IN LESS THAN THREE WEEKS………………:))

Guess I'm just a sunshine boy. Gray overcast days don't work for me, never have. Wasn't until about mid afternoon when the sun made it's first appearance for the day that I was able to get myself a bit of enthusiasm going. I sure wouldn't do well living in England or along Canada's west coastline anywhere. And Washington & Oregon States despite what I hear about their beauty would have me in the doldrums in no time with their inclement coastal weather. Did you know Yuma Arizona averages 313 sunny days a year & Astoria Oregon just 126.

OUR PINE NEEDLES HAVE BEGUN TO FALL & SOON OUR GROUND WILL BE CARPETED WITH A GOLDEN BLANKET OF NEEDLES

Spent a few more hours in our front yard jungle trimming back shrubs & growths of all kinds again. I have really let things go these past few years so figured I had better get a handle on it before it gets a handle on us. This past summer seems to have set a record in rapid plant life growth everywhere & our place here at home was no exception.

WEST END OF OUR BACK YARD

  

I set out this morning not to write a post tonight for a change, & here I am again. Not much on my mind to write about but the sun room is cozy, the music soothing, Pheebs is asleep on a chair behind me, & Kelly is curled up in her chair watching her nightly TV programs. Guess this is just as good a place to be as any & while I'm here I may as well jot down a few thoughts to pass the time.

IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY YOU CAN SEE PHEEBS TO THE RIGHT OF OUR PARK’S GOOSE POND ON OUR EVENING WALK TONIGHT

October 1rst tomorrow already. Feels like the summer has slipped away quickly but of course it hasn't. I think it was the many Jeep jaunts that Pheebs & I did over the past 6 months that helped me through my restless summer more than anything else. And of course writing my posts every night has been a great help as well. With the state of poor quality television programing these days my hobbies of blogging, photography, & travels around our local countryside sure have saved me from many miserably boring nights in front of the television screen.

 

TONIGHT’S WALK IN OUR TUNNEL LIKE ENCHANTED FOREST WHERE I HAVE BEEN TRIMMING BACK BRANCHES ALONG THIS PATH FOR NEARLY 11 YEARS NOW

In less than 3 weeks we will be on the road & a new adventure will begin. I always so much look forward to that huge sudden change. From a somewhat sedentary 6 months we will once again within minutes of leaving our home in Bayfield be rolling through the darkness heading for a border that will put us in another country less than an hour & half of leaving home. First challenge will be the border crossing. Always a very apprehensive few minutes. Had we not been singled out for 3 agriculture checks in the past few years I suppose we would not be too worried about being detained. But we know what can happen & we do not have the advantage of naivety anymore. Always a huge relief if & when the person in the booth says, ‘have a nice day’ & waves us on.  Our first day on the road will be a long one & I look forward to that. We will end our day somewhere we have probably never been before. And we probably won't know where that place will be until we actually pull in somewhere & shut er down for the night. I love that open ended style & freedom of spontaneous travel.

SOME FOLKS DON’T CARE FOR SUMAC TREES BUT I’VE ALWAYS LOVED THEM SO WE HAVE LOTS OF EM

 

DAPPLED SUNLIGHT ON OUR NEIGHBOR’S NEWLY PLANTED TREES & A FOREST SPIDER

A couple posts ago I had some Egret photos from the Hullett Marsh. Bea, in a comment asked, "How did you do the 3D photo effect"? Well, I didn't do anything different & I think I can explain it by saying the effect is probably created by having a much lighter object (white Egret) closer to the camera than the darker background it is photographed against. In an email, Colin from out in British Columbia asked about another photo in the same post. He said, " It was the first picture in the last group of pictures, with a solitary tree on the left side of the road. I enlarged it and saw a ghostly circle with rays emanating from it to the left of the top of the tree. What caused that"? I emailed Colin & said, " That ghostly apparition you see in the top left corner of the photo is a windshield reflection through the glass. I hadn't noticed it until you mentioned it". And will Gaelyn from GEOGYPSY still have her job after midnight tonight??

RED BELLIED WOODPECKER IN OUR FRONT YARD

GROANER'S CORNER:(( "Frank, if you have 20 dollars and Bill takes away 14. What would you have?” said the teacher. "A fight!” answers Frank.
-------------------------------------------------------------
- Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.
- Home is where your pet is:))
- "If having a soul means being able to feel
love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals
are better off than a lot of humans."
(James Herriot)
- The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails -William Arthur Ward
- The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...AL.
- It is not so much having nothing to do as it is not having the interest to do something....AL.

