RIP Judy, I love you very much.

  I am not sure if anyone reads this anymore but I thought I would let anyone who does come across this that my mom passed away yesterday August 17, 2019.  I hoped this day would never happen.  I loved my mom sooo much and I hope that when I retire I keep the tradition of traveling the US as she did and her mom before.  Emma, her dog, came to live with my wife and me two years ago.  Emma is still around and full of energy.  In the summer of 2018, the traveling bug bit my mom and she traveled in a small rig from southern California up to visit me and my brother in MN and my sister in Indiana.  This past winter she sold the rig and bought a car.  She was finally done with traveling.  Early tomorrow morning I fly to go to where she lived in southern California to tie up loose ends.  I may make another post or 2 when I have more to say or maybe, one day, I will use this as my blog when I travel.  My wife and I are going to drive her car back to MN at the end of the week and plan on visiting Zion National Park.  We wanted to stop at a place she has been as we travel back home.  My brother, sister and I hope to take her ashes to one of the parks she volunteered at next year and throw them in the wind.  That is what she wanted.  I remember when I showed her how she could do a blog and we got so excited every time we saw a new subscriber.   I know she had the pleasure to meet a few of you and that really made her day.  Thank you all for following her blog through the years.  I know she liked to finish a post with the butt of some animal and say "The End", butt, pun intended, I thought this would be a better one.  I love you mom!

There comes a time…

This June will mark my ten year anniversary as a fulltime RVer.  It has been a wonderful journey with so many memorable experiences for me.  I’ll never forget each and every one of the fifteen National Wildlife Refuges I’ve volunteered at, but there comes a time when it’s best to ‘hang up the keys’.  I have reached that point in time.

          There’s a bench here in the park to sit upon and contemplate things.  It’s a favorite place of mine.

Driving the rig has never been my favorite part of this lifestyle, and I was literally dreading getting ready to do so again.  I’ve grown tired of the stress and all of the work involved in traveling solo.  Beginning in October, I gave Jojoba Hills a try and it turned out that I really feel comfortable here.

So, for the last couple of months I’ve been investigating how to stay.  It seemed silly to me to have a motorized rig just sitting on a site for who knows how long.  Well, today I signed my name on the dotted line and in about eight weeks a Cedar Creek Cottage destination trailer will be installed on my site. (think kind of a park model)

 Can you believe a black-crowned night heron showed up at the pond below me in the middle of the desert?

I was thinking that perhaps with trading in the motorhome I could get the trailer and maybe have something left over towards a small rig for summer travel.  Pipe dreams for sure!  Seems to me that we always think what we have is worth more than what it really is worth.  That’s been my experience anyway. 

                                                                      Pepper tree peppers.

So, no little rig, and tomorrow I’ll be calling my financial advisor to get some funds for the trailer.  Mind you, I chose what I think is a quality rig with several upgrades to be my new ‘home’.  I’ll not be pulling this baby anywhere.  I was a nervous wreck this morning while waiting for the guy to come and evaluate my motorhome for a trade in.  I was hoping for more than what was offered, but that didn’t pan out.  (This was the third or fourth place that I had been in contact with.)

Tonight I’m feeling excited about starting a new era in my life, but it seems ‘Travels with Emma’ has come to an end.  Not many travels in my future until I can save up for something to travel in.  Probably won’t be posting much of anything now that I’ll be sedentary.  One door closes and another opens…

          I’m taking this as a good omen.  This rainbow was the view from my door during last night’s storm.

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

Last week was a busy one

Want to get yourself worn out?  Well, just have two grandgirls (8 and 6) visit for six days and that will do it!

Of course picking lemons for lemonade was one of the first things we did.  There’s a small lemon orchard in the park and members can pick what they need.  The biggest and best lemons are up high, so it was great to have Robyn agile enough to climb one of the trees for the prize fruits.

Tuesday found us on a very long day trip to visit Joshua Tree National Park.  The trees, cacti, and wildflowers were all in bloom.  It was the perfect time for a visit.  Avery and Phoebe were even able to earn Junior Ranger badges by the end of the day.

With a little help from their mom, both girls got to shoot my air rifle.  We practiced one afternoon to be ready for the Thursday morning Ladies Poker Shoot.  Avery, on the left, really didn’t like it, but Phoebe ended up being a little Miss Annie Oakley.  The Poker Shoot pays out on the best high and low hand, with at least a pair being required.  Robyn won the low category and I wasn’t even in the running this time around.  We didn’t enter the girls in the shoot, but I think Phoebe might have been in the money if we had.

On two afternoons, we did soap felting.  The finished products are on the lower right.  With all those soap suds flying around everyone had sparkling clean hands, and I now have the cleanest picnic bench in the park!

