A Brief History…

The new house in Tucson is located in a pretty spot in the Catalina foothills.

I walk the dog most evenings especially as it is now starting to warm up.

The west view from our house shows how much of the area here is open space.

The sunsets are spectacular, even from street level.

We have huge Ocotillo cactuses on the property which are just starting to leaf out and bloom.

The view to the east shows the mountains.

For Christmas last year, I gave my son and his wife a lovely painting of their children.

Laguna Beach

It was done by a Laguna Beach artist whose work I like very much.

I hope they will enjoy it especially when the children are grown and gone on with their lives.

Here is William with the AR 15 at the shooting range. It’s mine but he gets to shoot it.

He was also pretty good with the Walther PPK. The .45 1911 is a bit big for his hands now.

Here’s his father with a birthday present, a ride on a B 17.

Special gifts.

Today we went through the new house to plan work to be done once it is ours.

UPDATE: Escrow has now closed and we are the owners. The work on the ceilings had begun. I was there yesterday and the contractor did some demo work to convert the little laundry room so it faces the garage. The wall between is thin and has a header existing so the wall can be opened. The water lines look old and he will replace the valves. There is no gas access so he will tap off the gas to the A/C and water heater which are across a small hallway. We have a gas dryer and like it. The A/C unit is old but, hopefully, has some life left in it.

Here is Jill walking out of the front door. The view shows the west side. The slope down to the street is our property. We will have some of the trees trimmed and clean up the slope a little but it has many interesting plants and we will keep it pretty wild.

This shows the view to the west. The hill down to the street is our property. Most of it is not useful except for privacy,

The pool will have to be drained and replastered. We will get a quote on adding a little water feature like a waterfall for the return. There is no heater but most pools here are warm enough by midsummer. If we were to add a spa we would add a heater. Not for a while.

The patio is nice with a grass yard, rare in Tucson, for Juliet. The far wall has cracks and needs repair but we will probably move it to make the yard larger. The grass will stay the same but we may add another palo verde tree.

This wall needs repair and I will get a quote for moving and rebuilding it. This area can be incorporated into the yard with a palo verde tree and some cactus. The grass area will stay the same. That may be a project for next year.

The Kitchen has formica counter tops that are in good shape and we will leave them alone. Some day, we will replace them. We will bring our own refrigerator and washer and dryer from California. The garage is large and has two recesses where we can put the washer and dryer. It will require some replumbing. The present washer and dryer are front loading and stacked in a small nook that can be converted to a closet. See above. The washer and dryer are now gone and the closet space they were in is larger than I remembered. The appliance we are moving will fit easily and there will be minor replumbing. A new gas line will be run from the A/C source and there run will be only a few feet. I don’t know if there is a gas outlet for the range. The electric range is staying and we can use it until we decide to get a gas range. The kitchen has no pantry and I think we will convert a closet adjacent to the kitchen to a pantry.

The two bathrooms are 1970s era cabinets but that can wait until we have done the other work. There are popcorn ceilings which will be stripped and painted before we move in in January.

This is one bedroom and has the adobe wall painted. The entire house will be painted an off white instead of the colored walls.

The other bedroom has a sliding door going outside. That bathroom, Jill is already planning some remodeling. It has a nice walk-in closet and she wants to remodel a closet opposite. I should add there is a third bedroom currently used by the seller as a workshop. He is a clockmaker. All three bedrooms are nice size. The workshop bedroom is the smallest.

I am very pleased with the location and view.

We are on the foothills with Oro Valley just to the west.

January can’t come fast enough. It’s here and we are packing like mad. The seller has moved. WE let him stay until the new year. Now the work begins and will take most of the next two weeks.

We spent ten days in Alaska this month. The weather was almost perfect with only one rainy day which coincided with an 8 hour train trip.

We stayed at the Hilton, where I stayed when I was there 23 years ago. We had dinner the first night at Simon and Seaforts, which I considered the best sea food restaurant I had ever visited. For some reason the food was not as good as I remembered but it was still full on Thursday night.

The next morning, we got up early and caught a bus at the Convention Center, called the Eagan Convention Center. There followed a six hour bus ride, broken by a short stop at McKinley Wilderness Lodge, about opposite Mount McKinley (Denali now).

The view from the Lodge is terrific. We were still a long way from our destination, however.

The bus finally dropped us off at The Denali Cabins, which are right outside the park on The Parks Highway.

There we were picked up by another bus, this one to take us to the The Denali Backcountry Lodge, another 92 miles into the park.

The Backcountry Lodge is a private company that occupies (with some passive resistance by the Park Service) some old gold mining claims. It was not there when I visited the Park 23 years ago although the gold claims go back to before the park existed. There is another lodge back there called The Kantishna Roadhouse, and the whole area is a community called Kantishna, although some old prints show that the name was originally Kantshitna. You can’t find a link to the old name but it was there on a photo of an ancient poster.

We left the Denali Cabins at 1 PM and arrived at the Backcountry Lodge at 7:45 PM, a trip of seven hours. Part of that is the 92 miles, of which the last 72 are gravel. Part of the time was spent looking at animals we encountered in the park.

This was the first bear we saw on the way. We also saw caribou.

Here are two about 100 yards away. When I was there before, 23 years ago, we saw caribous cross the road just ahead of us but not this time.

Finally, we arrived at the lodge just in time for dinner, which they had delayed about 45 minutes for us. There were about 30 people staying there and our table mates remained as such the next few days.

(more…)

I have been visiting Seattle since my first trip there in 1959. At the time it was a pretty city but not too prosperous. The saying at the time was that “If Boeing gets a cold, Seattle catches pneumonia.” Boeing was the only large employer. Now, it has Microsoft and Amazon and a bunch of internet spinoffs.

In 1987, I bought five acres on Vashon-Maury Island. Actually the two islands are connected by a man made isthmus called “The Portage.” My lot was on Maury Island and I later bought a lot next to it so that my property was ten acres. It had a well that I owned two shares of five and there was a large storage tank that serviced the only structure, a house next door. I owned those lots for ten or twelve yrears, always anticipating moving there in retirement. I had an architect named Nora Jaso, who was going to design a custom home. The property had 60 blue heron nests on one corner and I agreed to make that portion a preserve. This photo may be of that rookery.

ACross the street, 248th street, there was a gravel quarry which is now a park.

I sold the ten acres in two parcels about 15 years ago and wish I had kept at least one. Now, I am looking at the island again.

The island is reached only by ferry boat. There is a ferry landing at each end of the island. The north end terminal serves West Seattle and then Seattle across a bridge. The south terminal serves Tacoma.

Ferry to Vashon

Here is a photo taken from the ferry on the way over.

North Ferry Terminal

The north ferry terminal is under repair and this view shows it as I was waiting to go back to Seattle.

Downtown Vashon

Here is a view of “downtown Vashon” which does not have a stoplight.

I had lunch at a cute restaurant called “The Hardware Store” which is about at the spot the camera is in that photo.

I talked to a real estate lady who showed me two houses, one of which we went through in detail. Houses on Vashon are not cheap.

Manzanita Beach Road

We looked at a small house on the island which I liked a lot but we are months from any decision to move there. That is the view from that house.

Beach House.

Here is that house. It is two bedrooms and one and one/half baths but quite nicely finished inside.

We will go up again in a couple of months when we are back from Alaska. We also looked around Oregon near where Rick lives.

We spent the last week in Oregon about 40 miles from Portland. It is the Oregon wine country.

The country is hilly and beautiful with so many wineries that it looks like Napa Valley.

My wife’s son lives there with his family on a 48 acre compound near the town of Mcminnville.

Their home is at one side and there are other homes there for the other family members who live there..

Not far away is a very nice aviation museum.

They have a great collection of WWII warbirds with another collection of jet fighters outside.

The museum has had a few financial troubles since the founder died a few years ago but seems to be OK now.

As I watch the election, I am thinking of a bolthole and rural Oregon might fit the bill. Housing is pretty cheap and the country is very pretty. Lots of rain in the winter and a bit of snow, so we will take another trip in a few months.