Great trail hike

Went for my trail walk yesterday. I really enjoyed it. The weather was beautiful while I was walking, in the 70’s, and I didn’t get hot until near the end. I did about a mile and a half and covered most of the trails here. What a wide variety of trails. From paved, to crushed rock and groomed, to a foot path up the side of a hill. At one point I thought I had lost the trail, but I kept going. I got some great photos including several really good lizard pics. Finally.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. Jeanne moved over to a developed site, so it is just Barbara and I here now. 

I used my solar panel to charge up my solar generator. It was fully charged before the sun went down and I didn’t have to fire up the gas generator at all last night. The solar gen was enough to run my TV to watch the news, DWTS and Castle. And enough juice leftover this morning to run my wifi, and possibly charge up my laptop when it needs it. I can’t fire up the gas generator until 7 AM. That is when quiet time is over.

I did get my shower, in rig, yesterday morning. What a treat that was. Got my hair washed and did a french braid, which I can only do when my hair is wet. I have tried to do it dry, but it just doesn’t work. Now that it is getting cooler, I will probably do it more often. It is too hot to have my hair on my neck when it is warmer.

There are some beautiful cactus gardens here. I want to go back with a smaller camera and get identification photos for future reference. A lot of the cactus have identification signs, but with my big camera, I couldn’t focus on both the plant and the sign, it was one or the other, not both. My smaller camera will get both. I think I am also going to walk to the Family Dollar Store out on the main road. It will be a two mile walk round trip, assuming the weather cooperates. We have been having thunder storms off and on. Not sure what today’s forecast is yet. 

Visited with Barbara for a while in her rig yesterday. She has a 22ft(?) Sunseeker. It is always nice to see how other rigs are laid out. She has the rear kitchen, and I like that setup. Gives her a lot more counter space and cabinets in the kitchen. She also has the over cab bed, which I don’t care for, but plenty of room. Even tho her rig is shorter, it is also wider than Ody. But I am still happy with my choice. She showed me her ALFA antenna that she was using to use the campground free wifi. I can’t stay connected to it, but with her antenna, she has a great connection.  I came back and did some research (on my pay per gig) and discovered her antenna will not work on this OS. Most of them won’t. I finally found a less expensive one that is supposed to work with Mavericks and got it ordered. It should be in Yuma when I get there. It is going to be like Christmas…mail and packages. :) 

I also discovered while doing my antenna research that this particular model of macbook has wifi issues. Apparently I am not the only one having trouble keeping a connection. I will have to haul out the big computer and see how that does. I hate using my pay per gig to upload photos, it eats it right up. I did walk up to the Visitor Center for a better connection, and got all 52 photos uploaded in a matter of minutes with a good solid connection.

I left the door to the back open yesterday. I only saw Kali Cat sniffing back there once, and I discouraged it. Not sure why she was sniffing, but didn’t want any accidents. No peeing in the shower, and there is still plenty of large clumps in the litter box. So I am hoping we are over the UTI issue. She only has a few more days of travel before we settle down for a while. Only one or two more doses of medicine too.

I am not sure when I will leave here. There are a lot of variables. I don’t want to hit Quartzsite before Nov 1, and I don’t want to over stay my welcome in Yuma. So I am thinking I will leave here Thursday or Friday, it will be two travel days to Yuma, so I will probably arrive there Friday or Saturday, depending upon when I leave here. But I also don’t want to get bored. As long as I have an interesting walk, I should be good.

Last night I did a garlic shrimp stir fry with turnip greens and feta. Was very good. I do miss having my little electric oven available tho. Before moving into Ody, that is the way I cooked 99% of my meals. I may dig out my dutch oven today and see if I can bake in it on the stove top. If I can figure that out, it would make things a lot easier. I could use my oven if I wanted to run the generator the whole time, but in my mind, that is not an option. The same with the convection oven in the microwave, have to be hooked up to power or running the generator. Experiment time! :) I still don’t have a grill, so I can’t use that, plus, the intermittent thunder storms also discourage grilling.

Well, my solar gen just ran out of power, and it is just about 7, so I need to go start the generator and get things charged up. It looks like the northeast will be getting some snow this week. I see they are predicting up to a foot in IP. I will not miss that, just the general excitement of the first snow. It is always so pretty. But then it doesn’t go away. For months...and months....