Oh my...where did the past 12 months go?

Somehow the past 12 months have flown past me.  My charming son gave me a push when he recently texted me that I was overdue for a blog post.  He's right...drat.  And then he sent me a second text on the same subject...

Okay, so I will do a recap of the past months with photos.

Shortly after we arrived at Ramblin' Roads RV Resort (RRRR) in October, we visited an off-road dealer in Phoenix to upgrade our rigs. Mike's old Wolverine was beginning to show its age and my Polaris had needed $1,000 in repairs and wasn't even two years old.  I no longer trusted it to keep me safe out in the wilderness.  

The one above was my choice.  (The red truck in the background also belongs to me.)  

This is Ray, our neighbor in the park directly behind us.    Ray is sitting at the entrance to the Desert Queen Mine (Winchester and the Desert Queen).  He was not familiar with off-road so we took him on an excursion in exchange for his helping to remove the spacers on the Polaris.(Spacers set the wheels out about two inches which makes for a more stable ride.)  We didn't want to trade in the Polaris with the spacers on it and we had friends who wanted them (see below).

Robin and Steve live down the lane from us in New Mexico and they also spend winters in Arizona visiting friends in various places.  This photo was taken on Super Bowl Sunday while we watched the KC Chiefs trounce the SF 49'ers in the last quarter of the game!!!!  Steve and Mike installed the spacers mentioned above on their Polaris as it was the same size as my old one.  

We took Robin and Steve on a couple of our favorite rides before they moved on to visit other friends.  This photo was taken at Picnic Hill, a short distance from the park.  In fact, you can see the park by looking out from where Mike is sitting.  

Shortly after Robin and Steve left, our other neighbors in New Mexico arrived for a visit.  Karen and Bob live directly across the lane from us on Sunrise Ridge.  They are experienced side-by-side drivers so we picked some of the more challenging trails for them.  (One trail we wanted to run had a major collapse over the summer and is no longer accessible.  About a 25 foot section of the trail slid down the hillside.  If you go back on the blog posts, I believe I did a post and photos of it year before last.  It's the Yuma Mine Overlook trail.)  

The photo below was taken at what we call the No Left Turn Mine.  It is in a box canyon, and to get to the trail, you turn right at the No Left Turn sign.  And why, you are asking, is there a traffic sign in the middle of nowhere?  If you turn left, there is a parcel of private land which is not open to the public .

It was quite an interesting winter for us as we kept getting new neighbors who like to ride.  One day I walked into the office to buy quarters for the laundry.  Standing at the office window was a tall, attractive 40-ish man who was asking about riding opportunities.  I asked him where he was from (west of Fort Collins, CO) and where he was parked at RRRR.  Oddly enough, he was two spaces down from us.  Well, we had a great time with Jason and Michelle for several weeks.  His sister and brother-in-law joined them for a few days so we had four rigs on the rides.  

Our neighbors from Montana, Colleen and Mike Fenimore, were also at RRRR for the winter.  They frequently came over to join the post-ride festivities with Jason and Michelle.  Here Mike looks over Jason's firearm.

While Jason and Michelle were with us one day, we came across these beautiful animals Big Horn Sheep .  I was leading, came around a curve, and the three rams were at the side of the trail.  Instead of bolting, they just slowly ambled across to the other side and stopped to look at us.  Jason got out to take photos.  (These are his.)  I was too gobsmacked to get my phone out.  

Jason always has a pistol on rides, as do many others.  Since the rams showed no reluctance about staying in the area, Jason fired his pistol to see if they would react.  They just looked at him.  Clearly, they are not hunted and do not fear humans.

Finally they slowly moved off and climbed a hillside, then disappeared over the top.  I asked at the office if people were reporting sightings this year, as we had not seen any Big Horns our previous two winters.  Joyce said that there had been a number of people who had seen them.  An incredible piece of luck to see them.

Before Jason and Michelle left, they told us they are looking forward to coming back to RRRR for three weeks next year to ride with us.

