Another beautiful day today, clear blue skies, mid 70s, low humidity, no wind, T-shirt weather by 10 o'clock.

I'm not a big fan of doing laundry, sometimes I think I'd rather throw my dirty clothes away and just buy new ones, especially when I have to sit in a laundromat for a couple of hours. But today, it wasn't so bad; the laundry room is only about 100 feet away from where I'm camped, so I can wait in the bronco while things wash and dry.

Normally I like to fill up my truck with diesel before I take a trip, but since I forgot to do that yesterday while I was shopping, I figured I would just wait until I get to Benson, Arizona; I've got to go through that town anyway, so I will just fill up while I'm there. Benson is only about 40 miles away, and I've got plenty of fuel to get there, but it just makes me feel better if I leave with a full tank... It's a psychological thing.

I'm going to miss the fairgrounds; it has become a place where I look forward to getting to and enjoy being while I'm here. All the construction next to the boondocking area has made things a little difficult at times, but overcoming annoyances like that is part of what I consider being a happy boondocker.

I used to consider Ben Avery's shooting range one of my favorite places, but since I don't know anyone there anymore, and I'm not as interested in shooting as I used to be, I think the fairgrounds has replaced it at the top of my list. And I believe it's only the good memories I have of Ben Avery's that will keep it high on my list of places I enjoy going to.

theboondork

There were several vendors at the show and they had set up booths like this.

Wow! Most of the quilts at the show were incredible, I guess they would have to be if you wanted to show them off at a quilt show.

But taking pictures of them was challenging. It was kind of dark in the building, I don't use a flash, and I didn't take a tripod, so under the circumstances I was lucky to get  an image at all. Looking back at my snapshots  I really should've taken a tripod.

This quilt has a lot of stuff going on, and it reminds me of a Middle Eastern tapestry. And the size appears to be a wall hanging.

This is a favorite of mine, but its meant to be seen from a distance.

This quilt is more like what I would see my grandmother make, nothing really fancy Just geometric patterns from scraps of cloth she would have left over after making some of her clothes.

This giraffe is cute, and looks like a wall hanging. But like a lot of quilts their best seen from a distance, if you look to close the picture tends to fall apart.

Some of the vendors booths were very colorful, and fun to take pictures of.

This is a weird quilt about tablecloth size, but despite its weirdness, a lot of time and effort went into sewing this thing.

This a small quilt and looked more like a decoration that you would lay on a table, but it was one of my favorites.

There was about four of these alleys you could walk down with quilts hanging on both sides. There were a lot of quilts on display and I would be happy if I had the artistic abilities these quilters have in their little finger.

Sunrise this morning, that's me dozing in the middle of the picture. I don't like to get up this early in the morning for various reasons, but when you're surrounded by a herd of horses, and they tend to wake up at sunrise, and they want to make sure everybody around them realizes that their awake, instead of fighting the system, I just get up when they do.

It was a beautiful day today, mid 70s, blue sky, humidity in the teens, and most important almost no wind.

But being a beautiful day that meant I had to get some things done so it was a beautiful, busy day. Since I'm finding that some stores have things that other stores don't today I went shopping at three different grocery stores, Safeway, Fry's, and of course Walmart. And between the three of them I found everything I needed.

That was important to me because I'm leaving Tuesday morning for the Wilcox area of Arizona, and I'll be out in the sticks for a while so I wanted to stock up a little bit on the things that I didn't want to run out of. Stocking up is hard to do in the bronco since there's hardly any storage space, so I've got cans of food in the bronco and in the truck, so hopefully I can remember where there all are when I need them. I still have to do laundry, but I'll just put that off till tomorrow.

I spent a little more time watching the barrel racers this morning, but most of their day was about barrel racers getting their various awards and prizes. And tonight there's supposed to be a live band, somewhere and I'm not sure where, celebrating the end of this championship race.

I also dropped by the quilt fiesta for a while, but there's a lot of stuff to see in their and I still haven't seen it all. It's kind of weird that when I'm in the quilting building every single person is wearing a mask, and that's probably because were all over 100 years old. But despite that I still feel like I might get sick just being there.

