did you know that today's date is... 123123 ?

don't forget to click the pics.

They mate for life, and can live as long as 40 years.

Well, I'm still here at Whitewater Draw, and no one has tried to kick me out yet. I thought I might drive half a mile down the road tomorrow and stay at the other boondocking area, but it feels right to start the New Year right here, surrounded by my favorite birds. I think that would be a good way to start the new year.

Being a government employee myself for many years, my experience was that during and around a holiday, we were down to a skeleton crew, with only the most important jobs manned. And even though the jobs I worked at were "mission-critical," we would still be down to barely enough people to ensure everything important continued to work as it should.

This probably means that most of the Arizona game and fish department in charge of Whitewater Draw is more concerned about who to invite to their New Year's Eve party than what's going on with the boondockers at Whitewater Draw, which is 30 miles from the nearest town.

When I leave Whitewater Draw, I'm going back to Tombstone and hanging around there for a few days until I can figure out what to do until I go to the Pima County fairgrounds for a rodeo on January 12. Then, on January 26, the biggest barrel race of the year is a three-day event. Then, in February, the last two weeks of the month will be all Hunter Jumper competitions.

I don't want to spend the money to stay at the Pima County fairgrounds that long, so I'm going to spend a week here and there at the fairgrounds and find some other place to go before the next event because as much as I love the place, the cost of their boondocking is getting pretty expensive. They don't have a monthly rate only a nightly and weekly rate, and the weekly rate basically saves you the cost of one night of camping.

Theboondork

A pair of snow geese. For some reason not many snow geese stay here. it seems like most of them stay at the Bosque Del Apache for the winter.

Getting a decent picture of a flying duck has always been a real problem for me. They can get off the water and into the air so quickly, and fly so fast it's hard for me to catch anything but a blur. But sometimes I get lucky, and that's all it is, just luck.

Cranes don't often fly in a ''V'' pattern like geese do. but sometimes they like to pretend their geese. You should see them when they pretend to be a hummingbird.

It's a good thing Sandhill cranes enjoy each other's company, because they've got plenty of company.

Another duck I was lucky enough to catch In flight.

By the look of that snow on the mountains I reckon I'm lucky That the weather around me is still pretty decent...But that apparently is going to change for the worse next week.

And speaking of changes in the weather; the weather is yet one more thing that a boondocker has to pay attention to. If you run into some bad weather while in an RV Park it's no big deal, you're probably pretty close to civilization, you've got plenty of help around, and under some circumstances you can look at the RV park owner and say; "what are YOU going to do about this?"

But a boondocker may not be close to civilization, there might not be  anyone around. and YOU are the only one responsible for your decisions. so keeping a close eye on the weather is more than just idle curiosity for a boondocker.