Trip to pick up boat

Hello again.
Everyone has been wondering when we were going to do an update on this blog. Well, I finally got some pictures. Below is a shot of the parking lot in Flippin, AK, of the Ranger factory. As you can see it is in a very rural setting (notice the cows in the background).
When Terry got there on Friday, they had to go out to the lot to pick up his boat with the tractor. Here it comes behind the tractor so this is his first good look at the boat.

Then he had to take it to R& H Marine to get the motor PDI. The mechanic was working on it and found a problem with the oil injection module. Fortunately they had another E-Tec on the lot that had just come in so he swapped the part so he could get Terry on the road. Look at that motor without the top. It's awesome looking isn't it????

This is the mechanic looking at the computer while he is testing the motor.

In the picture below the mechanic is replacing the bad module. Great facility and people who run the place. The moved from New York and started this business. It's about 10 miles from the Ranger factory and is located in Bull Shoals, AK.

The picture to the left is of R & H Marine where Terry had the PDI.
They have lots of nice Ranger boats for sale!


I don't see another one the same color as ours tho, but Terry said there were lots of them at the factory, which was a surprise to him. Of course, I think the color of our new boat is GREAT!!! It's not BLUE.

Traveling back. Nice travel top.

The cover that came with the boat is black. We'll put a picture up when we actually cover it with the new top.

Of course, he had to stop at Cracker Barrel for dinner on the way home. It was about 8:30 pm at this point. He didn't get back here until 1:30 am!! It's about a 10 1/2 hr drive from Georgetown to Flippin, AK.

The above picture is from the inside of the Ranger factor and they are getting ready to load on a truck. Terry's thinks this one is also painted like ours. it's hard to tell from this picture. The picture below is inside the factory. This robotic tool is a water cutter that drills the holes in the deck for all the accessories. It uses 65000# of pressure to drill the holes. It drills all the holes in the hull in 9 minutes with no dust!! Pretty amazing. They are presently producing 24 boats a day!!

The fellow in the picture is actually programming the robotic cutter.

Finally, back home and now it's in the storage building that our friends the Porters' are letting us use while they are traveling in their motorhome. The storage building has 8 spaces for rv's so we are in one space. The space next to the boat is empty at the moment since those people are traveling also. We are just getting all the stuff put back in the boat that's been in the motorhome since we left Coeur d'Alene, ID.

A closer picture below. You can see the new "flat screen tv" mounted on the deck next to the driver console. I had some of the tackle in the cats carrier so when I was getting in there to unload all the boxes, I found A SNAKE!!. I had unloaded all the boxes when I saw the snake. He was hiding under the boxes in the carrier. We took the carrier outside and he crawled out of one of the slits as you can see.
Then he slithered away and of course headed right back to the building!! We don't know where he went, but he's inside there somewhere trying to get some shade from this 100 deg heat. There has been 21 days at or over 100 in June which has set lots of records. The most 100+ days for the summer is 69. At the end of June there are already 21 so we are heading for a record breaking season. We did have a rain shower yesterday which cooled everything off about 5 degs.

This was my first look at the boat with the travel cover in place.

Well, that's it for now. I'll get some house pictures posted soon. They have the roof on now with shingles and are getting ready to get the stucco in place. It's slowed down now and we still haven't done the pre drywall inspection. Hopefully that will be this week.

Hope everyone has a great 4th of July.

Sandy and Terry

Granite and doors

Well, they are putting on the material for the stucco today and still putting in electrical wiring. The trim has now been painted as you can see above the corbels.

Above view from the garage of the doors and the ceiling for the back porch. They are in the process of cutting holes in the ceiling for the can lights and fans.

A close up picture of the trim paint. Below are the granite slabs that we have picked for the kitchen and the master bath.

That's all for today.

Sandy

More construction

Well, construction is coming along pretty fast, at least on the outside. When we got there on Friday, they were wrapping the house and putting up the corbels. Of course it was a hot and sunny day.

Saturday they put the roof wrap on and it looks entirely different. They also go in some of the windows Friday afternoon.

Above is view from the great room looking toward kitchen. As you can see it looks a lot like the sunriver house.

The garage view or the man cave is to the left. Some windows still sitting to be put in and some windows have to be returned since they are not the right ones. Also, one of the windows in the sewing room is broken.
Right picture is looking from great room out the back across the back porch. You can see the pad for the rv on the left side in rear. They will have to put in a lot of fill dirt to drive that thing up onto that pad!!

The above view is looking from the great room toward the front door.

Another view from Friday of the corbels going up. There are 35 corbels around the front of the house.

Construction on new house

We got to the construction site today about 1 pm and the workers were busy. Yesterday we came out but didn't have the camera but there were no workers present. This view is from the end street that "t's". Each way goes to a cul-d-sac. Our lot goes to the middle of the cul-d-sac on our end. The house on the left was just started in early January. They move in tomorrow!! I can't believe how fast this process will take. We may be in the house in early Sept!! Wow. I hope I have furniture. It's still in storage. Oh well, we can stay in the mh until we get it.





