Moving Right Along on Monday

Gee, it's 4:30 pm and we haven't yet done a blog post today. We'll talk about yesterday later. Went to bed at 10:30 last night (a real rarity) and got up at 5:30 am. We drove off to the Blue Grade at 7 am so you can see this post's title is appropriate--moving right along on Monday. we went halfway up the hill and got back to the straw house at 8:05 am. Called Fire Dispatch and we were burning a few minutes later. We burned until we ran out of propane. (We're leaving all our propane tanks empty in our absence this time around.) Then we hustled to get ready to spray the pre-emergent chemical.

It takes about an hour to get everything set up to spray. We started spraying at 10 am and sprayed continuously until 2 pm. I'd guess I sprayed over 50 gallons and still didn't cover everything. At least I got the important areas. Frankly, I can't stand more than 4 hours of spraying. Two would be about right. Four is over the top. So, I quit spraying at 2 pm and then spent an hour cleaning up and putting stuff away.

I called the Fire Chief here and asked Chief Mike to come and look at our place. I bragged that we have "The Best Defensible Space in Rimrock!" He came right over and he was real pleased. We had a fine visit--he's a great guy in our opinion.
We volunteered in 2005 to help him build a website for the local fire dept. He needs help again and so we will pick up where we left off next November.

After Mike left, I hot-footed it to Camp Verde to return some narratives to Ken Reynolds at the Basha's grocery store. Bought some chicken to cook on the fire and washed the white truck--Snappy, as Susun calls her. Since I was wearing my swimming suit (nobody cares about fashion in Camp Verde), I jumped in the back of the truck camper and used the high pressure wand to give it a good tornado-like cleaning. It was filthy. I wound up soaking wet as you can imagine.

Then we hot-footed it back here to the straw house, arriving at 4:30 pm. And now we're writing this blog post. Yeah, you can see why the post is titled, "moving right along!"

Sunday was a real whirlwind from start to finish, too. We got off on a hike around our neighboring National Park property and returned in time to check in with Nancy at 10 am. We made a plan and took off for Flagstaff, arriving there around 11. We had a wonderful visit with Nancy. There was no way we were not going to see Nancy on this trip. We cut it pretty close, though. Nancy's doing great but really lamented the recent winter weather. We've heard from numerous people that it was really a hard winter, physically and psychologically. We looking forward to having Nancy bring her RV down to the straw house next fall and (hopefully) next winter, too. Nancy will be working on the Verde River guide that we are kinda, sorta, maybe progged to be doing then.

After we left Nancy's, we drove over to Maggie's place and checked out her amazing quilts. You wouldn't believe her quilts--amazing is a tame word for them. If you are accustomed to thinking a quilt looks like something your GrandMa made, then you would be pleasantly shocked to see Maggie's art quilts. WOW! I'd never been to Maggie's house either and that was a real nice treat to see. Husband Steve was off fishing Lake Powell. It was real nice to see Maggie two days in a row.

We sure hope we can spend more time with our friends during our 5-6 months here next winter. Our friends are GREAT and we miss them a lot.

After we left Maggie's place we headed over to Home Depot and (surprisingly) had an easy time getting out picnic table delivered and loaded. It fit perfectly in the small truck. Then we headed over to Target and bought a lamp that Susun's been looking for. (Thanks for the tip, Maggie.)

After that, we headed down Oak Creek Canyon and slogged through the Sunday tourist traffic. We went out in West Sedona to Bob's place and got 3 tents and two air mattresses out of storage in his garage. Bob was playing his drums when we arrived. He's got potential to be a pretty good drummer.

Then we headed over to Safeway, bought 13 ears of white corn and hot-footed it home, arriving right about 5 pm. Whew. The Winged Ruby was sitting out on the fence to greet us upon our return. We had a nice Happy Hour and campfire and Gary and Robin came to visit the fire and we ate roasted corn and stayed up late, finally calling it a night at 10:30 pm.

Been real high speed lately. And it looks like it's gonna continue for awhile, too. That's generally what happens in the days leading up to the full moon which will be on the day of our departure!

Cheers, jp