home sweet home




Well, I've been in Kanab for two months now. Not bad. The workamper job is going well. It's definitely helping me to get back in shape and it's great to talk with so many European guests. The lodge gets a few tour busses in each week and sometimes all 88 rooms are filled. All the signed photographs around the place blew me away. Just about all of the film stars from the '30's to '70's have stayed at the Parry Lodge.

I get a daily email from workamper.com listing job openings. This was one:
Arizona: Workamper needed for 12 hours weekly light yard maintenance in exchange for full hook-up RV site, at clothing optional property in Tonopah, AZ. Included: telephone, Satellite TV, laundry, electricity, water, sewer & trash. Call: 623-810-0594.
Sounds like they might use more sun screen than most.

This photo is of looking down onto Kanab from the top of the mesa with the 9,000’ Kaibab plateau in the background.

Found some great geocaches in the area. One was up on the mesa above town and another was eighteen miles east of town and then a few miles along sand roads to Eagle Sink, the largest sinkhole I've ever come across. This sinkhole drops into the ground about 100 feet and is the size of a football field. Another cache has me stumped. Been within a hundred feet of it twice. There's just 75' of river in the way. Someone told me there is a dam downstream that I can walk across. I'll nail the sucker next time.

The site I'm in at the small RV park is right next to the tenting area. Couldn't be better. There's grass in my ‘backyard’ and I can relate much better to this type of camper. The other day I was talking with a bicyclist who was heading down to the North Rim. Tanja is German, in her early thirties, and has been on a solo bicycling trip since 2005. Last year was spent in South America. She keeps a travel blog going (www.getjealous.com/tanja08209). Next it's across Nevada, up the California coast, and on to Seattle, British Columbia, and Alaska.

Another lady was staying in the tenting area for a while and volunteering up at Best Friends. CC has been living full time with her dog in a class B converted van for the last two years. Pretty spry for 62. She also dry-camps quite a bit in her travels.

If you enjoyed ‘Forest Gump’, read ‘Gump and Company’. It's a hoot. How can one person get into so many fixes? The cast of characters alone will have chuckling.

I screwed two plant hangers into the back window frame and hung up a hummingbird and a chickadee feeder. Can you guess where Lapis and Onyx like to hang out when they are inside? Looking through the glass, they are like one foot away from the birds—bodies quivering and tails lashing. They need all the entertainment that they can get this summer. I don’t allow them to go outside while in the park. I also got a cage and have it hanging out a window so at least they can get out in the breeze.

Actually played tourist one day. Linda Lee, a friend from Florida, visited and we went down to the Kaibab plateau for a week and spent a day at the north rim. We walked around the campground they have in the Park while we were there and had some entertaining conversations with some of the campers. Nice time.







Half way through the summer, I was able to switch my two weekend days off to weekdays. From that point on, I headed up to the Kaibab plateau for a double-overnight each week. Some absolutely stellar disperse sites along the east rim of the Grand Canyon. One morning, two dogs came into camp and Meadow ran up a tree. She did not know how to climb down and I don’t like heights. To make it worse, it was a Ponderosa pine, so there were no branches low to the ground. You can see from the photo that I had to back the Cherokee up against the tree, put the table on the roof rack, and climb on top of it to reach the first branch. Not fun. Ah, the joys of owning a pet.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
Henry David Thoreau


FOR INDEX OF POSTINGS GO TO JULY 2006

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

park model, rick’s ’66, 4 miles an hour,
and a kindle

Image
I’m sure I’ve mentioned somewhere on these pages that I like park model trailers. If I ever regress to wanting a house, this is the route I would go. Park models are built on a trailer chassis, registered as RVs, and are limited to 400 sq. ft. They can be moved from time to time but they are designed to be used, pretty much, in one spot. The photo is of their Wedge model. This site also has some pretty cool units: http://smallhousebliss.com/category/small-prefab-and-modular-houses/ I was reading ‘World Ark,’ the Heifer International magazine, and there was an article about a small village in Nepal. The women make two 3-hour hikes each day, to haul water for their families and animals. There is a 5,000’ elevation difference from down where the water is, back up to the mountaintop village. Unreal. And forget about holidays and sick days. I’ve heard of similar stories—but 5,000’! I bet the husbands in this village never piss-off their wives. Theresa and David ...
Read more

solstice, new tenant, and sci-fi

Image
Hope you had a Stellar Solstice, the Earth’s New Year. “Cultures around the world have long held feasts and celebrated holidays around the winter solstice. Fire and light are traditional symbols of celebrations held on the darkest day of the year. Humans may have observed the winter solstice as early as Neolithic period—the last part of the Stone Age, beginning about 10,200 B.C. Neolithic monuments, such as Newgrange in Ireland and Maeshowe in Scotland, are aligned with sunrise on the winter solstice. Some archaeologists have theorized that these tomb-like structures served a religious purpose in which Stone Age people held rituals to capture the sun on the year’s shortest day. Stonehenge, which is oriented toward the winter solstice sunset, may also have been a place of December rituals for Stone Age people.” We picked up an addition to our household in the last two or three weeks. A mouse. I first became aware of it when I noticed Mesa on-point facing the bottom of a wall. Do...
Read more

chompin' to hit the road - big eyes at night,
homemade trailer, onyx and turkeys

Image
I generally follow the geese south. Now I’m thinking of following the hummingbirds. They left the last week in August. I had to, at least, dig out Wright’s book and the Delorme atlases. Planned a tentative route to New Mexico for whenever this job is over. Went through three 25 pound bags of sugar this summer with the hummingbirds. A handful of birds stuck around for the first two weeks of September but finally left. Sure hope they still found flowers along the way. There have been some transients coming through but I’ve taken most of the feeders down, given them a good scrubbing with bleach, and stored them away for next summer. Guess I’ll try it here one more summer. It’s been pretty slow here since the forest fire. If the weekly take gets any lower, AL&L will probably tell me to wrap things up here. Oh well, so much for working until October 15. Finally hooked up the 50 watt solar panel. Works great. Way more power than I use. Before I head south, I’ll install it up on the roof ...
Read more