And the fun and interesting people just kept coming.  We met a couple from Maryland who also liked to off-road.  Steve and Levere spend winters in AZ, drifting around from park to park.  Steve drives and is relatively new to it; Levere doesn't drive.  We were careful about our selection of trails and went out with them several times.  Levere really wanted to learn to drive but didn't want Steve to teach her so I took her out a couple of times.  The photo below is what happens when you open the door and step out without checking where you are.  

Levere was driving and wanted me to take over, as she wasn't comfortable with driving the trail ahead.  So dummy me, I jumped out and rammed right into a jumping cholla cactus (Jumping Cholla).  I had jeans on when this happened so you can imagine what it would do to someone wearing shorts.  It takes needlenose pliers and tweezers to pull the spines out, as they have a barb at the end.  Go in really easy and come out really hard.  If you don't get them out, they create a festering sore.  

Going into Phoenix is an exercise in patience.  We are about 100 miles west via I-10.  The photo below was taken at 2:30 PM on a weekday.  Heaven help us if we leave any later than that.  

On this trip to Phoenix, Mike diverted to show me the Arizona Biltmore development and golf club Arizona Biltmore.  How the other 5% live...  He stopped at the club house and purchased the visor below so I could feel rich.  The parking lot at the clubhouse was full of BMW's, Porsches, Mercedes, etc.  

One more lucky encounter:  John and Wanda Kintzer.  They farm 30 miles east of Minott, ND and were in AZ for the winter.  Their son farms adjacent to them so he keeps everything going over the winter.  

John had an older four-wheeler and wasn't familiar with the side-by-sides.  Since we have two machines, we took them out for several rides and then we had the usual post-ride festivities at our place.  Both of them play guitars and participate in the jam sessions the park holds.  So one night, they brought over a guitar and we had our own little jam session and sing-along.  It was really fun.

We got a text message and a photo from them not long ago .  They stayed at RRRR weeks after we left as the weather in ND was cold, wet, snowy, etc. and the COVID-19 virus was making it dicey to travel.  As soon as they got back to ND, John went out and bought a Wolverine like Mike's!  They are planning to come back to RRRR next year and ride with us.

So now we are back at Burro Mountain. Lots of sunshine, wind, 50's at night, 70's during the day.  All park events (Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day festivities, etc.) have been cancelled.  There will be no group events until further notice which may be all season.  Oh, well, since we are not social, it makes no difference.  

Hope you all are doing the appropriate things to protect yourselves and families from the virus.  

Been a While...

It has been a couple of months since the last blog post.  The time gets away from me, especially since the weather was miserable April and May and I had a lot of work (still more to do) on our new site at the park.

We took some friends, Sally and Ron, on a ride to Jack's Peak.  Faithful blog readers may remember photos from last year.  This is the site of the big wireless towers which cover this area.  BORRRIINNG ride, mostly county roads but this ride had a new feature:  ladybugs.  We took the trail to the top of the mountain and stopped for lunch.  

Every inch of this pine tree was covered in ladybugs.  One of the weather channels had a radar picture showing a massive cloud of ladybugs so this must be a banner year for them.

I have put up hummingbird feeders, cake feeders for the acorn woodpeckers, and a box-type feeder for loose birdseed.  There is a particularly quarrelsome pigeon which likes to attack the box feeder and fight over the feed.  The fact that the box is full of birds already doesn't discourage additional birds from flying over and trying to land.  There is a dead tree across the lane; occasionally I look out and see dozens of these birds perching, just waiting for us to refill the box.  Makes me think of the old Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Pigeons!


Another interesting and beautiful bird common here is the 
 Acorn Woodpecker.  One enterprising bird has discovered that hummingbird nectar is quite tasty.  

We did another all-day ride with Ron and Sally to a place called the German Mine.  It's a 50 mile ride round trip.  Doesn't sound like much but most of the ride is on rough trails and average speed is less than 5 mph.

The old cabin for miners.

That's my Polaris in front, with the red "ribbon" on the winch.

Mike on an "up" portion of the German Mine trail as we were going back.  The trail is up/down/narrow so no matter where you are, you will encounter one of the above conditions.  I am at a curve looking back down the trail.

