We have had a quiet week or so. Lots of time spent sitting on the porch look out at the view, reading lots of books and practicing our scrabble. Every year we have a scrabble tournament with our sister-in-law, Miriam, and she usually whips our butts,or at least mine….Kathy can give her a run for her money and comes in second most tournaments. Miriam and Terry will be here in Tuesday, so the tournament will begin in Wednesday.

We drove into Salida last Friday, hoping to go to the Hartman Alpaca Farm, but the were having a veterinary emergency, so we made arrangements to come back on Wednesday (yesterday) and went off and had pedicures.

Sargents is the town that is nearest to Whitepine and everyone in town meets there on Friday night’s for dinner. Tomichi Creek Bar and Grill has become quite the hot spot. We are enjoying getting to know our neighbors better.

In addition to good food, Tomichi Creek has an ice cream counter and they have fabulous ice cream and gelato. We have probably stopped there more than we should have, but we only get one scoop!

We finally got to the Hartman Alpaca Ranch Wednesday morning. Kathy had heard about them through a knitting group to which she belongs. The Hartmans are a delightful couple who are raising these gentle beasts in their retirement. Coincidentally, they are originally from Southern California and one of their son’s actually attended the Junior High School where Kathy taught. They have a little shop that sells the yarn made from their alpacas. It’s all natural, and the color is the actual color of the alpaca. Kathy bought some yarn (each skein has the name of the alpaca who grew the yarn) and I got some dryer balls that are supposed to take the place of dryer sheets. After we shopped, we went out and met the alpacas. We got to feed them treats out of our hands, and meet the ones whose yarn we purchased. What a lovely morning!

After we left the alpaca farm, we drove up to Buena Vista and had lunch at the Buena Viking….specializing in burgers and tots, yum.