Yuma Daytrip

Our "Happy Tuesday" group took a field trip to Yuma to explore two venues: the Imperial Date Farm which is technically partially in Arizona and partially in California, and the Old Yuma Territorial Prison. Two fantastic stops with a luncheon at Lute's Casino (which used to be a casino but no longer is).

 At the date farm, the trees were in their dormant phase but we got a good look at them and a tour of the processing plant. At the prison, we enjoyed the personal stories (maybe enjoyed is not the right word) of a great many of the former inmates. Some very colorful characters inhabited this place for a time and it was certainly not an easy time at all. Think about 6 prisoners in a small, unheated, uncooled stone cell not really big enough for six people with only one small bucket to be used as a toilet. It was hard to look at the cells and imagine just how bad that must have been. No white collar cells at this prison.

 

Slide Show Date Farm and Territorial Prison:

Christmas Time 2012

Some construction projects at our annual site, some good food in the tent with our friends, some wildlife around camp, and a few specially conceived Christmas present for "them that deserved em." It was another good season of the year in Arizona. Nationwide we go into the new year with the same political crap of the old year, and facing the prospects that even if a "deal" is agreed to, we just may wind up worse off than if one isn't reached. We have to swallow hard to keep a positive attitude, but there are some things more important than all that, I guess, and we just have to try to zero in on those aspects of our lives.

For us personally, it was a marvelous year. For our coach, it was a piss poor year, which forced us to deal with our own budget at the same time we fretted about the country's. Still, nothing exists in a vacuum, so we try our level best to keep an eye on everything. And enjoy life all the while. Sometimes that is easier than other times.

 Linda starts the pot of beans for Christmas dinner in the tent.

Barlow is gifted a block of wood for under the gas pedal of his Ranger to keep him from speeding (anything over 10 mph) in the park.

 We bubble wrapped Franny to keep her from bruising herself any further. Now there's a Christmas present you won't see very often.

 "Ma and Pa"- a sculpture we made to hang in our garden with a couple cow bells from my parent's house.

 Marilyn stains one of the two new plant benches we built

 And the hummers partied on.....

To end the year, just a few pics and couple slide shows of life here in the winter.....





Happy New Year to you and yours! See you in the new year!

Welcoming The Baby Cheeses

Don't think for one second I am trying to be sacrilegious at Christmas time or any time. But when I posted on Facebook a few days ago that I had received the cheese making supplies I had ordered from Amazon.com to launch my "I want to learn how to make cheese" mission, my rather witty kid Derek commented that I was getting ready to "welcome the baby cheeses" for Christmas. Have to admit I laughed out loud at that as did a few others. Clever to say the least!

And so a few days later we located a source for some traditionally pasteurized milk, brought it back to the coach and made our first attempt at some cheese- choosing mozzarella as our first try. Halleluiah. It worked. Now I missed photographing a few steps along the whey (I mean way) because cheese making happens fast- by the minute, by the temperature, by the chemical recipe, and there were a few steps like stretching and salting that we just couldn't film and do properly so the photos had to pay the price. Next time.

So our first results were very promising. Cheese looked like and tasted like mozzarella cheese. Could have been seasoned a bit better- but all in all, not that bad! Definitely NOT a deal breaker or something to make us quit right here right now. Not sure what recipe we try next, but that is part of the fun of something new.

Desert Rain

It's the desert! Enough with the rain already!

I think this is day three in a row with rain, and while it's wonderful to see it rain in the desert, I'm thinking about an hour or so is good enough. We've already had way more rain in the last couple days than we had for a 6 month stretch last winter. Not complaining though, just anticipating the return of warm sunny days with gusto.

So here are a few images you won't get to see very often this time of year in the desert.....or so I hope.

 

Bouse Like House; Not Boose Like Moose

It's Bouse, like "house." It's a thriving metropolis a few miles away from Brenda. OK, it's a large city near Brenda. No? OK, a huge town near Brenda. Oh heck, it's a tiny little village but it really is only a short ride across the desert by atv from Brenda- about 18 miles, and we made the ride a couple days ago to take in the Bouse Christmas Bazaar. And it was- bizarre so to speak, but well worth the ride which included a side trip following Dandy Don back in to the hills and a canyon we call "Sheep Canyon." It's a beautiful piece of real estate and while many others have reported sheep sightings in the canyon, I personally had never found one back in there. But on this day, they were pretty much everywhere. A single ram as we headed back in, then an old boys club with four more rams and then a group of four ewes. We had plenty of time so we took plenty of time to just watch what these fine animals were doing. Many were eating- browsing on creosote bush, Palo Verde scrub brush and small mesquite trees. Nearly all of them seemed intent on doing some head rubbing against the saguaro cactus, and we couldn't be sure whether they were just scratching an itch or whether they were removing spines so they could take a bite out of the water storing capabilities of this mighty cactus. Our visit to Bouse included a visit to the assay office and an old pit mine where we mined a few old metal relic pieces to bring back for the "desert junk" garden I'm starting.

