Chipmaker Coherent: The Road Trip, part 8

Day 7 -- Bedrock

The day began with tree-planting. Jenny had picked up some young shade trees to plant near the bunkhouse, so Dickie Joe revved up the track-hoe to start digging holes. Carson soon joined him in the tiny cab, and had a smile plastered across his face the entire time. When they got down, the first hole dug, he declared "that was funnn!"

Carson mans ("boys"?) the controls under Dickie Joe's watchful eye.

Dickie Joe offered me the track-hoe, and I figured why not? I climbed aboard, listened to the two-minute tutorial, and was off. Operating a track-hoe for a basic function like digging holes is comparable to playing a video game. Two main hand joysticks take care of the raising and lowering, bucket curling, and rotating. Two other sticks for motion, including spinning the tank treads to rotate the entire track-hoe. A throttle. A couple of other controls that I didn't need and so didn't learn. Anyway, it's not hard. I finished digging the particular hole for a larger tree, then scraped the dirt back in. The soil thus broken up, Val took the helm and dug the final tree hole. All of us finished planting the tree, and then we had breakfast.

My turn...

...and Valerie gets in on the fun too.

Then I drove the track-hoe -- at top speed it might be moving at eight miles an hour -- down the lane a bit to the ranch manager's home, where we planted one more tree.

Later, I was helping install a swamp cooler, when Jenny and Val drove up on the four-wheel quads, kids mounted fore and aft with Jenny (there's a rear-mounted toolbox that acts like a high seat back, so there was no way Carson could tumble off). Since the installation was down to a two-man job, I was shanghaied into a quad excursion. (Unfortunately it was for much longer than I thought, and so ended up with a sunburned arm. My jeans and hat protected other parts, and my left arm has had a "driver's arm" tan for decades, but my right is still susceptible.) We motored up to Rte. 90, went east about two miles, then turned off onto a graded dirt road that headed up into the north canyon. Cliffs soon loomed overhead on both sides as we pushed on alongside the Dolores.

Ready for off. (It's hard to see, but Carson is tucked up behind Jenny on the yellow quad.)

Canyon walls -- just beautiful.

The kids check out the aqueduct remains.

Kicking back atop a sun-drenched boulder.

I take after my kids.

The entire view is captivating. The high and crumbling cliffs, the rocky slopes littered with scrub and scree long fallen, the muddy Dolores splashing along on our left. A few miles in the San Miguel River ends by converging into the Dolores; we arrived here just in time to witness an eagle soaring along the top of the western cliff face, casting a shadow just below it, gracefully coasting until turning where the canyon bent back again. The dirt road continued up the San Miguel, and we went further along, until we came to the remains of an century-old aqueduct built high on the opposite wall for mining operations back in the day. Having seen that, we turned back and pulled off at a slightly secret picnic site (if you don't know it's there, you'd never find it) down by the riverbank. The kids stripped down and splashed in the muddy shallows. I roamed through the brush a bit and spotted uncounted lizards. Finally, we packed up -- we hadn't brought more than a snack's worth of food, and were getting hungry -- and headed home to the ranch. Amalie had taken the controls (under Jenny's watchful eye) on the trip in, so Carson got the conn on the ride out, and did quite well. Start to finish, we were out four-wheeling for about three, maybe four hours. On the whole we are not keeping a close eye on the time, not out here. The sun's position is accurate enough.

The hat proved its worthiness by holding fast to my head even when running along at 30 mph. I like this hat.

After sunset, we got a second amazing lightning show, mostly atop the northern range. Some striking bolts, some horizontal bolts, some deep in the clouds lighting up the skies, and some cells far to the east. We sat around a small campfire (well controlled in a rock hearth) and enjoyed the show. Later, some rain fell, but the storm was in the quiet parts by the time it passed over us.