Today my plan was to get the van loaded for camping and clean up some of my mess from working on the van.
I spent most of my day loading the van and cleaning up the carport. I put things in piles that go in different places and still have to work on getting some of the piles under control, but I got it good enough to get my car back in there.
I wanted to get the van loaded for camping as I planned to head up the hill on the family property to test my four wheel drive with the new v8 engine. My plan was to go to the top of the hill which is about two miles up to the highest point on the property where there is a spot that overlooks the town of Guerneville. I got going around five PM, bringing something for dinner.
Installed the float ball
I stopped at the water tanks to install the new float ball and weight. I did install them, but the ball needs more weight as it’s not heavy enough to pull the float down now that we are using a new steel cable.
So I put it in four wheel drive and headed up the hill watching my temperature gauge to check how the temperature was going to be. The temperature slowly climbed to 220 when I got to the top, which wasn’t too bad for this rig.
High Point Lookout Camp
Here I am at the top at High Point Lookout Camp, parked with my side doors looking out over the town of Guerneville, down below.
Here’s my view out the side doors looking down at the town of Guerneville.
Guerneville
Here’s a little closer look at Guerneville, with the fog sneaking up the river.
Trimmed some brush
Here’s another view of where I am parked for the night. The sun is just going down. I did some brush trimming as things where a bit over grown.
Ridge top walk
I went for a little walk around the ridge top through this area just before dark.
See and hear the town
I cooked my dinner as I watched it get dark on Guerneville. I could see the lights and hear the sounds of the town from up here. It sounded like there where a lot of people down there having a good time from all the roaring I could hear. Music too. And the occasional dogs barking.
Getting foggy too
I watched as it got darker and the fog tried to move in more.
The town finally quieted down and is now very peaceful for the night.
My spot
Here’s my spot in the van where I’m typing this blog. Nothing fancy but it works for me. I sit in a wheeled office chair as I can’t stand up in this van, but with the wheeled chair, I can move all around so it’s quite comfortable.
It after ten PM now and the fog has moved in around me. It’s real quiet and peaceful up here on the ridge top in the dense fog.
Van’s working great
That’s pretty much my day. I guess I should say the van did just fine in four wheel drive coming up the hill with the V8 engine. Much better than the old inline six cylinder engine.
The engine heat was acceptable, but I will install an electric fan too. Another purpose of the electric fan is I can turn it on in the night when I hear critters under the van. I think the noise puts a real fear in them as it’s quite loud under there.
Tried to get internet up here
Oh, I tried to get a Wi-Fi signal up here for the internet. I thought I might be high enough to pick something up from Guerneville. I did pick quite a few signals up, but none of the open ones had a good enough signal for me to connect.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
