Is this why I came home????

Last week I was sitting around looking at the options I had as far as working my way home for the summer.

I could head over to Upper Pahrangate Lake region of Nevada to hang out for a few days, I could head back over to the Bundy Ranch and hangout to see what happens......get more photos and take some time to share more of what I have been learning about States Rights and the Fed's fiduciary responsibilities concerning the BLM and the Land Trust out government is held under. Very interesting.....A tease for one of my next posts, here is a very short video:

http://americanlandscouncil.org/myportfolio/rep-rob-bishop-explains-how-lands-are-crucial-to-funding-education/

As you can see our western states would be much better funded if the feds were not stealing from them.


Here is a longer, but very informative video of the problem that lead us to the Bundy Ranch Standoff and many more just like it:

http://americanlandscouncil.org/myportfolio/the-need-to-transfer-the-public-lands-anthem-az/

Just then I got a phone call from my daughter Randi......who had ordered a new Queen bee for one of our two hives. 

We lost a hive over the winter and still do not know why, we just know it is a sad thing as the hive we lost was a very friendly hive that was a joy to work with, unlike the other hive which is extremely aggressive. Hive #1 was so friendly and easy to work with that it felt like the welcome mat was always out.....everyone should get the chance to work such a mellow colony of bees....they will be missed.

Last year I had a brain fart or TBI mistake of moving the friendly hive in my own crazy way......I just picked up each box and walked across the garden loosing bees every step of the way......the correct way to move a hive is to strap it together from top to bottom and move it as a unit.......I realized what I had done as soon as I was done......the hive may not have had time to build back up

or

I may have hurt the friendly bees by placing them side by side with the aggressive bees? 

Anyway, Randi told me the bees would need to be picked up that weekend........ I told he she would have to deal with them on her own and also added the extra job of tearing down the hives to rebuild them is such a way as to be able to paint the boxes I bought last year so they would not go another year unpainted. That would mean someone would have to open the live aggressive bee hive, pull all the frames out of the boxes and move them into painted boxes and reassemble the hive........

Here is a good view of a box or super and a frame. It is also a good example of how to dress for a date with bees.

I began to wonder if Randi would be able to do what I needed her to do?

I have not explained just how aggressive these bee, I'll call #2, became.....last spring when I purchased the queen and a few pounds of bees, they were no different than any other hive I have worked with ( oh ya.....I know they are called a colony, but hive has less letters to type )   :]   As the summer went on and the hive #2 had gathered more honey, they began to get a little aggressive, they would buzz around me every time I got near them. 

I have always preferred to work the bees with no protection, no hood, no gloves, short sleeve shirts, short pants and flip flops work for me.......

One time a small group of bees not only buzzed around my head, they chased me out of the garden and even after I had swatted them to the ground a few times they continued to attack......first time I had ever been attacked. I got a sting both on my left check ( FACE not rump! ) and on my left ear.....both of which got very swollen and the ear hurt like blazes !!!

Did I mention, I am allergic to be stings and I still have not built up an immunity to the bee stings....   !!!!!

So I started to do something I never ever wanted to do...... wear the hood. As time went on the bees got even more aggressive, I began to wear long sleeved shirts and long pants, I taped my legs and tucked in the shirt tails, I wore gloves and taped every place I thought the bees might get to me.....just as a precaution.

Did I mention, I am allergic to be stings and I still have not built up an immunity to the bee stings....   !!!!!

I began to keep everyone at a distance from these bees instead of encouraging them to stand right next to me.........so I had gone from having my grandsons stand right by my side without hoods to simply go stand far away.   

That sucks......my last time working the bees was last fall just before I left Utah for the winter. I did suit up, I did tape up......and was I ever glad I did!!!!! 

This is not my hive, but it looks like it is ready to swarm.

#2 attacked me the moment I opened their hive......it was like something out of a horror movie......hundreds of bees immediately flew into my face with force and they did not give up trying to get to me till I was done removing the top supper from their hive......I had to remove the frames one at a time and brush the bees of the frames onto the remaining two boxes.......the whole time being shocked as to how aggressive these bees were.