On the way back, we detoured to find a "seasonal" pond.  At this time of the year, there's quite a bit of water but by the end of the summer, this pond will be substantially smaller.

Yes, I Am Still Out Here

On December 26, bad weather blew in from the west and we are still having uncharacteristically cold, wet, and windy weather.  Winds in AZ topped out at 40 mph gusts, we had torrential rain at times, and many days the temps did not rise above 45 degrees.  Obviously, going out riding on the mountain trails did not hold a lot of appeal.

I have a bunch of unrelated photos which I will post with appropriate captions.  We are back in NM at Burro Mountain Homestead now, getting our new place organized and refurbished.  The site itself had not had any maintenance in probably at least a decade, maybe longer, so there is cleanup and painting to last for a while.

A very cold Bob Brown.

 Our new neighbors on Sunrise Ridge at Burro Mountain Homestead surprised us by showing up in January in the park in Arizona.  You can get an idea of how pleasant the weather was by Bob's photo.

Why you don't go out alone.

We went out for a ride one day with a couple of others from the park.  One of the guys had an older four wheeler which stopped dead miles from the park.  We managed to tow it back and he told us later than the local mechanic told him to get the backhoe and bury it in the desert.

Buzzed.

We were up at Flag Hill one day and got buzzed by a small plane.  There are a lot of small airports in the area and there must be lots of recreational fliers.  This guy, in my opinion, was way too close to the top of the ridge as he came past us.

Cocktail Hour

We met this delightful couple at the park.  Nancy and Paul live at Grand Junction, CO, where it was substantially colder than Hope, AZ, despite the poor weather we were having.

St. Patrick's Day

We had decent weather for St. Patrick's Day.  Paul and Nancy came over to help us celebrate the day.

A few days before we were to leave for New Mexico, our neighbors on the south from last year, Mike and Colleen Fennimor,  volunteered to take us on a ride we hadn't been able to find.  It took nearly all day to make this ride and get back to the park but it was well worth it.

View from the top of the Yuma Mine Overlook trail.

Looking down at the Yuma Mine from the top of the ridge.

Part of the trail to the top.

The day before we were returning to NM, we decided to have a couple of beers and burgers at a local cowboy bar down the road from the park.  No matter what time of the day, early or late, the parking lot is always full.  (Note to C'ville people:  this place reminded me of an upscale Westerner.)  There was the usual pool table, loud music, plenty of beer drinkers.  We walked across the building to the "restaurant" to order the burgers and then returned to the bar to wait for the food. 

We chatted up the guy sitting next to us who clearly had been on that bar stool quite a while.  While Mike was keeping up the conversation, I started looking around at the signs on the walls.

We planned our trip back very carefully, as it is 380 miles and we do it in one day.  Just one tiny oversight:  the highway we chose led right past the Renaissance Fair location and the fair was that weekend.  Took over an hour to go ten miles.  One bonus, though, was that the wild flowers were spectacular nearly all the way home.  That's what you get from all that rain all winter. 

'Twas the Day Before Christmas...

Temps in the mid to high sixties today, light wind, bright sunshine.  Definitely shirtsleeve weather.  

The park does a whole bunch of things for the holidays.  I volunteered one day to help decorate the rec hall.  Some decorations are especially eye-catching:

This is the Old West...you make decorations out of what you have.

There is a contest tonight with a parade through the park to choose the best-decorated golf cart or off road vehicle.  Here is one of the entrants:

And some decorations are more successful than others.

Faithful readers of the blog may remember that there is a lemon tree on the planting area next to the trailer and in front of it, a grapefruit tree.  While the lemon tree obviously isn't doing well (dead limbs, few lemons), the grapefruit tree is covered with fruit.  I brought my juicer from NM this year and I've had the BEST grapefruit juice on the planet for the past week or so.

The folks next to us on the north left the park at the end of last season and we had new neighbors this year for a month, Nancy and Paul.  (They have gone to San Diego for the holidays but will be back in a few weeks.)  One day the four of us wandered around in the mountains and wound up at Jail House Rock.  Already there was another group, several rigs.  Turns out they were from Parsons, Kansas, and they spend several months here every winter.  

