Dark As A Dungeon

We recently went to hike around one of the many abandoned mine sites in Mojave National Preserve. I believe this one is Evening Star Mine. There are multiple mine shafts, a few old buildings, and a lot of Joshua trees. And a big rock that smacked the bottom of our car.

Michael and Darcy explored some of the infrastructure while I took pictures. I did not see it happen, but Michael carried Darcy up the first flight of stairs and said they were pretty solid, all things considered. I'm glad I didn't see it.

I know nothing about mining, really, but I assume this was a chute for loading up -- buckets? barrels? carts? -- of ore.

This mine shaft was particularly deep. Michael was demonstrating this fact to Darcy by dropping rocks down the shaft to hear when they hit. We had a difference of opinion about whether we could see the bottom, or if we were just seeing a debris pile being held by fallen beams. Either way, this is deep.

I can't really imagine going to work every day by climbing down ladders into the ground. I know that they were no doubt more stable when they were in use, but even so, it would be a depressing start to a work day.

Michael recently started reading a book about the history of Cima that he really brought home for me, but I've been ignoring it in favor of fiction for a few weeks. It turns out that we don't really live in Cima. We live in a "residential suburb" of Cima called Hockersville. Four families had homesteaded four quandrants that meet at the corner of "our" property where there is a sort of intersection of two dirt roads. They all built their houses on the corners so they would form a small community and the Hockers (two brothers) owned two of the four quadrants, so they were honored with the name. All but our quadrant were still owned by descendents when the book was written and at least two still are, we think.

Three houses are still there (although I think the one on our property was a replacement for one that burned, but I can't remember who told me that) and there's a roof that may be the remnant of the fourth, so I might try to put together a photographic essay about modern day Hockersville.

"We Have Forks With Tines On Them!"

Specifically, Michael and I had forks with three tines, and Darcy had a fork with four tines. She counted all of them after asking what they (the tines) were called.

In other words, her vocabulary continues to grow quickly. As do her culinary borders. Tonight was baked tofu with a broccoli/mushroom/zucchini/noodle stirfry. About half-way through, she asked to eat "mama's zucchini" because hers was all gone. The spice level of both was moderate and she ate it up. It's a good feeling.

And in other news, we have new friends! Who live in the preserve! And have an almost-toddler! They live about twenty minutes south of Kelso Depot and work for the research center there. They walked into the Depot and asked to meet Michael last week because they had heard there was a couple with a toddler there. They followed up quickly with a dinner invite, which we had to decline because Michael was under the weather.

I asked Amy to come with us to a toddler playgroup in Vegas yesterday and we had a great time despite some teething crankiness. They stayed to play for a while when we got back to Cima and stopped in to see Michael today, inviting us out to their place over the weekend.

It's very, very nice. We seem to have a lot in common, besides small children and talked pretty much non-stop during the drive.

Obama's Day of Service: Toddler-Style

President-Elect Obama, as most of you no doubt know, called for a day of service today, and Darcy and I answered the call! Friends of ours through our Meetup group announced that they were going to help clean up some dunes near the Las Vegas airport, so we decided to join them. Darcy and Freyja helped a lot -- by carrying small trash bags for a hundred feet or so and losing most of the small pieces of trash they put in them. Good work, toddlers! The rest of the time, they played in the sand or, in Darcy's case, followed dogs.

After all that work, they were tuckered out, so they took a well-earned rest in the shade of a creosote bush. It was a pretty warm day and due to an exploding juice box that left a sticky lake in my backpack, we weren't carrying water with us.

Their rest was interupted by the arrival of these three dogs -- the same dogs Darcy had been following earlier in the adventure. Darcy wanted to pet them and invite licks, but Freyja wasn't quite so sure. Along with our two big and two small bags of trash, the group collected a few truck-loads! As we left, the organizer of the clean-up told us that they're in the process of turning that little dunes area into a nature reserve/center, so this was a good first step.

While the turnout (over twenty people came out to just this one of several service projects in Las Vegas) was encouraging, we also saw signs of the bad economy. We left a pile of "trash" that was pretty clearly someone's home, complete with a blowup mattress and cooler. We refrained from collecting the empty bottles and such that were scattered under the same thorn bush to avoid an invasion of what little privacy someone living in a park has. I can't imagine that Las Vegas is a very friendly place to be homeless. Probably the soon-to-be-nature-center would have preferred that we remove that, but it didn't feel in keeping with the spirit of Obama's inauguration or Dr. King's holiday.

Darcy Sings!

Apparently, Darcy hit some sort of new threshold in language development over the past week or so. Up until now, she's been able to finish lines of songs or help singing other, small parts of songs she knows well. But now, she can sing whole verses and songs. She is very fond of singing the ABC song, as you can watch, if you'd like. Michael's singing along only because Darcy tends to sing a bit louder if she's singing with someone instead of singing by herself.

We're Home

That's pretty much the whole story. We have water. We have power. We have fish alive and well. It's good to be home.

Day Six In Baker

The insanity of Christmas carols at the Gordon celebration.

I got clever and called our house in Cima this morning. I got the answering machine: power is, indeed, restored. With any luck, it came on in time to save the fish. We haven't heard anything about our water, so I'm guessing the part did not arrive yesterday. Now that it's the weekend, I suspect we are sojourning in Baker at least until Monday, more likely Tuesday. Huzzah!

Playdough Is Much More Fun Than ...

... a house without water or electricity! Today, my aunt and uncle were visiting us. We had lunch in Baker and then toured one of the volcanic landscapes in the park. Darcy, Michael, and Nick descended all the way into the lava tube. Ellen and I watched from, let us say, the vestibule. We stopped at Kelso, of course, and then tried to tour Cima House on our way to dinner in Nipton.

No lights. No power. No filter and heater running in the fish tank. No heat in the house. Nothing. Ah, the joys of a house without power or water. After dinner, we parted ways with Nick and Ellen, who headed back to their hotel in Las Vegas, and we drove back to Baker. We got word almost immediately that it wasn't a power problem that had anything to do with the water work, so we called the electric company. According to their recorded message, our power went off at 1 and was turned back on at 8. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it's really true. We don't want two dead fish and a freezer full of defrosted food when we get our water back.

Of course, we haven't had an update on our water situation today. Michael's colleague who let us know about the power hadn't heard that the fix the other day didn't work, so he couldn't help us on that account. With any luck, we'll hear something tomorrow!