It’s about time to get back to real time. Enjoyed the San Diego trip but now it’s time to get real. Not sure that is always a good thing! However, then again, sometimes it gets my heart started!
I came out of the house on my way to the office and realized the birds were going bananas. Then I discovered why. They were chasing a snake (altho he might not have known that was what they were doing, they were convinced). Important things first, I went for my camera! He had crawled under a yellow wooden bo
x that lives over the water pipes against those rare winter freezes we get at this elevation. After lifting the yellow box off (with a long hoe), I took pictures. He shook his rattles at me and stuck out his tongue, but he didn’t say he was sorry for trespassing.
My only close neighbor this time of year was in the campground. Don Heisty, and his wife, Camilla, came over and with a rope and long pole, he found a way to loop the rope around the snake’s head and take him over and throw him back into the desert. He may come back for tea and crumpets one day. I just don’t want to know about it.
Thinking the excitement was over, Don and Camilla went back to their lovely fifth wheel. I soon called them back to admire another snake…only this one was very dead. I pulled the other bigger yellow box over, just to see what was going on, and behind it was a huge dead gopher snake. He had gotten behind it and tangled in the netting I had put there to keep the birds from stealing the insulation for their springtime nests. Don thought he had probably died of thirst. Poor thing. He still smelled so he may not have been there all that time. All this excitement running around my yard and I didn’t even know about it.
To t
hink all that was happening within five feet of my office chair. I’m so grateful for the wall between. It is early. I can see it will be an exciting summer!
About every three weeks, I make the 120-mile round trip into Surprise or Prescott to the big box stores. Even tho everything from apricots to vanilla to fuel is cheaper, if I counted the cost of the fuel it takes to get there, I’d probably be even. However, I have many more choices and I always look on that trip as a very short “staycation.”
You probably won’t look on these things as great adventures but it depends on your outlook. My Wal-mart experiences are right up there with watching grass grow and coffee perk. An older lady (At least a year older than me) was trying her darndest to reach the only and very last object on the shelf and couldn’t reach it. I tried but my arms weren’t long enough either (big surprise). I went around the corner with my cart and saw a guy. Guys have long arms. I asked him if he would be willing to help her and bless him, he did. She was so pleased and I think he was, too. And I always love it when you see people at their best, helping someone else. Small problem but big reward.
God Bless until next week.
Minshall’s RVing Alaska and Canada ($19.95) and RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy ($16.95) are available thru Amazon.
At 45, Widow Minshall began 20 years of solo full-time RVing throughout Alaska, Mexico, and Canada. Sharlene canoed the Yukon, mushed sled dogs, worked a dude ranch, visited Hudson Bay polar bears, and lived six months on a Mexican beach. She lectured at Life on Wheels, published six RV-related books and wrote a novel, “Winter in the Wilderness.”
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