LAZY BONES.
Day 142 – 32 degrees this morning, a few clouds, mostly sunny. Rob was up at sunrise, took a walk down into the canyon to the creek, and took some pictures. The girls do like it here now and have settled in. We sat outside in the morning sun as it warmed up. Most of the campers were leaving today.
WE JUST CAN’T MAKE UP OUR MINDS!
Day 141 – Beginning of Week 21. Rob was up at 6:15 a.m.; I got up at 6:45. 44 degrees and sunny, but a little haze. We didn’t want to hang out too long because we had the potential of a long drive ahead of us today. This was a really good campground, and the environment here was excellent for us to unwind. We really appreciated being so close to the NWR since we visited so many times. We hope to find more of the same.
251 miles
BIRDING 101, THE LIFE & TIMES OF A BIRDER.
Day 140 – Another beautiful, clear night – the sky full of stars. This place could grow on you. 6:30 a.m., sunny, 38 degrees. The girls were quite the group of rambunctious kitties, running from one end of the RV to the other, and dragging along the toys that Ron, Sophie, & Maple gave them. Wee Haw!
Day 139 – Okay, so I’m re-evaluating my initial opinions of the desert. I’m totally a tree-hugger & really had no desire to travel through or stay at desert sites, thinking they were just barren, flat, sandy places of no color other than shades of dry brown. Wrong. We paid the campground hosts for an additional 2 nights, and we may stay longer than that, who knows? (The same thing happened when I was dreading the so-called flat & boring middle States. Wrong again. Not all flat and certainly not all boring. The U.S.A. has so much diversity and variety to discover. Slap me silly next time I am Captain Bringdown saying I don’t want to go here or there!) We love it here.
ON THE WATER AGAIN!
Day 138 – Sunny and clear this morning at 6:45 a.m., 36 degrees. It warms up quickly here. It’s a fat old sun. We waited until it reached 60 degrees at 11 a.m. and headed out to go kayaking. We launched from Palo Verde County Park into the Oxbow Lake which is an off-shoot of the Colorado River, without the wind & tidal pull. It was wonderful. Although the wind was up to above 10 MPH, we had no problems. The long, narrow Lake was protected on both sides by tall reeds & grasses. They drew various ducks and Coots to the Lake & we had a great time kayaking near to them.
STALKING BIRDS AGAIN!
Day 137 – 38 degrees, beautiful sunny day, 6:45 a.m. We did some catching up on things, then packed a lunch of egg salad sandwiches & went to the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge. To get our bearings, we drove past the Refuge Headquarters and took the Levee Road all the way to the end at Cibola Lake. All dirt roads along the Colorado River or on dikes with canals on either side for irrigation. At one point, we stopped to take pictures of White Pelicans grouped together on a little island. There was a man there who was a Birder, too. He was from Montana. He and Rob proceeded to debate whether a specific bird, way far away, was a Yellowleg or a Willet: Rob looking through his camera lens, the gentleman looking through his binoculars. “Um, but look at the beak. No, he’s not the right color. I wish we could see the legs better.” And so on. I took a cute picture of the two of them. Then we left, and had our lunch at the end of the road.
CHANGING CAMPGROUNDS AGAIN!
Day 136 – This area seems nice; we think we’ll stay a little while. It looks like a good place to unwind & regroup. We need to catch up on the blog, do our monthly budget (we’re behind on that, too), answer e-mail (we definitely owe people responses), and generally just play catch-up. But this campground, if it really IS a campground, is too close to the highway & not where we’d want to spend several days. Time to find another place to stay.
25 miles
ON THE ROAD AGAIN!
Day 135 – We’d like to thank our friends & family for taking the time to visit with us during our two-week stay in the L.A. area. It was so good seeing all of you! After much thought but no time to do research (therefore a quick decision), we’re going to head south and east next, rather than back up north along the coast. We miss the trees & definitely will go back to explore more of southern Oregon and northern California at another time. But because it’s winter & there are snowy and icy mountain passes to cross if we go north, then east, we’re going to try something new & completely different for us: the desert of the southwest. We have no idea where we will stay tonight. We’re just taking the quickest way out of town & driving east to get out of the Big City; then when we (or the cats) have had enough driving, we’ll stop somewhere and camp.
250 miles
Day 134 – Beginning of Week 20. This morning we did four loads of laundry & took care of some paperwork before leaving for Rob’s moms’ house. We ran a few errands first: we found a small one-room, post office in an old area of San Pedro & mailed our NY school taxes, stopped for gas (amazing how the price of gas can vary so dramatically, as much as 60 cents per gallon, from one corner to the next!), and at a grocery store, picked up fresh red bell peppers & Yukon gold potatoes for a recipe we’re making tomorrow night. Didn’t get to his mom’s until about 2:30, but we stayed awhile and visited, Rob fixing a couple of things that had broken (this is why we call him “Mr. Fixit”).
Day 133 – This morning we made a huge batch of Guacamole, our contribution to this afternoon’s lunch at Rob’s brothers’ house. While smashing avocados, we watched 3 little boys playing outside our RV. Their parents must’ve turned them loose to destroy the campground, because we watched them meticulously ripping the beautiful flowers & plants apart in the nicely landscaped island on one side of our RV, then stuffing the flowers and plant bits into their pockets, presumably to take them home to their mom? How sweet, LOL.