Nancy with one the the ladies from Parsons.

I have been fighting with the seat belt/shoulder strap on the Polaris since I got it.  Finally I decided to order a four-point harness and take the factory-installed equipment out entirely.  This is an annoying job because you have to take the center console cover off as well as taking out both seats.  We only made one tiny little miscalculation:  when we removed the factory seatbelt, we engaged the governor that automatically limits the speed to 15 mph.  Fixed that the next day with a butt connector and electrical tape.  But we had to take the cover off the console AGAIN.

Paul kindly came over to assist in the job both days.  So now if I roll the Polaris, I will probably stay in it.  Probably a better plan not to roll it.

So to you all, loyal readers, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Whew, what a summer!

I'm just about worn out.  As you know from earlier posts, we took the Lance trailer to Burro Mountain Homestead, southwest of Silver City, for what we thought would be 4-6 weeks.  We liked it so much we signed a lease agreement and traded the Lance trailer  (22 feet) for a much larger one which we parked on the leased lot.  Within six or eight weeks, a much better lot, leased for decades, became available so we traded the Pinon Crest site for the Sunrise Ridge site, which meant moving everything.  (For you loyal readers, you may remember that Sunrise Ridge was where the cougar was spotted earlier in the summer.)

The new site came with an existing deck and two good-sized storage sheds.  It continues to baffle me how we have so much stuff when the object of living like this is NOT to have so much stuff.  The Hitchhiker trailer in Deming, with its great screened porch and storage shed, is for sale.  

No maintenance to speak of has been done on this site for a very long time.  It came with a 22 year old trailer which we just had hauled away, as the trailer we bought at the start of the summer is 20 years newer.  We did our best to get some of the maintenance done (the deck hasn't been stained for probably 20 years) but we ran out of time.  Lots of projects for next year. 

Many of the permanent sites have either a wooden roof/deck built or they have a car port covering everything.  Our new neighbor down the lane, Sam Bowman, has been incredibly helpful in solving a lot of issues and he told us unless we owned a lumber yard, a wooden structurer was cost prohibitive as well as taking weeks to get built.  He recommended a car port company out of Gallup, NM.  (Usually the first thing that goes bad on trailers is the roof; lots of caulking, a rubber sheet "shingle," and lots of opportunities for disaster.  The car port protects the roof and removes the dangers of leaks.  An additional benefit is the roof is shaded during the hot summer months and the trailer stays much cooler.)

Below are a couple of photos of that crew putting up the car port.  

Giant erector set.

When I ordered the car port, the company said to expect delivery in 6 to 8 weeks.  Although we were going to be in AZ at that time, Sam agreed to project manage it.  A week or so later, Sam got a call from the company that they could deliver it in 10 days (!).  So on the last day we were in the park, the crew showed up and got it finished in one day.  The wind kept rising as the day went on.  I finally quit watching the workmen because they were ON TOP of the rafters and passing big sheets of roofing steel which were like giant sails in the wind. A couple of times the sheet got away from them.  Fortunately no one was hurt but it was a dangerous day to be building one of these.  

We are now at the place in Hope, AZ, which consists of the park, a small chapel, and a closed gas station across the road.  The nearest "town," Salome, is six miles away.  I go to Parker (47 miles) or Wickenburg (60 miles) to shop.  It does encourage me to do a good grocery list because there is no running out to pick up something I forgot.

We have the side-by-sides with us but we haven't yet had time to go adventuring out onto the trails.  I hope we can get ourselves organized soon, as we haven't had much time to ride in a couple of months.  

Rains almost over, I hope.

This is a short post, as we haven't been doing much other than getting settled in the new park.

The monsoon rains started the second week in July and have been with us consistently.  It poured from Saturday of Labor Day weekend to Sunday noon.  Definitely took a lot of the fun out of activities here in the park.  Most of the temporary people packed up and left the park either Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.

