Views From The Mountain

In years past I have written a blog at summer’s end called “Reflections On The Lake”.  This year, because we weren’t lucky enough to go to Lake Tahoe, my end of the summer blog has a new name.

Wow what can I say about spending the summer at 2700 feet near Oatman?  The view as seen at the top of the blog was incredible and one I enjoyed each and every day.  This year the monsoon season was not as wet as usual so we didn’t get to see any water coursing down that “Waterfall Mountain”.  The locals had mentioned that sometimes the rain would create that waterfall briefly so I was sorry we didn’t get to see that phenomenon.  Maybe next year.

We had some real challenges this summer.  Ones I certainly wasn’t anticipating.  Like the little ground squirrel bastards that kept eating through the sewer hoses and the garden hoses.  They are the worst and although I think the juicy fruit gum solution worked, but the shear number of them made it not matter.

Then, of course, there were the mice. I have an extreme problem with rodent things.  Snakes, spiders, and bugs do not, well, bug me but rodent things really get me going.  Although I never actually saw one, I knew they were there and because of them we now have a cat.  Sure is a good thing Susie is so entertaining and easy going because I am not much of a pet person either.  But Susie has definitely captured my heart.

So with all of these challenges who would have guessed it would be bees that drove us out!!  While I am not afraid of bees it was the shear quantity of them that was the problem.   I bet we had 50 inside and a couple of hundred outside.  Just too many to deal with and being in Arizona the dreaded thought of Africanized bees looms in the back of your mind.  So back to the RV park we go.

All in all it was an interesting summer, we had a lot of challenges but we handled them.  Well except for the bees!!  Rex has said this was a good test for eventual boondocking.  We will see!!