Simple Living and Simple Travel

A camper was up on the Kaibab plateau in northern Arizona. The last day in July, a Sunday, he got up, feeling good, and started the day off with an early morning one-hour run along the AZ Trail. In the afternoon, he felt a pain across the top of his chest, moving towards his right shoulder. The camper didn’t want to, but thought it best to drive down to the emergency room in Kanab, UT; the pain was increasing. It took an hour and he barely made it. He must have looked pretty bad when he shuffled through the doors because two staff workers got up and met him half way. So far, really no big thing. The camper’s upper right arm started turning red during the last 20 minutes or so of the drive. The doctor diagnosed shingles. The camper said the redness was NOT what brought him in here. Then the upper arm started discoloring as we sat there watching. The doctor admitted the camper overnight for strep throat (positive for strep A), shingles, and dehydration. The next morning, cellulitis wa...

Our last moving day was interesting. Neither Meadow, Mesa, or myself, enjoy moving days—Meadow least of all. I break camp the afternoon before, pack up, and back the Dodge to within a couple inches of the trailer’s A-frame and hook up the chains and break-away cable. Meadow knows what this means. In the morning, if she gets out, she’s gone. I might be able to keep walking after her and wear her down and snag her after half an hour or so. If she hides, however, she’ll hide and sleep for hours and I have to move the next day. Been there, done that. It rots. When I catch her, I have to grab her by the scruff of the neck or she will shred me. Yep, been there, gone through that, most assuredly, didn’t like it. Luckily in the morning, it wasn’t Meadow that got out. I had gone outside for a few minutes and when I came back in, there was a hummingbird flying back and forth across the back window; keeping real close to the glass, almost skimming across it, not repeatedly flying into the g...

A little after 5:00 one morning, an animal sound that I was not familiar with, just outside my window, woke me up. It was getting near time to get up anyway, so I did. After a couple minutes, I pulled up the back blinds, and there was the source of the sound, a little elk. I love these little unexpected treasures that Nature offers up. Last month I wrote about local mega-fires. Remember I mentioned the lost hiker? A local told me that the hiker did everything right with her signal fire and kept it contained. The local said that the helicopter flew directly over her fire and the down draft spread it out of control. The people on the chopper denied it. I wonder what the true story is. On my last town-run, I was in a laundromat that had a local radio station playing. At one point, the host started talking about the towns of Show Low, Lakeside, and Pinetop being on pre-evacuation notice. I was doing my laundry in Lakeside. I asked the lady working in the laundromat what the story wa...

I was out on a hike one morning and came across an older couple on the trail. We stopped and talked about a number of things. I love when this happens. They’re from British Columbia so I asked if they lived near Hope (where Jim and Barb live). They live a bit north of Hope in Lytton, BC. The town was named after Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the man who wrote, “It was a dark and stormy night.” That got a smile from me. Meadow was injured more than I originally thought by that feral cat. After 3 or 4 weeks, she did not seem to be getting any better, still hobbling around on three legs. I took her to another vet in the town we were then near and she said there might have been nerve damage from the bite. It might heal in time and it might not. I asked if it would help if I worked on moving the leg from time to time. So there I was, doing physical therapy on a cat. One day I asked Meadow if she wanted to go for a walk and she perked right up; it had been a month since our last walk. She went...

Yep, once again, I was late for another month’s page. I had to pre-date the last entry so it showed up in April. I’m back to my 3-week stints out in the woods, with web access only when I go into town for supplies once or twice a month. And the one day I was in a town back in April, I didn’t have enough stuff to write about. I’ve been having to use my Slime compressor to keep air in one of the Ram tires so when passing through Silver, I stopped at Big O Tire to have the leak fixed (it had a nail). The Nash brakes have not been working properly (seemed to be veering) for quite some time so I called a shop in Silver to see if they had time to fix them. As luck would have it, they did. I had the hubs greased back in Moab, and apparently, when the mechanic put the wheels back on the street-side, he sheared the wires to the two brake magnets. Hence, no brakes on one side. Guano. But as to the leaking tire, it still leaked. I stopped at a tire shop in Pinetop/Lakeside and they found a ...

At times, I’ll be sitting outside the Nash watching M&M moving about. This video clips slows the feline gait down so one can see why they look so cool when one is cruisin’ about. The gait changes when they pick up speed. I’ve read other web pages on this pacing and some don’t jive with what’s written on this link’s page, but be that as it may, that’s one smooth kickass stride. cat pacing video clip Last month, while still at at Oliver Lee, the day the Dog Canyon trail was closed, I hiked down the Dog Canyon arroyo, circled out and over to the Oliver Lee House and back to the Nash. A nice two hour hike, but I’m not a fan of flat hikes. Anyway, I came across these two javelinas. For the spring equinox I purchased another flock of ducks. My Heifer International total is now seven goats, two flocks of chicks, one flock of geese, two flock of ducks, and a ‘Gift of a Healthy Home.’ Next donation will be on the summer solstice. My social-fix season was pretty much a b...

Lemme think here. Should I turn around—or keep goin’? I went back to last month’s page and added three more paragraphs, changed some text, switched a photo, added another of an absolutely awesome tow vehicle that I came across in Bisbee, and changed the title a bit. I seem to go back and edit past pages quite a bit, even some I’ve written years ago. Meadow and Mesa did not like staying in the Nash for three weeks while we were in Bisbee. Meadow would go hyper every evening. If there were a small item lying about, it would get swatted all around the trailer. Mesa was way more vocal than he usually is, and his usual can be a bit much to take. He was making a sound between a howl and a snarl—he was totally pissed. As you know from previous pages, once we got to our next spot and they were allowed out, they flew out the door, easily clearing the three steps and disappeared for hours. Maybe I should trade them in for a turtle. While in CoRs, I ran across a couple I met a fe...