Kim walked a lot yesterday
and this morning said his hip was nagging him throughout the night. He wasn’t sure how far he’d be able to walk
today but was willing to go with me this morning. We walked farther than the green sign but not
quite to the COVID sign.
Yesterday the lines were
painted on the recently fog sealed portion of the road. It was interesting to see that the painting crew
got a little off course with the outer line; it ended up about a foot away from
meeting the line on the portion that wasn’t resurfaced. Oops! So it was blacked out and repainted. It makes for an interesting
visual on approach...the road is straight but the line now has a slight angle
where the two lines meet up.😏
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The trains out here are
long...it’s usually just an educated guess as to how long. Today we all took
the opportunity to put the subject to rest by counting the cars when we were
stopped by a train. The cab of the truck was so quiet one could almost hear
each person counting in their heads.
There were four front engines, one engine in the middle and 183
additional cars for a total of 188 cars. Earlier research indicated that train
cars were generally between 53 and 58 ft. long which made the total length of
this train somewhere between 1.89 and 2.07 miles.
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A couple of days ago Kim
wanted to know how the roadrunner got its name...no signal where we were at the
time so I forgot about it until now. It
seems Kim is not the only person asking these burning questions. Gary Clark posted an article in 2012 on the
website chron.com about this very
subject:
The
funny-acting roadrunner gets its name from a habit of streaking like
a pint-size racehorse down roadsides. With long, skinny yet strong legs, a long
tail for balance and an outstretched neck and beak,
the roadrunner could be called the thoroughbred of running birds
because it can reach speeds of 18 mph.
When I was growing up on a farm, I heard my
elders call the roadrunner "the snake killer." I've often wondered
why that folk name didn't persist, because many times I've seen a roadrunner
with a snake trying in vain to wrestle out of the clutch of the bird's robust
beak.
A Spanish folk name for the bird is paisano,
which loosely translates to "countryman" or "friend of the same
region." Because the bird dines on snakes and scorpions, I can understand
why people gave it a friendly moniker.
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Decided to take another stab
at seeing a roadrunner by heading out toward the petroglyphs again; it was a
good day for a drive. I asked if we could go out as far as the hawk nest; I
just wanted to see it again and maybe get a better picture. When we got close to it I thought I saw two
bodies on the nest edge. I quickly snapped a couple of pictures while in the
truck then got out. Taking pictures from a distance wasn’t working as I was
having a hard time holding the camera steady in the wind. Getting closer meant using less zoom which
meant the camera might be able to overcome any movement on my part. Getting closer also allowed me to see that
there were two little heads peeking above the edge of the nest. Oh,
happy day! How cool is that?! Took
plenty of pictures; then back in the truck when I was showing Mom the pictures,
I realized that there was actually a third little head visible in a couple of
the pictures. Yeehaw! Didn’t see any roadrunners, though.
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The petroglyphs were much
easier to see today because the sun ducked under a cloud while we were there.
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There are anywhere from 5 to
10 kids in the campground ranging in age from 3 to 9. The three kids across from us are homeschooled
so the mornings are usually kind of quiet...afternoons get a lot rowdier. The owners’ son, 7 year old Ozias, likes to
be in charge...if the other kids don’t follow his lead, he may very well go
pouting to his mom that ‘the other kids are being mean to me again’. Felicia doesn’t usually fall for it.
On my walk today I saw 4
little girls having a makeshift nail salon party on the picnic table at the
playground and nearby, behind a palm frond, there were 3 boys building
something out of cardboard boxes. A
voice rings out proclaiming them to be “He-man women haters” which made me
smile because I could tell it was Ozias that said it. Made me wonder what led up to such a
pronouncement. 😏
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While the thought of traveling cross country
in the middle of a pandemic causes me some anxious moments, it feels like it’s
time. Arizona, and specifically this
campground, has been a good place to ‘hide out’ so to speak but it doesn’t feel
as safe as it once did. Yes, there’s a
core group that has been here together for more than a month but each of us
comes and goes and it’s anybody’s guess as to what type of precautions we all
take to minimize exposure. And now it seems as if the social distancing mandate
doesn’t apply here. Especially among the kids.
As new campers/visitors arrive and mingle the chance becomes greater
that exposure will happen. For that
reason it feels right to be heading home.
I know we have a plan to keep ourselves as safe as we can but it’s still
scary to head out into this kind of unknown. Aghhh!
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By the time we got back this
afternoon, the wind had increased and so had the blowing dust so we didn’t take
a bike ride. But I did manage to get 16,200+ steps. 👍
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