‘STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER’

HAD A FOREBODING FEELING SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT WITH THIS OLD ABANDONED TRUCK I WAS APPROACHING THIS MORNING

It was only 8:30 & we were already seated at THE BAYFIELD BERRY FARM for breakfast. Our second Sunday in a row. Most unusual for us but it's kind of nice place to go when we have company. Another great brekky was enjoyed by Kim, Jason, Reeve, Kelly & myself. And here was the best part after breakfast. We got to pick all the fresh strawberries we could eat for nothing. Seems to be a bumper crop this season & there are still plenty of berries available. Any time now we will get a hard frost & that will instantly be the end of them. Waitress gave us a small plastic basket & said to go fill it up. Which we did. It's probably the most fresh strawberries I have ever eaten at one picking.  They were just totally juicy & delicious.

“HEY NO MORE PICTURES MR. PAPARAZZI MAN”

 

NO NO REEVE, YOUR SUPPOSED TO EAT THEM NOT STOMP ON THEM

 

‘STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER’

Kelly filled in at Deer Park today & headed over there shortly before 10. We were under overcast skies & with no projects under my belt for today I figured heading out for a Jeep ride with the Rascal Pants was a much better alternative to sitting around in my chair watching boring Sunday morning television. Kelly had spotted a couple places for sale last week south of Grand Bend & although we weren't really interested Pheebs & I headed on down to that area for a look see.

A YOUNG MAN CONTEMPLATING HIS STRAWBERRIES  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Never did find the places but that was OK. I couldn't believe how built up & populated the area around Port Franks has become. And the amount of traffic!! It was an area I knew back in the early to mid 60's but it is now an area mainly unrecognizable to me. Where once there were acres of rolling sand dunes reaching 40 & 50 feet in height there are now million dollar houses. Where once tall Oak trees, Cedars, Pine trees, & dune grasses once bent & swayed with the onshore winds there are now miles of paved streets & roads. But it's the way it is & I along with a few other young fellows were fortunate enough 50 years ago to roam those sand dunes & forests & create ourselves a bunch of great memories that still last to this very day. Remember those memorable times oh so long ago Gary, Jim, John, & Craig??
 

CAME ACROSS THESE ACRES & ACRES OF ONION FIELDS JUST SOUTH EAST OF GRAND BEND…I COULD SMELL ONIONS IN THE AIR BEFORE I EVER SAW THE FIELDS 
A few drops of rain on the windshield turned us for home & that pretty well wound up our day. As temperatures cooled off a bit it was just fine to kick back in my recliner & grab myself a few zzzzzzzzz's. When Kelly's not home Pheebs likes to climb up on her recliner & kick back for some big relaxed snoozes as well.

 

THIS OLD TRUCK WAS REALLY STARTING TO CREEP ME OUT
As most Snow Birding RV'ers know, it is no small feat to load up the RV every Fall for the following 5 or 6 months away from home. So many things to think about & remember. Check lists are the way to go but even so it is always difficult deciding what goes where in the rig. Thoughts, plans, & ideas are always changing & most of the loading quite often takes place in the last few final days before leaving simply because a lot of stuff may still be in use around the house. Always a mighty fine feeling to finally turn that ignition key, pull that gearshift lever into drive & head on down the road. But now some of the real problems start.

Just wait till you need something. Just wait till you go looking for something that you know is exactly in the place you stored it. Just wait until it isn't there. Always so easy while putting things in bins to remember where they are & always so easy to forget just an hour or a day later. No problem I thought just weeks after buying our Motorhome in April of 07. I had it all figured out & I was going to know exactly where everything was at all times. After all, I had worked in warehouses years before & knew how to organize things. Picked myself up a few pages of sticky numbers & numbered all the Motorhomes bins. 1 to 13 I think it was. Picked up myself a 3 ring binder & as I loaded things into bin number 7 I would enter that to the list in my binder titled bin # 7. I had it made, I was on top of things, I was organized. The plan worked perfectly for the first few weeks before hitting the road. It worked well as long as I remembered to make the changes in the book as I moved things around or added new things to the bins. Remembering was the key & remembering was the flaw in my flawless plan.

