Return to Cathedral Gorge

It was a pretty relaxed day yesterday...no long drives, and not a lot of sight-seeing. Heck, we even went out for breakfast. When we're in a small town, we like to visit the local "watering hole," have a meal (preferably breakfast), and eavesdrop on the conversations around us. It's a good way to learn how people spend their days in a town like this one.

So we visited this restaurant that serves up three meals per day, 7 days per week. To the right of the image below is the bar associated with the restaurant. It's name is "Side Car."

Did you ever consider what it means when you get "sidetracked"? I can't say I have, although I've used that phrase many times. For the first time, I realized it refers to the railroad tracks running parallel to the tracks in use, where boxcars go to be parked and forgotten. And do you ever wonder if anyone knows which train cars have been parked where? I wonder about that a lot. It's what happens when you get old. Your mind is occupied with inane and unimportant questions. Also, we learned from our server that no fewer than ten tracks used to run through Caliente. Now there are just two or three left.

We sat in the back where there was a heater running. The days have been comfortable here, but the nights have been below freezing. We've been bringing in our hose to keep it from freezing, but the pressure regulator still freezes overnight. We have to wait for the sun to come up to hook-up to water again. So here's how the restaurant looked inside. Be sure to notice the ceiling.

Over our heads was a portrait of this woman.

On the back of the menu was a little bio of her. I believe she may be the great, great aunt of the owner of the restaurant. I'm hoping you'll be able to read her story. Remember that you can make the image larger by clicking on it.

We each had the same breakfast...your basic breakfast, and I love restaurant hashbrowns. I had the English muffin. Mike had biscuits and gravy with his. And here's the thing: I don't understand this concept of putting gravy on a biscuit. Isn't a biscuit a perfect food all on its own? Putting gravy on it just seems to gild the lily, if you want my opinion. Certainly, you are free to disagree.

While we ate, we amused ourselves with this little timeline of the town of Caliente, Nevada. Be sure to take note of the years 1905-06.

Okay, so our bellies full, we returned to the RV to take care of a little business and collect our things before heading back to Cathedral Gorge State Park. I had time to finish up the day's inchy...and just let me tell you...I about had heart failure at the sight of all those bullion stitches. I expected much crying, moaning, and gnashing of teeth, but I stitched those babies up like a boss!

Later in the day, I had some time for more hand quilting. Each time I've worked on this, I've filled an entire hoop.

Last night I spread it out and took stock of what is quilted and what isn't. There are a few areas inside the quilt blocks that will need to get finished. (They didn't fit completely inside the hoop as I was quilting the rest.) I'll have to go back and finish up a few spots, but as of this morning, the areas inside the yellow line below are finished.

So, you can see I've made a lot of progress since the beginning of the trip. When all the blocks are finished, I'll go around the border and quilt the outer edges.

Okay, so back to Cathedral Gorge. We first headed into the park and back to where we'd hiked in the slot canyons. Mike is still learning and practicing. Last night we talked about working on improving our drone photography. We agreed on this: He makes the videos, I do the processing afterward. It'll mean learning to use some better video processing software. As it stands, these are only edited for length.

I tried to get a picture of what Mike sees from the controller, with limited success.

Let me introduce you to our little friend. Perhaps he needs a name.

From here, Mike made two videos. The first was flying up and over the top of the slot canyons. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

After that, he took some more video giving you a bird's eye view. Click right here if you can't see the video.

From there, we drove around to the Miller Point parking lot...the one we hiked to on our previous visit. As we left the park, we noticed this guy sitting on a utility pole. Usually they fly away as soon as I point the camera at them. This guy sat patiently while I fired off half a dozen shots. This was the best of the bunch.

My friends "in the know" tell me he is a red-shouldered hawk. And that reminds me...remember the really terrible bird photo I took out in Echo Canyon?

My friend Mary and others have correctly identified him as a golden eagle. Mary sent me this photo from the Audubon society website.

It looks like the same bird to me.

Okay, so we drove around to Miller Point, and we set free our little friend again. By the way, the junipers growing in this park are some of the biggest we've ever seen.

They are loaded with juniper berries.

Also, I neglected to show you the gazebo when I posted about this the other day. This is another structure built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Stepping inside, and looking up, the roof looks like this:

Here's a little information about it from the bottom of the canyon.

While I was standing there, I took a pano of the canyon. This is the same canyon we hiked to reach the viewpoint on Monday.

This is the video Mike made from the overlook. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

While he was making video, I wandered around taking pictures of the informational signs about the park.

And the next series of signs tells about the forces that have created Cathedral Gorge over millennia. Read them or don't...there's never any requirement that you read anything. Except when I'm telling you the ways you could die...you should definitely read that.

So that was our final visit to the park. Back at the RV, Smitty got out for an evening stroll. Sorry about this blurry image. I was shooting through the RV window, and so I couldn't use flash.

When he comes back inside, he gets lots of praise and a seat on the special throne acknowledging that he is a Cat of Valor.

If you can stand one more video, then you'll enjoy this video of Sadie. She was fast asleep on her window perch, dreaming and snoring. For such a little cat, she makes a lot of noise. For this video, you'll want to turn up your volume.

She would hate knowing I'd posted this. It would be so empurrassing .

We've seen the sites in the area, and we have a full day here with nothing planned. There is a nice walk along the river, and so we've talked about either walking or riding our bikes into town and checking out some of the stores there. At the very least, we'll stop into the little grocery store and pick up a few items. I'll probably spend at least part of the day on my hand quilting, but after today, I'm getting back to the snowflakes embroidery.