My last night at the Pima County Fairgrounds boondocking area.... At least I assume its going to be my last night, but I never really know for sure. But it does feel nice to have something besides a horse to take a picture of, I guess in a few days I'll be saying that about Sandhill Cranes.

I made it to Whitewater Draw about 10:30 this morning and boondocked myself pretty much where I was the last time I was here because that was the only boondocking spot left. Unfortunately, this place seems to be always kind of crowded, and I reckon it will stay that way until the Sandhill Cranes pack up and head North.

I was kinda shocked when I first drove up and only saw a handful of Sandhill cranes on the lake, and I thought I had wasted my time coming here. But a photographer I ran into said that the lake was full of birds yesterday, and they must be off feeding right now. That made sense because that's what they're supposed to do, but that's not what I saw when I was here a month ago.

Previously when I was here, some of the Cranes would fly away to feed but not all that many. The lake was covered with birds all day, all the time; I never saw just a few birds on the lake. So I thought that maybe they don't eat that much in the winter or feed that often, so the lake always looked full of birds. But now, maybe with summer coming up, they're all feeding heavily, so most of the flock leaves the lake and eats for most of the day to prepare themselves for that long flight North.

That's just a guess on my part because all I know for sure about birds is a lot of them end up on a rotisserie at Walmart for seven dollars a bird.

It's pretty cloudy today, so hopefully, I'll be able to get a decent picture of the sunset this afternoon. And hopefully, it will be 70 or 80° every day which is a lot warmer than the last time I was here. But it's a bit over 4000 feet in elevation here, so that can sometimes mess with the weather forecast.

Theboondork

Vans dominating the boondocking scene.... As usual. But with the new camping van designations of B+ and Super B's, I'm not sure where you draw the line between vans and class C's anymore.

A married pair of Sandhill Cranes..... I can tell there married because she's saying "take out the garbage!" And he's saying, "leave me alone I'm watching the game!"

Snow geese coming in for a landing on the rapidly diminishing Lake at Whitewater Draw.

I peeked out my window this morning and spotted this trailer parked next to me. This has to be the longest trailer I've ever seen in my life.... Four slide-outs? Four?

Back in the early 1950s Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz, both of "I Love Lucy" fame, made a comedy movie called the "Long Long Trailer". And most of their numerous and humorous troubles during the movie were caused by their exceptionally long, long, trailer.

That movie was the first thing I thought of when I looked out the window and spied this trailer. I looked it up on the Internet and the trailer in that comedy movie was 36 feet long, which was long enough that people laughed at it. I also looked up this Coachman chaparral fifth wheel and believe it or not it's 42 feet long... I wasn't laughing but I giggled a little.

It already has a pretty good dent in the rear panel near the bottom, and my guess would be they will probably have a lot more before it's over.

Tonight is my last night at the Pima County Fairgrounds so I'll be hitting the road tomorrow morning. I made up my mind today to go to Whitewater Draw again, and since its less than a hundred mile drive I should be there in around an hour and a half. The weather looks perfect, high 70s low 80s most days, fortys at night with humidity in the teens, and with some cloudy days so I'll have a chance at a few nice sunsets and sunrises. Sounds like great boondocking to me, can't wait to get there!

Theboondork

These are rose bushes here at the Fairgrounds that used to be way over my head, two or three times wider than what you see here, and covered with roses. I sure hope they come back by next winter, because they look pretty pitiful right now. It was Pima County Fairgrounds employees that did it, because I watched a  little of it happen, so I guess they knew what they were doing.

It looks like this Hunter jumper has a stable boy to carry her stuff and take care of the horse, I used to do a little bit of that stable boy stuff myself when I was a teenager.

 I hope these girls are a lot easier to get along with than the girls that boarded their horses at the stable I worked at. Miami Florida is a high-class place with a lot of rich people in it. And I worked around some girls that were driven to the stables every weekend by their chauffeur in their limousine. And having to deal with them is probably why I'm a lot more comfortable now being around country folks.