One thing I was told is that aggressive bees aggressively build their honey stores......we got a lot more honey from that hive than any other hive I have harvested. 

Did I mention, I am allergic to be stings and I still have not built up an immunity to the bee stings....   !!!!!


So any way to get back to my story......I packed up the 5th wheel and decided to just head straight home on I-15. I drove past the turn off to go to the Lake, I drove past the exit to the ranch, I got all the way into Utah past St. George when Randi called to tell me the good news that the hive #2 was already painted, they could be left alone !!!!!!

Being that I do not like to back track, I just kept on heading north......I did end up letting Sandy and Randi know I was headed home and that they should expect me in a day or two.

I spent the night in Nephi, Utah which meant I had driven about 330 miles that day. I was feeling rather tired so I just grabbed a fish sandwich at Burger King and slept in the parking lot after getting permission to do so. The next morning I was feeling a bit rundown so I grabbed a real restaurant breakfast of gravy and biscuits.  I got a nice surprise when I walked into the place...

 The whole place was set up as a train set.....even had a bridge you needed to walk under to go to the restrooms.

Sorry I did not get the name of the place, but it is just south of Burger King which is south of the Flying J truck stop on the south end of town.......they food they serve is great and way too much to eat in one sitting.

I was just 100 miles of so from home so it was an easy trip and I missed the heavy traffic.....

Here she is parked for a bit....notice how green things look.

I did go help Randi work the bees........I put on the hood, long pants, long sleeves, gloves and tape!!!!

Here is what I got .....

 

That was the back of my hand....got stung on my Bird finger on my left hand....these photos were taken that night, the next day the swelling was worse, but today it is mostly back to normal......if my grandson and I did not like the bees so much.........what a pain lol!!!

 By the next morning you could not see my knuckles at all and I could barely bend my fingers.......itching and burning for about 3 days

The swelling did move up my arm a bit as did the itching...and something weird.....my left ears felt like it did last year when I got stung there, not fun at all !!!!

Bundy Ranch Standoff

Well folks.....I was there these photos can show that, but they do not do this story justice at all.....I need a new camera so bad.....I apologize for the terrible photos I got today.

The traffic was piles up all day on I-15....heavy traffic, lots of protesters, cops, truckers......everyone wanted to stop traffic. I kept looking both ways up and down I-15 wondering just how far traffic was backed up......bad day to be  heading in or out of Vegas.

I had heard on the tv that it was all over, but wondered if that was true, if someone did in fact get shot in Overton and I just wanted to get out of the 5th wheel, so I rode the Triumph into Overton.
I stopped first at the Napa Auto Parts store and heard campers were getting ticketed all the way from Bunkerville to Overton for camping on BLM land......that there were snipers overlooking I-15.....so off to the ranch I headed.......so many cars.....cars everywhere in one of the most under populated area in the west.

About 5 miles south of the Bunkerville exit I saw about 100 police officers and 50 or so cop cars pulle of into a rest area....they also had a SWAT tank looking truck.....this does not look good I thought to myself.

When I got to the ranch, I could not get near the place so much traffic and I had been passing hundreds of cars going the other way.....I stopped near a family getting into their car, they were putting hunting rifles into the trunk as I pulled over....everyone had guns....cool...I was told the sherriff had finaly showed up and said he had fixed the problem and that everyone should just go home....really....no way, everyone was going to go up I-15 to the area the BLM had about 400 cows locked away in portable holding pens.  So I thought why not follow and see what happens.

The following photo was a long line of stopped cars......thousand and thousands of cars were stopped on I-15 today.

I finally made it to the pull off where everyone, who was not parking on the freeway, were parking.  

Here you can see one of the many lines of cops showing force....they were lined up along the highway medium and I bet I saw 100 cop cars here near the pens. The protestors were parked on my side of the freeway and hundreds of them were walking down the side of the road to a underpass where they could cross under the freeway to where the cows were locked up.....the underpass is where most of the confrontation took place.

