Nov2018-Mountain Lifestyle-Crestline & Lake Arrowhead edition

Veterans Day Dinner Planned
The 3rd Annual Veteran’s
Day Dinner will take place at the
Twin Peaks Senior and Community
Center in Twin Peaks on November
10th between 4:30 pm and 6:30 pm.
The event is being sponsored by the
Girl Scout Troup #1311. It is also
being co-sponsored by Thrivent Financial
of Lake Arrowhead.
In the last two years, the
event has brought out many veterans
from all across the mountain.
And again this year, all veterans
and their families are all welcome.
The idea is to honor all Veterans and
Did You Know?
There are new Plans for
CHronic-Condition Needs
Medicare Advantage Plans for 2019 in San Bernardino
County can provide extra help for Chronic Care Beneficiaries
with conditions such as:
• COPD • Chronic Heart Condition • Diabetes
These plans may provide coordination care, lower
co-pays for medications for these conditions as
well as certain insulin injections for diabetes.
For Information about these plans and others
call for additional information.
As an Independent Insurance Agent
since 1995 and working with Medicare
Plans since 2001, I provide you with unbiased
information and I am contracted/
certified with several plans in 2019:
thank them for their service.
The address of the event
is at 675 Grandview Rd., in Twin
Peaks. There is a larger representation
of veterans on the mountain
than in other communities
Rick Zane
Lic #0B38031
1-888-424-6208
or 909-824-6208
www.insurancehandbook.com
NASA and JPL’s InSight Mars Lander may pust to rest what’s on the inside
of Mar’s with several detection instruments testeing for Mars Quakes and
type of potential of water. Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL.
The ‘Claw Game’ on Mars
by Steven Peter
If you’ve ever played the
claw machine at an arcade, you
know how hard it can be to maneuver
the metal “hand” to pick up a
prize. Imagine trying to play that
game when the claw is on Mars, the
objects you’re trying to grasp are
far more fragile than a stuffed bear
and all you have is a stitched-together
panorama of the environment
you’re working in. Oh, and
there might be a dust storm.
NASA’s InSight lander mission,
slated to arrive on Mars on
November 26, 2018, will be the
first mission to use a robotic arm to
grasp instruments from the spacecraft
and release them into place on
another planet. These instruments
will help scientists study the deep
interior of Mars for the first time.
“We have a lot riding on
InSight’s robotic arm, so we’ve
been practicing our version of the
claw game dozens of times,” said
Tom Hoffman, InSight’s project
manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“The difference, of course, is that,
unlike the claw machine designers,
our robotic arm team works hard to
allow us to win every time.”
Insight’s robotic arm (called
the Instrument Deployment Arm)
will pick up two sensitive science
packages from the spacecraft deck
and gently lower them to the ground:
The Heat Flow and Physical Properties
Package, which will assess
Mars’ interior energy, and the Seismic
Experiment for Interior Structure,
which will study vibrations of
the ground set off by Mars’ quakes
and meteorite impacts. InSight also
needs to place a Wind and Thermal
Shield over the seismometer, like a
cover — or rounded dish cover —
at a fancy dinner service.
“The robotic arm has to
place everything perfectly,” said
Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, team lead
for Insight’s instrument deployment
system operations at JPL, “But we
like a challenge.”
As with any older machine,
engineers had to refurbish the arm
and customize it for Insight. They
pulled it apart, replaced some pieces,
relubricated it and repainted it.
Engineers also added a color camera
and a grapple (the claw).
An especially clever feature
of this robotic hand is that melting
of paraffin wax -- a common essential
of candles and crayons -- controls
the opening of Insight’s fingers.
To begin the process, an
actuator heats a very pure paraffin
wax to 84°F, which takes about 15
minutes in the average Mars temperature
of about minus 60°F. The
wax expands as it melts and pushes
out a rod that pushes on a spring
that opens the fingers. When the
fingers open, a microswitch turns
off the heater, and the cooling, contracting
wax allows the rod — and
the fingers — to retract. At rest, the
fingers are closed so that if the hand
happens to lose power, so it won’t
drop an instrument.
