Fulltiming Road Runners

Today, Thom dumped the gray and black tanks into our portable tanks for the last time.  Our dirty water tank is 100 gals, the fresh water tank is 75 gal.  We’re filling our fresh water tank in the trailer (100 gal), then going to put 75 gallons fresh into the well cleaned dirty water portable after we put it in the storage shed here in QZ.  The fresh water tank will stay empty in the shed.  No need to take the portables with us as we have full hookups this summer in the campground we’re managing.  We hope the water in the tank (leaving lid open) will help keep the humidity up a bit in the shed and keep things from getting too dry and brittle in the heat.

When we leave here we will go dump the dirty tanks again and probably fill up with fresh before heading to Lake Havasu.  We don’t know the availability of water there, so we want to be sure and take some with us.

I think I’m doing pretty good at getting ready to travel, but I still need to find secure spots to put some things while on the road.  It’s crazy… my intent has been to get rid of things and free up space, but it seems we’ve accumulated more stuff than we had when we got here.  Maybe, since we’ll have so much free time while going home, I can get some sorting done.  We don’t have to be in Utah until the 28th or 29th of April.  We have to be in our campground by May 4th.

We’re hoping the wind does what the weather report says and dies down by Tuesday.  Today is calm, but tomorrow and Monday are supposed to be windy again.  It should die down and be calm the rest of the week.  We’ll postpone our trip if it’s very windy.

I guess I’ve taken a long enough break from work, I better get back to stowing things we won’t need for a week.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Tah!

We’ll be leaving here in just 8 (maybe 7) days.

Sign-ups have pretty much come to a stand still.  We go to “work” and spend the day trying to find things to do.  We did get one renewal on Monday.  The rest of the day Th0m watched the world go by thru his binoculars and I played games on the computer and made a wire wrapped “cage” for an amethyst crystal.

Tuesday we went to the BLM final wrap-up meeting for the volunteers.  We were given our pins for serving for the 2008/09 year, our stipends (if we were part of the chosen few), and non-monitary  gift cards for WalMart ($25 worth).

Today, Wednesday, we drove up to Lake Havasu City to make sure we could find the Dispersed Camping area of the BLM.  We’ve tried to find it in the dark and failed miserably.  In daylight, today, it was really quite easy.  Go figure.  So now we know where we are going from here, and can even find our way.

I’m a huge fan of Chinese Food.  Today while in Lake Havasu City, we went to a Chinese Buffet for lunch.  I’m not sure if it was extremely good food, or if it’s been so durned long since I’ve had Chinese food, but at this point in time, I’d recommend this place to anyone/everyone!  It’s down by the London Bridge center and is called “Chinese Buffet”.

Right now things are clear and calm here, but according to NOAA weather, we will be getting high winds tomorrow after 1 p.m.  Needless to say, we’ll be stowing our dish and be offline for the day and night.

I wish I had my photos sized and set to upload to the blog, but I don’t, so I’ll have to offer my apologies and hope to post albums later.

Oh!… I meant to tell ya’ll what we were told at the wrap-up meeting for BLM Volunteers.  They said our Long Term registrations for the year were down 9% from last year.  Our 14 day registrations were down 13% for the year……….. BUT…. our 14 day free camping registrations were up far and above the shortage of long term and paid 14 day camping.

Most of the camping area hosts commented that they’d had several people stop to get information for next year, much more, over and above, any other year.  It’s believed we will get a lot more registrations next year than this year.  We’ll certainly be here to see how it goes.

I’m going to go play with photos so maybe I can post a few next time I do the Blog.  It could be a couple of days due to high winds.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Tah!

Extremely high winds have been predicted for tomorrow and tomorrow night so we’re stowing our satellite dish tonight and will keep it down until the winds die down.

We have to work Monday and the winds are predicted to still be gusting up to 30 mph so we’ll keep the dish stowed.  Tuesday is the wrap-up meeting for BLM volunteers.  It’s in Yuma.  We’ll be keeping the dish down on Tuesday also, just in case.  Depending on how late we get home Tuesday and how windy it is, we might get back online Tuesday evening or wait until Wednesday.

I’ve mentioned how warm it’s been in my last post.  Yesterday it got up to 96.4F and today only 90.5F.  Tomorrow the high is only supposed to be 72F (which means we’ll get into the mid to hi 70’s here in QZ), and stay in the 70’s for several days.  That’s perfect “pack up and get ready to go” weather, as long as the winds stay calm.

I’m ready to leave the heat here, but NOT ready to hit the cold up north.

I’m always apprehensive before heading out on a trip (me driving the car), but when I get in the car and am on the road I thoroughly enjoy the drive.

I saw my first Desert Iguana for the year yesterday.  I hope to see more before we leave.  This one was super shy and I couldn’t get a decent pic of him/her.

Time to finish dinner.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Toodles.

Today is the 19th, we hope to leave on April 1st…. that’s only 13 days.  I think we’re doing pretty good at getting ready to leave.  My only real concern is all the things that have to wait until our last holding tanks dump before we can load things on the flatbed trailer for me to tow north.  Thom and Russ are doing good at getting things into the storage unit we rented for this summer (I worry about heat damage what with the 115-130F temps during the summer).  We’ll see how things fare.