We had cookouts every night, and while waiting for me to finish cooking dinner the Indiana ladies went on a hike up the big boulder hill that can be seen from my patio.

Up and up they went.  I had to take these photos with my 600mm lens.  They were really just specs on the hill to the naked eye.

But before you knew it, they had made it to the top.  Sure wish I could have made that climb.  All the things I did get pictures of were interspersed with numerous trips to the pool and spa, two ice cream socials, and miniature golfing.  The girls took turns driving the golf cart to these events, and I’m happy to report that we didn’t crash even once.  Of course, the girls sat on my lap and I controlled the gas and brake pedals.  They’re not quite tall enough to do all that yet.

It was a busy week, and after taking them to the San Diego airport on Friday I was pretty tuckered out.  But you know what?  I wouldn’t have missed last week for the world!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

Getting ready for more visitors

My daughter, Robyn, and the grandgirls, Avery and Phoebe, will be flying into San Diego Airport tomorrow afternoon.  They’ll be here until next Friday, and I’m more than excited.

The weather forecast looks much better than when my sister visited two weeks ago, and the park is just about at peak blooming for the spring.  I’ve been planning what we’ll do while they are here.  Avery is the one that sent me Flat Stanley last December.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I took that soap felting class?  Well, what better way to have some good clean but messy fun.  We’ll also be making a few day trips.  Being eight, Avery is the perfect age to get excited about Junior Ranger Programs, so a trip to Joshua Tree National Park is on the itinerary.  I’ve heard that the bloom of the trees is spectacular this year, and we’ll make it just in time, I’m thinking.

Of course there’s swimming, miniature golf, root beer floats, and a trip to the air gun range to fit in as well.  Nothing better than having some time with family!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

This week was a mixed bag

It’s kind of exciting to have visitors, and this week my sister, Pam, and my grandniece, Amy, flew in from Chicago to spend a few days with me.  They had delays and missed connections and didn’t arrive until the wee hours of Sunday morning.  Since I don’t drive at night, they holed up in a motel in San Diego until I could get there once the sun was up.  Of course it rained for my whole drive to the motel.

On the way back to Jojoba, we took a side jaunt to the Palomar Mountain Observatory.  The drive up Mt. Palomar was socked in with fog, but skies were beginning to clear at the top.

The 200” telescope is used nightly by astronomers.  If you visit, you get to go inside the building, but there’s no looking through the telescope.  I found it interesting that the huge lens was made by Corning in New York.  I used to live not too far from Corning, and had visited their glass works many times in the past.

That’s the road up the mountain.  Lots of switchbacks.  It’s a good thing we went on Sunday because by Tuesday morning the road would have been snow covered.

On Monday we spent most of the day inside the rig since it rained almost all day.  I did show them around the park, and we went for the Monday afternoon root beer float gathering.

Tuesday the sun was out so we headed for Borrego Springs early in the morning.  Kind of surprising to see snow on the mountains along the way.

I took the scenic Montezuma Valley Road down to Borrego Springs.  Pam really enjoyed the scenery and couldn’t get over all the big boulders strewn about.

Of course there was the mandatory picture with the serpent to take care of.   You know, the last time I saw Amy she wasn’t even in school yet, and now she’s 14 and a freshman in high school.  Her mother, Christine, used to come and spend the summers with my family in upstate New York when she was about that age.  Time sure flies.

I do believe we found all of the sculptures that were scattered around the countryside.  Some, like this one, I had never seen before.  The brittlebush was blooming everywhere along with these desert wildflowers.  I have no idea what they are.  We stopped for lunch at Carmelita’s in Borrego Springs before heading back to the rig.

About 3:30 we went down to the air gun range so Amy could have her first experience shooting an air rifle.  She did very well.  We were all having a good time, when I suddenly knew I was going to be sick.  Thank goodness there was a large garbage can at the range.

Needless to say I was toast for the rest of the day.  Spent most of my time in the bathroom.  We’re thinking it was possibly food poisoning from the shrimp taco that I had for lunch.  I was worried about being able to take Pam and Amy back to the airport the next morning.  Thankfully, Fredericka, a fellow member here, volunteered to drive them at the crack of dawn.  I never would have made it.

So I’ve spent the last couple of days recuperating from that miserableness.  I sure am glad they visited, but I just wish I hadn’t gotten sick.

                                                                              THE END!!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

Felting Soap?

“Join me for a couple of hours of messy fun!”  That’s what the class description said.  I had no idea what felting soap was, but if it was messy and fun, I decided to sign up.  So I was off to the Ranch House at Jojoba this morning to find out what I had gotten myself into.

