it looks like I'll stay awhile

I walked around the old closed up rodeo arena and actually found it kind of a sad place. There was a couple of years in my life when I spent enough time at rodeo arenas to realize that there's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, on the dirt floor of an arena like this. And a lot of lives were altered in rodeo arenas just such as this all over the country with folks competing and sometimes risking their lives for nothing more than pride and a belt buckle.

Today was the first day in a long time I've been able to spend most of the day wearing a T-shirt instead of a light jacket. And the weather forecast for the next 10 days looks like it's going to stay that way. There's even a couple of days in there where it's supposed to get to 80.... I can't wait!

I've had a chance to talk to a few of my neighbors here at the roping arena outside of Ajo, and they tell me that there's no one in charge of this boondocking area around the arena. There are no officials coming around, there are no length of stay rules because no one's checking on anyone, so you just boondock where you like and stay as long as you want. That sounds like a good deal to me. Because even though I don't want to stay any longer than two weeks I still like the sense of freedom I feel when there are no length of stay rules.

Last night was peaceful and quiet and I didn't even hear any generators running. I think the RVers that know of a place like this are probably more serious boondocker's and have some solar power and/or quiet generators. So since my first night went really well I gave this boondocking area my seal of approval by unhitching from the Arctic Fox this morning and settling in for possibly a two-week stay.

I went into town this morning and filled up with diesel at $2.99 a gallon, that's a lot more than I paid at Cave Creek the other day, but Ajo is out in the middle of nowhere so I can understand why it costs more to get fuel here than it would near a big city like Phoenix.

I went to the grocery-hardware store across the street from the gas station just to check out the prices and I would say that everything was about 20 or 30% higher than most other big-city stores on most items. There again I don't begrudge them the higher price because I'm quite sure the store pays a lot more for the product than a Safeway or a Walmart would. But they were well-stocked and had most anything you would need.

                      theboondork

I wonder how long there will even be rodeos? They've been under attack for a long time from animal-rights groups, and insurance companies that don't want to sell them policies. It seems like anything that represents American's history is under assault from all sides.

I think this used to be a concrete barbecue. But I was never here when the arena was still open and being used so that's just a guess.

This is the chute they use to get the livestock in and out of the semi trailers.