We plan on leaving here on the 1st, going allll the way to Lake Havasu (approx. 80 miles) and spending a few days there.  Then we will head up to Lake Mead and spend a week or so there.  According to Marv there are a couple of spots we can camp and both are pretty nice, so we’ll probably check them both out for a few days.  From Lake Mead we’ll probably go to the Virgin River Gorge for a few days.  Thom and I loved it last year, and it’s the kind of place Russ will love!  I’d like to find a place between Virgin River Gorge and Salt Lake City to spend a night or two, but being that close to next stop (approx 5 - 6 hours), it may be set in our minds to keep on trucking.

Today Thom & I got rid of our recliner chair (falling apart), and rearranged the back part of the trailer (where the chair was) to get ready for the corner computer desk I ordered.  It arrived at my son’s (Mike ‘n Tiff) place today.  I’m slowly making my way around the front room, putting things away and throwing things away, stowing what’s left.  Next is the kitchen, and the bedroom can be done in a snap.

I seem to be having a tough time with taxes this year.  We’ve E-filed our federal taxes, but being residents of South Dakota, we worked in Utah for about 5 months, and my thick brain is having a difficult time figuring out  what is and what isn’t taxable by Utah.  I called them today, and they don’t know a heck of a lot more than me.  I guess I’ll muddle through.

We’ve been having pretty high temps… for me anyway.  Thom fares better than me, and Russ is the Devil’s brother….. can take heat like you can’t believe.  The last few days the highs have been in the low 90’s.  It wouldn’t be so uncomfortable for me if there were more of a breeze.  Today Thom and I worked our arses off getting things done in the “cool” of the day (70’s to mid 80’s) and intend to do the same tomorrow.  According to the weather report, it should be cooling down to the mid 80’s the next couple of days and hi 70’s on Sunday.  Boy!  Are we going to take advantage of Sunday’s cool to store and stow.

Time to take my shower now.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Tah!

We seem to be doing the same ol’ procedure as last year….. wait until the last minute to get ready to head north.  We work tomorrow, but the next day, I need to get out of bed, make our coffees, NOT turn on the internet, and get busy sorting through out mail, papers, etc.  I’ll wait to do the internet when it’s too hot to work on getting ready to go.

Today is the 16th of March and we want to head out the first week in April, so, at the max,  we have 17 days to get ready.  The overflow reservoir on the radiator on the motorhome has a couple of pinholes that leak like a sieve.  We need a new reservoir and only 2 weeks to find one.  There is a Ford dealer in Blythe, but who knows what they may have in stock or how long it will take to get what we need.

Beyond things that drive me crazy…. we went for a ride out in the Kofa Wildlife Refuge to Crystal Mtn and beyond today.  The cactus are just beginning to bloom and I got some pictures.  Rather than take up bandwidth posting the pics on this blog, I made an album of some of the flowers I’ve shot the last few days and you can visit them here.

The weather is warming up now.  It will probably be in the mid to high 80’s and even into the 90’s for the rest of the time we’re here.  I’m planning on doing as much as I can as quick as I can so I don’t have to sweat it out to get ready to go.

It’s always hard for me to get ready to head off to the next destination.  I usually feel like things are closing in on me and I won’t be able to get it done.

We always do get it done and are fine wherever we are, whatever we are doing.

I love my life!

Stay healthy and happy!

Toodles!

I’m finding that if I don’t post every 2 or 3 days, I forget what’s happened.

The weather has been okay the last 4 days, not as warm as we’d like, but still warm enough to not need sweaters/sweatshirt all day.  Temps have been in the low to mid 70’s for highs and high 40’s for lows.

Flowers are popping out all over.  Right now the Desert Marigolds are gorgeous.  Sorry, no pics yet.  Thom took me for a ride “out back” on Sunday and I was quite disappointed to see the Cholla are still only budding and not open flowers, as well as the Hedgehog Cactus and most of the Ocotillo.  Maybe I can get out there again this week to see if the buds are opening.

There aren’t any pics to share this time.  I’ve taken some, but not sorted thru them and adjusted them for posting online.  Soon, I hope.

We’ve gone to only being open every other day at the contact station.  We worked on Monday and were very very surprised to get 6 registrations and only 3 of them were renewals, the other 3 were brand new 14 day registrations.  Normal days have been zero or one a day lately.

Yesterday Thom made an appointment with Social Security to get it started this year.  We had to go to Blythe to do this (approximately 20 miles one way).  We arrived on time for the appointment, got all signed up and finished in about 20 minutes and were ready to head for home at 10:25 a.m.  Thom’s first SS Benefit Payment should be deposited in our account in August, 2009.

