180 Today we ride!

Nov 5, 2016

     We were settling in pretty well to our "tiny home". Ruthie was a master at making do with whatever we have.  

      Today I ran some errands with Sterling, he was picking up some of Lynda's Craigslist purchases (evidently they haven't visited with neighbor Wes and the dangers).    Some of the stops were in preparation for an upcoming holiday get-together.   At first I thought it was going to be just a few people however the number of chairs we were picking up today made me think I had underestimated the event.  Some fencing supplies for a project and white plastic fencing.  Bless his heart he had a surprise up his sleeve.   A portion of the fencing was to build a little fence around our little homestead.   It should help deter the neighborhood crowd from our patio area.   What more can you ask for, a tiny house with a picket fence around it.  

     Today we ride!  After all we can't have that trike just sitting there gathering dust.  Our destination was a little mountain town not far to the south and then a jog on 79 to the east.   Julian mountain is the home of the Julian pie company, while wintering in Indio we had rode up the other side of the mountain so we were familiar with the area.   It was a warm pleasant ride, thru gentle hills and valleys on the way to Julian mountain and pie heaven. 



Pistols and petticoats, Bad Bettys or Eccentric
 Ape decisions, decisions?

At an intersection we stopped at a small art/souvenir shop so we hungry as we pulled into the small little tourist town.  We barely got into town before we seen a restaurant named Granny's, an appealing name suggesting home cooked meals and a friendly atmosphere.   It was not false advertising.   A delicious fried chicken home style meal with all the fixings.  Even though we shared our meal as usual the full feeling was telling us there wasn't any room for pie.   Okay maybe a little salt water taffy strategically placed by the cash register.  Evidently even Granny practices good marketing practices.  We wandered thru a small part of the town.  Ruthie spent some time hawking Michelle's bandanas to a local motorcycle store and since we knew we would return we came up with a plan.  We would do the town in segments, two blocks on this visit then return again to explore more.  We purchased a little lighted Christmas picture for ourselves and one for our new friends at the ranch.  Switch it on it stays on for 6 hours and then comes back on at the same time the next day, pretty nifty. 

  

      This gives you an idea of our riding view, rough rugged mountainous terrain and then a patch of agricultural beauty.

This is that small green spot

In the large photo.

 

Always looking for alternate routes we ignored the GPS suggestion temporarily and headed west out of town on a blacktop road, according to the sign Ruthie is pictured by we should see a winery and cemetery.    At some point we should give our GPS a name after all we talk to it and I'm sure we cause it some degree of frustration on days like this when we openly ignore her (to be honest we have not assigned a gender, just seemed convenient to me.)  After trying a few times to have us do a U-turn and a couple of "recalculating"  it conceded and found a path down to Santa Ysabel and the other Julian pie store.   The path was named Farmer road, a single lane black top with no dividing line.  Just the kind of alternate routes we like.  Sometimes we end up on unpaved dirt roads that go nowhere. 


More decisions.

    

While the Julian pie outlet at the top of the mountain is a quaint little coffee and pie shop the one at the bottom of the mountain is more of a factory and outlet.   

We arrived and Ruthie waited in line, yes waited in line to by a pie.  A couple of texts and we found Lynda liked a berry pie, so it shall be. 

  I was positioning the trikes so Ruthie could take a picture in front of the store.  Not so unusual a couple came up to inquire about our vehicle.  Asking if we rode it from Minnesota I said "yes but not today.".  She said she was from orange county visited with us for a short time and took our picture as I was nervous about being parked in everyone way.   There are nice people every where you go.  The  part of the conversation I carry with me is her reference to Orange county as where she was from.  I assumed it was in California

 

although I immediately thought of Orange County Choppers which is in New York state.  The first time I ever heard of someone referring to a County instead of a City as a reference point was several years ago.  We had called our daughter Tammy in Wisconsin she happened be in the car with our granddaughters.  Talking to grade school age Briana we asked where she was "Polk County" she replied.  We still joke about it today, she had seen it on a county line marker, she might just as well have said she was in Wisconsin.   We put on a little over 160 miles that day.  We are enjoying the roads and scenery.  The relaxed schedule should give us much more time to explore. 

     Arriving back at our winter residence we found we were invited over for dinner.  Lynda shared the treasured pie with us and we shared our days experiences. 

We walked the few paces back to our tiny residence with a thankful heart. 

Getting cozier all the time.