December | 2016 | Michael S. Moore

So the day after the pad was poured and put to bed we

[me and the dogs]

scraped the ice off the windshield

and took a 170 mile round-trip for an avocado

[about the time I was crossing the border into California realizing the Empire Store might be a viable alternative for produce, but having no way to check took the extra hundred miles as insurance; It’s a nice drive, anyway, if one likes that sort of thing].

Before Alturas, where they are eagerly anticipating the annual “Guns and Hoses” benefit basketball shootout between the CHP and the fire department,

I stopped in Cedarville discovering

it was already much colder there.

Page’s Market, just down the street from the coffin maker [“Live like a cowboy, leave like a cowboy”] who’s set up shop next door to Michael Sykes’ Floating Island Books [background left, which didn’t look to be open], had the avo, and though I really should have checked the bookstore opted for coffee instead of coffins and fled

south into the sun to the bottom of Surprise Valley, to Nevada, across Duck Flat,

over a haunch of the Buffalo Hills,

down to Smoke Creek, the Desert,

Smoke Creek [even if the googlidiots can’t find it], the Road

and home for lunch, on the porch.

Quiet afternoon…

Friday…

Twisto brought out my seeds from Comstock as well as word that the Empire Store, under new management, now stocks all the fresh groceries one might ever want, sixty miles closer than C-ville plus I coulda checked the mail…and wandered out the Jungo Road a bit for an Adventure if so inclined.