Below is the view from the car when we arrived today. No sheeting was up at this time.



The picture below is from the motorhome pad in the back of the lot looking to the back of the house. The master br is on the right and the garage is on the left.

The motorhome pad is 45 ft by 19 ft and about 3 ft off the ground in the front. We were assured that the driveway would be gradual up to the pad. The foreman is meeting with the architect this week to make some changes to the rv space design. That will probably be the last thing they do.

It does have water, sewer, and electric.

This is a view from the front left corner of the lot. The house is set back from the street 125 ft.

Terry is in the great room and you can see the arches in the foyer behind him.

Another view from the street looking at the front of the house. I think we will have a driveway that goes from the front street across the yard to the side street between the far tree on the left and the tree to the right of that.

As you can see below the sheet is going up pretty fast. They have left out a window on the far right wall on the front which is in the sewing room. This window faces the front street. We saw the contract foreman and he said that would be taken care of later. No problem!!

The view below is from the neighbors driveway down the side street to the front of our house. This house is owned by a single lady that we haven't met. She hasn't moved in yet since it is in the final stages of construction.

The picture below is of her house since it has the same stone work that we will have but part of our house will be stucco. Also she has the same roof shingle that we picked.

The "corbels" in the foreground go under the eves along the front and side of some of the house. In the background is the closet for the sewing room and farther back is the sewing room with the wall that "doesn't" have the window yet.

I'm standing in the garage to take this picture. You can see the workman cutting some sheeting.

That's it for now and I'm sure this will look a lot different in a week.

More later.

Arches National Park

Hello everyone from Moab, Utah.

Arches National Park is just outside Moab, UT, and about 5 miles from Canyonlands. The day was sunny and 95 deg. Very hot so take lots of water!!

The first stop along the 40 mile round trip thru the park is an area called Park Avenue because the rocks resemble sky scrapers. Below are pictures from Park Avenue.
The view on the right is looking thru Park Avenue trail toward the big rock in the background which is Courthouse rock. You can see hikers along the trail if you look closely. This will give you some perspective of the size of these "rocks". It is awesome.

The next picture is of the left side of Park Avenue from the viewpoint area. It looks like that rock will topple off doesn't it??

The next view is of the right side of Park Avenue - the sky scrapers.

Another view above of the Park Avenue trail toward Courthouse.

The windows area has lots of things to see. This arch is the South Window and I'm sitting underneath on the right. It was a nice trail thru this area to Turret Arch and the North and South Windows.

This is a view from the trail between Turret Arch and Windows arches. It's a very spacious park. As you can see we have our water with us. It's in the camel pak around my waist. It holds 1 liter of water.

This is a view of both the North and South Windows. We hiked around behind these windows on a primitive path but couldn't get up to the windows from that angle so had to come back to the main path. I wanted to sit under the arch you know!!

This picture is of Turret Arch and there is another small "window" on the left side of this arch.

The picture to the right is part of the "Great Wall". After you leave the Park Avenue area you drive along this wall for several miles going to Balanced rock.

Another view of the Great Wall.

Balanced Rock is on of the most famous stops in Arches. It was told that when a bus tour stopped here one of the elderly gentlemen didn't believe the tour guide that his rock was "balanced". He thought it was cemented to the rock below so climbed the rock and then told the tour guide he was right it wasn't cemented. Now you are not allowed to climb the rock. There is a small hike around the base of this monument which we took and there are some nice views from the back side of the park's spacious lands.

Along the drive thre are "fins". Rocks which are like slices out of the stone. This is a view as we go toward delicate arch parking area.

The actual trail up to delicate arch is 1.5 miles and an elevation change of 1600 ft. I didn't think I could handle that so we went for the viewpoint upper trail hike of 1/2 mile with 200 ft elevation change. It was 95 and very hot, but the view was worth it. They had another lower trail but the view was 3/4 mile from the arch so we opted for the longer trail up to get the good photo of delicate arch.

Terry is going back down the trail from the top here.

As you can see from this photo some people actually did the 1.5 mile hike up to the arch. There are some people under the arch and along the trail to the left. Again, very hot day and the trail did not provide any shade!!

One of the spacious views looking toward the Lasal Mountains.

Landscape trail tree thru the fence. This was a very sandy part of the trail and was like walking on a very sandy beach. The sand was really really fine so was hard to walk.








The landscape arch is 306 ft. long (longer than a football field). In the 90's part of the arch fell and was caught on camera by a tourist so today you cannot go under the arch. The arch at it's narrowest point is 11 ft thick. They don't know how much longer this arch will be around since there are cracks in the existing arch which could fall at any time. The sign at this arch shows the picture the tourist took of the falling slice. It was a 6 ft. thick slick that fell along the right side of the arch. You can see that is the thinnest side.

That's it from Arches.

Next will be pictures of our house under construction!! We are now in Georgetown and hope to get pictures today.

Until later. Sandy