On our way to Blythe we noticed an accident on the freeway (I-10) on the east bound side right at the Flying J exit.  Looked pretty bad, but all off the freeway.  On the way back to Quartzsite there were signs saying the freeway was completed closed east bound and we had to take a detour.   Those of you who’ve been here, know that the only way to get around that intersection of I-10 at the Flying J is to take the off ramp, head north on hwy 1 all the way to Parker to hwy 95 and then south on 95 to Quartzsite.  We had to drive 75 miles on that detour when it would have only been about 16 miles if we could have stayed on I-10.  It was a VERY long drive home!

Marv ‘n Deb headed for home (the long way around) on Monday morning.  I didn’t even get to give them hugs g’bye.  We sure do miss them.  We’re glad we get to see them this summer up in Utah and that they plan on coming back here next winter.

Only a few minutes to time to shut down the generator so I better say g’nite.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Tah!

We have 25 days before we head back to Utah.  My head keeps thinking “home” (since my last house was in Utah), but my heart thinks home is here, where the RV is parked.  When we are in the campground in Utah, that will be home, when we are here, here is home, when we will be on the Oregon Coast, that will be our home.  I truly feel blessed that I don’t need a “home base”.

This week has been fabulous.  Today was the coldest day with the high at 72F and a slight breeze.  The beginning of the week was in the high 80’s.  I just looked at my weather station stats and noticed it got up to 92F on the 2nd.

We’ve rented a storage shed this year to store things we only use while in QZ… like our portable dump tanks.  In Utah we’ll have full hookups (first time in 2 years!), so why tote them back ‘n forth and take up room (lotsa room) on the truck rack or flatbed trailer?  Russ also has a lot of stuff he still needs to sort thru and has no room to carry it all to Utah and then back, so we’re leaving it here and he’ll deal with it next winter.

Wednesday we went for a drive to Dome Rock, looking for flowers in bloom and anything we could find of interest.  Not a lot is blooming yet, but lots of buds and a few early blooms on some of the plants.  The Ocotillo is still not blooming a lot, but I did find one spear of flowers starting to open.

The Cholla and Hedgehog Cactus are budding but not open.  We did find some Beavertail Cactus in bloom though.

Single Beavertail Blossom:

Even though we didn’t get much in the way of flowers, it was an awesome day.  Not too hot for walking the hillsides and not windy or cold.  Didn’t run into any snakes or Gila Monsters so it was a perfect day!

Tomorrow we split the day between sorting excess “stuff” ‘n going “outback” to see if the Teddy Bear Cholla flowers & Buckhorn Cholla flowers are opening yet (and give Willow a run).

It’s time we get serious about getting ready to head to our next destination, but I hate to say goodbye to my beloved desert.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Tah!

Today was absolutely bee-you-tee-full!  Temps up to 89.4F slight breeze around 5 - 8 mph to keep it comfortable and sunny with just a few wisps of clouds.  Who could ask for more!!!?  I went for a walk this morning and got pics of a few more new flowers, and a shot of a new bird for this year.  MOM… wish you had been here!  I’ll show the pics later in this post.

I think the rest of the blog will just be pics that I’ve taken the last couple of days and want to share.

Yesterday, as you know, we took Mom home (I’m already missing her), and I got shots of some flowers on the way.  These are the Sand Verbena people rave about in the desert.  A shot of one plant and a shot of one flower cluster.  Imagine that one plant multiplied 1000 times and spread on the side of a sand dune… absolutely gorgeous!

Growing amongst the sand verbena we find some lovely, elegant looking Fragrant Evening Primrose.  It grows close to the ground so, needless to say, I didn’t get down on my hands ‘n knees to verify the fragrant part.

As I mentioned yesterday, we took Willow along with us for the ride.  She’s a great traveler, but at times wants a bit of company to talk with.  She finally suckered Russ into a conversation.

This morning I took Willow for a walk to do her thing and noticed a lot more flowers in bloom so after I got her back home and on her tie out chain, I took a walk in the wash.  Yes, I know that’s where the snakes are, I watch carefully and make lots of noise, as well as carry a big stick.  I got 3 new flowers for the year.

This is an old flower (new pic) but I don’t think I’ve shared a good pic of the Apricot Globe Mallow before.

This one is a member of the Evening Primrose family, one of it’s common names is “Brown Eyes” because of the red spots at the inside bottom of the petals that turn more brown as the flower ages.

This one surprised me.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to see such a vibrant pink color.  It’s called the Purple Mat Moradoa, I just happened to run into the dark pink version of it.  It has just started blooming.  In full bloom it becomes a mat of bright pink or pink purple flowers. 

The last new flower is the Wooly Bluestar.  I couldn’t see the blue on it when I took the pic, so was thrilled when I saw it on the computer.  This is the first time ever I’ve run into this one.

And now for the last two shots of the day.  Thom was outside and softly called to me that there was a  Roadrunner behind the trailer.  I managed to get a card in my camera and myself outside in time to catch a couple of shots.  The first one he is standing on a rock looking for food, the other one he is running to get away from me.

FYI - He is definitely a he.  His tail is quite long and he has that lovely crest on his head that he refused to raise in alarm.

Time for me to head out to the fire….. to sit several feet away (it’s still quite warm tonight).

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles.