Humongous Taiwanese chip manufacturing facility being built down the road from Ben Avery gun range.

It was very cloudy today, so I didn't get much charging from the solar panels, but the temperatures were in the mid-70s. There was no rain at all, so it was a decent day.

I'm noticing that the weather forecasts for wherever I'm at are hardly ever as bad as they appear in the various weather forecasts I watch. Take the last few days, for instance; four or five days ago, they were predicting three days straight of very cloudy weather with almost no sunshine, which is important to me because the amount of charging I get on my solar panels is as important to me as the temperatures. But it ended up being one day of very cloudy weather and the other days pretty normal, and my experience is that's getting to be the way most of my weather forecasts are. The estimates are almost always worse than the actual weather turns out to be.

I understand that it's difficult to predict future weather, but 95% of the predictions make the weather sound worse than it is. Is it done on purpose? I can understand why they might "over-predict" dangerous weather such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and deep snow, but why would they over-predict cloudy weather that might be accompanied by a few sprinkles, which we often get in southern Arizona?

For most folks, especially us old geezers, what the weather will be has very little effect on our lives unless it's dangerous weather. But for the most part, weather is just a subject old folks love to talk about; after all, changing weather is just about the only thing in geezers' lives other than doctors appointments and the past, that some old folks have to talk about.

But for boondockers, our lives tend to revolve around the weather, so we pay close attention to it because, on some occasions, our lives can depend on it.

This blog post is getting long so that I will finish it tomorrow... Yes, I could've finished it today, but I'm not doing much of anything, so I needed to streeeetch out whats happening in my ordinary and very mundane life.

Theboondork

As I've mentioned numerous times in my blog, the hot air balloon is Arizonas State Bird. There everywhere especially early mornings and late afternoon. And since all of these balloons need a place to take off from and land on, trust lands is an obvious choice since theres so much of it. And since I'm boondocked on trust lands, I get to see them pretty regular.

I have no intention of getting in one myself, but there are folks that pay substantial amounts of money to go up thousands of feet in the air held only by a bag of warm air,  and a termite infested wicker basket.

As I was taking pictures of the RVs boondocking on trust land across the highway, a Harley came by,  saw me with a camera and waved. Being one myself I've always felt that motorcycle folks are fine people and that entitled him to a picture so here it is. It's not a very good picture, because my camera was  adjusted to take pictures of things sitting still not flying by at 65 miles an hour.

I probably didn't deserve it, but I will still rewarded with a beautiful sunrise This morning. it's amazing what you can see when you stand out in the yard wearing your pajamas.

There were a few clouds, but nonetheless, it was a beautiful day. It got up to the low 80s, which was quite comfortable with the humidity in the 20s.

Standing outside the Lance this morning in my sweatpants pajamas and watching the sunrise develop reminded me of how lucky I am to live this life I'm living. Notice I say how fortunate "I AM" because most folks would not consider the way I live as lucky. Most folks would feel that my life is one small step above living under a bridge, and that might be true for some people.

But I designed this life I live, so it must be perfect for how I want to live, if not I would change it. And I think that's what hit me this morning watching the sun come up, that at this point in my life, I can stand outside in my pajamas watching the sun rise over The desert, and other than being with my family, can't think of anywhere else I would rather be.


And that's the beauty of being a full-timer: you can choose how you want to live that full-time life. You can live in an adult-only, motorhome-only resort community on Florida's Gulf Coast. You can live in your car and a two-person tent, boondocking in the desert with only the minimum you need to survive. Or you can live some way in between based on your finances and what makes you happy.

And that's what makes full-timing so great; no matter what you choose, you will be welcomed by other full-timers no matter how you live. Of course, living in the almost new motorhome only resorts on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where they don't accept anybody except other RV snobs sounds like a terrible place to be, but you probably don't want to live around people like that anyway, so it's good they keep to themselves.

Theboondork

I've taken pictures of so many sunsets and sunrises I can't believe it still interests me but for some reason it does.

My neighbors in the van had there door open so they must be awake also.

When you're out in the desert you get a wide-open view of the sunrise.

For no reason, I packed up this morning and headed for Ben Avery's gun range. I only got a little done in Wickenburg that I wanted to do, so I may want to return to Wickenburg when I'm done with things at Ben Avery.

I left my boondocking area at about 9 o'clock this morning and almost immediately regretted picking today to leave. I wasn't paying attention to the fact that it's a three-day holiday til I got on the main road heading for Phoenix and found the traffic to be horrendous. And since most of the way to Phoenix is a two-lane blacktop, it was either white knuckle driving or slow going all the way to Phoenix.

But despite the adverse driving situation, I still managed to pull into a large school trust land area, already inhabited by dozens of RVs and officially declared myself home.

Across the highway from the school trust lands where I'm boondocking is an even bigger area with many more RVs than where I'm at, there might be a couple dozen RVs boondocking here, and across the highway, there might be a couple of hundred. from where I'm sitting, the lay of the land looks the same, and it's all trust lands, so one of these days, I need to drive over there and see what's going on.

So now that I'm back in civilization, there should be no more outrageously priced groceries like in Wickenburg, no more unaffordable diesel fuel like in Wickenburg. I didn't even buy any in Wickenburg it was so high, and there are no more mom-and-pop hardware stores; Walmart and Home Depot are just down the road from me.

So now I'm mostly waiting for the End of Trail cowboy shoot to begin Monday. And I think next weekend there will be some archery competition at Ben Avery, which I will also enjoy watching.

theboondork

My new boondocking spot just down the road from Ben Avery gun range.