Saturday, March 9…Take The Long Way Home (Supertramp)

 Morning musings:

   I started needle felting a snake last night. Not as easy peasy as I thought it’d be. I got the wire covered with core wool and stopped for the night.  Decided the head is a little out of proportion for the body but, too bad, I’m leaving it that way.  As Kim said, “It’s your animal kingdom, you can make ‘em look however you want.”

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   A squadron of javelinas showed up on the cell cam again last night.  The camera takes 15 second videos; pictures are good but video is better. They looked at the camera but didn’t display any apprehension about it like the first time they appeared on it (Thursday). Kim said that they’d eventually get used to the camera and that appears to be the case.

   It also appears that trimming the branch off to the side of the camera was the right thing to do.  The notifications aren’t going crazy anymore. The camera records the time, date and temperature of each picture/video taken.  When it was activated at 3:15 a.m., the temperature at its location about 1½ miles down the road was a whopping 37^o!   No wonder the heater was on last night.

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   It’s been confirmed: the sparrows are eating the suet. Watched from inside the camper and saw a sparrow pecking at it before it took off. Another one hopped aboard and did the same.  So, that experiment worked; now if they’d just find the fountain.

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Evening update:

   Our afternoon revolved around the Apache Leap Mining Festival in Superior, AZ.  Superior is a small mining town, surrounded by mountains. Think of it like this: The mountains form the sides of a bowl and Superior is snuggled down at the bottom of it. The entire town is on a slant and walking uphill both ways isn’t just a cliché…it’s reality in this town.

   We missed the chihuahua races today, but we had that experience a few years ago. I knew before leaving camp what I was going to have for lunch: a fry bread taco. Kim opted for Hot n Messy Nachos.  After lunch we wandered over to where they were staging the Mining Skills

Competition…we happened to catch part of the timed spike driving contest.  Using a hatchet instead of a hammer, drive two spikes into a railroad tie situated on sawhorses about waist high, then drive two more overhead into another tie.  Waist high was generally no problem but overhead was way more challenging. I’ve never tried it but hammering overhead appears to make arms tire quickly and using the flat end of a hatchet makes it easy to miss the spike. Knowing there was a stopwatch running couldn’t have helped either.  Nobody broke three and a half minutes while I was watching. As we walked away, Kim said, “I think Marshal could beat all these guys.”  If not, he could sure make 'em sweat about it. 

   I’m not a fan of fair rides, a carousel and  the Ferris wheel are about my limit.   The Mining Festival didn’t have a full complement of fair rides, but it did have a Ferris wheel.  Kim was agreeable to ride it with me; we walked over to check how many tickets were needed…seven per person. Next up was to find out how much a ticket cost…$1 each.  That would be $14.00 for both of us to ride a medium-sized Ferris wheel.  I thought about it and decided the money would be better spent on a funnel cake.

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   It was great to be out on the bikes and I think the bikes appreciated the attention also. 😎   Superior’s elevation is 2,888 ft., over 1,200 ft. higher than Picacho.  The bulk of that rise in elevation occurs about 16 miles north of Florence where one would turn onto Highway 60 toward Superior. A gentle uphill climb to Gonzales Pass, then mostly downhill to Superior, which is at the base of the Apache Leap Mountains. It’s just a good ride out there, wonderful scenery. 

   On the way home, Kim told me to lead the way…on a day like today I’m always going to stretch out the ride. Instead of heading to Coolidge from Florence, I took the Tom Mix Highway. Stopped at the Tom Mix Memorial to walk and work the kinks out of stiff joints (Kim’s hip) and wash bird poop off my hand. Really, how could a bird hit a small moving target like my hand? It was definitely the long way back to camp, but it was a beautiful afternoon, and we had no reason to hurry back.

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   Didn’t look at my phone much today.  Finally checked the cell cam app about 7:30 p.m. and found 24 notifications, all pictures taken during the day and all looking the same with no animals visible!!  So maybe we don’t have the problem solved.  I downloaded a video to see what could be tripping the camera and it appears that a bush on the other side of the fence might be the culprit. The wind was causing the branches to move; there’s nothing we can do about that because of the location of the bush. Lowered the sensitivity of the shutter from three to one…maybe that will help during the daytime.   

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   The sky was cloudy until about eight o’clock; then Kim was able to go out and get the scope cranking out images of the Whirlpool Galaxy.  It’s supposed to be clear into the wee hours of the morning and the Whirlpool is in a position where it will be visible for a number of hours. Sounds like Kim should be able to get lots of data.