and disappears into some underground creek.  It does not have a pool of water at the bottom, the rocks surrounding it is basically dry. It's strange but I could not find any information on it.

It was super neat but we knew that we had been gone too long and decided to head back when another vehicle pulled into the area. 

We did stop to take a quick shot of the flora and fauna in the area. 

We finally got back and had a quick lunch while we discussed what we should do next. Christian was tired and the kids had been sitting around too long, so I suggested that they should just go on their hike. I actually jokingly said that they could just walk over to the base of Sugarloaf and head up since Caitlyn kept insisting that Sugarloaf was just a little morning jaunt. We climbed up there the first time we came to Coyote Flats and I guess she remembers it being a lot easier than I did but we parked part way up, so it was a bit easier. Christian decided to just lie down and take a nap, so the kids decided that thy would just walk up from camp as I had suggested. They took nothing with them but a bottle of water each. 

Christian woke up a short time later and went after them. We figured he would drive up back up and maybe meet them at the top. When Christian took off, I could see the kids were still heading towards the base so I thought that they would see each other and he would take them the rest of the way and they would go together. The next time I looked over, the kids had disappeared and so had Christian, so I didn't know if they met up. I stayed at camp and relaxed and read my book since my knee certainly isn't up for a hike. After a while, I decided to collect some firewood for the evening as everyone would be tired when they got back.

They were gone a lot longer than I expected. I started to get a little worried that they didn't meet up at all. But they did make it to the top.

It has a great view of the Palisades, but because all of the fires, none of our views were all that clear. From what the kids tell me, the reason they disappeared from view shortly after Christian took off after them was because the landscape dipped into this steep trough before getting to the base of the mountain. You can't see it from camp, it looks fairly flat from my vantage point. Overall, they didn't pick a very good line up the mountain...not sure there was a good one from where they started. They bush wacked up quite a bit of it, traversing a lot of rocks and boulders. Needless to say, Christian beat them to the top and waited for them with his camera and climbing on some of the bigger boulders to pass the time. Caitlyn was excited to find the peak registry. She wanted to find her entry from 2021. Ty was pretty skeptical of their climb as he's doesn't really hike up things without a trail. Emily was generally disgruntled and unimpressed with the hike. They went back down the way we climbed up the first time and Christian went back the way he went up to get the Jeep and pick them up. They definitely like the trail they went down better than the one the used to get up there. They piled into the Jeep and came back to camp. All of the kids are pale from Idaho and came back sunburnt. Emily actually got burnt before from riding around in the Jeep. Ty got burnt the worst as he didn't have anything covering his neck and ears. Christian had to introduce him to the shemaugh and he ended up wearing it for most of the rest of the trip.

On the morning of day four, we took down our camp, had breakfast and discussed what we would do next.   We were going to show them the lakes we found but Ty and Caitlyn decided that since we already saw it, that they were fine moving to the next area. First we went down to Bishop to get the kids some aloe for their sunburns. We also picked up some more sunscreen and ibuprofen too. We got then got some gas and icy drinks and headed over to Mono Lake. Ty had never been there.

Christian stayed with the Jeeps while the kids went to go see it as it is just a short trail but there were tons of people there. We've been there many times and Christian had no desire to be amongst all the riff raff. I went mainly to take a few pictures of the kids. It was hard to do as they were either standing right next to me or among other people. Some volunteer from the park service was there with a monocular trained on an Osprey nest and we all got to look into it. That was pretty neat.

Afterwards, we headed up to the backside of the lake. We have a campsite that overlooks the lake that we've been to several times. On the way there, we decided to take Ty to Bodie as he hadn't been to a ghost town before either. We tried to take a shortcut but the park services has kind of blocked off the back entrances. We found out why when we eventually got there. They are now charging $8 bucks a person to walk around in their little ghost town. That's $40 for all of us. We offered to have Caitlyn just go in with Ty and we'd wait for them outside. It isn't worth that much to go see it again but they declined. They didn't think it was worth it to go in regardless, so we just headed back out to our original destination...our campsite for the night.

