I’ve been enjoying a sunny time at Mittry Lake, north of Yuma. It’s a lovely place with a great view of the lake.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with several other Boomer Escapee couples, with good food, good friendships, and particularly nice weather. We stayed here for more days, visiting back and forth, until they left while I remained with other new friends. But I still spend most of every day by myself, taking long walks with Cheyenne and unwinding from a busy summer. Finally I am sleeping for nearly eight hours most nights, the first time in months.

I love the beautiful hummingbirds that greedily reside here, and it took a long time for the bees to find their feeder. The lovely little birds are iridescent in the sunlight, just gorgeous! But they are also greedy and so habituated to humans who feed them at motor homes that as soon as I parked they began buzzing me, expecting food to appear immediately. So funny. Now I put out a top-feeder and the bees don’t seem to be able to reach the food any more. I am gradually winning the insect war, and the flies that get into the motor home are still annoying, but I’m getting good at eliminating those that sneak in. I learned that many plants here are invasive, even worse than the invasive stuff we get in Alaska. One of the most widespread are big ferny trees called “tamaris”.  They are so successful that they’re taking over all other local vegetation.  You can see in this picture, they are the ferny yellow bushes.

Camping here is free, so it’s been good for my budget. There’s no cellphone service for AT&T, but the Verizon internet connection is fine. That means I over-ran my limit last month, will have to pay for it on the next bill. My old friends Bonnie and Doug Towne drove down this week to hang out with me! We’ve been friends since our kids went to school together in Cooper Landing, when my son Peter was just starting kindergarten! That was almost 40 years ago!! It was great to see them again, I love staying in touch with old friends. We drove in to Yuma for lunch at their favorite Mexican restaurant. That was the first time I’ve eaten out on this trip. They lived for ten years in their RV, traveling the country working at various spots before they bought a little house in Arizona, but they still travel in their motor home during the winter.

Saturday was the big Algodones “fiesta” across the border to celebrate the start of the Snowbird Season, so I went there to look around. It’s not the lovely little Mexican village my friends Jo and David visited some 20 years ago… surely it would be unrecognizable to them now. It’s become the border capitol of dentists and oral surgery, and cheap pharmacies. Plus boozatoriums, of course. I guess that’s what happens when they are walking distance from thousands of snowbirds.

We had three days of clouds and some rain, so I finally had to run my generator for two hours to upcharge the batteries. That’s the first time ever that my solar panels weren’t enough! It tells me that I could use another panel when the weather doesn’t cooperate. On the other hand, most of these other RVers are running their generators EVERY DAY! Jeez… They do it just to make coffee! or use the microwave! or to blow-dry or curl their hair! Or even to run a fan! Hard to believe. (and annoyingly noisy!) I will probably go back to Casa Grande and get another solar panel installed, but not until mid-January. I need to save some money before I make the splurge.

Something unbelievable happened this week. A few nights ago, as I was sitting outside by my little campfire in the dark, a new neighbor stepped outside his rig behind me and played the most pure and simple melody on an Indian flute! I was enchanted! Then when I learned that he sells these flutes to musicians and museums, and teaches people how to play them, I took a leap of faith and bought one! I’m gradually learning to play it, something I never imagined I’d do in my “old age”. He says I’m doing great, but I know I have a long way to go. At least I’m determined. My hands feel stiff and sore, but he says the playing will actually help arthritis and develop dexterity, which I hope is true. I’m excited, even though I know I’ll never be a master. Now I must be more frugal than ever, to make amends to my bank account. (http://www.highspirits.com/)

Some photos of this place…

It’s been great to make new RV friends, and I’ll try to get photos of them with their motor homes, mostly to jog my own memory.  Here are some of them…  Connie and John, Roger and Anne, Reiner and Marie, Theresa and Dwayne.

It feels really good to be living on the road again!  Yay — now this feels like freedom!

I was ready to leave Alaska, even though we had a beautiful fall, and by November there was still no snow! When Cheyenne and I got to Arizona, I was surprised that after seven months in uncovered outside storage in a very hot climate with many dust storms, my wonderful Lazy Daze motor home was just fine. The paint on my car is worse for the wear, but the motor home looks good. I was delighted when both started right up after the batteries got connected, but I had to check everything out so I went to the Escapee RV park for a few days to clean up and get everything sorted, visit friends (especially Toni and Charlie Velardi, and Pam and Steve Ritchie), rest and recuperate. After that I traveled 180 miles to Mittry Lake north of Yuma. I’m in the mountains overlooking the lake, it’s very nice. There’s no AT&T cellphone service, but I do get Verizon internet, so I’m good. I can’t get PBS television, but do receive over the air network stations for news.

I’ve come here to meet with some of the Boomer group for Thanksgiving. They sent me exact GPS coordinates, so I had no trouble finding the place where it’s free dry camping for 10 days.  A few other motor homes are parked not far away. There always seems to be one that runs a generator, probably to watch television, I guess they don’t know about solar power or even realize their gen noise is so annoying – or else don’t care. My batteries recharge to 100% every day and I have never yet ran out of power, so I can be quiet and enjoy being in nature. Sitting outside at night, I can see the lights across the lake and a million stars, it’s just lovely.

I’m so excited! I have hummingbirds!! Right after I got this motor home, I bought a tiny window-mount hummingbird feeder at the dollar store, but this is the first time I’ve filled it. As I write this, there are several hummingbirds not even two feet away from my hands! I knew they were here because while I was outside a little darling came to hover right in front of me, as if to see if I was interesting. I adore them!! In Mexico, people hang huge quart bottle feeders and have to re-fill them every day. This is better than a movie, I think I won’t miss the chickadees and nuthatches at home.  I also saw a little bunny rabbit this morning.

But there are lots of flies! I found a tip online that seems to help… a ziplock bag half-filled with water and a couple pennies hung outside the door. It is said that the flies hate it and don’t come in!. I read that Pine Sol works too, but I can’t find the bottle I thought I had, perhaps it was in Alaska. So I tried shooting a perimeter with insect spray around my chair and table on the ground outside, will see if that works for sitting outdoors. Fingers crossed.  Every day is a learning experience, that and this quiet life are what I love best about RVing.

Just before I left Alaska, my son Peter had his kids call me from Germany, so I got to visit with all three of them for more than an hour. Then my first week in Arizona, my older son Grey called too, so it was great that I feel connected again to family.  I can’t spend bandwidth browsing Facebook, but that’s what I’d have to do to check in on my daughter and her family.

I love these warm sunny days! It’s hard to believe this is winter. We had some wind over the weekend, but it’s just perfect today. It was a relief for me to have some peaceful solitude time, but more Boomers are coming today so I’m sure we’ll enjoy afternoon happy hours together, and sit around my gas firepit at night. I even have marshmallows and roasting sticks. What a great life!

It’ll be good to hear from friends, so let me know if you see this update! Hugs to all!
Kristin

p.s. Here are a couple pics of my last visitor in Alaska.  This cutie came to the house every day of my last week at home…