More early morning air balloons

Air balloons landing near our campsite a few mornings ago:

We are happily settled in a great campsite near Sedona, AZ.  It's peaceful and quiet here, and really dark at night, which is nice.  Except for the moonlight.  Yesterday evening we had the most beautiful full moon.  I just happened to look outside as it was peeking over the horizon, a huge orange moon.

I haven't seen a lot of birds in this area, but yesterday this guy landed on my truck mirror and settled into a tree right next to my window.   He was really interested in both my truck's side mirrors.  It looks like he has whiskers around his beak. 

This morning I woke up to the hot air balloon trucks driving past, going into the field near my site.  I looked out my bunk window and thought they were landing.  I snuggled back under my covers, but then I heard the sounds of the balloons being filled and jumped out of bed and grabbed my camera and went outside.

This is the first time I've seen them launch:

Can you see the flames in the balloon on the right?  There's a loud WOOSH sound when they do that.

There were four balloons, and they sure were beautiful up in the sky.  Such a gorgeous morning, and what a way to start my day!

I'm looking forward to another great day - and wishing the same to you! 🎈🕶😊

Dodged a bullet - whew!

Thank God I have a TPMS - Tire Pressure Monitoring System.  I got it at The Big Tent at Quartzsite a couple of years ago.  I have the kind that has batteries, and I can replace them myself.  I had two batteries that that needed to be replaced, but had let them go for a couple of weeks.  So...

Two days ago I'm driving between Cottonwood and Sedona, AZ in the "slow lane" and I start feeling thump, thump, thump from my rear passenger tires.  I slowed down and looked in the side mirror and saw something black flying out from the back of The Palms.  I thought I had a shredded tire.  As I was pulling off onto the side of the road, the drive was smooth again.  Weird.

I got out and checked the tires as well as I could on the side of a highway, and didn't see any issues.  So I walked back along the road looking for what came flying out of my tires.  I found a bunch of chunks of black rubber that were from a tire right about where I saw the flying black stuff, and I collected them.

After bringing them inside The Palms, I saw the top right piece wasn't from a tire, but the rest were.  I took them outside and compared the markings with my tires, and they didn't look the same as my tire markings.  Plus they weren't as dusty as my tires.

I drove slowly down 89A until I came to a place I could pull off the road and do a better check on the tires.  I couldn't find anything wrong, inside or outside, with the tires.

I also got out two new TPMS batteries and installed them.  One tire was fine, but the other was showing ZERO PSI.  It wasn't the battery, because if the battery is bad, the readout shows two dashes, and this showed "O" PSI.   That was pretty scary!  It was the inside rear dual tire on the passenger side.

I bought the tires at Discount Tire in Yuma, so I drove slowly back to Cottonwood to the Discount Tire store. Unfortunately they were closed since it was Sunday, and I drove on to Walmart to shop and noticed their tire store was open.  I drove up and they checked the pressure, and it was, indeed, empty of air.  They aired it up and looked at the tire pieces I picked up on the side of the road.  He said the pieces were from large big rig tires, so that was good!

I decided to spend the night in Cottonwood at the nearest dry camping spot - by Thousand Trails - a mile or two down the road.  The next morning the pressure in that tire had gone from 65 the day before, to 27 pounds, and I went back to Discount Tire and asked them to examine my rear tires for damage.  He took off the two passenger side tires and the inside one had a large bolt stuck in it.  He fixed the tire for me and then examined all four rear tires, which were good, put the proper PSI into each, didn't charge me a cent, and I was on my way down the road.  What a relief!

I'm back in the Coconino Forest again until my 14 days are up. Nice site, I've met a couple of nice people camped nearby, and everything is good again.  I'm SO glad I ran over that piece of big rig tire which caused me to stop, which caused me to replace the bad batteries in my TPMS sensors right then.  Who knows how long it could have been before I checked the tire pressure if I didn't have a TPMS.  I wouldn't have known my inside tire had a bolt in it, and had no air in it.  I could have ended up with a  blown tire going fast on a freeway, an accident, who knows?

Lately I've had some issues that were serious and had to be fixed, repaired, checked, etc. immediately for my safety and comfort.  It can be stressful when that happens.  You have to do what's necessary right now, but then when the problem is fixed, the sky is blue again, the sun is shining and all is well.  That's how I feel after getting the tire fixed.  And this time, it didn't cost me $$$!

I always think these kinds of things keep my mind sharp, too.  LOL

Below are photos from one of my sites in Cottonwood - first (no surprise) a cow having a munch lunch - she was grazing all over the place:

And one of those Walking Stick insects - this guy was really big.  I was leaving my site and saw him.  I didn't want to drive with him on my tire, and he wouldn't get off.  So I had to pick him up in the center of his long body and was surprised that he was really soft, like a little green worm.  I guess since he looked like a stick I was expecting him to have a hard body.

And finally the beautiful sky one evening as the sun was going down.  Sure do love these Arizona skies:

That's it for now - take care, everybody, and check your tire pressure!  💝💝

Cottonwood campsite photos

A few weeks ago I went to the Prescott Valley area for a couple of days and spotted a bunch of these critters - crickets? - on a wall.  Isn't he beautiful?

Here are some photos from my favorite campsite in Cottonwood. 

First my favorite - a Roadrunner.  It's funny - there don't seem to be many in any particular area, they don't hang out in flocks from what I've seen.  Sometimes I'm lucky and park right in their daily path from "here" to "there" and can see them right out my window, and other times I'm facing the wrong way to see them out the window, or I'm just not in the right place.  But whenever I'm in this site, I always see a roadrunner and here he is:

Hey, Barbara - you're back!

