Nice day today, a little cloudy but I like clouds. The 10 day forecast looks like 80s are going to be the norm for highs but with humidity in the teens, and 50s and 60s at night its just about perfect for me.

I went for a hike in the desert yesterday, I didn't go far, 10 maybe 15 miles...... no wait, I meant yards, 10 or 15 yards. I try not to even drive 15 miles if I can help it. Like I said I didn't go far, but walking in the desert is about the only thing I can do around here that I'm positive doesn't expose me to the plague.

There were no hills where I was hiking so my pictures aren't very interesting, but that's never stopped me from showing my pictures before so it won't stop me now. The area around the LTVA is pretty much flat as a pancake with the only things breaking up the flatness are the small and medium-sized arroyos that cut through the land.

One of the reasons I don't have to hike very far is I have a telephoto lens on my camera that can take pictures from a great distance so I don't have to actually hike way over there to take a picture, I can just zoom into a bush or a flower and get a close-up without ever leaving the shade of the Arctic Fox. In fact most of my hikes are not much farther than the length of my awning

It didn't take long at these desert temperatures to drink up my entire canteen of Jack Daniels and have to turn around and make the grueling 15 yard trek back to the Arctic Fox, which I barely made before I was down to my last beer.

My 10 minute hike was admittedly brief but it doesn't take me long to learn something, and brief tho it was I learned that when hiking with a canteen full of Jack Daniels I should always use a tripod so me and the camera doesn't keep falling over.

                           theboondork

It's easy walking down this Jeep trail, it crosses an arroyo just ahead and continues on straight to the mountains. I made a left at the arroyo and used that as my path. There's much more vegetation near the arroyo's so it's more interesting than flat desert.

Another Jeep trail enters the arroyo. The arroyos go for miles and miles and there are Jeep trails going in every direction there was a bunch of yellow flowers growing next to the arroyo.

A dead tree slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces which litter the desert floor and wait for the hot winds to scatter them like the desert dust so not even a memory remains.... Much like me at the moment.

In the springtime quite often the desert doesn't even look like a desert. It has green grass, green bushes, green trees, even flowers, and you can be fooled into thinking.... This isn't so bad, I could survive in a place like this, it kind of looks like somebody's yard. But suddenly the Spring rains stop, temperatures soar to over a hundred every day, the humidity is in the single digits and all that green stuff disappears as the land bakes and the sun cracks even the rocks with its unrelenting heat.

Some purple flowers growing next to the arroyo. They look so delicate, almost translucent and yet for a short time they can live and thrive in one of the most inhospitable places in the country.....just like a boondocker.

I called the BLM Yuma field office this morning and asked them what's going on with the LTVA's and how can I re-up for another two weeks stay. And I was told that they didn't actually know what's going on with the LTVA's at the moment and that several of the top honchos at the BLM are going to have a conference call sometime today and decide what to do about the situation, she took my number and said she would call me back with the information..... I'm still waiting.

In normal times before the plague, on April 15 at the end of the LTVA's camping season, they would turn off the water, lock up the dumpsite, and the LTVA's would revert back to free 14 day boondocking just like all the rest of the BLM lands, and I'm pretty sure that's what's going to happen this time.

But since the LTVA hosts were pulled out early, probably for health safety concerns, the LTVA is still open but there's no way to register and pay the fees. So my guess is they're not going to put hosts back in here, because the virus situation is worse now not better, and the only place in the LTVA's where you have to come in contact with other people is in the welcome center where you pay your fees.

So my prediction based solely on common sense is..... The BLM is going to waive the camping fees, since at this point in time collecting them isn't worth the hassle or the safety concerns. They will keep the water and dumpsites open till April 15, and based on the government's new self isolating till the end of April decision maybe even try to keep them open longer, since a lot of these full timers don't have any place else to go.

And after the 15th the LTVA will revert to free boondocking, just like always, maybe even with the 14 day stay limit temporarily removed, again based on the end of April lockdown decision.

I see this morning that the FDA has approved hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of the Covid-19 virus and all I could think of was "it's about time". For one reason or another government agencies are often slow on the uptake, which is fine if you've got plenty of time to have endless meetings on the subject but in times like this things need to get done quickly and some risk is acceptable. I just hope they have enough of those pills to make a difference.

Since there's a lot of improvement going on right now in the testing and treatment for the virus I feel like the government's latest estimation that by the end of April we can start slowly getting things back to normal makes more sense than the previous hope of getting it done by Easter. And it makes me feel a lot better now that there's a possible date for things to start turning around.

                        theboondork

Today marks the end of my second week of self isolating, and so far It must be working okay since I haven't come down with the sickness....Yet. My Internet still works so I have plenty of entertainment. There's lots of desert to walk in whenever I feel like it. There's mountains I could climb if I felt extra special stupid that day. And I've become so good at self isolating, I don't even talk to myself anymore.

In fact the only downside to my life at the moment is illegally boondocking at the LTVA because there's no one here to sign me up for two more weeks. On the other hand you could say that since there's no one here to sign me up, there doesn't appear to be anyone here to catch me breaking the law. But I did get a phone number for the local BLM office so I'll call them tomorrow and try to find out what's going on with the LTVA's.

Yesterday Verizon sent me a free 15 gig bundle of data that I can use for one month with no strings attached, and I didn't even have to ask. There was a time when that would've been the best thing that happened to me for the entire month. But now even though I appreciate the gesture it doesn't really benefit me because I already have true unlimited Internet on my Verizon jetpack MiFi which provides all the Internet I want for a flat 70 bucks a month. I guess they felt sorry for all of us isolated folks who are more dependent on the Internet now than ever.

My food is holding up well since stocking up about two weeks ago so I figure I can go at least another two weeks without having to visit a grocery store. But just like a few days ago when I had to go to Walmart to get some more allergy nose spray I assume there will be little things that I need to buy until I get used to this "stocking up" routine.

One good thing that's happened with this "isolating" and "stocking up" is I've stopped eating out at restaurants completely, and I'm eating less at home. The eating less at home is partially because I didn't stock up on any snack foods, I'm paying more attention to what I'm eating than I normally would, and I worry a lot which tends to kill my appetite, and thanks to those three things I've lost 8 pounds already without even trying.

                                          theboondork

My temporary home at La Posa South LTVA about 200 yards from the dump station and the water fill.

I like the old classic trailers, I think they have a lot of personality.