WAS VERY SURPRISED TO SEE THIS SMALL ‘BROWN SNAKE’ IN OUR CARPORT…HAD NEVER SEEN ONE BEFORE

AND COULD THIS REALLY BE!!

As any newbie RV'er knows after a short time on the road, the most careful laid plans of organizing things soon falls apart. Items thought of as priority may find themselves unused while something buried in the back bottom corner of a bin suddenly becomes needed on a daily basis. Things are shifted & moved, re-found, relocated, & even discarded. This is precisely what happened to me. I was moving things around faster than I could write the changes into my inventory log book. Within months my lists were useless & my stick on bin numbers were just that.....stick on bin numbers. I suspect those numbers are still on the Damon's bins, wherever the Damon is. I'm guessing Phoenix Arizona. Maybe the new owner will be asked by eagle eyed observers, just like I was, "hey, what are those numbers on the bins for"?? Good luck......................

NAWWWWWW, IT’S JUST A DECORATIVE PIECE IN SOMEBODY’S FRONT YARD:))  WELL, I THINK IT IS ANYWAY…….. 
DEBORAH SHAFFER has made it onto our Blog Follower's list.  Couldn’t find a blogsite or too much linkable info on Deborah but no matter, we're happy to welcome her aboard here at The Bayfield Bunch.  Say, you wouldn’t know anything about loading up an RV would ya:))

THAT’S QUITE A ROOF DESIGN ON THIS NEW HOUSE GOING UP A FEW MILES EAST OF US

If you haven’t been to Niagara Falls or it’s been awhile since you have been there the folks over at STILLHOWLYN have some fine photos of the Falls & their trip to get their from Canada’s Sault Ste Marie through the Straights of Mackinac in Michigan.

 
GROANER'S CORNER:(( A man goes on a 2-month business trip to Europe and leaves his cat with his brother. Three days before his return he calls his brother.
Brother 1: So how is my cat doing?
Brother 2: He's Dead
Brother 1: He's Dead! What do you mean He's Dead! I loved that cat. Couldn't you think of a nicer way to tell me! I'm leaving in 3 days. You could of broke me to the news easier. You could of told me today that she got out of the house or something. Then when I called before I left you could of told me, Well, we found her but she is up on the roof and we're having trouble getting her down. Then when I call you from the airport you could of told me, The Fire Department was there and scared her off the roof and the cat died when it hit the ground.
Brother 2: I'm sorry...you're right...that was insensitive I won't let it happen again.
Brother 1: Alright, alright, forget about it. Anyway, how is Mom doing?
Brother 2: She's up on the roof and we're having trouble getting her down.
-------------------------------------------------------------
- Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.
- Home is where your pet is:))
- "If having a soul means being able to feel
love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals
are better off than a lot of humans."
(James Herriot)
- The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails -William Arthur Ward
- The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...AL.
- It is not so much having nothing to do as it is not having the interest to do something....AL.

MORE SOUTHWEST THOUGHTS & REEVE CHECKS OUT THE BAGO, THE BIKE, & THE JEEP:))

 

WE WILL BE GLAD TO TOUCH BASE WITH OUR ARIZONA DIGS SOON:))

Reading MERIKAY'S post this morning I am reminded of something I have written about a few times in previous posts a few years ago. I am reminded of something we have become accustomed to in the South West. In her post Merikay says, " One thing I find very distressing in the West is the small towns". Merikay goes on to say, "It’s all the old deteriorating mobile homes and shacks that I find disturbing. I would have taken some pictures, but that would be like taking pictures of the poor in a third world country". We just cannot comprehend"………….. I totally understand what Merikay is talking about & I to have chosen not to take many photos. When Kelly & I first began traveling to the South West we were disturbed by what we saw going through a lot of small western towns along the way beginning in northern Texas right on through New Mexico, Arizona, & California. Living & growing up in Southern Ontario we had never seen anything like those desolate little towns with their crumbling vacant buildings. Hard to comprehend the old shacks & crumbling trailers people were living in. Junk & litter scattered about. We were just not accustomed to seeing derelict towns & people living in the conditions they did. And it took us a few winters of traveling to begin to understand & accept what we were seeing. Little did we know we would eventually come to understand & accept what we were seeing so much that we would actually buy a house ourselves in kind of a tumbledown tired little old western mining town just like some of the places we had seen.