 

Back In The Saddle Again

Many thousands of miles have we rolled since last I posted to Gundyville. During that time we drove back east to Pennsylvania to visit my mother and do a few chores "at home" then we moved back down to Florida for the annual physical and financial checkups and now we are back in Arizona at our winter headquarters. As we had driven this route and done these very things quite a few times it felt too much like old news to be trying to keep up with posts, not to mention that that is one powerful lot of driving and a bit tiring and grueling to boot. This was the 13th time we have crossed the country in the last seven years!

But like I said, we are back in the saddle again. Had an all day quad ride into the desert to see a bunch of old mines and helped Lynn locate some geocaches on that first ride. It was pretty much an all day affair and we were rewarded with aching bones and muscles but with smiling faces. It is good to be back. Nearly all the gang is back and raring to go. Our Happy Tuesday tent is re-established and it would seem that no one lost any cooking skills over the summer- the treats have been really fine as in the past.

Here at our site in F-1, the gardens are pruned and looking super. The vegetable garden is planted and everything is up and running. Flowers are in hanging baskets, new hummingbird feeders are drawing lots of hummers (and not so many bees as last year) and we have stared a few new projects here and there at our place and around the park as well. Marilyn is in the Christmas decorating spirit- our tree - all 20 inches of it- is up and we have shatter proof balls on the mostly dead but making a comeback mesquite tree on the back wash.

A couple days ago a small group of us (I think there were 9 of us) got up at 5:30 and headed out on a full moon into sunrise desert ride that was totally awesome. Started out in only moon light (very dark to be riding) and set up a camp to make breakfast just as the sun came up behind a hill picked specially for the occasion. The black silhouettes of the saguaro cactus and mountains against the brilliant red sky at sunrise was all we had hoped for. There are only two good reasons to get up early when you don't have to: night riding like this in the desert is one and fishing is the other.

A couple of still shots for you today, a slide show, and a video clip if it will cooperate. And let me just explain that I will try to have this winter's posts be a bit more micro and or macro depending on what is going on. I plan to do considerably less of the story telling, unless of course a really good one comes along, and more of an up close and personal look at the things we see and do while we are playing in the desert. Hopefully that will mean more pictures, fewer words, but we'll have to see how things shape up.

Just one more small explanation for what you will see in the pics. We did not make breakfast like the cowboys used to do. No cast iron skillets, no steak on the fire coals, no kettle of coffee on an open fire. Nope. This was a ride hard and cook fast operation. To that end we all filled a quart sized zip lock bag with a couple raw scrambled eggs and whatever else we wanted to have in our "omelet"- mine for example had some slices of smoked turkey sausage and some cooked up bacon nibbles. Some folks added a few slices of mushroom. When we "made camp" we lit a propane tank hooked up to a single burner stove, heated a big kettle of water and then all threw our baggie omelets in the boiling water. By the time we had our sunrise photos well in hand, we had breakfast in a bag all ready- just dump onto a paper plate and eat. I'm not gonna tell you they were the most beautiful omelets I have ever seen, but they sure were tasty and doing the dishes was a total no-brainer. It's for sure we are gonna do this again!

 

Buckaroo Bob and Prescious Polly

Back quite a ways when we first started our great RV adventure, we met Bob and Polly in Wachula, FL. They have been dear friends ever since and we have hooked up with them and their many friends all across the country- this time in Thane Wyoming, where they have established a "summer residence." Great place. Fly fish the Snake River. Do some white water rafting. ATV ride the many trails though the mountains and along the many rivers. Take a gondola ride to a mountain top cafe in Jackson Hole. Plenty of fun stuff to do and we did as much of that as we could in the allotted week there. Plus- Bob helped my a great deal with figuring out what is going on with many of the recent issues of our coach- he used to have the same make and model. Much appreciated. Images from Thane, Wyoming and Jackson Hole.

