Baby Ground Squirrels, Groceries, Getting Ready to Go

As we sat with our coffee/tea and our iPads reading the news this morning, Maggie was doing her Sphinx impersonation on the back of the couch.  She was watching out her window and was not moving a muscle except for her eyes.  Just at the edge of the site a mother squirrel was standing watch like a meerkat while her two small babies were playing.  They peaked out of the hole, scampered out, and, like animal siblings everywhere, chased each other, wrestled, jumped on their mom and just had a rollicking good time.  Meanwhile, Maggie was transfixed watching them. Of course, when we finally went outside she ran straight to that hole and stuck her nose in it. Tonight when we went for our evening walk I almost stepped on one of them.  It was standing stock still so as not to be seen and since it was the same color as the ground, I didn't see it - funny how that works.  I probably got within 2 inches of it before it took off for home and startled me.  If they weren't rodents they'd be cute little guys!

On our walk this morning Maggie and I encountered three people!  I was surprised.  One guy stays year round and is on staff to watch over the park.  He was out in his golf cart to check for snakes on the path. (none found)  He said that he, too, was surprised about how many people are still here but they are the ones from the upper midwest where the weather is still yucky. We did see several rigs pull out today, however.  It won't be long before it's down to about 15 people for the summer - that's the number they guy gave me this morning.  

We stocked up on enough groceries to get us to Pensacola - at least I hope so.  The fridge and pantry are looking better and we have a choice now of what we can eat.  Well, as much of a choice as we ever have, anyway.

We decided to go ahead and leave tomorrow.  Roger fueled the truck while we were out.  We thought it best to give us an extra day leeway since the weather between here and there has been a bit crazy and we really have nothing to do here.  We'll take off in the morning with our destination of Lordsburg, NM - about 260 miles.

I worked on the end of the month financial stuff this afternoon while Roger prepped the RV - tightening lug nuts, lubing bearings, checking tire pressure, emptying gray water, all the other safety stuff he does, etc.  

It got pretty warm this afternoon - around 84 - and we had a breeze - not quite a wind.  It kept us cool if we were in the shade.  After being cold for so long, we opted not to turn on the air and it did get a bit uncomfortable inside, but now that the sun is down it is starting to cool off.  

More Bloomin' Cacti (and a Palo Verde)

(as you can see the green grass under the trees 

that was there a month ago is now golden brown)

At Home in the RV Park

Maggie decided this morning we needed an early start.  She had us up at 6am, which is about an hour before we normally get going.  She was raring to go - until she got in the truck and she pulled the hyper-as-heck act on us.  It took about 45 minutes before she calmed down and then she spent the majority of the day with her head in my lap.  She did have a separation anxiety issue at lunch when we each went to the restroom (separately) but once we got back and had lunch she was fine.  

Another lunch in the truck day - another VERY windy day.  (We think we may have offended the wind gods somehow.)  It was unrelenting all day until the sun started going down this evening and right now it is as calm as calm can be.  

After we got off of I-40 and headed south on US93 the terrain and vegetation became interesting and fun to look at.  Forests of saguaro followed by a forest of Joshua trees.  The wildflowers I reported were so wonderful the first of the month when we went home are on their last legs.  The cacti, however, are blooming like crazy!  The ocotillo I saw were exceptionally pretty with their green leafy stalks and red blossom on the top. 

The agricultural fields east of Phoenix and down here near Florence are green with alfalfa and corn.  

 

We didn't have quite the fun sitings as yesterday but we had a pretty hairy ride through Phoenix.  Couldn't believe the traffic for a Saturday afternoon.  We will NOT be coming down here through the city when we come back to winter.  We will find another way around.  It was tough enough without the RV behind us.

The RV park is like a ghost town but there are more people still here than we anticipated so it's not completely deserted.  Our street is pretty empty, though.  

It was nice coming home to the RV. In some respects it feels as if we never left.  That's probably because we left so many things here and there was even food in the freezer and cupboards.  

Maggie was happy to see the place and even happier when we went for a walk so she could check out all the ground squirrel holes.  The birds were busy with the cactus blossoms.  

Tomorrow we will go into town and "make groceries."  We will decide tomorrow whether we leave on Monday or Tuesday.  We are leaning toward Monday to give us a couple extra days leeway in case we have to lay over somewhere because of weather or wind or whatever.  Right now, though, we are in no hurry to cross Texas with all the storms or Louisiana with the flooding. It's going to be an interesting trip for sure.  

We are tired after two days and 814 driving miles so it'll be an early night! 

Yesterday's photos

Standing water in the desert outside of Fallon

Lots of snow on the eastern slopes of the Sierras
as seen from US95

Rose garden at our favorite pit stop in Beatty

Electric Vehicle and Tesla charging stations.  The guy in the
Tesla looked a bit bored sitting there waiting for his charge.

