Since I'm leaving tomorrow morning today was spent packing up and getting ready to go. Of course it doesn't take all day for me to get ready to go somewhere new, fact is I could probably pack up, hitch up, and leave in an hour. It's really my one track mind that causes me to take all day. When I start thinking about leaving nothing else matters very much to me except getting ready to go, anything else going on around me drops to the very bottom of my list of things I care about.

I hitched up and towed the Arctic Fox over to the dump station this afternoon getting that chore out of the way before I leave in the morning. It was kind of important to do that because 97.3% of the RVers in this campground at the moment are the cowboy shooters and tomorrow is not actually a shooting day for them. Their contests all ended this afternoon and tomorrow is a day of camaraderie, celebration, and handing out awards for the shoot. So a lot of them will be skipping all that and pulling out of here either late this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

So how does that affect me? I don't think I mentioned it before but the hookup sites here at this campground don't have sewer hookups, water and electric yes, but no sewer. So all of these cowboy RVers are going to have to stop at the campgrounds single dump station before they leave and I'm envisioning things getting pretty crowded and maybe a mite messy for anyone having to dump their tanks tomorrow morning.

I still haven't made up my mind exactly where I will end up tomorrow night but I'm leaning heavily toward Wickenburg Arizona, not only because it's one of my favorite Arizona towns, but Box Wash just outside of town is one of my favorite places to boondock. And since the state of Arizona is already preparing Box Wash to be a state Park I never know when I'll go there and find the natural beauty of the place totally destroyed just so the State can charge people seven dollars to get in the gate and $30 a night to camp. So every day I get to boondock there and ride my motorcycle is a blessing. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell: They'll pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

                             theboondork

These balloons came pretty close to flying over the gun range but a few warning shots from the Cowboys and a lot of huffing and puffing from the balloons passengers got it turned around.

Sometimes great herds of hot air balloons take to the desert sky, nobody knows why, they just do. some believe it's the start of their annual migration, others say it's their mating season. but until somebody shoots one down and studies it we'll probably never know.

I slept right through the actual sunrise.....no surprise there, but it was still pretty when I finally got up.

I drove up to Albertson's, the local grocery store that's only a couple miles away from me, and bought a few things that I was short of and stocked up on some more canned food. I'm getting a bit leery of going to stores and getting around crowds not because of Coronavirus, but because of the Flu that's raging in this area at the moment.

I'm leaving here Sunday morning which is fine with me because I've done everything that I needed to do when I came here, and I'm ready to get back to boondocking near a small town somewhere so I don't have to deal with busy roads and busier stores.

I don't know exactly where I'm going yet but my three likely choices are, Wickenburg, Congress, or Quartzsite. Wickenburg is the most likely because there's some good motorcycle riding there. I like Congress but it's a long way to go shopping. And sooner or later I'll end up in Quartzsite I just don't know if I want to go straight there from here.

                                theboondork

The almost tropical lushness of the southern Arizona desert.

A cloudy day in Phoenix.

Great weather today, mid 70s, humidity in the teens, and best of all a few puffy white clouds in the sky which makes for better pictures. If you've never been in the desert areas of the American Southwest on most days the sky is a deep blue without a single cloud anywhere to be seen, and that can go on for days.  There's nothing wrong with that in less you like to take pictures. and a cloudless sky means the sunrises and sunsets, even though pretty, are not really spectacular. But a few bright white cumulus clouds in a deep blue sky improves everyone's picture taking abilities.

I listened to the President's speech last night about the impending Coronavirus problems for America and was happy that I had bought some extra food supplies the other day. I knew the reason for his speech was going to be to let everyone know that we all need to be calm because the government has everything under control and there's no need to worry, and that's pretty much what all the speakers said.

But I'm old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan said "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help". But the lady that's the head of the CDC did actually say that they expect more Coronavirus in America and the American people should prepare. I can't remember if those were her exact words but the meaning was the same. So the other day I had already bought a few weeks worth of mostly canned food which will last for years and it's the same things I eat anyway so it won't go to waste.

Now I'm thinking of other things that I can freeze or store for long periods of time, again things that I actually use and not some weird survival food that I would get tired of eating in a couple of days. But no matter how you feel about all this Coronavirus thing it doesn't hurt to have a few cans of coffee put away just in case.

I guess all those Survivalist Preppers that have been stocking up their underground bunker with food and ammunition don't look quite as wacky as they used to. I've never considered myself a prepper but I did put away a few extra rounds of ammunition in the past just in case of the Zombie Apocalypse.

But like I said before its not the Coronavirus that bothers me as much as the interruption to our supply chain for food, fuel, and other necessities that it may cause. I've been in the midst of that happening on a local level before and it's rather unpleasant, but the closest I've seen it on a national level was the shortage of .22 ammunition that went on for years under Obama simply because people were hoarding it. And who can forget the "Great Toilet Paper Shortage" of 1973 that started because of a rumor. So there's no telling what people will do if the problem is real......but maybe it's time to start thinking about what they might do.

                                                      theboondork

A grizzled old cowboy. I never see grizzled old cowgirls, maybe cowgirls don't get grizzled.