Sunday, February 17, 2008

A QUIET DAY IN THE SONORAN DESERT

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 17/08

I am sitting in the desert to-night typing this by the light of the moon. Checkers is beside me keeping an eye out for wily coyotes. We hit the 80F mark to-day so the nights are getting warmer.

Max's ankle is about the same so we didn't encourage him to walk on it again to-day. We did have to pull some cholla prickers out of Checkers though. Those things really dig their barbs into whatever brushes up against them.

Lots of sunshine to-day under clear blue Arizona skies. I cleaned windows while Kelly did a bunch of vacuuming. Other than that, we had a very relaxing day again. Started a campfire in the morning & had it going all day. I am still reading my Marshal South book that Kelly bought in Borrego Springs last month. It's a very meaningful book to me & it's the first book in nearly 25 years that I've been able to stick with. The fact that we actually were able to climb up Ghost Mountain & walk through the remains of his family's small adobe cabin back on January 3rd in California will always remain a special memory for me. OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy I can truly identify with this man's thinking & philosophies & as I sit here in the still night air of the Sonoran desert with a canopy of stars overhead & a big half moon to light my keyboard, I feel akin to a man I will never meet.

Checkers growls periodically at unseen soft footprints in the desert night. I can hear another RV'ers dog barking in the distance so there are probably coyotes afoot. We never see them but we know they are here.

To-morrow we'll have to go into Ajo & fill up our gas can again because I made a boo boo the other day. When we left our other boondocking site Thursday just the other side of Why, I checked my fuel gauge in the rig & it said we had a quarter tank of gas left. My well intentioned logic was to wait until we left Darby Wells in a week or so & fill up at that time. No point in driving these rigs with a heavy load of gas on board if you don't have to. Well, the first night here we started up the generator for a few minutes to run the micro wave. Generator ran fine for about a minute & then it petered out & wouldn't re-start. Of course I immediately assumed the worse & figured the engine had run out of oil despite having just checked the oil level a week ago. With dollar signs flying out the window I raced outside, lifted the bin cover & pulled the panel off the generator. Just as I unscrewed the dipstick, Kelly who was holding the flashlight behind me said, "do you think it ran out of gas??" BINGO!!!! Now I remembered........ as a safety feature, once the gas tank gets down to a quarter full, the generator will not operate. It's a safety feature so that the generator doesn't drain the gas tank completely & leave the motorhome stranded in the middle of nowhere without any gas. Did I mention I'm 63..............& male!!!!!!!!!!!!







UPLOADS ARE SLOW TO-NIGHT SO MAY HAVE TO DO THE WEB ALBUM IN THE MORNING.

2 comments:

  1. hahaha Wondered about the big red flower the woodpecker was inspecting till i saw the title in the album.

    the hermit

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ran across your blog while browsing RV net. You guys are doing what we want to be doing in three years. Karen and I will be headed south and the wide open spaces for the winters with our two border collies, Polly and Babe when we retire. For now we have to be satisfied with a month in South Carolina in the spring and couple of weeks in Tennesee in the fall. We are from Windsor, Ontario. Will be sure to follow your adventures.

    ReplyDelete