In previous posts a few times years ago I wrote about 'seeing with our South West eyes'. Switching our South Western Ontario heads to our South West Arizona heads each winter as we made our trek west. It is the lifestyle difference I often refer to in my writings & it is that drastic difference between our Bayfield area home & our Congress area home that we find so appealing. In southern Ontario everything for the most part is very prim & proper. No litter or garbage strewn about. Very few old shacks or junky trailers to be found. There are no desolate towns in comparison to what we see in the west. Cities, towns, neighbourhoods, homes & farms are, as a rule, very manicured & easy to look at. As I said, for the most part very prim & proper. And it is Ontario's laws, legislations, & building codes that make it so.

CLIMBING A ROCKY RIDGE BEHIND OUR HOUSE TO GET A BETTER VIEW OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

THIS IS A BACKYARD VIEW OF OUR PLACE THROUGH A 300mm LENS & THAT’S GHOST TOWN ROAD OUT FRONT…JEEP AT LEFT & DAMON MOTORHOME AT RIGHT…TAKEN LAST WEEK OF FEBRUARY 2013

Now, before I go any further let me make it clear I am not bashing parts of the South West. Long time readers know how much I love it there. And one of the things I love about it so much is simply it is still the old wild West in many ways. And that is very appealing to me because it is the old West that I am there to be a part of, to see, to experience, & to live in. It is the totally different western lifestyle that peaks my interest. Everything is different from Bayfield. The houses, the people, the landscape, flora & fauna. Different attitude, different value system & a different way of thinking. I always feel much more at home in the West than I do here in Ontario where I have spent the majority of my life. I think there is a little bit of wandering Gypsy in me mixed with some Cowboy yearnings backed up by a touch of Hillbilly hankerins.  And the West is well suited for that kind of personality. Not so much in Ontario though.

KELLY SCANS OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WITH BINOCULARS

Our old ranch style house in Congress Arizona is located on Ghost Town Road. A rather historic road with a fitting name that leads to a dead end at the old Congress gold mine about a mile from our place. Nothing much up there except a couple old cemeteries, a bunch of cactus, some Rattlesnakes, a boondocking area, & some houses built on some pretty tough ground. Congress itself is hard to describe because it is hard to call it a town. There is really no town there to speak of in the normal sense of a town. Two highways converge & a rail line runs through one of the them & alongside the other. That's kind of it. You could practically drive right through Congress without knowing you had even ever been there. Newest buildings are a gas station, a dollar store, fire hall, & a post office. There is a library & a medical center too. Oh & a good RV garage plus a few other small business. But there is no downtown to really speak of. Congress is just kind of scattered around on the desert floor like a bunch of loose marbles.  But it has an old west feel to it with lots of dust & old boards & that is why we like it. It's kinda rough & tumble with no fancyisms………………….except for maybe NICHOLS WEST RESTAURANT.

A MORNING OVERVIEW OF CONGRESS ARIZONA WITH SOME FOLKS BURNING BRUSH…HARD TO TELL YOU WHERE DOWNTOWN IS BECAUSE BASICALLY THERE IS NO DOWNTOWN BUT IF I SAID DEAD CENTER I WOULD BE CLOSE…OUR HOUSE IS JUST OUT OF SIGHT AT THE BOTTOM LEFT CORNER

SQUARE BUILDING NEAR CENTER IS THE SCHOOL WHICH IS TWO BLOCKS SOUTHWEST OF US

OUR HOUSE IS SLIGHTLY VISIBLE RIGHT OF TOP CENTER BUT IT’S TOO HARD TO EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHERE

Ghost Town Road itself is made up of a real residential hodgepodge of dwellings. Starts off with open desert then morphs into a newer fancy high end subdivision on one side. That is immediately followed by modest dwellings, & absolute junk yards. We fall contentedly into the modest dwellings category & we are comfortable in this type of atmosphere. Yes I wish some of our neighbors would make an effort to clean up all the junk & trash around their places but that's likely not going to happen any time soon & we have come to accept that. It is the way of the West. And I certainly feel much more comfortable where we are rather than having to live in the fancy-do community down the road. Did I mention my touch of Hillbilly:))

OUR BACKYARD’S SOUTHWEST CORNER BUT IT SURE WASN’T CLEANED UP LIKE THIS WHEN WE BOUGHT IT

BACK HALF OF OUR SOUTH SIDE YARD

NORTHWEST CORNER WHICH WAS TOTALLY OVERGROWN WHEN WE MOVED IN

Here are 3 links to posts I have written in the past about the different lifestyle comparisons we have observed over the years. If your not interested in reading about that you still might find my South West photos interesting. Especially 'White Sands' near Alamogordo New Mexico. Newer RV folks might find these posts enlightening.  Keep in mind it is just my opinion & that sure don’t make it so do it:))

CAPTIVE WINDS

RUSTY'S RV RANCH

IN AWE

Ok, switching gears…………………………………..

