Anne-Marie and I have been real busy this last week, and If there is no update on the blog, it’s because I don’t have the time for writing the stories. We went to a wine tasting in Sonoita with friends on Thursday. Saturday I went on a hike over Sabino Canyon with the same group, stories and pictures to come later. Today we are going on a easy hike behind the RV Park, and should be back by noon. Wednesday there is a nine mile hike planned, that requires a lot of elevation gain and drop, and we will need two vehicles. All these activities are making it challenging to do any shopping for some new hiking shoes. Being retired with no obligations, and we are incredibly busy, and I don’t see how we were able to work, and get anything done, we just barely have time for happy hour.
Yesterday, I did a shopping trip to Home Depot, and bought another seed block. This is where I set the block out.
The Javelina visited last night at 8PM and again at 10PM. the camera took only 56 pictures, and at one time there were 9 javelina in the picture. This was a interesting one for me, because of the mother Javelina with the little baby javelina, feeding on the seed block. The baby looked to be nursing in the series of pictures, and always had its head buried in its mothers tummy.
This morning I walked out in front of the camera, in disbelief that the new seed block was gone. This has been interesting, but I don’t think that I will provide a seed block every night for these animals. I’ll leave the camera here for a while, in hopes of catching a bobcat or cougar, passing through.
Thursday our adventure was a visit to Kentucky camp, located about an hours drive from the RV Park.
The sign located at the middle of the buildings, told the story of the water source, and the purpose of the buildings. There is a trail along the ditch to the start of the water system eight miles away, and we will save this hike for another day.
The ruins of the old barn, and a truck chassis. Lloyd framing a picture to the right, and the rest of the group in the center.
This is the front of the Hotel/Office building. The roof has been replaced, and the porch has been rebuilt to preserve the building. The walls are adobe brick, and as all of these buildings, the little rocks and twigs that were added to the mix are exposed all along the walls.
This wide picture is taken on the far corner of the Office building, with Linda and Steve walking down the covered porch.
Anne-Marie, Lloyd, Bill and Steve are studying the water monitor, that was moved here for display. The box of rocks was used for balance to keep the monitor on target. Eight miles of water lines and ditches, and this would squirt over 100 feet, and blast the hillside away, into a slushy gravel muck, to processed out the gold.
The wide view showing the Office building and the Assay building on the right.
The cabin on the right has been restored to a livable state, and the Forest Service rents it out for $75.00 a night, and it is presently occupied. Lloyd is close to the last adobe cabin, and it was closed to visitors. I walked around the building, and next to the rock wall, on the back side of the cabin, I was startled by a loud angry “Hissss”. I froze, looked down and saw nothing, and moved closer to the building, and looked for the source. I couldn’t see any snake, tortoise, or Gila Monster lizard, that might have made such a loud sound, and I even picked up small rocks to throw against the rock wall, and still no more sound. I dashed around the cabin and alerted the remaining three of our group, and they all seemed a bit disinterested, looked and then walked on. I left the rock wall not knowing what caused the terrifying “hisss”, but happy that maybe I didn’t really want to know.
The full moon has been bright enough for the girls to have their moon lit walks, the last two nights. Anne-Marie and I have been at Grandmas house doing laundry and packing the left over stuff from the estate sale, and we are almost done. The Realtor has been showing the house several times a week, but no good offers yet.
For not having anything to do all day, we are struggling to keep up with all the social activities that are available to us. Today we have a trip to a ghost town, about an hours drive away, lunch out with about 7 friends, A wine tasting tour, A pizza feed at 4:00PM, and Happy Hour after all of this. Some days we can just barely keep up. Saturday, the group has a hike planned that requires an early start. about 8:00AM. We all seem to enjoy a day off between the high energy days, but the happy hours continue.
Tuesday Evening we had a early moon rise, and the clouds from the west to the east had a red glow, but the camera didn’t show it well. Out of a dozen pictures that I took, this was the best. The moon is so bright, that this camera just doesn’t show detail. This was taken during happy hour, standing behind Steve’s RV.