Look at how well he's camouflaged in these bushes:

Here's a view of The Palms with cloudy skies overhead.  This area has good hard ground and I wasn't worried about getting stuck here if we had a few days of rain. 

It was super hot this day, and the cattle that were grazing in our area were trying to find any shade they could get.  There are no large trees here, but they managed.

This one was pretty smart - it had quite a bit of shade earlier on, but is starting to lose it in this photo.  Then it was time to mosey on...

I love that in the desert things are so sharp, thorny, prickly, sticky, etc., but then when they bloom, the flowers are soft and beautiful.  These white flowers have always been a favorite of mine.  Absolutely pure white petals:

 This next plant had really pretty flowers, too.

There's so much to see if I take the time to walk around and notice.  And TAKE THE CAMERA!  Sometimes I forget, but when I miss something blog worthy, I make sure to bring it the next time.  LOL

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  💟💟

A1 Mountain Road - driven out by the dust!

I wanted to check out the dispersed camping at A1 Mountain Road, and when we left Willard Springs, we headed there.  It's in the Coconino National Forest - 6.6 miles west of Flagstaff, off I40.   This is the road we came in on, and just pulled off to the left and stopped.  Easy, peasy.  Good road, and tons of flowers. 

It's nice that it's so close to Flagstaff.  I found a level, solar friendly site right along the main forest road, and I set up camp.  The weather was perfect and we settled in.  Then a huge lumber truck went past us on the road, in a cloud of dust - you can see in the photo above how close we were to the road. A while later he drove past us the other way, loaded with huge tree trunks.  This went on all day, for two days.  It wasn't terrible, but on Friday I was thinking, it'll be a calm, quiet weekend, then I'll see if I want to head on to other places.

(There are other roads running off this main road that I could have moved to, but honestly, I had just experienced two "oops" moments when I drove too close to a large round rock and damaged the step on The Palms, then a little later, brushed the corner of the roof past some small, leafy branches and got a little dent from a sharp branch that I didn't realize was so unmoving (it looked like some easy, leafy branches to swish past, which I've done many times), and I needed to stay on easy roads at this point.  Sometimes boondocking can be rough for a solo driver, constantly jumping in and out of the rig to check clearances, but both these times I didn't think I'd have a problem clearing the rock and the branch.  These things happen, and no permanent damage was done.)

We were parked in the middle of a field of flowers, and I picked some to put in The Palms.  I love having fresh flowers.  I hung them on the knob of my beautiful pantry door.  I'm collecting photos to blow up and hang on the walls of my future Park Model - this one might make the cut.  I love the way it looks:

Saturday morning started at 3:00 am, with traffic on the road.  It sounded like another big truck, but it sure was early.  I went back to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning and looked out the window, there was a line of pick-up trucks, some towing flatbed trailers, as far as I could see in either direction.  They were crawling along, no problem dust-wise, but when the traffic started moving, it became really dusty, of course.  I wondered what was going on!

After a while, trucks started coming back past us in the other direction loaded down with truck beds and trailers full of cut firewood.  Must have been the smaller pieces from the harvested tree trunks the logging trucks carried.  This went on most of the day.  I really liked our site and didn't want to move, and thought, tomorrow's Sunday.  It'll be quiet.  I kept The Palms completely buttoned up all day and night to keep the dust out.  The Palms is pretty tight, and I don't usually get dust inside unless I leave something open.  But it was a really nice day, and I wanted the door and windows open!

Sunday morning, I woke up and another pick-up truck drove by with a bed full of firewood.  Within 15 minutes we were on the road.   It's a good area to boondock, I think we were just there at the wrong time, and next time, I'll check out some of the side roads, which I know have lots of room for campers.

While we were there we had a Harvest Moon, and we had a perfect view right across the street from The Palms:

Onward and southward - we are now in the Sedona/Cottonwood/Camp Verde area, where we have two forests between the three locations.  That makes it nice - 14 days are allowed in one forest, then I can shop, dump the tanks, get water and propane and drive to the other forest for another 14 days.  That's the plan until - probably - November, when we'll head down to the Quartzsite area.  It should be perfect weather then and I'm looking forward to being in Quartzsite again.

Don't forget the VP debate tonight - I'm looking forward to it.

From me and Katie, have a great Tuesday, everyone!  💗💗

Final photos from Willard Springs

I have a lot of photos left to post from Willard Springs, but I've moved on, so I'm going to try to post just ONE photo in each file category.  It's going to be hard, but for the sake of your gigabytes, I'll try.  🤔 Otherwise, we'll have a hundred photos here.  They are such pretty critters, it's hard to pick a favorite.

I saw two different kinds of squirrels, a regular grey squirrel and one with a brown back and white tail:

Lots of birds - here are two kids of hummingbirds:

Female - I think this is a Broad-tailed

Male Broad-tailed

Male Black-chinned - notice the purple band on his neck?

Acorn Woodpecker:

Black-eyed Junco:
 

Hawk:
 

Painted Redstart:
 

Western Bluebird:
 

White-breasted Nuthatch:
 

Yellow-rumped Warbler:

And finally, instead of a sunset photo, I'll end with a foggy photo.  We had some rain while I was there, always welcomed, but I'm also always afraid I'll get stuck in the mud in places like Willard Springs.  Thankfully that didn't happen, and one morning I looked out the window and saw fog.  I didn't see it coming in or coming down, I just suddenly noticed it, and it was FOGGY.  Really pretty:

We enjoyed our stay at Willard Springs, AZ.  It's south of Flagstaff and north of Munds Park, and at an elevation that's perfect for summer.  Right now, though, it's quickly cooling and it was time to head south to warmer temps.

From me and Katie, have a wonderful Sunday, everyone!  💕💕