I LIKED IT BETTER WHEN DIALS WERE DIALS & KNOBS WERE KNOBS

A LITTLE SPLASH OF COLOR IN THE TREETOPS FIRST THING THIS MORNING

No doubt about it.  We had our warmest day since arriving here last November 1rst.  I think we might have hit 80F today.  We sure have waited a long time for this & as Ralph Kramden from the HONEYMOONERS would have said, ‘How sweet it is’:))

   

THIS FOREST RIVER SUNSEEKER SURE HAS A LOT OF EASILY ACCESSIBLE  STORAGE FOR A CLASS C

The first day of March slipped right by me.  That short month tripped me up again.  We only have about 5 or 6 weeks left here in Congress & there are still people we have not got around to see this winter.  Wasn’t it just a couple weeks ago we got here……………… 

THIS MORNING’S WANING MOON SLIPS QUIETLY INTO THE BLUE 

Soooo nice to once again feel warm air on our skin.  That has been a long time coming this year.  It sure ‘ups’ the feeling good meter.  We are rapidly moving into, for me, what I call perfect weather days…70 to 75 degrees.  Below that it’s getting too cold for me & above that it’s getting too hot.  I wonder if there is a Planet somewhere in our Universe that stays between 70 & 75F year round.  If so I’m gonna get my hammer, some nails, a few pieces of wood, & begin construction on a rocket ship.

WARM DESERT AIR MADE FOR A PLEASANT MORNING WALK

Kelly was off to Wickenburg for groceries & dog food.  Me & little miss Rascal Pants took the Sunseeker out for a cruise.  Had to fill up with gas anyway & we were just needing to get ourselves out of the house for a change.  Besides, I was just itching to take the rig for a drive.  It’s been sitting too long & needed some exercise anyway.  I can tell it’s just chomping at the bit to go somewhere.

  

WE WAS OUT CRUISIN IN THE NEW RIG 

We Jeeped ourselves out into the desert this morning before pulling over & taking our walk from there.  I just shake my head when I hear people referring to many of the south west’s desert areas as desolate & barren. They have obviously never seen the green Sonoran Desert which stretches up from Mexico to just about where we live at it’s northern end.  It’s a narrow stretch of desert maybe only averaging a hundred miles across.  A year ago while walking in the Darby Well area one time near Ajo I said to Kelly, “wouldn’t it be nice to find a house in this kind of setting with all the Saguaros & greenery”.  Little did we know we would do just that a few months later.

 

I was reminded of all that this morning as we walked in the warm morning air amongst Saguaro, Hedgehog, Prickly Pear & Christmas Tree Cactus, just to mention a few.  The larger Palo Verde trees are greening up & the ground cover is coming alive with many variations of grasses, shrubberies & plant life of all descriptions.  Barren & desolate??  Not a chance.  Said to Kelly, I much prefer walking through this lower growing greenery any day where we can see for miles & miles in any one direction.  Mountains on all horizons & not a long flat spot in site.   I can only imagine how beautiful all this must be when everything is in bloom.  Oh how I wish we could be here to take that all in sometime.  Would love to see what our house & property look like in the late Spring, Summer, & early Fall.  No need to wonder what our house looks like back in Bayfield during the winter.  Been there, done that……not nice!!

HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY:))

As kids we often heard, ‘don’t touch that!!’  When televisions first came out we kids were always in trouble with our pudgy little fingers all over the TV screen.  The words ‘don’t touch that screen’ became imbedded in all of us over the years.  It carried as much fear as touching a dreaded hot burner on a stove.  Don’t touch that!!!!  Now, here we are in our adult lives being told, ‘ya gotta touch that, go ahead touch the screen.  If ya don’t touch the screen it ain’t gonna work for ya.  I still look over my shoulder for my Mother standing there waiting to pounce if I touched a screen.  And I don’t mean a screen in a door.  Today’s whiz bang technology now wants everyone to touch screens.  Do these kiddie pop designers not understand the psychological trauma this can inflict on we older folks.   At home here we did not have much in the way of touch screen electronics until just a few weeks ago.  Now we have one in our rig & I don’t like it!!

