Home Sweet Home

We arose at 5:30 am this morning in order to leave at 6 am....in order to miss the strong afternoon winds that were predicted (again) along interstate 40. We pulled in to the Corrales post office right at noon, with just a breeze starting to build. The drive was blissfully calm, with the exception of a ten mile stretch near Grants, NM that is always gusty. We use an app called 'Windy' that does a good job of letting us know how the winds are at any given time, and here is the current situation:

Lots of yellow and orange! Which is what we needed to avoid. We are now home, unpacked, doing laundry, making shopping lists and paying bills. Back to the real world...

.....for 25 more days that is. Join us again for our Peruvian trek in June!

A Bounty of Beauty

As you probably realize by now, the next stop was the Grand Canyon. Saw loads of beautiful vistas, spectacular landscapes and a handful of critters (ravens, condors, squirrels, and elk). I am too worn out to give you a decent play-by-play of the day-by-day, but you do get the pictures!

The above is my first successful panoramic photo....the tree was on my left and Tom was on my right. And the Grand Canyon was in between.

Was waiting for sunset when I noticed the rock in front of me had made nature's onw little version of a strawberry pot. In each eroded hole in the rock, a plant had taken root and was growing on top of the canyon.

My artsy sunset shots

Tom waiting for more sunset shots

We had elk wandering through the campground most mornings, and we saw one fella in full velvet on our way out....but that picture is in Tom's camera.

London Bridge Redux

Well, no pics on that last post, and Grand Canyon was an electronic free zone. Barely got enough of a signal to call Dad, and even then only two out of three days. So..I owe you all some pictures, several days worth. So here ya go: I think you can figure out which pic went with which text...

This last picture was something I took with the old camera, thus the fuzzy, grainy pic, but it really was beautiful moonrise.....

London Bridge

Edited- Pictures not showing up for me...If you cannot see them either I will have to re-try when I get to some real wifi.

This morning we awoke to no rain (yay!) and the promise of sunny skies. And they were right.

There was a puddle on the ground, however, when we opened the door which made us go "uh-oh". Turns out it was the fresh water tank dripping from the overflow-which should not be full, as it was at 15% yesterday. But it was 100% this morning! Still not sure how that happened, as we checked all the valves, switches, hoses, etc. and they were all in the correct position. But somehow or other, we filled the fresh tank (and then some) overnight.

And Then....we had been hearing a clicking sound coming from our rear wheel hubcap. That turned out to be the metal valve tube from the tire being hit by the wheel hubcap. Took it down to the tire store where they adjusted the hubcap position, and for extra measure we wrapped duct tape around the valve stem so it can be cut instead of the valve. A fair number of Unity owners just remove the shiny hubcap and leave the wheel exposed so they don't have to bother with this. We're thinking about it.

After we got those chores out of the way we were just across the road from the London Bridge, so we stopped in the Visitor Center and took a look around, walked down by the Bridge, took some pictures. The area is a little tacky, but the people are very nice. This is off-season, so not too many takers on the water toys and such, but it was a nice stroll.

Something interesting they have done here at Lake Havasu is put replica light houses all around the area. Here is a map, two of them are nearby in this park.

That is about all for now....we are off to Grand Canyon tomorrow, where there is no cell service and limited wifi. So there may not be any posts for a couple of days.

And Now This

After yesterday's weather we were left with windblown sand dunes up and down the beach:

But this morning, we awoke to this:

Yep, that's Marines on the beach doing fitness drills. After an hour or so watching them and enjoying the Sunshine (!), we opted for cooking Breakfast Burritos on the Beach.

Of course, after that came the need for the second Sand Purge of the day

As Tom likes to say, "the good part is you're camping right on the beach, the bad part is you're camping right on the beach".

And as I mentioned yesterday, we had a party up at my sisters house for my Dad's 90th and my nephew John's 29th birthdays. It was a great time, lots of good barbecue, and I thought I'd show you a few pictures of the family.

Matt, Adriana and Lily

Dad

Logan and Jack

I am certain we have more pictures of the actual party, but I was busy partying and not using my phone for pictures. Tom does have pictures in his camera, but of course, this is the camera that has no Internet connection and I cannot get the pictures off of it until he attaches it to his computer back home. But rest assured we all had a great time.

Tomorrow we leave here, and while Pam and Gene will head more directly back to Corrales, we will do the same taking a slightly longer route via Lake Havasu and Grand Canyon.

Neither Wind nor Rain nor....

.....aw heck, who am I kidding. We're not the Postal Service. The weather, after last week, has turned decidedly stormy. First came the winds, which were strong enough to grab the rain flies off the tents and send them soaring. The kids all went running off and turned them into wind toys on the beach. People with flags flying from their rigs (US, Marine and pirate) were watching the flags stand staright out and their poles were bending

Bit by bit, the wind also blew sand between all the parallel parked RV's and built up hills and covered what was on the gound. Including electrical cables, water hoses and sewer lines.

Let's refresh your memory of what the ground looked like on Friday night:

See the nice ground tarp all the chairs and the brazier are placed upon? Now look for the tarp, which is in the exact same location, in this photo:

A couple of feet under the steps are all that you can see of it. The rest is buried under that new mound of sand which blew in. We'll be digging that out tomorrow.

Then came the rain, which at least washed the sand from everything. And that also wet the sand enough to keep it from blowing into everything. We are supposed to get some relief today, the rain will continue sporadically, and the wind is supposed to remain mostly calm.

We're hoping for sunny weather - and that the weatherman who forecast that is right - tomorrow. We've already agree that a) we'll laugh about this later and b) we need to make a return trip during better weather.