A few days after landing, Insight
engineers will put the robotic
arm into action. The arm will move
so the camera attached to it can take
images of the area around the lander
site. Back on Earth, engineers
will use those images to figure out
where the instruments can be safely
set down.
Waiting for the Big Meteor Show
in Earth’s Sky
The biggest meteorite show
of the year is on Dec. 13th and 14th,
where some 75 meteors per hour
dazzle sky watchers. In November,
a warm up to the big show, is
on November 17, and 18 when the
Leonid Meteor Shower happens in
the predawn hours of those days.
The number of meteors per hour is
around 15 shooting stars across the
sky.
Photo taken on the north side of Green Valley Lake. Photo by S. Peter
Where to Find Fall Color Around
the Gateway Communities
by Steven Peter
For those lucky enough to
live in higher elevations in Southern
California, we are given a yearly
show in the fall with rich colors
of bright yellow, orange, and red
leaves before dropping onto the
ground. The leaves seem to turn
in our local mountains a little later
than in the Eastern Sierra. But, by
mid-October to early November,
most have either blown off with the
Santa Ana winds or are just hanging
in there to fall soon after the first
frost. Quaking Aspen always show
their brilliant yellow color along
Highway 18 going towards Big
Bear Lake as you drive to higher elevations
up into the mountains.
The higher the elevation,
the quicker the leaves have turned.
The phrase ‘turned’ in this sense,
means that it has changed or developed
new color. People who search
out color are called ‘leaf peepers’
and usually traverse areas of higher
elevation. In Southern California,
most deciduous trees that are ‘color
changers’ are in larger quantity in
the mountains. The cooler climates
display the better range in color at
the higher elevations.
When coming up Highway
330, you can spot the yellow leaves
of the oaks that are changing earlier
along the highway. Highway 18
shows color here and there until
you arrive into Arrowbear Lake and
spot the large Quaking Aspen along
the highway next to the Valero gas
station. Quaking Aspens glitter silvery
green in the spring and summer
but turn a bright yellow in the
fall due to the loss of chlorophyll.
Approximately two miles down
the road past Arrowbear Lake
is the turnoff for Green Valley
Lake. Taking that road in either
early morning or late afternoon,
the sun glows through
the yellowing leaves to give
the appearance of an otherworldly
hue. Additionally, on a
quiet morning or late afternoon
with no wind, you might catch
a beautiful serene view of the
lake with the fall color surrounding
and mirroring it up to the sky. Make
sure you have a camera with you as
you don’t want to miss this scenery.
Green Valley Lake has some of
the best colors in the area due to
the larger number of oak trees and
higher elevation. Being at 7,000
feet, the lake is higher than even
Big Bear Lake. The back side of
the lake (across from Green Valley
Lake Road), has more of the brighter
colors.
For the less adventurous,
and where you can walk more into
the forest, lies the Heaps Peak Arboretum.
The Arboretum is about seven
miles west on Highway 18 from
Running Springs. A great variety of
trees and fall color will greet you
as you walk the easy .07-mile hike.
An interpretive trail will explain
the different trees and plants native
to the San Bernardino Mountains
throughout the hike. Along the way
you may see lots of green Bracken
Fern on the hillsides turning brown
and hibernating for the winter.
If you would like to get a
glorious 360-degree view, a quick
drive up to Keller Peak and Children’s
Forest just off Highway 18
would be just the ticket. The spectacular
view from Children’s Forest
will display the view around
the forest and showcase the lakes
among the fall color. And if you
are not afraid of heights, try Keller
Peak, where you can see the desert
to the north, the San Bernardino
Valley and beyond to the south, and
on a clear day, the reflection of the
ocean in the far distance.
A New-England type view from Wilderness
Road, Running Springs. Photo by S. Peter
These brilliant red maples can be found at Fireman’s Park, next to the
Running Springs Library. Photo by Steve Peter
This idyllic scene was taken at Green Valley Lake last Fall. Photo by S. Peter
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Page 18 Mountain Lifestyle (C) November 2018
November 2018 Mountain Lifestyle (C) Page 19