Glenn's Underground Cabin Update

[glenn kangiser]

Providence Ghost Town and Bonanza King Mine Story


http://mojavedesert.net/desert-fever/providence.html



I didn't realize I visited two historic sites instead of one at the mine...




I noted lack of welding but no square nails estimating the ruins to be around 1920 or so.  I didn't realize it also went to much earlier dates.



Though it looked pretty safe I did not walk too far down into the drift...short on time and .... lazy ... I guess

[rick91351]

We have been through there from Parker and Needles both.  I love the area but hated the close packed high dollar RV parks.  Ellen is hardly impressed with any of it.  Her cousin has a winter home there in Havasu.  The house is way way nice.   If it is her winter home her house in Fountain Valley must be something else.

Very interesting the Bonanza King - good payer - some current interest in the area as well.   I can assume the sono tube legs on the barrel stove is not circa 1880's    Nor the galvy tank in the photo.     Very good looking tight hard rock in the drift.  Cheap to mine does not need a lot of timbers like around here.  But here doesn't take so much powder like there.   

[glenn kangiser]

In Havasu City - I asked a local kid if there was anything else to see besides the London Bridge....

Nope.... His uncle worked on it and he had lived there for twenty years.  I guess he should know.

The drift at the mine sloped downhill rather steeply.. probably at least 10 percent.  I went 4 or 5 hundred feet in and could have kept going - it was like a freeway compared to a lot of mines.  Didn't see much change where I was and turned around and came back out.

I assume a lot of the stuff left there was from later days at the mine...



The crusher in the top of the hopper shows built by Fulton Iron Works.. SF California... read that when I blew up the photo... it was about 30 or 40 feet from me when I took the pix.

I have to assume a lot of the stuff was from the final workings of the mine... part of the early stuff burned. ... just a bit of modern stuff noted around...

[rick91351]

The lady at the RV Park at Havasu that checked us in was about as friendly as a rarttlesnake.  Her only comment was hope you have a big boat or a sand buggy other wise there is nothing here.  We stayed the one evening and was gone come morning.  Even the people staying there were sort of stuck on them selves.  One guy early thirties had a new Vette parked by this new fifthwheel and was batting the constant dust off both.  I tried to kid him about pulling the fifth wheel with the Vette.  He informed me he had a new Ford F-350 for pulling the fifthwheel parked by the entrance to the RV park.  Dude I am so impressed with you.... almost as much as you are with yourself.  GRRR!!!    Almost......

I agree with the freeway assessment.   Most likely modernized the entrance and all the last time they ran it.        

[glenn kangiser]

After I was in town a bit at Havasu I could see they were not really my kind of people... so went off to explore...

[rick91351]

The other freaky weird place we stayed at last year was Blythe, Ca.

It was not the one upsmanship of Havasu.  To me it was a Stephen King novel meeting a John Grishim read centered around an RV park.  Sort of one of those place you can not put your finger on it but I would bet there is a lot stuff happening here but not in the open.  So glad to see the place in the rear view mirror of life.   

[glenn kangiser]

For the most part the people of Tehachapi have been very helpful and friendly. 

No bad encounters so far. 

A couple days ago I hopped on the motorcycle and went to the Borax plant at Boron, Ca.  About 50 miles I guess rough guess.



Kind of a cool place with the worlds largest open pit borax mine.




A panoramic view since it is so big... one mile across and 2 miles wide...

[glenn kangiser]

I failed to mention that these pix were taken at the visitor center at the mine.  They have made a very nice visitor center on top of the overburden pile at the south edge of the mine.

Complete with a full size 20 mule team wagon train... [ouch]





There are a few more things to see outside....





And a ton of things to see inside as well as an educational movie and many educational displays also...





Movie history...




Various stars who came from Death Valley Days...






Cool specimens displayed...





How about one that's about 4 feet x 4 feet?




More history...all around...





...as well as real samples free to take home ....mounted on a post card size card and labeled nicely...





It cost me $2 to get in on my motorcycle and they donate that to local charities.  All in all a nice place to visit and likely not bad to work at.

[Redoverfarm]

 

[ben2go]

That was a great trip.So now having learned all that new info about borax/boron,how do you feel about this write up? http://www.health-science-spirit.com/borax.htm

[glenn kangiser]

Wow... Interesting stuff there Ben.  I'll have to try it out and report back.... 