One of the Labor Day weekend events was a silent auction.  Park residents cleaned out storage sheds and closets and brought all their unused stuff down to one of the park buildings.  You have never seen so much junk!  However, the park made $600 for the general fund and Habitat for Humanity sent a truck to pick up all the remaining items that didn't find a new owner.  

We had seen does and fawns at the salt block but no bucks until recently.  The bucks are growing out new antlers and the antlers are covered in "velvet," the covering which supplies blood to the growing antlers.  Soon the velvet will start dying and the bucks will rub it off on trees.  Now we are seeing the bucks at the salt block.  Do they need extra salt/minerals for their growing antlers?  And oddly enough, they ignore apples; they are only interested in nibbling the salt.

I don't count my occasional apple or carrot as feeding them.  I am careful to place the goodies when there are no deer in sight.  They connect the treats with the salt block, not a human.  

Earlier in the summer a stupid camper near the park was attacked by a bear.  This week the notice below was posted on the bulletin board in front of the office:

There is speculation that the cougar is a female with cubs and she has built a den in the woodpile.

The park is surrounded by thousands of acres of wilderness with a few scattered cattle ranches.  It is perfect habitat for the big predators, bears and cougars.  I have been told that bears occasionally show up in the park as well.  Before the dumpsters had lids, one slid down into one and couldn't get out.  A very angry bear.  Game officers had to come out to extract it.

We will be here at Burro Mountain for another six weeks or so and then we'll tow the side-by-sides to Arizona for the winter.  Riding is really good there and we will be ready to get lost again.

Rain, rain, go away...

Odd as it may sound, we are experiencing the infamous Southwest Monsoon season.  We have had torrential rains, lightning, thunder, almost every day for the past 10 days and this will continue intermittently for the next month.  Nearly all the rainfall in this area comes in a very short window in mid-summer to early fall.  People in the park have said that the rains will continue until about the middle of September.  When it's not raining, the weather is gorgeous; blue skies, temps in the mid-70's to mid-80's.

I attended the Burro Mountain Homestead Association meeting last Saturday morning.  The park functions more like a coop than a regular RV park.  Only residents with a year's lease are invited to attend.  

There was the usual reading of the minutes, treasurer's report, coffee fund report, etc.  The park sponsors a whole bunch of activities, including a champagne brunch next month.  I volunteered to help clean up after the brunch.  (I did go to the brunch and bused tables.  It's about the only work I've done in five years.)

At the end of the meeting, there was a spot for announcements.  A gentleman behind me stood up.  He knows someone (Forest Service guy, maybe) who has ten wildlife cameras in the area around the park.  The camera has recorded SEVEN individual Cougars.  The message was "BE AWARE."  There are a number of ranches in the area near the park and lots of cattle.  If the cougars get tired of deer, they munch on cattle which explains why there is a hunting season on them (the cougars, not the cattle).

Update:  It is still raining almost every afternoon. Lots of lightning, thunder, and poor Muppet is terrified.  Indy just sleeps through it and Lola is uneasy but not hysterical.  Mike's old dog, Bela, would panic and try to hide in any little cubbyhole she could find.  Once she got under the bed in the RPOD and got stuck.  It took both of us to work her out.

Strange accidents sometimes happen out on the trails.  Mike's left front wheel locked and would not turn.  Weirdly enough, somehow a stick exactly the size of the opening in the wheel got rammed all the way through and jammed the wheel.  

You can see that the stick was all the way through the wheel, barely visible from the outside.  When Mike took the wheel off, we could see why the wheel wouldn't turn.  Note the bent piece.  Took us half an hour or so to bend back the damaged piece, remove the stick, and get the wheel back on.  Took tools in both of our tool boxes to get all the work done safely.

I have mentioned that the deer wander freely through the park.  We have a doe who comes to visit and has developed a taste for bird feed.  No wonder this feeder is empty every morning.

Several weeks ago, I put a salt block down the hill behind our site near a game path.  Occasionally I put an apple on the salt block.  This morning, I looked out to see a doe munching the apple with a fawn at her heels.  The apple fell to the ground and the fawn tried to get a bite.  Mama gently nosed him/her away and ate the last of the apple herself.  The fawn had to have milk for breakfast.