After a few hours the cowboys on horses had made their way over from the ranch....about 10 miles, I would guess, across the dessert....it sure felt like the Calvary arrived.....flags flying...dogs barking and dust kicking up from the horses....Heros.....they folks were unarmed and willing to ride right into the thick of things......right up to the heavily armed feds who by this time were locked and loaded....this was a great moment !!!!

Throughout the day we were told many times the feds were going to free the cows as soon as the crowds pulled back.....only to buy time for more cops to show up.....the cops would stop west bound traffic for 1/2 and hour or so and lines of cop cars would drive up the freeway the wrong way with lights flashing....looked like an attempt to intimidate the protestors....why am I calling them protestors??? Patriots is a much better thing to call them.....
Anyway this went on for many hours, and every time a deadline was missed another excuse came from the feds......we heard there were some rather serious threats made towards the patriots, guns where drawn, cops pulled back at one point to grab more gear, vests, additional cops, rifles and once again began to push the patriots back under the overpass.....I heard at one point Mr. Bundy had given 30 minutes for the feds to surrender their unconstitutional weapons or they would be shot....this sounds serious. This does bring up a good question, can the federal government use guns against American citizens on American soil?

There were hundreds of younger (30 and under ) patriots many of them heavily armed lined up face to face with the feds and nobody looked like they were going to back down....I was so impressed.....so many of our youth who seem to get it......we have our rights and we can stand up for them.....a great moment in our history if you ask me......I hope our youth learn something about our Constitution from today......a very good time to spend some time and teach them what our public schools will not teach.

Finally the BLM trucks lined up and pulled out of there  .....on one big group and with every truck floored.......looked (?) pissed off, scared(?) I just did not get the pedal to the medal exit.

 the above photo is of the BLM pulling out.....

Now what is going on....still 30 minutes and no cows

 You can not see it, but this is when the first cows made it under the overpass....they were now under the control of the cowboys and on their way to the river and home to the Bundy ranch......It has bee said the government paid $1,000,000.00 to round up a few hundred cows....they ran many down with helicopters during some of the hottest days of the year....I know I've been seeing 95 degrees for 3 or 4 days while the cows have been being rounded up......calves were separated from their mothers, the Bundy ranch had fences destroyed, water tank destroyed and prize bulls shot!!!!

There are many stories out there about Harry Reid and his family selling water rights they do not own to China for solar power plants, drilling leases to oil wells.....BLM had stories that have now been removed from their own web site......something fishy.....follow the money !!!!!

I know something about real estate laws, water rights, land contracts and range rights......I do not see where the BLM has the right to do what they have been doing here.....as a real estate agent I would never attempt nor advise a client to disregard contracts like this, but look what we know about the way we treated the American Indians....why expect them to change now.....today just might get them to change.....lets hope.

After the snipers left things settled down so the NHP got traffic moving and most of the patriots headed back to the ranch to see the cows come home.....there were people who got a chance to speak at a temporary stage set up near the ranch....this is where the news shows the two tall white flag polls.

I was getting rather tired so I headed back to Overton where I had a pretty good hamburger at Sugar's and rode back to the 5th wheel in time to watch the last 90 laps of today's Nascar race.

I felt like I got to witness and even play a small part in a historical event today......time will tell us what the future holds and if today was really a victory or just a good excuse for the feds to overreach more.

I rode back to Stewart's Point to find two large motor homes with Toweds park just feet from my 5th wheel......really......hardly anyone around......camping spots all over the place ( many much better than where I am ) and they park just feet away and put their lawn chairs even closer to me.....kind of makes me glad I ride a LOUD motorcycle!!!! now if I just had the meanness to go start it at 12:30 am   lol


I just want to say today I met many real cowboys, real Americans who love this country and see the value of Liberty........I felt honored to be there with them......and dare I say very few of our elected officials deserve to polish their boots and I can think of a few who would find a boot where the sun does not shine if they ever even tried.