There had been quite a few falling stars on the past couple of nights, so it was nice to sit out and just watch the stars.

On the morning of the fifth, and last day, we broke camp and headed back home. We had a long way to go and Ty's family wanted to have dinner with us when we brought him back, so we had to make it back at a reasonable hour. We were a little concerned about having dinner there after four days of camping, but they insisted that it would be fine so we accepted their invitation.

We stopped by Alabama Hills briefly for lunch and to show Ty around a little bit.

We didn't have too crazy of an adventure, but Ty survived relatively unscathed. Luckily his sunburn toned down some before he got back home as did the girls', but I think they will peel some before it's done.

Ty's mom made us a big pork chop dinner with potatoes and apples. That was pretty fantastic after being out camping for the past four days. We got to get to know his family a little bit, although I think they mostly talked to us rather than with Caitlyn. She wasn't contributing more than she had to. Mostly Christian and Ty's dad chatted if I'm gonna be honest! But we were happy to find out that they are very normal people and we got along pretty well. Ty's mom also made this really fancy cheesecake with raspberry sauce. It was really good too but I felt like I was going to have to roll out the door by the end.

We left a little later than we intended but it was good to get to know them. Of course, we ran into some problems with road closures and stuff in trying to get home again so it took us even longer to get back. We were all dirty and exhausted and Christian had to get up early in the morning to start work the next day.

July - Part 2

We've been taking a lot of video and stuff on our day trips, trying to get back into recording our adventures as we hope to make a neat one of the trip with the kids at the end of the month. However, we have been having problems with the 5K video from the newest GoPro. Christian had been using proxies in order to edit his videos but at some point, they stopped working or the program wouldn't use them or something. It's been a while since we have upgraded his computer, so during Prime Day, we ended up ordering a new mother board, processor, memory and fans for his computer. Later, we ended up getting him a new power supply as well. Maybe next year or so we will be able to get him a new video card as well, but this new system is at least useable for now.

The XJ got a transmission oil change, tope engine clean and new spark plugs. Everything seems to be running well now and sounding great except it doesn't start up right away when the engine is cold. We are hoping that it is just a matter of retraining the computer since we haven't driven it at all since it was parked and had a bunch of things changed on it.

We went on one last day trip the week the kids were supposed to get out of school. This time, we were supposed to go on a trail to Surprise Canyon, but when we got there, we decided to just go explore the Inyo Mountains instead. When we got there, there were a bunch of idiots doing the Badwater 135. It's supposed to be one of the world's hardest races. 135 miles from Badwater (the lowest point in the Continental United States) to Whitney Portal (the trailhead for the highest point in the Continental United States), during one of the hottest times of the year. Anyway, they were running up our road. The sides of the road was covered in their "support cars." And there were a bunch of other volunteers or media people standing around in the middle of the street when we got there. We were pretty irritated. 

At the same time, we saw a bunch of F-18 fighter jets diving into the Northern Panamint Valley. We ended up taking a side road towards where they were doing that, but by the time we got through the throng of people and aired down, they finished their diving approaches there and it was getting seriously hot. My Shemaugh wasn't doing enough for me. I wasn't feeling too good and I wasn't trying to run some insane race through it. We ended up airing back up the Jeep and heading back up into the Inyo Mountains where we were headed before we got side tracked by all the people. It was a lot cooler up there. It was such a relief!We didn't have an exact trail or destination. We were just exploring to see what there was out there and maybe see if we can find the back road to Cero Gordo. We checked the maps after we got back and figured that we just barely missed it. The road we were on would have taken us there but we thought that it was going too far in the wrong direction, so we turned around to try another branch of the trail. The GPS coordinates showed that the right branch of our trail that would have taken us where we wanted to go was just around the corner from where we turned around! We ended up at an old mine where the road seemed to stop.

We turned back and took another side trail to see if it would take us back to the highway as it was getting late and we didn't want to get back as late as we have been from these day trips.

Our road took us into the Santa Rosa Flats which was really nice. We startled some coyotes as we drove by but it was beautiful and no one else besides the coyotes were there.

