The month of May began in the low to mid 80s, then bounced to mid to high 90s, and continued to yo-yo between 80s & 90s till it finally hit 101 on May 21. We only had the one day of 101 because another cooling trend came through and the temps dropped back to the low 80s and high 70s. In fact on May 23 & 24 the temperature only got to 79. The forecasters are saying it won’t hit 100 again until after the Memorial Day holiday……it really has been an amazing May!! Everyone is incredulous with how nice it has been!!
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end! We decided to leave on June 1, not because of the weather, but because of a recall on our refrigerator’s thermal switch unit. It seems Norcold (the maker of our fridge) had several motorhomes go up in flames while their refrigerators were operating on propane, so Norecold put a recall out on those particular models. Turns out our refrigerator is one of the offending models (bummer).
We drove our coach to a service center in Apache Junction (AJ) on May 20, and they said the refrigerator looked great, but needed to order the new part to be installed as per Norcold’s recall requirements. While at the service center, we also had them service our front AC unit because it was making noises. It was determined the “squirrel cage fan” in the front air conditioner unit was out of sync and needed to be replaced. Once we picked a date to have the parts installed (June 1) we decided it would be a good time to make the move and slowly head back to Oregon. We have several stops planned before getting back to Oregon and won’t be home until mid July.
With so many of our park’s residents gone, it has been very quiet. We feel like we are living in a ghost town, and it’s wonderful! We enjoyed these past few weeks by geocaching, rock collecting, visiting friends, dining out, and just enjoying our solitude.
The first and second of May we attended geocache events celebrating “10 years” of geocaching. One was in Mesa and the other was on South Mountain in Phoenix. Both events were well attended with fun activities and as always, lots of food.
I have had many people ask me what geocaching is: Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment. Anyone interested can always go to geocaching.com and check it out.
We drove to Tucson the night of May 14 and attended a World Wide Flash Mob Geocaching Event the next morning. That event was our find 6,000. The Flash Mob was only 15 minutes long. and to commemorate it, there was a group picture taken by a member of our group who was controlling the down town web cam from his computer. The picture isn’t really very clear, but the operator of the camera doesn’t have a lot of time to “capture” the picture.
On May 20, we had a special visitor stop and see us. He looks a little like a Golden Eagle, but in reality is much smaller and is called a Harris Hawk. He stayed around for most of the day preening and chattering all the while staying very close to our site. It was fun to see him so close just watching us as we watched him.