The Javelina made a visit last night, and pushed the seed block all over while chewing on it. The Javelina in the center, is pushing and rolling the seed block. I didn’t see anything this morning, except foot prints, and I think that the seed block has been eaten.
This picture shows the huge head and neck that these animals have.
The damage and heartache that these animals cause, is nearly as bad as the neighbors hogs back home, when they got loose, and rooted around the yard and garden. Tuesday night when they visited this seed block, they first visited Bill and Linda’s bird feeding area, and tore up their little garden, and ate their seed block. Linda was watching from inside their RV, as the seed block was broken by the Javelina’s strong jaws, and then consumed by two of the animals. Bill tried to chase them off, by throwing rocks, but they returned after a few minutes. Bill said that a couple of them were broad, and wide like small cows, and didn’t want to mess with them. Over at Steve’s RV, they left slobber and snot on a few of the chairs, and moved some decorations under the bird feeders.
This morning, after changing the memory card in the camera, I saw that the Javelina had really rooted up Steve’s patio area, and under the bird feeding tree. The nice border holding the bark mulch in place was rooted up, and a lot of the bark was pushed around, it’s kind of a mess.
I think that we don’t need to have food for these animals even close to our RV’s anymore. They just aren’t grateful about anything.
Yesterday was a day for a hike to the Honeybee hive, and we saw the usual and some unusual sights on the trip. We walked over 6 miles during the day.
I have seen horse tracks on the desert trails, but never a rider until this hike. This is a local resident, from a few miles away, and he spends winters here, and summers in Minnesota. The horse is a rescue horse, and seems to be well mannered around other people. I was going to give the horse my apple that I brought for lunch, and as this was early in our walk, I wasn’t hungry yet. The horse and rider got away before I could get the apple out of my pack, and that worked out the best for me, as I was really hungry at lunch time.
The group studying the damage to the hive. The rain storms this summer, filled the wash with water, and the bank eroded away. The hive was partially destroyed, but the bees are still working.
The wet looking area on the ground, is fallen parts of the hive, and the wet looking area on the bank, is the old but still working area. The other picture is of a smaller part of the hive,and the bees have built some new combs, and were real active. We didn’t see any bees flying to or from the hive while we were there.
Bill and Steve at a dead saguaro cactus. The ribs of these cactus had many uses with the Indians, generations ago.
The trail camera caught a visit from the Javelina last night. They hung out off and on for an hour, and pushed and rolled the seed block around. This was a small group, and the most that I saw in a picture at a single time was four. Mostly full grown adults, and no babies were pictured. The two on the right were having a discussion about feeding order, and a few of the pictures were showing some blurry action.
The two nose to nose, and another just came into the frame, right next to the camera. The large Javelina in the second picture shows how large that their head is, they look to be 1/3 head and the remaining 2/3 is body. They seem to follow each other, but they don’t get along well around food. We have seen them in Copper Crest Development, and the hair looks dirty and coarse, they just aren’t a cuddly animal.
The trail camera got a real close inspection by the Javelina, and the dirt streaks are slobber and snot from their noses. The batteries in the camera gave out last night, and the last pictures were too dark to show much. New batteries in place and ready for another show, but the seed block is small enough to get pushed out of the picture area, I think that I’ll get another.
The Estate Sale at Grandma’s is all over, Kathryn and Ernie are on the way home, and Anne-Marie and I get to clean up the place, but at our own schedule. The sale disposed of a lot of stuff, and we need to gather the remaining items that didn’t sell, into a group so that the Salvation Army folks can pick it up. The sorting out of the family mementos took a bit longer than anticipated, and in haste, because of the upcoming sale, a large pile was not boxed up, but covered with blankets, to protect from being sold. The remaining pile needs to be boxed and put into storage by Anne-Marie and I. The house is still listed for sale, but there is a chance that we have a renter lined up for the winter season. This house had only a couple of boxes of nonmarketable trash in it, total. Grandma and Grandpa had traveled full time for 20+ years, and had a lot of little souvenir items, from all over the world, and this took a lot of energy to sort. This house was tidy, and nothing compared to the estate sales that I helped with, back when we had a book store at home. I remember some houses that had so much junk, that in the end it sorted out to less than one box of good stuff, to 10 boxes of trash. The estate sales, at one point got to be the same pile, just at a different house.
Anne-Marie and I are just numb and tired from the whirlwind of energy that was used up by all of us. Yesterday we did a small shopping trip, and we forgot several items that were written on the list that we had in hand. This was a week of high energy work for us, but Kathryn and Ernie, after driving 835 miles made it a week of vacation for them, and after all of this, they get to have a relaxing 835 mile drive back to Carson City in Nevada, so that the both of them can rush back to work tomorrow. Anne-Marie and I had vacations that involved long drive times, and high energy activities, and a rush back to work to rest from the vacation, I don’t know how we did it.
Anne-Marie and I are just beat, but not from the physical work, but the number of decisions to make, and the overwhelming amount of stuff to look at. This reminds me of when we were in the Great Lakes area this last summer, and we were trying to do two or three museums and attractions a day, and we both had information overload several times when we looked at too much.
Two coyotes this morning, and one about 11PM last night. This picture shows the female sniffing a little container of ant poison, that was set out on a ant home. The ants were traveling to a RV site, and becoming a real bother, and the RV owner set these pet safe ant baits along the ant trail. There is a coyote in the distance straight up from the seed block, at the edge of the wash.
The ant poison is what she doesn’t like. She has visited nearly every night, and been captured by the camera, and she marks this almost every time. This is the first daytime pictures of the coyotes, and I’m still waiting for the Javelina to come by. A few nights ago, a neighbor just about 100 yards away, had a visit by the Javelina, so my turn is getting closer.
The Estate Sale went well, and a lot of stuff that I thought should go to recycle was actually wanted by someone else. Today is Thanksgiving, and dinner is at 2:00, Kathryn and Ernie will be attending with us. Anne-Marie has worked on cooking the turkeys, and yesterday she made the gravy and dressing for the meal. When Anne-Marie was finished with the meal prep yesterday, she smelled like Thanksgiving dinner for several hours after. The bunch of us went out for dinner at Tiny’s last night, and we had a good meal, and a wonderful time visiting. Tomorrow is another sale day, and a packing day for the family mementos, and Ernie and I will have a run to the local transfer site after the sale ends.
The days post isn’t complete without the latest from the trail camera. A coyote in the background.
A coyote dashing across in front of the seed block, and that’s all that there was.
The wildlife in Copper Crest show themselves more often than they do here in the RV Park. Tuesday afternoon, Anne-Marie, Kathryn, and Ernie got to watch a Javelina wandering around the wash, right out the backdoor of Grandma’s house, and it was there for nearly 10 minutes. These are the most miserable looking animals, 1/3 head, and covered with coarse gray brown hair. They don’t look like anybody would want to rush out and hug or pet one. They have a strong musky odor, and Kathryn could still smell it after it had left, most unpleasant.
Tuesday, late afternoon I took a walk in the Copper Crest development, visited the tree that has all of the insects feeding on it, took a walk up to the upper end of the houses, and into the desert a few hundred feet. The insects are busy as ever, and I found a unopened seed pod, and I collected it. The seed pod will help me get an identity on the type of tree that it is. I walked to the upper end of the development, and the sun was just starting to set, and set the clouds a glow.
There is a lot of fiddley camera stuff to get a good exposure on the glowing clouds.
I think that I took nearly fifty pictures, and this is one of the best wide panorama ones.
This is typical of the colors that we see during happy hour, back at the RV Park. This was taken less than 100 feet from the top of the development.
Today Anne-Marie gets to help with the Thanksgiving Dinner some more. Anne-Marie helped with the turkey yesterday, and today they are making the stuffing and gravy.
At Grandma Johnsons they are having a Estate Sale today and Friday. The sisters have sorted most all of the stuff in the house and all is going well.
