A RETURN TO GOLD ROCK RANCH

Went to bed last night at 8:30. One hour later I was on my feet as the rig was buffeted by repeatedly heavy wind gusts. It had been a windy day but the weatherman said the winds would subside by evening, which they did, but now they were back for round 2. It was pointless trying to sleep with all the howling & shaking going on so I fired up the tv & buzzed around on the computer for awhile. Winds finally quieted down around 10:30 so back to bed I went. Two hours later we were on our feet again as the banshee winds returned & ripped at us from the southwest. Sounded like it was going to blow the tires right off the rig. Heard a nasty rattling sound on the roof that was getting louder. Oh, oh, solar panel panic. The thought of having to climb up on top of the rig at 1 a.m. in the morning in a howling cold desert wind wasn't to my liking but I had no choice. It was either that or run the risk of having an expensive solar panel torn off. Jumped into my warmest Canadian winter clothes, grabbed an open end wrench & headed out into the night, up the rear ladder & onto the roof. Wow, was it windy up there!!!! Carefully crab crawled across the roof to the first panel where I discovered one of the bolts on the 4 support arms was very loose. Cinched it up tight with the wrench & that immediately solved the rattle problem. I also tightened all the other 7 nuts & bolts as well just to be on the safe side. Getting back down the ladder wasn't as easy as coming up & despite getting a foot stuck under the air conditioner & ripping my right leg completely off at the hip in 3 places, I was finally able to get down the ladder & head inside to bed somewhere around 2 a.m. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz:)) Slept in till 6 a.m. Jeeeeeezzzz, almost missed half the day!! The cool stiff breeze hung around all morning but the sky was clear & the sun felt warm as long as one kept out of the wind. Good morning to do laundry so we headed off up the road a few miles to the Gold Rock Ranch RV Park. While the laundry was doing it's thing we walked around the park having a look at stuff. Always interesting to see how people live & fix up their places. Certainly is different from southern Ontario, Canada. Took some more pics but I'll include them in maybe to-morrow's photo album. No photo album pics to-night. On the way back from doing laundry we headed off on some old mining roads back to-wards the mountains & came across some nice sites for future boondocking if we are back this way again. The site we are at now is better than the first one we had here, but the sites back closer to the mountains are even better. The desert area here isn't quite as nice as the areas around Ajo or Tucson over in Arizona simply because there are no Saguaro cactus here & the Sonoran desert over there is much greener than here with a larger variety of plant & animal life. We haven't heard one coyote since being here. But, what the heck, it sure beats 3 feet of snow, sub zero temperatures, & the horribly boring endless days & nights of a miserable Canadian winter......................

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