I also want to remind everyone treason is a hang-able offense and I see a lot of treason these days....seems to start at the top and be working its way down......I pray the leaders of this great country wake up and start looking out for our country, its citizens, our children's children and not their own pockets.....Americans just might not put up with it much longer and all I see then is bloodshed and that my friends is not good.....nobody wins that one!!!!

Sattelitte For This Dummy !!!!

Don't want to have legal issues with the Dummy guys now do I.

I have a long history with tv addictions.....as a young 4 or 5 year old I remember we had an old tv given to us, it was a nice wooden cabinet for like a piece of fine furniture than anything you buy these days, that would have been back in the 50's. It had a funny round screen and was rather greenish in color, not the gray of most black and white tvs. It only worked a few times and always needed new tubes.

Back then most grocery or drug stores had a tube machine.....it had many sockets for you to plug your tubes into and test....

As you can see the tester had drawers full of most of the popular tubes...lots of fun for a kid like me...

I remember my dad watching Friday Night Fights......they were hard core fights, usually heavy weights fighters and the fighters really looked beat up back them......much more so than today...well maybe not.....I just Binged bloody heavy weight boxer and it's not stuff for my blog.....LOL

Anyway the old 40's tv never got used much and it was given away to a antique dealer....

I found one similar to ours...it is the one on the bottom left in this photo...

We had another portable tv in the early 60's.....it was plastic, futuristic and would be cool today.... They had rabbit ears unless you were rich in which case you had an antenna on you roof. Portable meant there where no legs....you had to sit it on a table or something and you could easily pick it up and move it around the house, readjust the rabbit ears and you were ready to go.
We had rabbit ears with tons of aluminum foil stuck on the ears to increase reception.... and it worked!!
Made you look a bit trailer trashy....but....it worked, my mon would usualy tear it off after I goet it working just right.

What I remember most about our second tv were the odd looking pattern left on the tv when the stations went off air...

The stations all 3 of them went off air around 11pm and signed of with the American Anthem, American Flag and some of the then new jet aircraft fly overs.

I remember watching the launch of the earliest spacecraft....

 Back then, they would just show the live rocket sitting on the pad for hours with the ticking down of the clock showing on the screen, they would leave it like that with no talking or anything.....and I would stand there starring at the screen till I made myself late for school.....a habit I had for much of my school career.

When I got into the 5th grade we got another hand me down black and white portable tv from my mothers parents.....they were rich and got to buy one of the first color tvs.

I had lots of fun adjusting all the things that we could adjust....drove my mom crazy!!!

I remember how exciting it was to see the NBC peacock.....

Now remember we had black and white so we saw it in black and white, but still it was exciting to know we were watching collor shows just like the movies.....lol.

My first time watching color tv was Thanksgiving dinner at Uncle Lee Liston's house....he was the winning est football coach in Utah for many years back in the 30s 40s and maybe 50s......so we watched football.....man where those bowl game fields green.

Romper Room, I LOVE LUCY,SOUPY SALES,GUN SMOKE, RIFLEMAN,THE MONKEYS (Sandy got to spend some time with Davy and Mickey...I tease her about Davy being her boyfriend ) and don't forget the Munsters with their cool cars.

So what was this story about?????

Satellite tv in my rv......

I have the solar system to power it so I brought it with me.....

I got the service department to send a tech out to the house before I left and got a 2 hour lesson on setting it up for free......and I did not have to buy into the expensive program they tried to sell me for rvers.....just do not have all the local channels......but I do have them here at Lake Mead.....cool!!!

The first time I tried to set it up, it took hours and I  had plenty of help....Mark and Dieter come to mind....thanks guys!!!

