Thanksgiving & Dirt. Santee, CA

About 2 years ago, my son Tod and his wife, Char, bought a fixer upper house in Santee and spent the next four months renovating it. They, along with my other son Adam, stripped it down to the studs and did it right: new wiring, plumbing, wallboard, the whole 9 yards. And they did the finish work right too, textured walls and ceilings, attractive moldings and a great selection of warm colors on the walls. Nice!
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The house is on a cul de sac in a quiet residential area and has a fantastic view of the city and surrounding mountains from the rear of the house, see pix. It’s oriented such that the back patio is sunny most of the day and that felt really good because a cold snap came through while we were there, frost on the cars both nights.  That green stuff in front of the house is low maintenance grass - astroturf or whatever they call it these days.
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There were about a dozen of us there for the holiday, the aforesaid plus other members of Char’s family. Fantastic food! We watched some of the parade, some football, topped it off with the annual Punkin Chunkin competition. I really enjoy the creativity, goofiness and just plain fun-loving folks involved in that event. You gotta be a little crazy to spend $50-100K and hundreds of hours building a machine that’s used for 10 minutes one day a year, and no payback except bragging rights. It’s a good kind of crazy though, helps offset all the sick and violent craziness that’s a staple of the nightly news. Good on ‘em, say I.
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En route to (and from) Santee, we drove through desert recreation areas populated with thousands of boondocking RVers with their off-road toys: dune buggies, dirt bikes, Jeeps, ATVs of all kinds. Off-roading is very popular in the SW but holds no attraction for me. Every summer of my teenage years was spent off-roading, pulling all kinds of machinery behind tractors, getting fried by the sun, ending the day totally filthy - eyes, ears, nose and mouth full of grit - and clothing that stood up all by itself. Oh yeah, those were the days!