Morning musings:
10:45
a.m.: Have to be at the University of Arizona
in Tucson today at 12:05 p.m. (appt time 12:20, be 15 minutes early) for Kim’s
2nd vaccine. It’s about a 50 minute drive but we’re leaving early to
allow ample time...we discovered last time that arriving early isn’t a problem
but there are dire warnings about being late.
And while I’m willing to push some time boundaries, we’re really not
interested to see if these particular warnings are just idle threats.
So we had no particular plans for the
morning hours...took a shower instead of a walk, decided to put the trail
camera out closer to evening and the laundry room didn’t open until 9 a.m. So we sat in camp...I wrote on pictures to
send to the grandkiddos and Kim played with his new tiny camera. Just a pocket sized camera that has a little
more picture taking capability than his phone.
Not a typical morning for us.
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There’s a very tantalizing smell that occasionally
drifts through the air....it’s happened every year we’ve been out here. The
thing about smells on the wind is that it’s hard to know where it’s coming from
when the wind blows in all directions...haven’t been able to pinpoint the
source although it’s common to smell it when I’m out walking on Picacho Highway.
Often thought it was make an excellent
air freshener.
Yesterday I noticed a woman out in the yard
of one of the houses in the little community.
I walked over to ask her if she knew what that wonderful smell was...she
smiled broadly and said, “My fruit trees. I have two grapefruit, an orange and
a lemon...they are so full of blossoms right now.” Mystery solved.
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A woman around camp has looked very familiar
and today I had the opportunity to ask her if she has been here before...like
two years ago when she was just starting her new life...RVing full time. Yes, it’s Deb...Single woman, newly retired
from Ford who took a major leap to do the traveling she never had time to
do. In 2019 she sold life as she knew
it, bought a truck and camper and hit the road. She is still loving what she’s
doing and returns to Picacho for the winter months. Don’t know how long she’ll be here but she
did mention that she has a reservation in Glacier National for the months of
August and September and from now until then to get there.
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12:15
p.m. update: We arrived at the appointed place at about 11:45 a.m. and are
still in line. We’re moving but haven’t
had anybody check him in yet. It appears
the process is slightly different for the 2nd vaccine. And the area on campus is much smaller than
the parking area at State Farm Stadium which is where I got my vaccine. A whole lot of waiting in a small space
crammed with lots of vehicles but it’s okay...been waiting a year for life to
get anywhere near normal again, waiting in line to do our part is just part of
the process.
12:40
p.m..: 2nd vaccine is in the
arm!! Now to wait 15 minutes before we
can leave.
Best comment of the day:
As the 15 minute wait period was nearing the
end, a young lady came over to ask “How are you feeling?” Kim replied, “I feel fine.” With a twinkle in her eyes and a smile in her
voice, she said, “Then get your ass outta here... congratulations and thank you!”
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Evening
edition:
My blue-tooth selfie stick broke twice while
we were out here...the first time a little JB Weld fixed it, the second time
the charging housing pulled out of it. All
the JB Weld in the world wasn’t going to make that better. But since it was
fully charge when it broke It could still be useful when checking the saguaro
nest. Kim had another idea; since we
were in Tucson we stopped at a Best Buy so he could buy me a super duper selfie
stick, complete with a blue-tooth remote.
Remote will take pictures and bonus! it will activate my phone’s video
feature also.
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One last stop was the La Estrella Bakery. La Estrella supplies piggy cookies to the Eloy grocery store. They have a Tucson location with in-store shopping so I figured we should go right to the source. We missed the road the first time so Rapunzel took us around the block. All the street names in this area are in Spanish and she doesn’t give a lot of advance notice of when to turn. So we missed another turn. But that’s okay because we were coming around to the original road we’d missed which is more like an alley. Turn onto that, find that there’s a fork in the alley and she’s not specific about going right or left. I chose right and it happened to be wrong. So Rapunzel directs us to go around a shorter block. At this point I said, “If we can’t find it this time through, let’s just head back to camp.” Kim replied that “We’re not leaving until we find the darn place...given it too much effort to not see this through.” Rapunzel indicates that we’ve reached our destination but there are no store fronts anywhere only residences or the backs of buildings. On one of our trips around the block I saw what looked to be an interior marketplace. It looks like there’s something in there. Let’s park and check it out.
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We were both in a minor food coma from
having eaten a late lunch at Arizona Pizza Company followed by a few tasty
treats from the bakery so instead of a bike ride we opted to do the wash. The
lethargy was real.
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While waiting for the laundry to dry we
walked to the culvert to put the trail cam back out. We didn’t get an opportunity to do it last
night so we waited until the sun was about to set. Hoping anything but a vulture or raven shows
up on the camera tomorrow. What we did
notice is that the bananas are gone...they were there last night but gone today.
Something ate the bananas and there was no camera out there to record what that
was. Ding
dang! Hopefully the camera will operate
correctly after we updated the firmware. At the very least we shouldn’t have 200+
pictures of weeds moving. Made sure
there wasn’t any in range of the camera.
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Kim was
imaging a new target for a bit but his equipment unexpectedly stopped tracking...he
shut it down. Will try for the same
target tomorrow night.
