CHECKERS GIVES THE ROOSTER A GOOD BARKING TOO!!

ANOTHER FINE SUNSET OVER THE MULE MOUNTAINS

Well, the most exciting thing we did to-day was take a big bag of garbage to the Elfrida dump this morning. Now, where do I go with the blog from here:(( LOOKING SOUTH INTO MEXICO

Jeannie & Ray will be home sometime Monday so it looks like our departure date will be Tuesday morning bright & early. Secured the bicycles on the back to-day, re-organized some bins & to-morrow morning early I'll clean some windows & mirrors before the big winds roll in. Corky, the big black energy dog comes for the day to-morrow so that will be good for some rollicking tumbles in the grass. MULE MOUNTAINS NEAR BISBEE

Checkers let the chickens out again to-day for about the fourth time but it has turned out not to be a problem. The girls like to come out & strut around in the fresh & newly growing green spring grass. Checkers then goes into the chicken coop & really gives the rooster a good barking too in the next pen. It seems to be the rooster who is the focus of Checkers attention. Could be because the rooster is male & Checkers is acting on the girl's behalf about issues of the past when the rooster may have seemingly had his way with the ladies causing some undue stress & embarrassment in the old hen house. Whatever it is, Checkers has sure been giving the old rooster a piece of her mind!! By the time we leave the old bird may have changed his roguish ways completely. Yesterday was Kelly's last Yoga class & afterwards she got talking with some of the other ladies there. Turns out one of the ladies lives just south of McNeal at a Quakers community. It's an interesting concept they have & I was surprised to hear it was not based on religion. How refreshing!! We took a drive through there on our way back from Elfrida & it looked like quite a peaceful little community. Saw a small flock of Sand Hill Cranes this morning but the bulk of the birds have left for their northern summer quarters. I think some of them go to Nebraska & some of the older birds just fly over to Elfrida & hang around the Longhorn saloon for the summer. THE TOMBSTONE HILLS

To-day marks day 44 for us at the ranch & that is by far the longest we have ever stayed in one location. It also marks 101 days since having to pay for a campsite. At an average of $23 a night we have saved about $2,530.00. That more than pays for our gas here & back plus covers our propane usage for over 4 months plus buys us a fair good bunch of Cracker Barrel meals. Cost of having 2 solar panels plus 4 new batteries & accompanying hardware/software installed by Solar Mike's Sunworks in Slab City California over a year ago was about $3000.00. http://www.thesunworks.com/id7.htm Our solar installation has already paid for itself because we boondocked 2 months out of last years season too. We can generally do a couple weeks of comfortable boondocking before having to dump tanks & take on water. If it wasn't for having to dump the black tank we could boondock indefinitely because water can always be brought back in containers. SUN IS GOING DOWN OVER SIERRA VISTA ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MULE MOUNTAINS

Just when I thought I didn't have any photos for the blog to-night I was lucky enough to catch another nice sunset going down....................................

THE GLEASON MOUNTAINS

No photos for the web album to-night.

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/