Eventually, we made it back out to the road, only to once again, run into the folks running the race towards Lone Pine and the end of their race at the Mt. Whitney trailhead. We had originally thought to go into Lone Pine to pick up dinner, but as the runners would be running along parts of the 395 to get there, we decided to just head back home and maybe pick up a snack somewhere along the way.

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At the end of the semester, one of Caitlyn's professors offered her a position as a TA next semester for the class she was finishing. Caitlyn was kind of on the fence about accepting the position. It's a business class, not computer science and apparently Caitlyn had her before in a lower level business class. As she aced them both and remembered Caitlyn from her first class, she must have liked her enough to offer the position to her. After much contemplation, she finally got back to the professor about accepting. I think she was secretly hoping the professor offered the position to someone else already. She was a bit apprehensive about the amount of reading she would have to do to help grade papers and being a TA in an upper level business class where the students may be older than her. Christian and I thought it would be great experience for her and knew that it would be good for her resume and possible other jobs as the professor is a department head and can get her more hours or positions if she was interested. She is also concerned about her work load next semester and didn't want too many hours, just in case, but she will have a job and some income, which will be good.

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The kids' last day of finals was on Wednesday. They finished packing and cleaning and headed out Thursday morning. They landed in St. George by late afternoon and spent a bit of time with Austin and his family. They got to go swimming.

Pictures courtesy of Caitlyn

The next morning, they stopped by to see their Aunt in Mesquite. While they were there, Christian looked up the road conditions for them and found that there was a major snafu on the 15 outside of Nevada. It was actually completely closed in a couple of places. The worst was a semi-truck carrying lithium batteries that was on fire near Baker. It had actually been burning since 6:am with no end in site. We had to have them leave and take a round-a-bout way home. 

However, just outside of Las Vegas, they had some car trouble. Emily's Jeep was running rough and her check engine light came on. It was 110 degrees F out and Emily had to go out and troubleshoot her Jeep as  our young girls were stranded on the side of the road outside of Vegas! We were so stressed out. Luckily, Christian gave her a code reader and they were able to figure out the problem. There was a problem with the intake air temperature sensor and Christian had her see if it was loose or disconnected. He had to located the general area for her by searching on the internet. It was indeed disconnected. The idiots at the Jeep dealership that did the work on her engine reconnected it it but obviously didn't snap it in and it jostled loose. We were so stressed out. To add insult to injury, her aunt had stocked them up on cold drinks and she had a giant lemonade on her door. When she went out in the heat to frantically figure out what was wrong with the vehicle, it got knocked over and spilled all over the footwell on the driver's side so it was all a sticky mess for the rest of the trip.

After she reconnected the IAT sensor, the car ran fine but she couldn't clear the code. She cleaned up the car as best she could at the time and they basically had to take the 95 down through Nevada and then across on the 62 through 29 Palms. That's the simplified explanation. They actually had to switch on many roads to get back. Luckily, they were in the car together and one can help navigate while the other drove. Christian and I were on pins and needles and couldn't do anything except sit at our computers, monitoring their progress home for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Their shortest day of driving ended up longer than the day before!

July - Part 1

This past month was somewhat more eventful than usual. Both in a good way and a bad way. First, we came back from our trip, only to be sick for the next 2 or 3 weeks. That definitely sucked. So we didn't do a ton the first couple of weeks of the month. Because of time limitations and the amount of work that needed to be done, Christian still forced himself to go out almost every morning to work on Caitlyn's car. First, he worked on the alignment of the vehicle. We found that the front axle was not as bent as we had thought and we ended up putting shims in instead of swapping axles out. That would be way too much work than we have time to tackle (especially when we aren't feeling well and only have until noon each day when it gets way too hot to do anything).  We did find out though, that the alignment was a LOT off of what it should have been and that was the reason it ate through the tires so badly.

