We took another short trip to Sweet Water Reservoir to see if any new birds were hanging around. It’s only about 10 minutes from our site, so not too hard to get to. We got to see a few beautiful Cinnamon Teal and a Northern Shoveler, but nothing new to us. Still a nice morning outing.

Pickle Ball

This is a big thing here in the park! We finally took a class of sorts – Pickle Ball 101. Reinforced rules and scoring as patiently explained previously by a nice neighbor. We’ve since played a few games with other neighbors and had a lot of fun. The park here has 8 or 10 courts, and LOTS of players. Fun exercise!

A couple random shots of our park…

Woodcarving

I’ve been enjoying the woodcarving club here. I’ve done a little carving over the years, but it’s fun to carve with others and learn from them! Here is a little guy I’m working on now. He will be a “Birder” with binoculars. It seemed appropriate. I’ve roughed him out, now I have to give him a face! That’s the hardest part for me.

Good Friends

Friday we were blessed with a visit from longtime friends Paul and Lorna. They are spending the winter a couple of hours from here, and we hadn’t connected before now. It was very good seeing them, and the weather cooperated so we could have a nice picnic outside.

In the background of the picture above you can see the trailer of Tim and Laurie. They were here a couple of weeks, and we had lots of fun chatting with them. (and playing some Pickle Ball). It’s sad to see new friends move on, but I’m sure we’ll keep up with them.

Behind us has been a another great guy called K.C. He says that stands for King Cobra. (OK, not really) We’ve had fun with him too, but again, he moved on. It was fun watching him load his beautiful BMW bike on the ramp in front of his camper. I’m hoping we stay in touch with him too!

Motorhome Maintenance

One weak spot in our gorgeous home with wheels has been drawer catches. These hold the drawers closed, so they don’t fly open when we drive. They require a bit of a tug to open, but you get used to it. The problem is that even very expensive fancy motorhomes use these cheap plastic catches that regularly break. I’ve replaced at least a half dozen of them. I’ve wondered if the nice self closing drawer hardware would work in a motorhome – are they strong enough to hold heavy drawers while driving? I finally read of some folks who’ve upgraded to that type and they worked fine… So I installed them on five drawers. It’s really nice to have the soft, self closing function. The question is still whether they could keep the heavy silverware drawer in the kitchen closed. [Sneak Preview: we just drove about 6 hours and they drawers stayed closed as they should have!]

Astrophotography

Cherryl has been worried that I don’t have enough hobbies… so I have asked for help from another good friend and neighbor, Chuck. (He is mentioned, with pictures, in a previous blog: Stargazing Supreme) He’s patiently given me guidance on techniques and equipment, and recommended Dark Sky locations. We are going to head out to one of those locations next week, and I’ll try my first real astrophotography there. Below is a shot I did of Orion, from right next to the Motorhome here in Tucson. Terrible light pollution, combined with inexperience, yielded this result. You can see the “belt” of Orion in the center, Betelgeuse is the reddish star top left, and Rigel is the bright one lower right. I’m hoping for far better pictures next week!