End of May

The month of May is almost over and we’ve now made the decision to leave Queen Valley on June 1. We’ve had fantastic weather and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving any earlier.

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.

As I said earlier, we are pulling out of Queen Valley on June 1 and stopping in Apache Junction to get the parts for the fridge and AC installed. We should be done and on the road by Noon and hopefully in Laughlin early that evening. You ask what we will do there? Well, geocaching of course! We plan on staying in Laughlin for several days, then work our way up to South Vegas and stop again at another casino to do more geocaching. We are not huge casino fans, but like staying at their RV parks when we can.

End of Season

Tomorrow is May 1 (May Day) and it’s totally dead around here. We actually see and hear more wild critters than real people. Yep, the snowbird season is over and many of our residents have gone back to their summer homes. The few that are still here plan on pulling out soon. We plan on staying here until the weather hits triple digits and stays there for a decent period of time.

This last month was like a roller coaster with the variance of temperatures. A week would start off in the low 70s and work up to a low 90, then drop back to the 70s before it once again would end up in the high 80/90s. Our lowest daytime temp in April was 67, with the highest daytime temp at 95. Because of all the sudden temperature drops, we haven’t had a chance to acclimate to the higher temperatures, so when it does get hot, we feel it! As usual, we had lots of wind and dust, some rain and thunder, and many beautiful sunny days.  No matter what, we loved every minute of it!!!

Since it’s getting warmer, the snakes are out and several have been spotted in and around the park. Park maintenance doesn’t like to kill them unless they become a nuisance. Not all are Rattlesnakes, we have seen many bigger Bull Snakes. They are wonderful to have around because they kill and eat the Rattlesnakes. A couple of Gila Monsters have been spotted and our close neighbors even saw a coyote chasing a bunny on the morning they were packing to leave. Yes, we too have spotted some critters while out driving the back roads (mostly snakes).

There were many wildflowers blooming in April turning our green hills yellow. The sides of the roads were quite colorful, and yes, the pollen was nasty (I’m still sneezing)….but that will all come to an end once the days get hotter.
            
Many of the cactus are now blooming, but there aren’t as many blooms as there normally are. It’s probably because the weather has been much cooler than normal. The magnificent Saguaro also is blooming, and its white blossom is gorgeous! I’ve always been amazed at how these plants can have such a beautiful flower.

Over Easter, we had a scare with Ken’s son Dean. Dean was hospitalized due to some chest pain and found out he had Pneumonia. He was released from the hospital, but was told there also may be some problem with his heart and needed to schedule a stress test. The stress test showed Dean was having some restriction problems, so he had to undergo an angiogram, which thankfully showed no blockages. The doctors think Dean’s problems were side effects of a high blood pressure medicine he was on. Dean is now on a different medicine to reduce the high blood pressure. He is back to work and gaining strength every day! Thank God!!!

The rock shop is now closed for the season, but Ken spent his usual days working during April. Happily, Sylvia is now the Rock Club’s new president and Ken will have more free time next season. He will continue to monitor and work in the rock shop when we return, but the paper work and spending personal time working on club stuff will be over. For the rest of this year, Ken will continue beading and making jewelry.

Before the huge exodus of park residents, there were many going away (clean out the fridge) parties with lots of food being served. We also were involved in the usual geocaching events and going out to various restaurants with friends…. So much eating!!!! Since most of that is over, we are back to our sensible eating habits and hopefully will start to downsize our waist lines (grin).

We’ve still been taking the Wrangler out on some 4WD trips, and hope to do more before we park it for the summer. No, we don’t plan on going anywhere dangerous, but do plan on going after some elusive geocaches. Yes, we will continue to “pack” and carry an emergency locater!

I am still not sure when we will leave, but we do plan on doing some intensive geocaching in and around Laughin and South Las Vegas before heading back to Oregon.

Desert Fun

After we got back from Death Valley, and while the weather was nice, we managed to take a few jaunts out in our Wrangler to enjoy the desert. Yes, we have had some very nice days along with a few cooler and a couple wet days.

One very nice, 73 degree day, we joined our friends, Dave, Pat, and their daughter Marilyn on a drive north of us to see a slot canyon which overlooks Roosevelt Lake. They weren’t sure what the road was going to be like and didn’t want to go alone, so we tagged along with them.  It’s always a great idea to travel with someone just in case there is a problem.  Most of the drive was on paved roads with just the last mile on a somewhat rough (high clearance needed) dirt road that ended at the top of a slot canyon. We did go through some deep mud puddles, but didn’t have any problems.  Notice that Dave is taking the high side of this mud puddle.  The middle is much deeper!

The view from the rim was awesome! I hate heights and steep drop offs, but I did enjoy this great view.  No, I didn’t go near the edge.  Ken was the one who enjoyed tormenting me by standing right on the edge as he took pictures.

We all had a great time and after we got back to the main road, we had an early dinner by the lake. Yep that lake you see in the distance!  Do notice the snow on Four Peaks!

We went out again on March 27, and 30.  Both days we drove south about 40 miles and went off roading in the 96 Hills area.  No, we didn’t follow our own advice and have someone go with us.  We went by ourselves, but did have an emergency locator with us just in case something went wrong.  Plus, we always pack while going out by ourselves.  Ken was loaded for snakes, and I was loaded for whatever (grin).  Our goal was to find the geocaches that were placed during the last couple AJACS Campout events that we hadn’t had a chance to look for.  This time during the two days, we found a total of 31 caches. Most involved some bit of hiking and climbing. Yes, Ken did ALL the climbing!  We also found snakes...Rattlesnakes. One very mad Rattler was too close to a cache that we wanted and he was not going away.  Well, Ken won that argument, and we signed the cache log and got a picture of the snake.  Another Rattler was soaking up sun in the middle of the road and was not very happy about our big white Jeep interrupting him.  We managed to get a couple pictures before he finally went off in the weeds on the side of the road.  Another one which we couldn’t get a picture of was at the edge of the road and was not letting anyone or anything get close to it.  We let that one be.

The wildflowers are blooming, but we only saw buds on the cactus and no blooms. We did see some strange Saguaros and took a couple pictures.

April is now here and as you all can see I made a change to my blog page.  No it is not an April Fools joke. I may keep it this way, or may change it again….I just haven’t decided.