Christian also checked the fuel pump but did not find anything wrong with it, so the other really big thing we had to tackle was pulling out the wiring harness again since the XJ was having problems on the Cedar Pockets trail last month, which was the real reason for the stalling problem we were having. He found that the crappy wiring loom we got from the auto store and Amazon, failed miserably against the heat of the engine and transmission. We think that the wires got damaged and was shorting out when we were jostling it down the trail. Christian had to take it all apart and inspect every inch of it. He ended up replacing a bunch of short segments of it, then re-wrapping it and covering it with proper nylon loom. In addition, he got special heat shielding for the hottest and most damaged part of it next to the transmission. 

We also found out that the valve cover gasket was leaking pretty badly, so he had to replace that. 

During the afternoons, when it was too hot to work outside, and when Christian didn't have to do research on or do internet searches for replacement car parts, he went back to work on his Voron. He got the print head done and started on the electronics.

After a couple of weeks of sickness, we were healthy enough to try to take a day off from the Jeep "mines" to actually go drive it...or at least drive the TJ. We replaced the oil pressure sensor that we had a problem with. In addition, we got an air dam to cut down on some of the most turbulent wind problems we had when we have a very bad head wind in the TJ with the top down. We drove out to San Bernardino to investigate the Pilot Rock Trail. Unfortunately, the Vista Fire obscured most of our views.

The Pilot Rock Trail itself was also a bit disappointing. There was a lot of garbage along the trail plus some graffiti. It's the reason I usually avoid the San Gabriel Mountains...too close to all the city riff raff that shouldn't be out in the mountains in the first place, as they do not enjoy or respect the wilderness. They destroyed much of the San Gabriel Mountain areas years ago and it looks like they have moved on to  the San Bernardino Mountains. 

It was a fairly short trail though, so we went back through to take the Willow Creek trail over to Deep Creek. We found a somewhat challenging route that gave access to a nice little secluded spot at Deep Creek. It was really beautiful! Don't get me wrong, there was still a bunch of trash there, but not anything that did it too much damage yet. It was really hot out, so we dunked ourselves in the creek. It was really nice. There were a bunch of small fish in there too and they didn't seem to mind us very much as they would just swim around our ankles.

We definitely wanted to bring the girls back here. We knew Emily especially would love this place. We even planned to bring garbage bags to help clean up the area to try to discourage people from doing even more damage. However, we found out about a week or week and a half later that due to the fire, which they still haven't put out, they closed this trail. What's more, they have closed it for the next year! Why? I have no idea. I can tell you that it has nothing to do with the fire the closed it under as the fire is about 20 miles away on the other side of the 15 freeway. We are not happy about it at all.

Christian continued working on Caitlyn's XJ. We had to order more wires and loom which we did not have sizes for in-stock. Meanwhile, Christian fixed an exhaust leak on the TJ. The next week, we took off for another day trip. This time we went to Hunter Mountain and Hidden Valley in Death Valley. We stopped by to look at the Boxcar Cabin while we aired down the tires, but we kind of regretted it because the ground was littered with nails all over the place. We were lucky that we didn't get a flat.

It was a beautiful day. There were still wild flowers out and it wasn't too hot as we were up in the higher elevations, for the most part.

We have found that if we wrap our head with a tactical shemaugh, soaked in water, we can endure the heat a lot better. It might have gotten us in a bit of trouble, as we were doing so well, that we decided to drive through the lower valley to exit Death Valley instead of going back out the way we came in. It was quite a bit hotter down there. We stopped by to see the Ubehebe Crater, which was pretty neat since we've past by from a distance before but I've never stopped by to see it. You used to have to hike a little way to see it back when Christian went with his dad many years ago, but they have built a road and parking lot right up to it now. We aired back up here.

We drove by Badwater and would have stopped to see it better but as there were still a surprising amount of people visiting here, we drove on.

By the time we got to Jubilee Pass on our way out of the park, the car was overheating a bit (as were we). We pulled over briefly to let it cool down and refresh our shemaughs.

The sun was setting but we still had quite a few hours before we would make it back home, so after we cooled down, we continued on our way home.

End of June

We have not had the most auspicious of beginnings for the summer break. First I screwed up my knee last month, then we had to take an unexpected 2,750 mile trip up to Oregon, across to Idaho and then down through Utah, Arizona and Nevada. It was pretty grueling. At the end of it all, Christian and I got sick. We picked up some bug along our journey even though we really didn't go anywhere except visit with family. It's been pretty bad. We got sick shortly after getting back and have been sick the rest of the time. It's pretty miserable.

Plus, the heat of the summer has come with a vengeance with no break in sight. So we really only have until lunch time to work without risking another heat stroke in this weather.

Regardless of the sickness, we've been slowly trying to knock out some work on the XJ since we were able to bring it back with us and we are limited on time/energy. We changed out the ruined tires and installed the TJ tires on to them. We tried to buy Caitlyn a new wheel for her spare tire that matched her other wheels but apparently they aren't really available right now. Plus the bigger tire isn't really going to fit where her old spare sat on the side of her trunk. Her old spare (which was a little undersized) had to be partially deflated to fit. The "experts" on the YouTube had said you just had to move the seat a little and drill a new hole to make the 31 inch tire to fit, but that isn't going to work. It is more complicated than that and the adjustments would make the back seat more uncomfortable than it already is. I think we were goin to have to find a way to modify her back bumper to include a swing out tire carrier...which is way more than we are prepared to do at this point.

Meanwhile, Christian did a lot of work on the cooling system of the XJ. He flushed the radiator, put in a new water pump, a new fan clutch, fan shroud and a bunch of new hoses. It seems to be running much better (cooler).

We did also find out that the trouble we had with the XJ on the Cedar Pockets Overlook Trail was not, in fact, the fuel pump. Christian has tested it and it is actually running fine still. He now thinks that it is a wiring harness that has rubbed through the sheaf and is shorting out on a stud on the engine block. When he re-wrapped the wiring harness, he put it back in better condition that when he put it in, but we were not aware that there is supposed to be a mount for it there (that was missing when we got it). Apparently it is a common enough complaint because a lot of people lose them when they mess around in the engine bay and her engine was supposedly re-built some time before we bought it. He has some luck reproducing the  problem while jiggling the harness around but it doesn't happen all the time. Apparently it was positioned just right when we were going down the rough steep roads that it seemed to short out pretty regularly as we bumped up and down the trail. He will have to pull the entire harness out again to fix it as he can't really see it from the engine bay.

So, as half of Christian's so-called vacation has passed us by, we hope that we might be able to get out at least here and there to go do something nice besides staying home and slaving away on the house, garden and cars next month. What happened to three months of summer break for kids and teachers? It's a lie. It was stolen a week at a time until it was whittled down to what we have now.

Instead of ending in such a sour note. Here is a picture of my lovely friends trying to stay hydrated in this awful heat.

Road Trip

We finally got our stuff together to hit the road for our 14 hour drive up to Oregon. It is always a grueling drive. By the time you hit Sacramento or so, you have to start questioning the sanity of your decision to make the drive in a day. Because going up the I5 freeway is the most direct route by quite a bit, we always use it but there is not much to see or divert you from the long trek up through California...not that you would have time anyway. We usually try to start relatively early and make it into Oregon for a late dinner. We have a little time to visit and chat before calling it a night.

I was a little wary of this trip as Cheri's dog is fairly big and is always jumping all over us when we visit. Not just when we first arrive, but almost every time she is in our presence unless we are sitting on one of the tall chairs or the stools...although, she pushed her limits with that sometimes as well. With my knee all messed up, I feared that she would knock me over or land on my injured knee. Cheri knew it as well, so she kept Chance roped off that first day. We had actually considered making this trip to see her before all this Jeep nonsense happened but had found out that she had acquired a second dog, a French bulldog pup. We were less than enthused about the prospect after that.

The next morning, pup was let loose. It was okay except that it liked to twine itself in between your legs when you walked like a cat causing a significant tripping hazard, so you had to be very careful. Christian and his mom then went shopping and to run some errands and I stayed with the dogs. The pup, Bug, was fine and spent half the time napping, but Chance was locked out in the yard and barked at all the neighbors a good amount of the time they were gone. That was pretty annoying.

They came back briefly so that she can pick up Bug for shots at the Vet. She took Chance as well and Christian and I got a little time to look at the JK and work on a few things. After lunch, Christian and his mom went out again to pick up the U-Haul trailer for the Jeep. I hung back with the dogs again but this time, she left them both out. Chance behaved uncommonly well. The little interaction we've had together, Cheri and Christian made sure that she didn't jump on me...and I don't know if she has just learned to behave a little better or if the cane and brace on my knee kept her off of me. Having the other dog to play with also helped but I think she was a little ticked that the pup has had free reign of the house all morning and so she refused to play with her and just ignored her, choosing to take a nap at my feet instead. 

After her nap, she whined at the door a couple of times, so I let her out, but she didn't need to take care of business and just looked at me expectantly, so I tossed her ball for her a little bit. Afterwards, when I went to sit back down to rest, she seemed to be in a better mood and deigned to acknowledge the pup again.

When Christian and his mom returned, they took both her Jeep and Emily's new one to the tire shop. Christian thinks he convinced her to keep the ridiculously flashy wheels on Emily's Jeep and trade it for her more practical looking ones. Cheri hinted that she really liked them and thinks she manipulated Christian for them. Either way, Cheri is happy with our giant, flashy wheels and Christian (and definitely Emily) will be happier with Cheri's.

The only slight downside of it was that the tires were much newer on the oversized fancy rims. We looked up the rims that Emily got and found out that they are VERY expensive wheels actually. They just don't have as much flare as the one's we traded. The ones she ended up getting from Cheri might actually be real bead-locks as well! In the end, everyone agreed that the flashy ones look much better on Cheri's vehicle and Emily's Jeep now looks a little less like a mall crawler and more like a real Jeep!

After dinner, they loaded up the Jeep and we settled down to watch TV and relax as Cheri had over taxed herself, as usual, and was in some pain.

After breakfast the next morning, we packed up to make our trek to Idaho. We originally suggested to pick up the trailer that morning to cut down on costs but she got the trailer ahead of time and paid for a whole week! 

There is no direct route to Idaho from Southern Oregon. It is even more difficult hauling a trailer loaded with a big heavy Jeep. It is a bit slow and tedious. Last time, we were able to traverse some of the route on off-road trails. They provided a place to camp and a somewhat more direct route. Because we were towing, we could not go vey much off road and we had to be very careful of where we pulled off to as it is not easy to maneuver the truck and trailer. The roads we needed to take snaked across Oregon and dipped into Nevada before zigzagging back into Oregon near the border of Idaho. We originally planned to camp in the dry lake bed that we found last time, but we were a little worried that the lake bed would not be that dry. Sure enough, as we got closer, we found that it was actually raining in the area, so we continued along our route, hoping to find a better area. We actually did chance upon a great spot as the sun started to set that evening near the  Eastern edge of Oregon.

We were a little farther along than we had anticipated the next morning when we continued our journey into Idaho. We finally got into Rexburg early that evening. We were able to unload the Jeep so the kids could see it. We had planned to meet Caitlyn's boyfriend, Ty, for dinner, so we piled in the JK and headed to his place to pick him up. The kids picked a little Mexican joint in Idaho Falls that they like for dinner. Emily got to drive her new ride. We got to meet and talk with Ty. Afterwards, we went to the dunes in St. Anthony to test out the Jeep before dropping Ty back off at his house. 

We were pleasantly encouraged in meeting Ty. We generally don't worry about Caitlyn's judgement of people for the most part but you are still a little wary in who is dating your daughter. He seemed genuine and nice. There was no red flags that came up in our conversations with him. They seem fairly well suited to each other actually.

Originally, we were going to leave the next morning as we wanted to limit the amount of time we had the trailer, but since that was all taken care of, we decide to stay an extra day to visit with the girls...plus it was Father's Day the next day and Christian wanted to spend it with his girls. Incidentally, we were there the year before at the exact same time!

I stayed with the girls and Emily was nice enough to give me her bed again and Christian camped near the dunes. We were all tired and got in bed but stayed up chatting for a while more.