But when I'm in the horse arena nobody's wearing a mask and yet for some reason I feel safer. And I think it's because walking around healthy young people without masks on makes me feel like I'm not around a bunch of old sick people.

Theboondork

Here's a nice trailer. Very modern and comfortable looking.

And if you go through the door on the left there's the bathroom, and if you open the next door you can visit with six of your favorite horses. Why does anyone want to live with six horses? Beats me! But some people apparently do.

If you live on a farm or ranch like a lot of these barrel racing folks, your choices of pets are not limited to dogs and cats.

Here's something you don't see every day, it's a portable horse wash. It's in a semi trailer so it can travel around, and you put your horse in one side, and he pops out squeaky clean on the other side. I haven't the foggiest idea how it works, and since I have no desire to own a dirty horse, or a clean one for that matter, I'm not interested in finding out.

Barrel racing horses are usually kinda high strung, and this one didn't want to go racing, but she talked him into it eventually.

When I got back from shopping this morning I found that the horses and their trailers had taken over my boondocking area and there was hardly any room left to park. So I went to the office and threw myself at their mercy hoping to find me another place to park, but it appeared to be hopeless.

And the problem is starting in a few days the Fairgrounds is hosting the Gem and Jam show, which I believe is there biggest show other than the County fair that they have here at the Pima County Fairgrounds so there pretty much out of space to put people, including me.

Fortunately I have found out that people in charge of things will put forth an extra special effort if you lay on the floor, curl up in a ball, and cry like a little baby. This has worked throughout my life except  for that one time when I was drafted. And there were so many people laying on the floor crying  they didn't pay any attention to me.

But this time it worked and the campground host found me a spot in the corner of the regular camping area where I will be spending two nights and then leave the Fairgrounds until next year.

You can see the bronco on the far right. For someone that doesn't like crowds I sure have attracted a lot of horse trailers. And this is nothing, everywhere I look is packed with horse trailers.

The wind was still blowing today, but not as bad as yesterday, the temperature did finally creep up into the low 70s but the wind made it a little bit unpleasant for me.

This wind has not made it easy for me to get the things done that I need to do before I leave here Tuesday morning. With the wind blowing like it is it mostly kills my desire to do anything. It makes warm weather a little chilly, and chilly weather cold, and I don't like the cold. I chalk that up to my geezerlyness, because a lot of this chilly weather were having would be summer weather in Colorado and yet it makes me cold. It also makes me wonder how old geezers like me can stand living in cold, snowy places.

And speaking of cold I have come to realize that the bronco is really difficult to try and stay warm in. Not only is the insulation woefully lacking, but due to the poor design and pathetic construction, the only time it's warm is when the furnace is running, and the minute the furnace goes off, I have to check to see if somebody opened the door. It's barely tolerable in chilly weather, and is no better than a tent in cold weather. So the bronco is definitely not a camper any full-timer in their right mind would consider.... But I might not have known that if I hadn't tried it.

The barrel race at the event center was as crowded as I've ever seen an event there, there were so many people it made it difficult to get in a place to get decent pictures. But I got a few, or at least a couple of blogs worth.

I also spent about an hour looking at the quilts at "the Quilt Fiesta," which is approximately 55 more minutes than I thought I was going to spend their. But it was more interesting than I thought, maybe because I'm so old I'm actually interested in things like quilts... I guess the next time there's a knitting convention I'll be first in line.

Theboondork

I went over to the barrel racing for a while and had a good time watching the horses, and how skilled the girls are. But it was pretty crowded in the arena, and nobody was wearing a mask, of course everybody in their is young, and probably healthy, except for me, and I must've been the oldest person in the arena... But at least I'm getting used to the feeling of being the oldest person anywhere I go.... Except the quilting fiesta, some of those people looked like Egyptian mummies without the wrappings.

I also moseyed across the street to the "Quilt Fiesta", and spent a lot more time there than I thought I was going to. It wasn't as boring as I had anticipated, and it was interesting seeing all of the quilt designs and all the time that must've gone into making these things... For what purpose I don't know.

But at least everybody in their had a mask on, and they were all so old they made me look young.

This is where the barrel racing honchos get to camp, 50 feet from the arena.

I took more pictures of the barrel racing and the quilt fiesta than this, and I'll be putting them up in the next day or so.