Our new Sunseeker has an infoentertainment center with radio/GPS/bluetooth/ etc. etc. etc. & probably a host of other things I don’t know about yet.  That is all well & good but having taken the time to learn my way around some of the stuff lately I can say right up front, I do not like this touch screen technology at all.  Not even a little bit.  There is definitely something wrong here.  Using one’s finger to continuously poke & re-poke the screen makes no sense to me.  And how many pokes does it sometimes take to change a single thing.  I find it very distracting for a driver.  I am a knobs & dials guy from way back.  Give me simple knobs to turn, dials to look at or slider bars to adjust.  That just makes good common sense to me.

AWWWW SHUCKS, GUESS I SHOULDN’T COMPLAIN SO MUCH…AT LEAST THE HEATER DIALS ARE STILL KNOBBABLE

Years ago stereo & electronic companies began internalizing everything.  Instead of simply adjusting volume with a knob, one now has to finger press this menu to access that screen touch finger press menu which of course leads to another annoyable finger jabbing menu with a list of menuable items your finger must manically thump through & finger click your way to a fat fingered volume control bar buried somewhere within the over pecked unit.  Sound annoyingly confusing?  Well, that’s because it is!!  This touch screen technology must have been thought up by a bunch of bird brain wandering wood headed Woodpeckers afflicted with a mass batch of wildly wonky & whacky ways!! 

 

Thumping away on a flat surface with a finger reminds me of something a caveman would do to light a fire.   And, may I add, these screen are not always easily visible in the ever changing sunlight streaming through vehicle windows causing a myriad of reflections everywhere.  If your wearing sunglasses, you might as well go pound your head on the pavement as try to read the already smeary finger smudged screen.  About as much sense as trying to see a tiny little image on a bright sunny day while holding a point & shoot camera at arms length.  Poke, poke, poking away with my finger on our rig’s sometimes hard to see computer screen, scrolling through menu after menu, smudging up the screen with my pudgy little fingers seems just about as dumb as it gets.  “Don’t touch that screen” I keep hearing my Mother holler.  It just don’t make no sense no how.  And then there is the whole distraction hazard while driving.  Oh how I wish for those good old plain radio knob days when dials were dials & knobs were knobs!!

AND WHY A PINK HAIR CLIP ON THE STEERING WHEEL…TO REMIND MYSELF THE TV ANTENNAE & ONE OF THE ROOF VENTS ARE UP

And, did you know….Albert Einstein once said, "Information is not knowledge".
Knowledge is the use of information. A search for the connection between facts. A step towards a personal understanding.

IN THE SUMMER’S MONSOON RAINS THIS WOULD BE A GUSHING WATERFALL & I WOULD SO LOVE TO SEE & HEAR THAT

 

THE FORCE OF WATER HAS CUT DEEPLY INTO THE DESERT FLOOR HERE

Amazingly enough, we have a second Blog Follower this week.  Full time boondocker Garth Bacon from WANDERING W/ SERENITY is boondocking his way down the back roads of America.  Some nice photography here folks.  Welcome aboard Garth:))

Sure do like the looks of the BLACKRAPID camera straps. That Classic RS-4 looks like a winner to me. Thanks to Chris & Caron for mentioning that in the Shout Box. (couldn’t get your blog link to work guys) Also, thanks to folks for the feedback on the ‘hitch drop’. Some good info there & I will definitely be doing some measuring shortly.

Ever thought of doing your own brake job on your Class A Motorhome while traveling.  No problem for anyone out there, right?  Well, certainly not for Steve over at RVING: THE USA IS OUR BIG BACK YARD.  For you iron fisted mechanic types, you will find this brake job in a parking lot, interesting.  And, I don’t think there is one of us out here who hasn’t had some kind of a problem with an insurance company at one time or another.  Peter & Bea over at AMERICAN TRAVELER are pretty upset with what has just happened to them.

  

ALWAYS NEED TO CARRY LOTS OF WATER IN THE DESERT

If you do not see a post from me Sunday night….not to worry.   We may not be here for a few days, & thanks to everyone for the positive feedback on my story about…the Rock:))

OUR LITTLE DESERT DOG

GROANER’S CORNER:((    A boss tells his new employee, "I'll give you 8 bucks an hour starting today, and in three months, I'll raise it to 10 bucks an hour. So when would you like to start?"
The employee replies, "How about in 3 months?"

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- 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.