When I moved to Lake Mead I was on my own......I tried and I tried....no luck, so for a few weeks (?) I was without tv, I stopped off by a camp site of Berry and Mini and Berry came over the next day and offered to sett it up.....wow it was so exciting to see tv.....I thanked him and he drove off.....we had not tightened the bolts on the stand and guess what happened when the wind blew.....no tv and Berry was just getting out of yelling range....I thought how hard can it be......well hard enough I gave up!!!

after a day or two, I got out there again and guess what I found.....RED lines....

I had been shown how to get the needed settings off the tv by pluggin in the zip code.....it gives you the skeew....I knew that was still set correctly.

Azimuth......you need a compass for this one

and elevation......how hard can it be????


Well being an old gear head, I looked at the elevation bolts and just adjusted them like on a motorcycle.....you know use the center of the bolt and line it up on the mark....my mark would be 47 here at the lake.....then things should work just right.

The  hidden red line....LOL

Well don't know how I found this little hidden red line or better yet how I missed it....get that right and presto.....easy peasy....tv.

Now what a HAPPY CAMPER I became......tv, local Utah channels gave me some of my now favorite shows...Blue Bloods, Elementary, Unforgettable and Up to date Survivor. This has to be my favorite spot so far this year.


BREAKING NEWS.......BLM IS MOVING OFF THE RANCH......hope it is not just for now!!!!!

More visitors or should I say invasions.....!!!!

One of the unexpected things I have enjoyed during my stay at Stewart's Point has been the visits from our military troops.....

I have watched prop-driven air planes practice scooping water into their bellies and take off into the sky to drop the water, I have watched the same plane land and take off multiple times.....they even flew overhead very low and gave me a wave after I stood at attention and gave them a salute for their service.....ya I'm one of those old vets who does weird stuff like that now.... :)

I have heard helicopters dropping troops at night in pitch black darkness....I even figured out what the weird lights were that nobody seemed to be able to figure out.....no it was not a UFO.

The last visit was during the day....a helicopter practicing low level hoovering....I watched with amazment thinking what would happen if that chopper got just a few inches lower or if it tipped a little......I bet the pilot had the same fears...

I got a few photos, but missed the best one as these guys also did a flyover for me....I had watched them for a while and got a chance to wave as they flew rather close....I could see the solders easily so I gave a hand wave and took one of these photos, but missed the good shot when they returned and flew low overhead.

I'm sorry I have to take photos with my phone right now....if you look close you can see the water being stirred up as the chopper hovers close to the water.....this is nothing, they got much closser than this before they were done.

The photo here was just a bit late.....just before this the wind and stirred water shot a big spray up...exciting and I sure hoped they had the wipers on....at that point I said a bit of a prayer as I did not want to witness a crash...

I may not have mentioned some of my other visitors here at Lake Mead, a red fox, a sand colored fox, pelicans and a pair of rather tame buzzards who have walked right up to the trailer the last few days, just outside my open door and even when I talked to them they did not fly away.......and I have not  feed them. I saw one big humming bird, but since I had not planned to be hear as long as I have, I did not set out my feeder and that was the only one I saw.

There is also an invasion of militia going on rather close to where I'm at so I may drive over and see if there is a good place to set up camp for a few days.

I have spent a lot of time watching tv and reading the old net looking for information about the standoff. Here is one of the better stories I have found that answers some of the questions.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/bundy_ranch_the_federal_government_and_the_nevada_water_tipping_point.html

It  says it is a water issue, but I have also heard about some oil fracking permits that have been sold and that this has something to do with things as well...Harry Reid and his sons are said to be involved with both scams which would be meant to rip off the people of Nevada and the U.S.A.  As they say follow the money......it's scary to see the Governor and the Sheriff both turn their backs, what ever happened to State's sovereignty? 

This will be interesting to watch and I might want to be able to say I was there when it all happened. I woke up with the same kind of concerns I had when I was 17 years old and I enlisted into the Air Force during  The Vietnam War.....I felt it was my duty to stand for Liberty, as my ancestors had done, and here I am again feeling like our liberty is under attack again, only this time it is our own government that is overreaching being the bully by disregarding our constitution....