 

Yellowstone 6 - Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces

I thought the Old Faithful loop was a painful hike....but Mammoth Hot Spring terraces and all its many hundreds of stairs hurt even worse. I think the collective nature of being in the park driving and hiking day after day has taken a toll on us old farts. I think we have decided that this last week was the dividing timeline between middle aged and officially old. Or so say the legs anyhow. The altitude hasn't helped much I am sure, and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to look back and blame our fatigue on that.

Mammoth Hot Springs are vertical, not horizontal like many of the springs in the park. Covering them from one end to the other hurts, but it sure is nifty to look at and produces such amazing sites as Canary Springs which is actually of waterfall of boiling water that has built up the hillside with its highly calcified water content. Add to that the thermophile bacteria and you have a recipe for rare intrigue and beauty- the likes of which IS here on earth but much more resembles what you might expect to find on some other distant planet. This is our final chapter from within the park. Don't know if time will allow more from West Yellowstone Village where we are camped or not. Still dealing with a slide issue on the coach- the part should have been here and done last week but that didn't work according to plans and so we won't know if the part will arrive before our scheduled departure and/or if it will solve the problem when it does. I do know for sure we are sick of dealing with it- so hopefully it all comes together at the last minute and we hit the road with renewed confidence. Hope so. Hope so. Hope so.

Yellowstone 5- The Old Faithful Basin

Last post closed with the eruption of Old Faithful, the presumptive "must see" of Yellowstone National Park. Yea, I guess. But there is so much more that is even more fascinating in one way or another that gathering in the great outdoor amphitheater with as many as a thousand people to await its timely eruption was almost a bit of a letdown. To us, it felt much better to get off by ourselves as much as possible to investigate the far reaching features of the park. The park is enormous, and even on a day when thousands and thousands of people are roaming the park along with the buffalo, it is possible to find solitude to enjoy the grandeur of our nation.......

with one exception!

And Marilyn commented on it one day as we drove endlessly through the park. You see, we have been at this game for a long time. We can spot wildlife be it large or small, with the best of them. In fact we often make it a competitive sport on a drive. First one to spot each roadside animal wins that round and so on. And in the park, this was no exception- we spotted much of what we saw. BUT- there is no escaping the fact that if you are driving along and come upon a bunch of cars and people yielding binoculars and cameras, you can pretty much rest assured that they have spotted something that you have not yet seen, and so, like the eagle, you swoop in to see what you may be missing. This works to help more people see more stuff, and I have no problem with that. But on a few days this became a bit of a problem in its own right. To wit: One day we watched as the guy up in front of us pulled over to the side of the road. Before we got there, there were nearly 25 vehicles pulled over to see what he was seeing. But as we cruised by slowly so as not to miss a special opportunity ourselves, we realized that there was actually nothing at all there to see except the side of the road. We chuckled about that....and as I continued down the road toward the next sighting, Marilyn said: That poor guy probably just pulled over to take a leak and there were 25 tourists with cameras pointed right at him...."

This post reveals what is out and about in the Old Faithful Basin- way more good stuff than Old Faithful itself. And seeing the area makes for a long hike. Too long for us perhaps, but we did it anyway and found it almost impossible to put one foot in front of the other by the time we made it back to the Inn and the parking lot. Tired puppies! But worth it as I hope you will see here....

Yellowstone 4: Journey To The Center Of The Earth

They say the center of the earth is still a ball of molten lava which churns constantly and tries despite its constraints to reach the surface if for no other reason than to cool off a little. Well, Yellowstone provides at least a glimpse of what lies deep below our feet as we walk this earth for the whatever time we are allotted. I was tempted to say that visiting the geo-thermal features of the park is like standing on the rim of an active volcano and peering down at the bottom of it. But the reality is that when you are in Yellowstone you are standing ON TOP OF the caldera that once was an active volcano, and you are taking a tour in essentially what will again become an active volcano at some point. Moreover, the Yellowstone Volcanic activity area is one of, if not THE largest area of such activity in the world. Simply put: in the future, this could well be the source of the site of the largest active volcano on planet earth. You get a sense of that here. You are not afraid. But you take the signs that tell you to stay on the marked trails very seriously....because you can see the boiling water and mud and steam just below the surface and in fact coming to the surface all around you- all the time. It is impressive to say the least.

So in this post and with the images today, I would like to share our look into the earth below us....