Emotions. Sad, that so many Thanksgiving holidays are so different this year. We feel for those who want to travel, who want to spend time with their families, but due to things beyond most of our control, cannot. We hope all our family and friends had a great Thanksgiving. We all have so much to be thankful for when you think about it!
We are loving every minute of our new fur baby, Chief. Even the cuts and bruises from his sharp teeth and claws!
Playing with him, watching him nap, and his snuggling into our hair and breathing his warm breath into our ears while we try to sleep. It’s amazing!
John and Bill did a few days of boondocking over in Quartzite (about 45 minutes from here). We went down and visited, had a great breakfast, a long desert hike, and lunch. AND Chief got to meet his Cousin Mouse!
It was good to see the Quartzite area, it is dispersed camping, $180.00 for a season (up to six months), and there are dump stations, potable water stations, and garbage bins. I was envisioning campers upon campers, but everyone is nicely spread out, the roads through the desert seem mostly smooth and not too dusty. Always good to have options, but we are really enjoying our little RV park, Morenga Palms three miles outside of Wenden. There may be be 75 rigs here, but some of them are empty, “the Canadians” aren’t here this year due to international travel restrictions. We have great neighbors from North Dakota, lots from Montana and even a few from Sanders County, Montana! We have trees (palms and palo verde), cactus, large spaces, a nice mile long walking path in the desert. We like it! There was a socially distant potluck on Wednesday, Rob and Kim cooked turkeys overnight in a pit of mesquite, everyone brought a dish or two and we were separated by tables, numbered and drawn so each group went to the potluck line alone, and were served by two masked ladies! It was fun!
John and Bill had a spot reserved really close to us (spitting distance) for the Thanksgiving weekend. They arrived on Monday afternoon and left on Sunday. John and Keith did some holiday shopping while Joanette got her hair done! and we ate, baked, played Rummikub and went for several walks while preparing for our holiday feast!
We probably should have taken the picture of the turkey prior to carving it, don’t you think!
About 20 miles up the road is the town of Aquila, which means Eagle in Spanish. When you look off toward the mountains there, you see what looks like an Eagle’s Beak, hence the name, Eagle’s Beak Peak. The day after Thanksgiving we loaned Chief to a neighbor, Marci, for puppysitting privileges and the four of us drove to the Aquila Cemetery, parked Toad and headed off to conquer a 3.9 mile hike which included climbing to the peak! A two hour excursion turned into about 4 hours, (sounds like Gilligan’s Island, doesn’t it!) We walked just a 1/2 mile or so before we began our ascent to Eagle’s Beak. You will note in the picture there is the arch at the top (Eagle’s Beak) and an arch a little lower down.
Well, it was rock climbing as well as hiking, most likely above our skill set and out of our age range, however, no helicopters had to be called, no injuries sustained and we were feeling quite good even though we didn’t make it all the way to Eagle’s Beak, just to Eagle’s butt! We finished the rest of the hike, 3.9 miles, in about 4 hours!
We accomplished a bike ride on Saturday and then sent John and Bill on their way home to Palm Springs to get ready for us to show up at Christmas!
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