Just my 2 cents worth, we are all allowed our opinions right?

Thanks for visiting, please be sure to come back to follow my travels.....my next post will be "Satellite for Dummies"

VW auto Show Boulder Nevada Part #2

Well that should confuse some folks....where is part #1  ?????

Seems the last title was not catchy enough....

Well as promised I have a few more photos of last Saturday's VW show.

I found a link that you might want to check out after you look at all my photos and still need more.

https://m.facebook.com/EricArnoldPhotography?v=photos

Please stick around to the end or just fly by all the photos and read my thoughts.....I'll try to recap my great day and some of my thought about my new life.....I am getting used to it more and at times it is pretty good.....

When I was a kid.....mid 60's we used to play many games around the VWs as we drove in our cars....
One was to see how many blocks we could drive looking for a bug....there were so many bugs in Ogden that almost every block had at least one so we would see how many blocks in a row we could find a bug.....40 50 blocks was not hard to do back then......now they are a collectors item !!!!

 

 Buses on the other hand were a bit less common....before the Hippies they were not cool at all !!!!
Now buses like this one are worth a ton of money.....more than the average house in Utah.

The fastbacks were not popular then....now I want one...lol  !!!

I took this photo with the idea of cropping it down a bit....I like what I got 

This orange bus is the one with the posters all over the inside....sorry they are out of order

The following group is a club out of Las Vegas.....they had lots of members with cars there and they were having lots of fun......that's what it should be all about.......they had lots of nice cars in the club.

Everyone likes the pop out windows.......I now have two bugs with them !!!!!

Remember my last post I talked about the poor looser with the green bug who was upset about not winning a trophy.....well this cute little pink bug with all that Skooby-doo paint is the one who won the trophy.....both were nice....the pink one is not my taste, but it was the paid attendees who voted and I bet lots of girls voted for this one.....and it is a club member from the Vegas club......just one advantage to having a close knitted club.

If you ask me the other guy had an easy out on loosing......he can still tell himself his car is better but....

If you like candy apple red.....this is for you......nice car !!!

Cheap camera.......poor quality photos.....lost the red color on this car.....it was beautiful 

My uncle Kirk, my dads younger brother had a few nice cars way back in the early 60s.....he had a 56 Ford Fairlane that he traded in for a new Corvair that he traded in for a Cougar like this one....I liked the Fairlane the best.......he then got married and who knows what he drove....too boring for me....LOL

Looks like the end!!!!!

But it's not 

 I liked this one enough to do again

That's a lot of lift

Could this be the end????

 Almost.......now is my time to tell you about my day a bit.

I had a wonderful day.....the only thing that would have made it better would be for my wife Sandy to have been there......she may not feel the same....I don't think she likes car shows much.....she does like shiny paint so it might be a toss-up.

I left the show and drove back to Lake Mead where I got a chance to check out another marina, Callville, it has a shower for $2 you get about 8 minutes....felt good.

I had a chance to do some thinking about my life, where I was 10 years ago nobody would want to live through, but I'm here now and on good days it's pretty good......I thank God for that and all the other great things he does for us.

I was driving in a very beautiful area just taking it all in thinking of something one of my closest friends told me a few days ago.......he wished he could be here with me doing what I do....he is worried he will have to work every day for the rest of his life.

It boils down to choices......I could have chosen to end things years ago and I would not be here for all this.....he could choose to take a leap of faith and be out here with me, if that was really what he wanted....now his wife on the other hand is another story.....she would like to live this way if she had a multi-million dollar rv ( some thing way beyond their means ), funny thing is I think she would enjoy this more than the rest of us.....lol!  I think the size of your rv means very little to most of the people I met, they are much more interested in the person, if they like you they like you, if they do not they do not.....it's all about who you are and how you act out on the road.  People are much nicer this way by the way.

It's getting hotter every day...today 95.....so I will not be here much longer, time to be heading north to wards home where I have many important things to do...

God Bless