Ansel loves cards

We are back in Bend after spending the coldest winter months at the Buckeye Ranch south of Tracy, CA. Ansel would very much love to hear from you. He loves getting cards, notes and especially post cards. Drop him a note and make his day !! Shoot me an email and I'll give you the mailing address if you don't have it. cowhorse7@yahoo.com

We will be celebrating Ansel's 95th birthday Aug 1st

When any one inquires of me how is Ansel doing? I always respond by saying, "He's still going, he's the energizer bunny in 4-low (4-low, referring to a how slow a 4x4 pick up goes in 4-low) He doesn't go very far very fast, but he keeps going".




When I saw this trailer parked at the Shilo Inn up the street, I turned around, drove back and made Ansel get out of the car to let me take this picture. The trailer was in town for the Hot Air Balloon Festival that was going on that weekend. One of the balloons was the "Energizer Bunny".


What keeps him going is feeding his horses every morning and every night. We have an elec golf cart with a utility bed on the back, I load the hay for him, and he drives around and feeds every day. For the horses in the barn, I wrestle the hay bales around, and put the hay in front of the stalls and then he feeds each one. He's been using a cane since Christmas, and takes that with him on the cart to feed the horses. I do the watering and take care of the fencing (such as it is) but he still feeds his babies every morning and every night.

In this picture Ansel is giving long time friend Judy Moorehouse a tour of the horses. Note the Mercedes emblem on the front of the cart. :0) When it's muddy or snowy the cart never misses a beat with the rear chains on.

A Nice Visit at Buckeye Ranch

This is the main gate into the ranch, it's 5 miles from the end of the county road. The pic was actually taken on a previous May visit. The hills are all green right now.

Larryann was trying to bond with one of her pups, and the cats wouldn't hear of it. They raise McNab cattle dogs. My Lucy is one of theirs. If you are interested, their contact information is on their website. http://www.pwlivestock.com/

Averyel Willis and Ansel enjoyed sharing some stories. Averyel was widowed last summer. She and her former husband, Porter A, live on the Buckeye in their own house, just down the hill from Port and Larryann's house.

Averyel fixed us a lovely dinner down at her house. It was a great Italian chicken dish that I can't pronounce. Ansel is there too, my self timer camera missed him.

There is a pig inside the dog house... Actually she is "Oink" Larryann's pet pig.

Ansel meets Greg Kent, who owns the Buckeye Ranch. Greg invests lots of thought into restoration projects and water development on the ranch.

Mutt and Jeff... Greg was a professional NFL football player for the Raiders, and as you know Ansel was a jockey.

Driving from San Ysidro, north to the Buckeye

When we left San Ysidro, Ca which is the US/Mexican border, we headed north to spend the night with friends at the Buckeye Ranch, which is west of Modesto and south of Tracy. It was about a 6 hour drive. I took this next picture, when I realized that we were almost the only vehicle on the highway north. It was a little uncanny, I was wondering if something was wrong. It didn't take very long though as we got closer to LA, before the traffic looked like this. I think it took longer to go through the LA area as it did to drive from there to the Buckeye.

Here's another one of those clever cell phone towers. This one looked more like fir tree.

Here's a truck load of Lemon's headed for the Northwest.

After a long climb up a mountain pass, when we came down the other side, the San Joaquin valley opened up for as far as you could see. All irrigated farmland. It was beautiful, well except for the wind. The wind was insane. The picture below is of a corrugated flood irrigated field.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we had lunch at my newest favorite place. mmmmmmmmm In N Out. What I love about an In N Out, is you only go there to eat hamburgers and fries. Three choices on the menu; single, double or triple with fries. The fries are made literally fresh at each one. You can see them, washing the taters, peeling, them and putting them in the slicer and then carrying them to the fryer. mmmm they are so good. I feel that they have above average help than other fast food places.

Then it was on to the Buckeye. Once you get to the gate, then it's a 30 minute drive to go the 5 miles into the ranch.