We're heading off to my sister's late this morning to celebrate the 90th birthday of my Dad.
Par-tay!

Still Beautiful, But Cloudy with a Chance of Rain

We connected up with our neighbors yesterday morning, and were settled into our new campsites by noon. We are at Del Mar Beach on Camp Pendleton for four nights, and we have a terrific ocean view from our front window.

The weather is cool, which is actually good for inside comfort, but a little cloudy and breezy on the beach. The locals would not be surprised by this; after all it is now May, and May Gray weather is due right about now.

Nonetheless, it is lovely to be here with our friends, sit around the modern campfire, wander up and down the beach and continue our lazy adventures. And yes, Tom is going to Lowe's when we get home and pick up his own brazier for the back yard.

The young Marine fishing here told us he has been catching grouper, which is very tasty and are fond of the sand crabs he digs up and uses as bait.

Similar Stuff - Different Day

Another beautiful beach day...

While Tom is off beach glass hunting, I am blog writing. See that teeny tiny boat (white speck) in upper right of the picture? I watched it come down by us, and then start drifting. As I watched, I saw they had spotted a whale, mostly because it surfaced and blew a spout of water in the air. I tried to take a picture, but it was worse than my photos of the dolphins in Chile or Tom in the mountains in Colorado, if you have been reading this blog that long. So I did the next best thing, I borrowed a picture from the internet.

This is the same type of whale, and this is about how far it surfaced each time it came up, and this is what it would look like if you were feet from it instead of 1/3 mile. 😁 Only the spume was bigger, because I can see it from my patio.

And, as long as I am borrowing pictures, a couple of times a day we get a pelican patrol. Three or four birds glide along in formation level with our patio, about 15 feet away. They make no noise, and you never hear them coming, they just glide on past in perfect wingman echelon formation. I never am able to snap a picture, so instead this is what you get. Just imagine them lined up.

Today is our last day here in Laguna Beach, tomorrow we head down the coast to join up with our friends and neighbors, Gene and Pam at Del Mar Beach in Camp Pendleton. We've done laundry, eaten our way through most of the cupboards and fridge, all we have to do is pack tonight. We are off to lunch today my college roommate and our godson. That's all for today's busy agenda!

Where is my GOPRO Scandinavia???

(Despite what the tag says above, I am posting this Wednesday, not Tuesday)
Another relaxing day at the beach here. Well, for the most part. Or at least on my part.

We both woke up early, read the paper, had coffee, and waited for the morning fog-marine layer to lift. Wandered down to the beach and Tom did more sea glass hunting, at which he was far more successful this morning. We went to lunch with an online cruise buddy who lives locally and with whom we try to meet when we come out this way. And then we meandered through a couple of shops on our five minute walk back to the condo.

I settled in for a nice long read on the patio chaise lounge while Tom decided to work more on his movie editing project. This project entails taking all several hundred of his two to three minute Go Pro raw footage taken over the last three years and editing them into interesting, short, few second snippets that can be combined into one or two minute, edited, interesting, action movies. He's been working on this for several weeks, sometimes many hours per day.

Today's project was Scandinavia. The actual editing takes very little time, but the file sorting and organizing is much more time consuming. Tom has his own unique filing system for his computer, one which is completely foreign and illogical to me, but it (reportedly) works for him. This is what I think a file folder system should sorta look like:

And this, to the best of my understanding, is what Tom's looks like:

Every now and then he misplaces a file folder and asks me to help him find it. The converstion goes something like this:

"How do I find the file folder I was just working on that is not there anymore?"
"Have you tried your recent files list"
"Yeah, that's where it was but it's gone now"
"It's gone?"
"Yeah, gone"
"Did you move it?"
"Maybe"
"How maybe?"
"Well, I was here and then my thumb slipped on the trackpad and I don't know where it went"
"OK, look for the folder name in search"
"OK, here it is 'Completed Scandinavia'
"What is the directory path?"
"Uh, Hard Drive->Completed Go Pro->2015->Scandinavia->2016-08-26"
...long pause...
"Why do you have an August 2016 file folder inside a 2015 file folder?"
"Because that's where it is"
"But why?"
"My thumb musta slipped then, too"
"But then why is the Scandinavia folder under 2015 when we went there in 2016?"
" I dunno, but that's where it is!"

This is the sort of thing that happens all day long when it's movie editing day. I overhear all sorts of really interesting non-sequiters:

"Oh, I know where that is, it's in my super-duper master file folder of the year."
"What time did we land in Iceland?"
"This needs a text box and then it will be complete. Now where do I find those?"
"Aha! The GoPro Scandinavia file is now in the Scandinavia Go Pro folder, NOT to be confused with the Scandinavia folder which is in the Go Pro Folder"
"You didn't see how great these geyser ones came out!"
"I know that's a duplicate folder of all those pictures but I don't want to move it in case I move the original by accident"

Or this conversation:
"You would be proud of me, the Ireland folder only has three folders in it, Go Pro, Completed Go Pro and Pictures.
"How many pictures are in the Picture folder?"
"681"
"Do you think you should further sort those by date or location?"
"Nope"
5 minutes later:
"How come I can't find any damn pictures from Cork? The sons a bitches have to be here somewhere"

Lest you think that is all we did, we did enjoy our stroll about town, the lovely view of the waves and even the dolphins playing just offshore at sunset

Good Morning

The adventure material is getting thin these days...because we are just being beach bums. We've been enjoying the sound of the waves crashing onto shore, eating our meals on our seaside patio or going out with our friends and family. We've been strolling the sand at low tide in search of beach glass; slim pickings this time of year, but there have been a few.