with a second to last Grocery Run Detour thrown in though not until after Sumi threw herself happily into the Frog Pond before our breakfast at the house pond. Only then did a person set

out to check out the long anticipated arrival of Seth’s trailer at Parker with, among other things,

Dave’s shed and a vintage tractor*.  After that it was back to the Wall Spring gate where our

ever assiduous FeDasshole** on his first trip out all summer dutifully followed the plainly stated instructions that “if you’re pissed off at being called out for lying to the postmistress toss packages over the fence”.  Retrieving my nonetheless-through-no-fault-of-FedEx still undamaged

art supplies I was on my way by 9:50, over the pass [5980′] and into the lower reaches of

Surprise Valley within the hour, leaving the pavement before the California line to turn up the

east side of Lower Lake for Murphy Spring, now fenced and otherwise improved by something

called the PF…

The old structures mostly remain, cows now fenced out, and after the fencing ran out the road

turned into single set set of four wheeler tracks crossing rock strewn alluvia for the dozen miles

and hour or so up to Eagleville’s cracked and buckling single lane blacktop ‘airport’ after which

Hays Canyon’s graded gravel soon turned to pavement and crossed the valley to Eagleville.

From there it was an efficient trip to Alturas for an hour of grocery shopping at the Holiday, over

Cedar Pass for the usual gas, Cedarville dozing through a summer Wednesday, and back to

Eagleville, after which I could see across the lakebed to landmarks of my hour and a half drive up that side all through the thirteen minutes it took to do those 14.6 miles on the pavement

south until swinging right at Bare Ranch and into Nevada, crossing

Duck Flat,

the unnamed 5980′ pass [not shown] over the Buffs, down the canyon,

around the curve where the cement truck rolled

and home, six hours and 207 miles later, for a beer on the porch in the Cathcart Chair in lieu of those boring exercises…94 degrees at 4:30.

*Seth and Sonny’s tractor had actually appeared previously during their move out of Fred’s Field.

**To be fair, just as employees of Tesla and the X-pire embody the Protocols of Elon [and hey, Mr. Muks, why does my Starlink get slower the more I have to pay for it, dude?] in all their apartheid negativity it’s perfectly understandable that FedEx contractors would reflect the Southern Values of the bonehead Missisippian who originated the organization they are exploited by, correct?