The next morning, Emily made us German pancakes again while Christian did a few things with the Jeep. He wanted to rotate the spare tire in as it is brand new, while the other tires are fairly well worn. He found out that the shop that swapped the tires did a pretty lousy job as some of the lug nuts were not torqued on enough while other lug nuts were on so tight that he hurt himself trying to get them off. If Emily had to change a tire on the road for whatever reason, she would never have been able to do it by herself. It was super ridiculous. Overtightening the lug nuts causes damage to the studs and can also damage those very expensive wheels. Plus they did not even air up the spare tire. Christian hooked our portable air compressor to the battery in the engine bay and found a slew of other problems. 

One of the reasons Cheri got this vehicle for Emily was so that she would have a nice reliable vehicle now and Christian would not have to spend all his time fixing it first (even though he already spent a year and a half on fixing the other one). So when we got the JK, Christian tried not to do anything with it. Cheri was going to take care of everything. She had it detailed and the dealer go through all the maintenance items so that it was ready to go. She also got an extended warranty from the dealer. 

We saw that they replaced the radiator, but they broke the fan housing in the process. Some of the bolts were bent or just missing. They didn't even properly fill the radiator completely as the overflow reservoir was completely empty. Christian took the beauty cover off of the engine and found that an air intake pipe was not even connected. The air box was wiggling because they broke the 2 out of 3 snaps for the air intake box. The air filter was not replaced or even cleaned and in fact, they had trouble putting it back in, so they took the gasket off and dumped the filter back in without it, upside down to boot so the debris that the filter caught would just get sucked in! The engine oil was overfilled. The brake fluid was filled but is filthy and the brakes were a little squishy so they probably introduced some air bubbles into the system.

They didn't do anything with the transmission fluid because it was completely burnt. The throttle body was filthy and had never been cleaned. I could go on and on. We were very upset, to say the least. And we know Cheri paid a lot of money for this "service."

We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to remedy some of the problems. We went from store to store and was not able to get her coolant. She ended up ordering some and we put some distilled water in the overflow container for now. We cleaned out her throttle body and it ran much better. Christian zip tied her fan housing together and we put in a new air filter (properly), connecting the hose they forgot. He properly torqued all her lug nuts...which was how this fiasco got started. We won't be able to do anything about the transmission fluid until they get back home.

More than half the day has gone by. Christian spent most of his Father's Day, fixing the idiot mechanics work and getting dirty. We were finally able to go take another drive which is what we had wanted to do that morning with the top down. We found out half the latches for the top was not even secured and the screws in the middle were, in fact, bent. The dome light wasn't working properly. One bulb was out and the other was replaced with an incompatible LED light. It was just more nonsense. Since we were basically out of time to go do something, we just went back to the dunes to make sure it was working properly and explore a bit to salvage the rest of our day.

Marian had offered the girls to get us some nice steaks and ice cream so Caitlyn and I went shopping for them while Emily and Christian was working on some part of the car earlier. When we got back from our drive, we worked on dinner. We invited Ty to come back to have dinner with us. Dinner was a little late but it was good and we got to sit and chat some more. Thanks Marian! I didn't end up taking any pictures of them as I didn't want him to feel uncomfortable and we spent the time getting to know each instead. We are still pleased with him as we have gotten to know him more. We stayed up quite late talking into the night. Christian and Ty finally left and we got ready for bed once again and chatting a little more as we settled in for the night.

We packed up and left the next morning. The girls had school that morning and we stayed longer than we had initially intended but it was a good visit. We made out way out of Idaho and into Utah using the most direct route. It was pretty windy all day, everywhere we went. We found what we had thought was the perfect campsite, only to realize that we're actually in an Indian Reservation, so we went back out to search some more. We finally stopped for the night in a Cypress Grove North of Beaver near Cove Fort.  We were exhausted and it was still a bit unpleasant out because of the wind, but much better in the Cypress Grove that were actually Juniper? We set up camp and had dinner in the truck. I thought I was crazy because I kept feeling this kind of rumble in the truck, even though the engine was off. I mentioned it to Christian and he was feeling it too but he thought it was because he was exhausted and his body was kind of vibrating with it. That's when we started to get a bit concerned. Christian walks around the campsite seeing where the vibration was coming from, whether he can feel it through dirt outside of the truck and on the trees. He could actually feel it most on the more compacted dirt road we turned off from. We then had to consider what it could be and whether we should stay there at all as we'd never felt anything like that before. In examining the map, he found that we were surrounded by cinder cones so it could be possible volcanic activity.

We finally called the girls to see if they were okay and find out if there was anything going on over there. We could not get a hold of Emily initially but Caitlyn said that they couldn't feel anything. She found out where we were and looked on the internet to see if there was anything going on in our area. Apparently there were a couple of small earthquakes on the previous day in Beaver, but nothing was reported after that. In the end, we just decided that we would just stay put and get some sleep. If it got worse, we'd get up and tear out of there. We got everything else organized and packed up to go at a moments notice. It was late, we were tired and didn't know where else to go. I woke up a few times in the night but didn't think I felt it any more. In the morning, when I was fully awake, I was certain that the low resonate vibration was gone. We had breakfast and continued on our way.

We were originally going to camp further East. There was a short hike we wanted to attempt next to the road, but we were also expected at Christian's sister's place the next day and did not have enough time so decided to camp somewhere closer that would not take us off our route so much. So when we began that next morning, we were quite a bit ahead of schedule. Christian's sister, Aron, works at the Temple on Tuesdays and she wouldn't get out until after 2:30. We decided to go explore a little bit while we waited in the Blackrock Mountains of Arizona on our way to Mesquite which was just over the border. We found a  trail to an overlook. We found a place to park and unloaded the XJ.

It is quite a nice trail. It takes you to the Cedar Pockets Overlook. We really liked it. It was not a very clear day, however, so we would definitely like to go back there someday.

And best of all, we had the whole trail to ourselves. However, on our way back down, we had some problems with the XJ. It kept stalling on us as we went downhill. After a few fits and starts, we thought it might be the fuel pump. We actually even already have a replacement one but it was not a priority to get it replaced last summer before Caitlyn had to go back to school. We were frantically trying to fix her other stalling problem because of the cam position sensor. We were able to kind of coast down hill using a combination of the brakes and the e-brake to control our decent. It was difficult without the air assist and power steering, however. When we would go uphill, Christian would be able to get it back running and be able to drive us up and over hills. It was very stressful. After we covered several miles in this way, we were able to relax a little more as we knew that we were not so far from the truck and in a pinch, would be able to unhook the trailer and come back for the Jeep, but we made it all the way back and got it back loaded onto the trailer. 

We got a hold of Aron and she had just gotten out of the Temple, so our timing was still perfect. We actually ended up beating her back to the house as she stopped for a few groceries. She made us dinner. Unfortunately, her boys had other plans but we were joined by Kraig's mom who regularly joins them for dinner several times a week. We chatted for a while but when Kraig went to take his mom home, he took Dillan with him and we were able to take a shower and had to sneak downstairs where we were to spend the night. Apparently Dillan gets very upset when people stay over which is why we never do, but we felt bad for Aron, so we did it this time. It frustrates her if her family can't visit with her as much as she would like because Dillan will have a tantrum. He was well behaved though for our visit and he didn't know we stuck around. The last time we were there, they wanted to take us out for dinner but Dillan had a meltdown and Kraig had to stay home with him. Aron took us out and we left afterwards.

The next morning, we were up early. Kraig went out to water his fields and we followed shortly after in his side-by-side to see and maybe take some pictures.

We chatted with him a while then went driving around his property to see the river and stuff. Afterwards, he gave us some of his meat from his own cattle. He takes it to some place that cuts and prepares them all for him so he gave us a nice sample of it. Aron actually made burgers for us from the same meat the previous night. We met Aron at the gas station and she filled us up with gas, drinks for the road and ice for the meat. 

We got back home in the late afternoon. Christian unloaded the XJ out on the main street so he didn't have to maneuver the trailer on our little dead end street to return to the U-Haul place. The mosquitos welcomed me home ｡:ﾟ(;´∩`;)ﾟ:｡