Yesterday, I went to a nearby Albertson's grocery store and picked up a few groceries. Things sure have gotten expensive; I stopped buying food items that have gotten too expensive, especially if it was just a luxury item like soap or water.

I also noticed that the gas station nearest to Ben Avery's had diesel fuel at $4.39 a gallon. I remember when I laughed at California people for paying that much for fuel... But that was six months ago, and now I'm not sure if I can get it any cheaper  here in Phoenix. If I have to pay $4.39 per gallon for diesel fuel, that will be the official doubling of the price I was paying last year when I started my winter travels.

I wonder what will happen to fuel prices during the summer vacation season. I imagine a lot of folks will be going to the local lake instead of the Grand Canyon or some other faraway place.

I'm thinking about all these people that are new to the RVing world and can't wait to get their hands on their new RV that's been back-ordered for nine months, and when they finally get it, they find out they can't afford to put fuel in it, or can't afford to put fuel in the truck to tow it. That's going to make vacations pretty rough when they're getting 8 or 10 miles to the gallon. And if they can scrape together enough money for a tank of fuel, I imagine the price of campgrounds this Summer is going to be pretty shocking.

On the other hand, what if the price of fuel is so high that many RVers stay home. Then the campground owners will have to lower their prices just to get people in the door.

                                                                  theboondork

Actual Cowboys aren't that easy to find. You can find folks that look like cowboys, guys that wear cowboy clothes, and lots of actors pretending to be cowboys. But finding the real thing isn't that easy, because there's just not that many real cowboys left.

But I've shown pictures of what cowboys do, and I've shown pictures of how they do it, but these are pictures of the cowboys themselves. Feel free to make up your own captions.

And I thought real cowboys only loved their horses.

Last nights sunset while boondocking at Ben Avery's gun range.

I awoke to gunfire this morning, not the bad kind like a drive-by, but the good kind, like the range, just opened at 7 o'clock.

As I was eating breakfast in the bronco, I could hear a local company named Dillon Aero, testing their M134 mini-guns they build for the military. Five or six  thousand rounds a minute going downrange, makes an unmistakable sound.

Those of you that reload ammunition will recognize Dillon as the manufacturer of one of the best reloading presses ever made. And is used by almost every competitive shooter that reloads their own ammunition. Their company is located here in Phoenix, so they use Ben Avery's gun range for testing purposes.

Pretty much as an afterthought, Dillon ended up with a bunch of worn-out leftover General Electric mini-guns from the Vietnam War. While repairing them, they learned ways to make them better and more reliable than they were before. This led to the Dillon company forming Dillon Aero, making their own M134 mini-guns, and becoming the major provider of the mini-guns to the American military and numerous foreign countries.

In the past, when Dillon was testing the mini-guns, I would hop in my truck and go down to the range they use and watch them shoot, but with the bronco on the back of the truck its too much work to pack everything up, so I had to listen to them from afar and enjoy the sounds of a gun that can fire up to 6000 rounds a minute.

                                                          Theboondork

Strange planes often fly over the campground. There's a private airport nearby so there's all kinds of weird things flying around.

There are usually hot air balloons flying around Phoenix, especially during sunrises and sunsets.

View from my boondocking site. If you look carefully you should be able to see a hot air balloon near the bottom of the setting sun.

My new digs at the Ben Avery gun range. I've got my very own water faucet, a shower next door, and a dumpster at the entrance to my boondocking site.... I don't know about you, but to a boondocker that much luxury is a little bit of Heaven.

After stopping in downtown Wickenburg and filling up my empty 5 gallon propane tank at $2.99 a gallon, I headed East, first on 60 and then on 74, and by 10 o'clock I was pulling into the Ben Avery gun range a wee bit north of Phoenix Arizona.

They accepted me at the campground with a minimum amount of begging and pleading on my part and in a matter of minutes, $72 poorer I pulled into my boondocking spot for a weeks stay at the largest shooting range in the West, and even better, there's hardly anyone else around. I'm also right next to a restroom , shower room building, with a water faucet in my boondocking site, and a dumpster right near the corner of my site.

For those of you that don't often boondock you probably don't realize how thrilling it is to be able to walk 50 feet and throw your trash in a dumpster.... ANYTIME I FEEL LIKE IT!! Boondocker's get used to being thankful for the small things in life.

I was able to park the bronco with the refrigerator on the shady side, which helps the fridge stay cool. And ordered a few things I needed from Amazon to be shipped to the gun range.

 So now, I'm in my happy place, I'm around folks I can relate to, my Internet is down right speedy, and there's even a little cloudy weather predicted for Phoenix, so maybe I can get a decent sunrise or sunset picture... All's right with the world.

                                                            Theboondork

Cowboys! I was talking about boondocking at Ben Avery's gun range, and suddenly there's cowboys. I guess that's what happens when I have left over pictures from the last place I was at.

There's a lot of frustration on this cowboys face, and it's all because of that empty loop hanging in the air... Sometimes the cowboy's win sometimes the steer wins.

I don't know how these cowboys keep from getting tangled up in all that rope.

It seems to me being a Healer like the cowboy in the picture above would be the worst job to have. I mean, what are the odds of actually being able to rope a steers hind-legs while he's running?

I used to think that it would be impossible to rope both of the hind-legs of a running steer, even though I saw people do it, it just didn't look possible. But it's all about using the proper technique, and hopefully these next three photos will show how it's done.

First of all the Healer that's going to rope the steer's hind legs throws a big loop in his lasso, and it's big for a reason

When the Healer throws that big loop, the top of his loop hits the side or the shanks of the steers leg, which causes the bottom of the loop to wrap around the steers hind legs.

 The steer is being pulled forward by the Headers horse, so when the loop wraps around the steer's hind legs for a split second the loop is open and the steer's forward motion pulls his hind legs into the loop.

But that big loop has a lot of slack once the steer steps into the loop, so the Healer only has a second to take up that slack or the steer will step out of the loop.

So to keep the steer from stepping out of the loop the healers horse has to quickly back up, and at the same time the Healer has to rare back as fast and as far as possible to get the slack out of the loop. And remember all of this is taking place in five or six seconds.

There's a reason this is called TEAM roping. Because those two cowboys, and those two horses have to be perfectly in sync or none of this will work.