Rog and Maggs patiently waiting for me to finish taking pictures.

First Day of our Next Adventure

Here we are - exactly one month since our last post to this journal.  We've been at home and really enjoyed being there. The weather wasn't wonderful, but we did feel good being home.  We are looking forward to seeing our Florida family and having friends and relatives visit us while we are there,  but I don't think either of us are quite ready yet for the cross country drive with the RV to get there.      

We are in Las Vegas tonight - same motel that we stayed in on our way home a month ago. They have a very pet friendly policy, which is a good thing, because I left the door just closed but not locked while Roger hauled in our stuff.  Maggie nosed her way out into the hall and was running up and down like a dog happy to be free of a leash and of the confines of the truck before I noticed she was missing.  We finally corralled her and got her back in the room but not before she visited with the maid who was cleaning a room.

It was 47 degrees and cloudy when we left this morning.  We stopped in Hawthorne and found a place with a picnic table for lunch but had to eat in the truck again - gale force winds and 50 degrees. We had wind all day - some of it pretty fierce.  We kept seeing RVs and hoping they were managing to stay on the road.  The temperature didn't get above 60 until we got just north of Las Vegas and then it was only 70 when we arrived about five o'clock.  Windy. Very windy.  It was a beautiful day, otherwise, with mostly sunshine. 

We had a few fun sitings today:

 - Outside of Fallon (about an hour from home) we saw a bison in a field with a bunch of beeves.  Just one, but he was a big one! 

 - South of Fallon there were lakes of water in the desert along the road.  Spring runoff?  Left over from the last rain?  It just looked weird seeing water in amongst the rabbit and sage brush.  

-  A little further south we spotted a pretty large herd of wild horses grazing on the cheatgrass that is prevalent right now due to the wet winter.

 - As we drove out of Goldfield we heard a helicopter flying low along the highway and watched it as it veered off to the east. It was an Army Apache helicopter and it had missiles strapped to it!!  It looked a little out of place there, but it really wasn't all that far from the Tonopah Test Range and Area 51 and was probably on a training mission.

 - Coming down the road towards us at a very slow speed were several NHP cars with their lights on.  In between the lead cars and the follow cars was a man jogging and carrying an American flag.  I spent some time on Google trying to figure out what was going on and I think it was the 17th Annual Relay Run from Las Vegas to Carson City in honor of fallen law enforcement officers.  That's the only explanation we could come up with.

 - Just north of Las Vegas, between the city and the Nevada Test Site is Creech Air Force Base.  Years ago it was just a little tiny reserve field with not much there.  It is now one of two drone bases in the United States.  It's where they direct the flight of the drones in Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East.  Well, there was a peaceful protest of about twenty people going on across the highway from the main gate.  Lots of peace signs being waved at the cars as they went by.  

When we stopped for lunch in Hawthorne we noticed some Tesla charging stations.  Again, when we stopped in Beatty for a pit stop there was another one - with a car being charged.  We didn't see any in Tonopah, but we weren't looking.  Again, The Google came to our rescue when we tried to figure out how far a Tesla can go on a charge.  300 miles max and it takes an hour at one of these supercharging stations.  So, an eight hour drive from Reno to Las Vegas in a Tesla would need three hours of charging time to get here!  We think that because Tesla has a big presence in Nevada that it is one of the reasons there are so many charging stations around - that and the fact that the towns are so spread out.  

No food in the house last night for dinner resulted in us going out to eat.  We went for Chinese and deliberately brought home leftovers so that we could eat in our room tonight.  It was nice not having to go find food.  

Maggie was very hyper today and not wanting to travel well despite getting her anti-anxiety pill this morning. She didn't want to sit on her bed on the console but in my lap and after we stopped in Fallon to let her out before we headed south on US95, she didn't want to get back in.  She cried and whined and just bounced all over the place.  I gave her the other half of her pill to help settle her down.  This behavior resulted in another "duh" moment for us today.  We have had Maggie for four years now.  She won't ride in the back seat and we've always put her on the console.  Sometimes she is great and other times not so much.  It occurred to Roger that maybe she is up too high and having everything flash by her out the window was part of her upset.  That is maybe why she sits in my lap with her head either in my arm pit or down between my leg and the door.   He suggested we put up the console to form the third seat in the front and put her bed down on it between us.  That made sense and it would give her something behind her and perhaps make her feel safer. Duh! It only took four years to come up with this solution. Well, we will see tomorrow whether it was the changing of her bed or the second pill, but she was quite mellow the rest of the day!  

I've been trying to upload some photos I took today but the wifi in the motel isn't letting me and my phone has only got one bar of service here so nothing is happening.  I get the spinning beach ball forever.  Sorry - I actually got a couple good ones. I'll try to load them tomorrow as an addendum to this post.