The first step in this process was to pick a bar of soap.  That’s my lavender scented bar on the lower left.  There were bags of wool scraps to choose your colors from.  The purple jumped out at me, but the instructor wasn’t sure it was really wool, so I had to pick a different color.  (I did wonder why she would bring stuff that you couldn’t use, but we’re all just volunteers here.)

                   Next you have to shave off all the edges on your bar of soap to make it easier to cover.

After pulling the wool strands apart, you begin wrapping your soap in the first layer.  Making sure the corners get covered is most important.  You don’t want to be able to see the soap at all, so it might take several layers.

            I decided I wanted some white highlights to that burgundy, so I wrapped on a cobweb of white.

Once you’ve got the colors and layers you want, you wrap the bar in a section of pantyhose; creating a bag for the bar to be in.  Our leader, Sarah, said she wished she had called some of us to bring along some pantyhose.  Good thing she didn’t call me.  It’s been well over ten years since I’ve had any of those around.   Someone suggested that maybe you could pick up some pantyhose at Goodwill.  Used pantyhose??  Yuck!

Then we went outside for the messy part.  You have to immerse your soap bag in hot water to get it good and soaked.  Then you start rolling it in your hands; around and around.  Soap suds go everywhere!  You’ve got to do this for about a half an hour until the wool begins to ‘felt’ and seize up around the bar of soap.  (The scenery around us was not too shabby either as we were working.)

You can squirt it with cold water to keep it wet as you work.  Sarah said that it also helps to shock the wool by rubbing it on old fashioned scrub boards.

Well, after about 45 minutes, my bar of soap was still lumpy and not seizing up.  I took it out of the pantyhose bag to discover that the white stuff apparently wasn’t wool.  It hadn’t transformed at all, but the burgundy underneath was perfectly felted.  So I ended up with a rather mundane felted soap.  Guess it just wasn’t my day for picking the right materials.

Everyone was pretty happy with the results of their labors.  You might ask why the heck would you do this to a bar of soap?  Well, I’ve been told it’s something like having a loofa sponge with the soap built in for your shower.  As the soap gets used up, the felting shrinks to stay tight around the bar of soap.  Sarah says that when the soap is gone, you end up with a little pouch that perhaps granddaughters would like to hide little precious items in.

I do know that after 45 minutes of felting/washing my hands, seven hours later my hands are still creamy and smelling like lavender. 

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

The first time is always more exciting

Emma and I headed out early this morning to revisit Sony Bono Salton Sea NWR.  I was hoping to see lots of waterfowl before they began their journey north for the summer.  An ulterior motive was to get some photos for the latest Photo Bug group challenge here at Jojoba.  Our assignment for next Friday is to bring in some photos where we only took one shot of the subject, and did no after shot processing of the photo.  I almost always process my photos before putting them on the blog.  Cropping is the most frequent tool I use, and I absolutely can’t stand tilted horizons.

This is a good challenge for me.  You have to think about composition, lighting, and myriad other things before pushing the button to take the shot.  I have to admit that I cheated a bit though, since I have difficulty keeping the camera steady.  If I thought the photo was blurry, I took a second shot.  It also helps if your subject isn’t moving, but as you know, wildlife is my favorite subject and it seldom holds still.

Sony Bono NWR is a two hour drive away, and I was excited to find this coyote coming down one of the hills only a half hour into the drive.  I pulled off the road, lowered the passenger’s side window, and whipped up my 150-600mm lens camera only to find I couldn’t extend the lens.  It’s been several months since I’ve used this lens, and I really fumbled around trying to unlock the zoom.  This photo is severely cropped to even tell there was a coyote out there.

Eventually I got the lens unlocked, and got this parting shot.  It’s cropped too, so I won’t be using it at Photo Bugs. 

Along the way I had to travel through a portion of Anza Borrego Desert State Park.  I just wished these ocotillos were in bloom so the flowers at the tips of the branches would have brought out a pop of red.

I got to the refuge and stopped at the visitors center to find out what was around.  Compared to the volunteer I talked to in October when I was here, this lady was lack luster.  It was rather disappointing.  What the hay?  She couldn’t answer my questions with anything other than a maybe or I think so.  Not the best person for the job I’d say.

Overall the visit was a bomb.  Didn’t find much, and took next to no photos.  The wind was blowing like crazy and the area made me think of what I had read about the dustbowl of the 1930’s.  You could barely make out the surrounding mountains. 

Oh well, I’ve found that the first time volunteering at a refuge is always the most exciting.  Everything’s new I guess.  It’s not so exciting the second time around.  I won’t be making any more trips to Sony Bono this year.  Time to set my sights elsewhere.

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy