Usually when we are on a SOWER project we’re parked within walking distance of where we will be working. Pretty much we leave the house at 7:28 to get to devotions at 7:30. And that has seemed early enough. But this project has a little twist. For the time being, we are parked about 12 miles away from the project. Pretty much in the desert.

While it makes for great sunsets and quiet nights,

it also makes for a morning commute. And while it’s pretty much a direct drive, it’s more than three minutes.
Out the drive,turn left.

Drive down Dillon Road.

And down Dillon Road

And down Dillon Road, getting closer to town

But not too close – still plenty of “country” out here!

Finally getting into civilization (traffic lights and some better road surface!)

And then to work!

We were given a tour of the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission first thing. And my, were we impressed. They have three basic programs – one for emergency housing (one night at a time), one called “case management” where men and women (and their children) can stay for an extended time and work with a case manager to help resolve some of their life issues, and then there’s the New Life Program. The New Life Program is a 12 month program that combines discipleship, job training, and residential responsibilities. The Mission also has a food distribution program and they serve breakfast and dinner to many area homeless. We were blessed to hear the testimony of one of their New Life clients this morning, and we’ll be hearing more in the days to come. How great is our God!
But speaking of commutes – we had a little commute on Sunday for church. This time we turned right out of the drive as we headed to Desert Hot Springs.

I think we’ll be spending a fair bit of time on Dillon Road this month!

I say “Let’s make a Lemon Meringue Pie!”
Not that I have actually ever done that before.
There was a time (in a previous lifetime) that I was considered a pretty good cook. I even dabbled in a little catering off and on. But I confess that the only lemon meringue pies that I made (and trust me, there weren’t very many), came from something that looked like this -

My other stumbling block in doing really any type of baking (other than an occasional batch of brownies right out of the Duncan Hines box) has been the amount of counterspace in my little house. On a good day (read I have gotten the dishes washed and put away) this is my entire cooking work space.

And if I need to actually cook something on the stove (in one of my two saucepans), my space reduces to this.

This arrangement has made me very good at cooking very simple things.
Not so good at complicated, multi-step recipes.
But I had all those lemons……..
Plus, I had that cornstarch that I’ve been carrying around for the last 5+ year.
Why, I even had eggs.
It seemed like the stars were perfectly aligned.
So thanks to my friend The Internet, I rounded up a couple of recipes, and gave it my best shot.
This is what my kitchen looked like after I got the pie in the oven -

But THIS is what the pie looked like.

I was able to reclaim the kitchen (eventually), and I have to tell you, the pie was REALLY GOOD.

OK, so it was a little runny, but my, oh my, was it yummy!
And since that pile of lemons in the top picture is of the lemons I have left, I think there might just be another pie in my near future!

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Toby called and said -
“It’s a GIRL!!!!”?
OK, so it really doesn’t seem like it was yesterday, but SEVEN YEARS?????? Now that seems impossible!
It seems that she went from this

to this

in the blink of an eye!
Happy Birthday, Eliana Grace – the sweetest seven year old we know!

Back in November we made our first foray into Joshua Tree National Park. It was a great day, and we knew we wanted to return. Today we finally made it back to check out a couple more sections of this fascinating park.
The Keys Ranch – or Desert Queen Ranch – Tour
The ranger-guided tour of the ranch includes the colorful story of the 60 years Bill and Frances spent working together to make a life and raise their five children in this remote location. The ranch house, school house, store, and workshop still stand; the orchard has been replanted; and the grounds are full of the cars, trucks, mining equipment, and spare parts that are a part of the Desert Queen Ranch story.Ok – that’s the official summary. Here’s the reality –

We didn’t have a long walk to get to the ranch from our parking spot, but to say the ranch was “remote” was quite the understatement.

Thanks to the recent rain (this area got over 4 inches – quite a deluge for them), there was actually water flowing in the stream. Our ranger/guide said it was the first time he didn’t have to say “imagine water running here….”

Here’s the first view of the ranch –

The actual ranch house –

Windmill and well -

Here’s that stream again –

These folks never threw anything away, and made their living any way they could think of. When the area became a national park, they opened a small store and even had a couple of cabins available for hardy travelers.


Here’s one of the cabins –



It was a very interesting tour – and it made me realize how very hardy and innovative the Keys family was. Someone lived at this ranch until 1969 and it’s a real testimony to the American Spirit.
Barker Dam Trail
From the Ranch we took a short drive over to the Barker Dam trailhead. William Keys helped with this dam in the early 1900’s with other area ranchers. I don’t know if there is always water in this reservoir, but again thanks to last week’s rain, we were treated to some lovely water views. It was a great short hike – really just perfect for our little group of 6.


(I loved the color on this one.)
And finally the reservoir –




Here we all are for the official “group shot” –

We had a really fun day – learned a little history, marveled at the ingenuity of man and the Masters’ creation around us, and finished it off with great lunch at the Crossroads Café in the town of Joshua Tree.

We still have about half of Joshua Tree National Park to explore, so I hope we’ll get a chance to do at least more excursion!

Since this was our last weekend in the “Pass” (as this area is known), we figured we’d better take the advantage of a beautiful day on Saturday to take a drive to some of the nearby spots we’d been wanting to check out. Big Bear Lake and ski areas were only about 45 miles away according to our GPS, but of course we wanted to stay away from major interstates and congested areas. “Let’s go up the back way, through Oak Glen (a quaint town of orchards and all things apple only 15 miles or so up the road), maybe check out a couple of geocaches, and then make our way over to Big Bear Lake.” Sounded like a plan, so I grabbed the camera, a couple of bottles of water and some snacks, and off we went!
First Stop – Oak Glen.
OK, so we didn’t actually stop (it’s not exactly prime apple harvest time), but the views were impressive as we were heading out of town –

And we really enjoyed the signage!

Trust me, they really know how to do “curvy” here in California!
Oh – and I wish I knew exactly what mountain that is in the distance. It was in my viewfinder for most of the day, but the best I can do is “San Bernardino Mountain”. And it’s a guess, folks. Just a guess.
But I digress with my lack of geography knowledge…..

See, there it is again!
Since we were headed to Big Bear we knew we would be coming into some snow. Remember last week when we had 2-4 inches of the stuff? Well, the mountains near here got 2-4 feet. Or so it seemed by the look of this car coming toward us on the highway –

Uh, sweetie – the snow was LAST WEEK, and maybe you could have cleaned a little more off the driver’s side??????
But for us, the roads were clear.

And even though the plowed piles got higher and higher, the drive was lovely!

We did take a little detour to do a geocache, and while Gary was walking around with his trusty GPS

I was busy clicking away at the beautiful snow covered landscape.

(I think this cactus was a little concerned about the blanket of snow….)
Finding the cache with all the snow presented a little bit of a challenge (and we hadn’t done much geocaching lately, so we were a little out of practice), but I finally noticed a straight edged thing under a root.

I made Gary do the groping (I’m not really fond of sticking my hand into dark “what just might be there” spaces, and we were rewarded with our first “find” in several months.
There were several other mountain roads that Gary had hoped to explore, but they were all closed. Such a disappointment for a guy who was really hoping for some dirt road adventures.

Anyway….on to Big Bear Lake.




All along the way we saw cars pulled over and folks getting ready to find a sledding hill or strapping on their cross-country skis or just plain having a snowball fight. Those are some renegade snowballs on the lake ice!
And there certainly was snow enough for everyone.

Maybe they are waiting for spring?

We literally crawled through the town Big Bear Lake – not only was last week’s snow the first BIG snow in a couple of years, but this was the first weekend day that the roads were open. It took us 2 ½ hours to drive the 10 miles along the south side of the lake. (We stopped for lunch thinking that maybe we could “wait out” the traffic. Not only was the lunch the slowest meal we’ve had in a loooonnnng time (2 hrs. for a burger and a bowl of chili), but the traffic was still waiting for us when we were (finally) done.) I have to tell you, 4 ½ hours of Big Bear Lake is just a little bit too much!
Not wanting to go back the same way we came, Gary chose to head north, pick up a cut-off road that went over to Yucca Valley, and return from the East. It was a great plan, except we never found the short cut road. Apparently the plows had never found it either. The road we thought was “it” turned out to be a little connector road that took us back to Baldwin Lake and was only about a ½ mile long.

But it did (almost) give him his dirt (mud) road fix.
Almost.
Enough chatter – here, in the order of their appearance, is the rest of drive home.


Baldwin Lake


Down the other side of the mountain until we ended up in the “high desert”.

We were losing daylight fast –

Caught the sunset going through Yucca Valley

(sorry for the blurry sunset. It’s very tricky taking sunset shots from a moving truck!)
That trip home was definitely the “long way home”!
Here’s our day’s journey on the map –

(You can see our missing”shortcut” home – it goes east above Big Bear and heads over to Pioneertown and Yucca Valley. It would have been sweet if it had been open!)
Zoomed out a bit –

And here’s a zoom in -

Yeah, there were a lot of those curves!
You know, not everyone can take what should be a 100 round trip drive and turn it into a good 200 miles. And even with the crawl through Bear Lake and the incredibly slow lunch service, it was indeed a Very Good 200 miles!