[rick91351]

That was a great trip.So now having learned all that new info about borax/boron,how do you feel about this write up? http://www.health-science-spirit.com/borax.htm

Once again the pharmaceutical and agricultural complex shows its true plumage.  A lady up here has tried this for arthritis and has had great luck with it.  So surprising we never will wake up to the problems of artificial fertilizer or inputs at they are referred to as.  We toss 'green manure' in to landfill never thinking WOW I could compost my grass clippings, I could use the sawdust and shavings from the wood shop.  Then turn around and buy inputs $$$ and choke out the vital nutrients we should be consuming all for convenience  OH Well.....     

[MountainDon]

Once again the pharmaceutical and agricultural complex shows its true plumage.     

Borax is too cheap. No one is going to get rich suggesting using it. No side effects according to that article. Can't have that now can we? It's better to prescribe another drug, make more money for the big pharma and the shareholders.

[ben2go]

I'm going to try it to see if it will help some of my ailments.

[Don_P]

Neat pics  There is, or was, a good series of articles on borax on the Rio Tinto website.
I've done some research on borate through the years and although I don't discount the paper, boron is an essential element of life, do go carefully in ingesting it directly. Sort of along the same lines as the way big ag treats the soil he is advocating treating the body as something to just hit with a concentrated chemical. That isn't the intended route into our body... they seem to be advocating it like fertilizer for humans. It is an essential soil micronutrient and is one that is tested for and ammended when we do our soil sampling.  It is a growth regulator in proper quantity. I have killed grass with a small spill... which the deer then treated as a mineral lick and cleaned up. In relatively high concentration I use it to prevent insect and decay damage in wood. Do look up and read the MSDS's for pure DOT (disodium octaborate tetrehydrate) such as solubor or timbor. There can be consequences of OD'ing, one of the first signs in males is the opposite of what the paper was touting performance wise  . We are finding in our fertilzer/ pill dependant culture that we are missing the mark though. many of these minerals that we have stripped from the soil in our simplistic view of what plants and animals need are indeed very necessary. If we get the minerals and the combination right for proper interaction (these things act in concert, holistically, not alone) in a pasture soil and then forage right, things like pink eye, stillborns, parasite problems, skin and hoof problems largely disappear... we aren't any different  . Dose and route makes the anemia or the poison. Direct ingestion of one chemical is not how we evolved, get it in proper balance in the soil, then in the food, and then in us. It acts in concert with other minerals for proper function in our bodies... but it does indeed play an important role.

Off the soapbox 

[ben2go]

Neat pics  There is, or was, a good series of articles on borax on the Rio Tinto website.
I've done some research on borate through the years and although I don't discount the paper, boron is an essential element of life, do go carefully in ingesting it directly. Sort of along the same lines as the way big ag treats the soil he is advocating treating the body as something to just hit with a concentrated chemical. That isn't the intended route into our body... they seem to be advocating it like fertilizer for humans. It is an essential soil micronutrient and is one that is tested for and ammended when we do our soil sampling.  It is a growth regulator in proper quantity. I have killed grass with a small spill... which the deer then treated as a mineral lick and cleaned up. In relatively high concentration I use it to prevent insect and decay damage in wood. Do look up and read the MSDS's for pure DOT (disodium octaborate tetrehydrate) such as solubor or timbor. There can be consequences of OD'ing, one of the first signs in males is the opposite of what the paper was touting performance wise  . We are finding in our fertilzer/ pill dependant culture that we are missing the mark though. many of these minerals that we have stripped from the soil in our simplistic view of what plants and animals need are indeed very necessary. If we get the minerals and the combination right for proper interaction (these things act in concert, holistically, not alone) in a pasture soil and then forage right, things like pink eye, stillborns, parasite problems, skin and hoof problems largely disappear... we aren't any different  . Dose and route makes the anemia or the poison. Direct ingestion of one chemical is not how we evolved, get it in proper balance in the soil, then in the food, and then in us. It acts in concert with other minerals for proper function in our bodies... but it does indeed play an important role.