In fact when I was working at the boarding stable in high school, on Saturdays this would be me. There was a riding arena behind the barn and when the girls were there practicing there jumping I would be resetting the bars when they knocked them over, or getting trampled by their horses if the mood struck them.

Hunter jumper. I can tell it's warm outside because no horses were wearing their little ear covers today.

Hunter jumper practice area across the street from the arenas. They ride around warming up their horses here, while there coaches are yelling at them to sit up straight, concentrate on the next jump, and other things to help them get better at a pretty useless hobby that bears no resemblance to anything a normal person does now days... On the other hand, when gas gets to five dollars a gallon there horse riding skills may come in kinda handy.

These old stables are right next to the Hunter Jumper practice riding areas. So even though they don't look that great there very convenient for the Hunter jumpers. Of course the Hunter Jumpers have also filled up the big barns, and the stables at the large indoor arena. Normally the rodeo horses are boarded here since the rodeo arena is right on the other side of these stables.

What in the world are these people doing here? With their funny hats and blue jeans, obviously a bunch of redneck ranchers. And taking SELFIES!.... How droll, how gauche. I can't believe Hunter Jumper folks let them in the gate.

Part of the Hunter jumper area. The arenas are on the left, and the practice areas are on the right. This allows the girls to practice and warm up the horses, and yet be quickly available when their numbers are called to compete.

One of the Hunter jumper camping areas. This is what I would call the boondocking area for horses since there's no electricity here. But a lot of horse people that have a combination RV and horse trailer like living here with their horses. A couple hundred yards away are full hookup sites where most of the RV horse people stay.

This looks like the youngest girl I've seen competing. She's pretty small, and her horse looks like some kind of a very small Arabian, so there both in proportion to one another and looks like a normal adult sitting on a normal horse. She's using some of the ribbons she's won that this competition to tie her ponytail.

When I wake up in the morning there are often an RV or two parked in the boondocking area that weren't here when I went to bed. But there just waiting for the office to open up at 9 o'clock so they can get checked into the RV sites normal RVers stay in.

To put the final touches on my boring battery story yesterday, not knowing if I would be able to get new batteries, I drove the truck around and ran it for a while to put some charge in the batteries until I could get some new ones.

After buying and installing the new batteries, I set the old ones on the ground and checked them with a multi-meter; after letting them sit long enough for the surface charge to dissipate. Both batteries were reading 12.2. And when I got up the next morning, one battery was reading 12.2 and the other 9.0, so I had a bad battery.

I took the old batteries back to O'Reilly's this morning and got my $44 core charge back, and since I was at my shopping area already, I went to a Safeway, Walmart, and filled up with diesel fuel since I'm probably going to be pulling out of here Monday morning.

I read an Internet article that said it's not looking good for a flower super-bloom this season. It started with good moisture in the Arizona area, but there hasn't been enough late in the season, like right now, to light the flowers up. Oh well, there will still be flowers in bloom in the spring; they just won't be spectacular.

It always makes me a little sad when I'm leaving the Pima County Fairgrounds. I enjoy being at the Fairgrounds, and because there are so many good things about it, I know I will always be coming back. But like I've said in the past, "The only place I like better than where I'm at, is the place I'm going to." I'm not sure where that will be yet, but because the weather looks so good, I'm leaning towards going back to Whitewater Draw so I can wave goodbye to the Sandhill Cranes before they leave Arizona.

Theboondork

Whitewater Draw Arizona. You know the more I think about that place, the more I want to go back. Even without 20,000 Sandhill Cranes, I'm sure I would enjoy being there.

Whitewater draw Arizona. It was a pretty place to boondock. And there were other things to see there besides the Sandhill Cranes. Even though it's supposed to be about 80° for most of the time I would be there. Several of those days are predicted to be cloudy, and cloudy days are great for taking snapshots.

Or maybe I'm just feeling a bit guilty because when it got a little chilly at Whitewater Draw I wimped out and slunk away to boondock in Ajo where it was warmer. And now I feel like I need to remove the stench of my failure and go back just to prove to myself that I haven't become a little girly man.... Remembering the old saying, "When you fall off your horse you've got to get back on, or shoot him and buy a motorcycle,"