SOMETIMES MY LITTLE PAL GETS A BIT SNOOZY ON OUR JEEP RIDES

- 

WHEN I’M WORKING ON MY POSTS AT NIGHT PHEEBS USUALLY CURLS UP ON ONE OF THE SOFT CHAIRS NEARBY

SHE LOVES HER TOYS

Question in our Shout Box about how we like towing our Jeep. Let me say I like towing a toad far better than I like towing a trailer. I can have that Jeep hooked on in about 3 minutes & unhooked in about a third of that time. If I line things up correctly in the first place that is. Our Jeep is a 6 speed standard so we tow it 4 wheels down. Only thing we really have to do is disengage the 4 wheel drive crankcase & we're good to go. I was never interested in having to use a tow dolly & that is why we bought our standard 5 speed Hyundai Santa Fe when we first hit the road. Towed the Santa Fe for our first 3 years with no problem. With the 33' Damon Class A, the 23' Sunseeker Class C, & the 26' Winnebago Class C we never knew or even know we have a tow vehicle on behind. And we've never had brakes on either the Santa Fe or our Jeep Wrangler. Both tow vehicles towed, cornered, & stopped like a charm.

 

 

We hit 74F today under sunny skies & a light breeze. Just doesn't get any better than that for me. Kelly put in a few hours at DEER PARK. Pheebs & I slipped into Bayfield for a 'Cold Cut Combo sub to go at Subway about 11. We did get ourselves messed up pretty good with some drippy sub sauce on the way home. Kelly's oldest Son Jason, wife Kim, & their nearly 2 year old little boy Reeve are at Deer Park for the week-end. They dropped over in the afternoon to show Reeve the big Winnebago, the groovy Jeep, & the vroooom vrooooom Motorcycle. In typical little boy fashion he liked em all:))

 

REEVE CHECKS OUT THE JEEP WHILE DAD LOOKS ON

 

AND THE MOTORCYCLE

GEORGE in his comment to my email problem hit on something in Gmail I have overlooked. (I've become kind of notorious for overlooking things) It's a simple solution that I'm sure will help me keep track of emails I wish to respond to from here on in. And it's a simple solution. Just 'star' the email. I obviously never thought to click that little box to the left. With that big gold star it will be easy for me to keep track of important emails now. Thanks George, & thanks STEVE for your offer to help as well. Two good guys with two good ideas. And speaking of good ideas, have you seen CHINLE'S finished South West decorative touches to her Gypsy cargo trailer:))

REEVE ESPECIALLY LIKED WINNIE THE BAGO & HERE HE TRIES TO SHIFT IT INTO SECOND GEAR WITH OUR COBRA MOBILE CB ANTENNAE

 

KIM & JASON LOOK ON WITH REEVE AT THE CONTROLS…EASING PAST THE DOGGY

WONDERED WHAT THEY WERE ALL LOOKING & LAUGHING AT…….

TURNED OUT TO BE A FROG IN OUR CERAMIC FOUNTAIN

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Bill was short of money and was out looking for a job. Pastor Nelson offered Bill $500 to buy paint and paint the church. Well Bill went out bought some paint and started painting the church. He discovered that he was using more paint than he expected so he added some thinner to the paint. It still covered but not as well as it did at first. Bill was still using more paint than he wanted to use. The paint was too thin to cover well but Bill still kept on painting. All of a sudden there was a bolt of lighting and a loud voice from the sky proclaimed, "Bill!!"......."Repaint and thin no more."

-------------------------------------------------------------
- Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.
- Home is where your pet is:))
- "If having a soul means being able to feel
love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals
are better off than a lot of humans."
(James Herriot)
- The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails -William Arthur Ward
- The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...AL.
- It is not so much having nothing to do as it is not having the interest to do something....AL.