Off the soapbox 

I'll have to do a soil sample.Our ground has been gardened since '54 and I an sure the soil needs amending.We have some areas were nothing will grow,even after turning in fresh top soil.

[glenn kangiser]

Last night I went to Costco and got a new Windows 8 computer.  They had a great discount there making it affordable.... My old one just didn't have the resources to keep up with the things I want to do... [ouch]

I have been wanting to do something with my Myanmar photos and vids but every time I tried to load an editing program on the old one it would lock up. 

Toshiba Satellite S55t .... It has a touchscreen which I feel is pretty necessary for some of the functions of Windows 8 .... 16gb Ram ... Core i7 processor....1TB hard drive.. now I can lose everything at once...

Just getting stuff updated and set up now, so soon back to my abnormal self I think...

http://www.toshiba.com/us/computers/laptops/satellite/S50/S55T-A5334

[glenn kangiser]

Progress on the train wreck....





Well.... I have been informed they are about ready for me at work again....


 

This is going to be a poured in place wall... and I have to weld 10 16' rebars to the plate at the top of that ladder... except they didn't give me enough room to do it and the plate  was supposed to be set backward instead of forward... ok... back to the drawing board... documented the problems and sent them in.... waiting for a solution now... for a while... I still have work to do though... after I order the proper size rebars for the job... they are not here yet either... [ouch]


That's OK though... they don't bother me... I have food.... lot's of good food.....





Getting used to the new computer and Toshiba already included a utility to make it function somewhat like the old one besides it's new features.... upgraded to 8.1 now and things seem pretty good.

Under the new face a lot of the features in the guts are similar to or the same as the old functions.  I can live with it I guess. 

[glenn kangiser]

I only ate the clam chowder and the cream puff for lunch... the rest went to Sassy ...and then I only ate half of it....



Going home for the  mail every weekend usually and everything is working... power is still on... batteries are still charged... food is still frozen in both freezers... in fact the batteries were on absorb when I was there Saturday so staying up quite well.  The animals are always happy to see me. 

I cut down the pumping to one cycle daily so the animals always have water.  Whitlock checks things daily also but usually nothing he has to do with the power... checks water for problems after a hard freeze but the place is pretty good for being off grid. 

Cool things to explore.. I found this again after 40 years....



Unfortunately our illustrious government caretakers are letting the elements destroy it and are doing nothing to preserve history except put it off limits to the public.  Oh yes... that is what we pay them for... drive around in a pickup paid for by the taxpayers locking the owners (taxpayers) out of their resources... history etc. what a waste....

[rick91351]

Glenn I am glad I am not the only one that has about had their fill of this.  I don't know what is going on but they are not managing anything.  They are just letting it all go to pot.  May be that is the problem to much pot.   

[glenn kangiser]

Hmmm that was the unofficial cause of the Big Meadow Fire that was set during mid summer heat with no preparations... forestry I believe... they were unofficially known as "The Green Team"....

That one cost millions to fight.

I have more pix but would some overzealous parasite want to see If I may have ventured into the "anti-public" zone accidentally?  Power trippers... you can't ever tell what they  will do and they will fight us with the taxpayers money so it is unlikely we could win or defend ourselves.  The above pix was taken from outside the off limits fence with a zoom.  There is another complete homestead a little ways down the road that is also off limits to the official owners... We The People...



Again from outside the Nazi Parasite line with a zoom....

[glenn kangiser]

Bureau of Land Mis-Management....

[ben2go]

Bureau of Land Mis-Management....

2nd that.

[rick91351]

I would a heck of a lot rather right now have the BLM managing things than the USFS.  I could write volumes on USFS road closures.  Ones we need closed they vow to keep open.  Those we need open the study to close.  They are land locking private property by doing so in some cases.  I have a USFS easement  through my property to their property.  They will not aid in signage of my property.  Mean while people leave the gate down cows go from my property on to theirs and they want to trespass me.  I can not lock the gate because it is an easement on to USFS property.  Woodcutters have cut trees on my property thinking it is USFS even though clearly marked.  Private and not trespassing.  Then hunting season is a joke unto itself.  They go out of their way to be a pain. 

[glenn kangiser]

I have been on roads where they closed off access to private property by locking their gates.  I heard the landowner may make the gate disappear......