After my last little run around to towns I moved camp to a different perspective of the Kofa Mountains and parked along the MST&T Road on BLM land. The road condition isn’t as rough as Palm Canyon because of less traffic so also quieter with RVs more spread out. Oops, probably shouldn’t advertise that. Only a few miles north of Palm Canyon Road yet still looking NE-SE at the ragged Kofa Mountains to the east and the Chocolate Mountains to the west.
The cell signal is inconsistently weak and strong though I am distantly surrounded by at least four towers according to some apps I found. Towers high me in a valley. Of course it’s winter windy in the desert with plenty of sunshine for solar charging. Maybe the wind affects the signal.
I haven’t been happy with auto-focus on my camera, old or new, for many months. Finally dug out a different lens, 55-300mm, and auto-focus seemed to work quite well. Also checked with the 18-55mm kit lens and yes, auto-focus worked fine. I am bummed because it appears my favorite go-to 18-200mm lens no longer talks to the camera during auto-focus. My eyes are not great so I do rely on that working. Because I don’t like to constantly change lenses I’m sticking with the bigger one but taking a different perspective and find myself having to back further away from the subject to get it in the frame. It will be on hold to replace my favorite lens, laptop replacement first, so I’m grateful to have backups.
I don’t like the power lines I’m almost parked under but did get an interesting shot of the light on the wires one morning after sleeping through sunrise. It’s kind of creepy. Out shooting sunset and could hear noise from the electric wires. Wonder if that’s what is screwing with my signal.
The whipping winds have kept me inside a lot. 20-30 mph gusts make 56° too chill for me. I hesitate to complain at all about the weather while hearing about folks dealing with unprecedented cold and snow. So even though sometimes the camper is rocking my tiny house, powered by solar and propane, I’m quite comfortable. I do know from personal experience a camper is brutal to keep even semi-warm under 32°. I highly recommend keeping some kind of fuel and camp stove available for emergencies.
Finally a day with lesser wind and I went for a walk.
Quite nice with the sun to my back. Then turned around and the “breeze” brought sniffles to my nose.
Found it challenging to experiment with different perspectives using the changed camera lens. Nice to see the Ocotillo leafing out.
Often see multi-armed Saguaro cactus that resembles some character.
Yet up close is rather interesting too especially when the cactus works so hard to heal itself from some aggressive action.
I was out for about an hour and didn’t cover more than .25 mi. But at least I got out.
One night I had a really good signal and watched a movie on YouTube. This is not something I normally do. Kind of an experiment as I’m contemplating a 7-day free trial on Hulu to watch Nomadland. I truly enjoyed watching the Perseverance Rover landing on Mars in close to real time on YouTube. Hard to believe we’ve gone from walking on the moon to landing on another planet.
Another nice day I sat outside for a couple hours reading. Then I let Sierra out for a little bit. She headed right for her hidey-hole under the truck and into the wheel well but can’t get there now that the camper is sitting where it should be in the truck bed. What a memory. She circled the truck a couple times, sniffed the fire ring, tried some dry grass, and wandered a little bit before I called her back, scooped her up and put back in the camper. I was worried about her getting cactus stuff in her fur or running off. We’ll see if I do that again.
Joann drove down from Prescott Saturday to camp one night. She arrived by 8am with breakfast Mc sandwich in hand. The camp set-up in her mini-van is coming along comfortably and usable while still a work in progress.
She drove us into the Kofa NWR to within sight of the end of the ten-mile MST&T Tower Road (Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph) with a few stops and side trips along the way. Some nice looking campsites along the road but very few campers.
More cholla as we climbed in elevation.
A totally different perspective looking down into the valley we just came from.
Returned to camp for lunch and sat outside for a bit but the wind picked up so Joann suggested another drive up Palm Canyon Road. Being a weekend there were lots of RVs and tenters along that road.
We did walk a little up Palm Canyon trail but the wind was brutal and the valley was disappearing in dust. Although Joann brought firewood it was too windy and we were wind battered so it was an early night.
Chuparosa, first wildflowers of 2021
Sunday morning was tolerable sitting outside using our rigs for wind block and we chatted for hours sharing stories and catching up since our last visit in January. I’ve isolated so much in the last week I talked her ear off. She left around 2pm for a 2 1/2 hour drive home already talking about another camp-out in the future. And who knows where that will be getting a different perspective.