Occupation of Independence

As we did the doggie walk to our scenic ridge this evening, I caught a glimpse of white, cauliflower-like clouds.  It wasn't until we got over the foreground that I could see the forest fire clouds and smoke that are producing the moisture, which then condenses into a white cloud on top. The fire must be 50 miles away (?) in the big wilderness area in central Idaho.  Ah dear, so it fooled me at first.  Smoke and fires have not been an issue this summer, so we are due.  After all, it hasn't rained for six weeks.  Normally the inland Northwest is as dry in late summer as the Southwest is in early summer.   Shall I start preparing to leave the Northwest?  What is the point of being here, just to look at smoke and haze?  But I should wait until the Southwest shows some serious monsoons.

 There aren't many flat places to camp in the mountains, even when you only need a small area.  Of course there are mathematical points of flatness, between the uphill and the downhill of a mountain.  A topo map shows isocline lines that are flat, but they too are too immaterial for camping or mountain biking.  That is why I was so delighted by a special type of isocline that we mountain biked on, today. By chance I found a water diversion ditch nearby.  It had a smooth dirt service road alongside it, so I followed it upstream.  The creek through the ditch was small, but it was energetic enough to make a pleasant gurgling sound.  The bottom of the stream seemed gravelly more often than muddy.  If the Little Cute One were a labrador retriever she would have been in heaven, splashing along through the water, only 15 feet from her man on a bike. We went uphill at a uniform 1 or 2% slope.  When was the last time I biked such a smooth and flat road?!  At times the mountainside was very

We had a chance to hit the Little Cute One's favorite spring, near La Grande, OR.  It makes a great bike ride, at over 5500 feet.   She is such a thirsty little dog.  Why wasn't I willing to drink the water? ___________________________________________ While working on my refrigerator problems, I removed a plastic panel to see what was going on.  About a third of the condenser fins were clogged with dog hair.  I was able to blow the hair out of the fins using a can of the pressurized gas -- sometimes called an electronic duster can.  I had no idea there was so much dog hair there. Of course the culprit was my second dog, Coffee Girl.  In some ways I didn't mind finding this problem, because it was a reminder of a beautiful and loving girl. It is also a reminder of how convenient it is to have a dog like a poodle, who doesn't shed! After cleaning the fins, the air being exhausted by the fan became 15 F cooler.  But I am still looking into adding refrigerant to the 7-year-

I have a 12 volt DC, chest-style refrigerator (ARB) that isn't cooling as well as it used to.  It is seven years old.  So refrigerating foods has cost me about $120 per year.  I should be happy with that. What I have now: this post will refer to this as a "12 VDC fridge." Of course I would like the next generation of refrigerator to be work out even better.  The 12 volt DC chest-style fridges are rather small (meant for 4WD guys in jeeps) and expensive (because 4WD guys use expensive everything.*)  So why not separate your RV fridge approach from 4WD culture?  Why not find an appliance that is mass-produced, non-specialized, and not priced for enthusiasts of some kind?   And if you can't get the functionality you want from a single mass-produced inexpensive appliance, then alter it, or better yet, combine it in a cleanly modular way with a second low-priced appliance? Consider searching 'converting freezer to refrigerator'  on You Tube.  You can find people