San Ysidro, CA my first look at the MEX border

Found these pictures on the internet. Thank you to who's ever they are. The first pic is of the US/Mex border from the Mex side in 1925. The pic below is present day, from the Mex side but appears to be from the opposite direction. It went from 4 lanes to 24 lanes. eeeshhhh, talk about a parking lot ?!

I told you in an earlier post about going to the San Diego Courthouse and researching the deeds and finding the location of his parents property. We also got a photo copy of a plat map with lot sizes etc on it. From that and with the existance of a few roads that still exist, I was able to determine a pretty close proximinty where the house was. The Google Earth image below marks the spot. In 1959 Ansel's mother sold the property to Vivian and Maurice, (Ansel's older sister). Don't know the year, but at some point after that the property was purchased to widen I-5 and the approaches to the border.

The yellow line is the US/Mexican border. To the north of the border (US side) there is a very large factory outlet store complex. Front St is now an alley behind a strip mall. It doesn't exist on the GPS, but it was still here on Google Earth for now any way. On the death certificates, Mother Marshall's listed the address as 241 National, and on Papa's it was listed as Front and Louisiana. On the plat map the south boundary was Front St, the west boundary was National, and the east boundary was Louisiana. On a larger image of Google Earth we can see traces of National and Louisiana on the north side of I-5 and you can see where they tied into Front St. Ansel remembers that there wasn't anything between there property and the Mexican border except a simple barb wire fence.

Here we are parked on what is left of Front St., which is now an alley facing east. One hundred feet NE of the utility pole you see is where the house would be.



The Border behind the shopping complex. It's actually a triple fence. One fence is below the pickup, and has barbed wire on top of it. Then the fence on the other side of the pick up is two fences. There is a series of mega flood lights along the fence too.

As soon as I got out of my car and started to take pictures... these two officers showed up on bicycles to see what I was doing. I asked if I could take their pictures and they said no...

This picture is looking at Mexico on the other side of the fence, there is a very majestic flag blowing in the breeze.

And for my girlfriends who do their nails... this looked pretty cheap?

Bay Shore Park, Chula Vista

Our accomodations in Chula Vista were very nice for $50.00 a night. I was shocked at the price, that included taxes too. They had a common continental breakfast, anad a very nice hot tub which I used every night. Didn't have it in me to try the pool though.

Early every morning I would walk the 1.5 miles down to the Bay Shore Park and out the other side and make a loop back to the room, it would end up being at least 3 miles. My walk took me down past the a Marina Dry Dock business, which is in the left side of the pic, the vacant land in this picture is part of a wildlife sancuary between the hotel and the bay.

The waters there are sooooo blue, the colors are vibrant. The land in the back is Coronado. I was hoping to take a drive across it before we left, but didn't end up with enough time. The pic below is my attempt at a picture with the self timer on my camera sitting on top of a trash receptical.

Ansel and I each have Nextel Direct Connect (cell phone technology walkie talkies) and he can call me anytime there is a cell signal, which I check often. If there is no cell signal I can change them to Direct Talk which gives us a 1-2 mile radius. While his hearing is still a challenge, we have a system of him asking yes and no questions so he can disern my answers. Also if he just chirps, me and doesn't talk, then I check on him. It's our answer to "life alert", which only works with in 100' of your home phone. I also carried the little can of mace with me. It was a very nice area, a snow bird RV park provided lots of walkers in the same area.

Back to Glen Abbey Memorial Park

These palms in the park were exceptionally beautiful. They are surrounding a beautiful water feature. I told you in a earlier post that we had found Ansel's parents graves had been unmarked for 60 years. Ansel was visiting the Memorial Park for the first time, at the time of both of their deaths, the weather and the roads were really bad and he couldn't make the trip down from Burns, OR. After visiting with the park staff, they told us that they would put some temporary markers on the graves, and gave us information on purchasing stones. Ansel wanted to think about the purchase some. The last morning we were in San Diego we went by to see the markers.

Ansel, 94 years old, leaning on his cane (which he just started to use at Christmas time) reflecting on his parents, while looking at their final resting place in the Glen Abbey Memorial Park, Chula Vista, CA.

One more piece of Ansel's facinating life story is put together. It had troubled him that he couldn't remember when his Dad had died or where he was buried.