theboondork's RV blog

Unpacked, Hunkered down, and ready for the holidays.

12/19/2020

Clicking a pic is a constitutional right guaranteed under the First Amendment. So click away and enjoy your freedom.

Sunrise this morning looking out my door at the rodeo grounds. I only count seven RVs boondocked here so there's plenty of room for everyone to spread out. I don't think it will stay this way, but it sure is great while it lasts.

Another beautiful day in Ajo, Arizona, low 70s in the daytime, low 40s at night, low humidity, just about perfect. But there are clear blue skies again, which isn't desirable for picture taking but were supposed to get a few clouds by next Tuesday.... Hopefully.

There are some gorgeous sunsets here at the rodeo grounds; the trick is to have enough clouds to make a pretty sunset. This being a desert and all, there's just not enough moisture around to make a cloud very often. Whereas on the coast at a beach, there's almost always clouds, so their sunsets and sunrises are nearly always beautiful.

My problem is getting out of bed early enough to enjoy a sunrise. Many of the jobs I had were the kind where you reported for work at seven in the morning, and to get there on time, my alarm clock had to be set somewhere between five and six. Nowadays, I truly appreciate and enjoy my freedom to get out of bed in the morning whenever I feel like it.

I unhooked the truck from the Arctic Fox this morning. Like I've mentioned before, I like to stay hitched up the first night I'm boondocking just to make sure I chose wisely and still like the place I camped when I get up in the morning. I also put out the bedroom slide and unpacked, which I usually don't do if I'm only going to be somewhere for a few days. Putting out the bedroom slide is kind of a message to myself that I'm going to roost for a while and not "live out of a suitcase" as I do for short stays, such as Yuma and Dateland.

Arctic Fox unhooked, bedroom slide out, cell phone antenna up, those are clues I'm going to stay for a while.

Yes, I know it looks desolate, but to me, it's beautiful. There's peace, solitude, and vast vistas, all of which I enjoy.

Remember, the Arctic Fox has wheels under it and will go wherever and whenever I want it to go. And if I wasn't completely happy and content here, or anywhere else for that matter, I would be down the road in a heartbeat. After all, that's the reason full-timer's homes have wheels, it allows us to be where ever were happy.

The freight train was about a mile away when I took this picture, and I zoomed in on the image considerably on the computer. But look at those rails. We always think of train tracks as being straight, but a lot of times they're not.

It did give me the willies knowing that train was going to be thundering past me in about a minute, on tracks looking like that.

I'm still using up some train pictures from Dateland. Look at the heat distortion rising off the locomotive. This is the first picture I took of one of the trains, and I was standing a little too close, probably about 20 feet away when he flew past, and it scared the heck out of me. After that I backed up to at least 30 feet away, and it was still earthshaking.

6 Comments

Judith

12/19/2020 07:24:37 pm

Good train stuff again!! Glad you're pleased with your roost. Looks like a good one to me.
I suppose I could look it up, but I'll just ask you and you can make something up about why a place in the desert would be called ajo.
Doesn't look like prime garlic growing country to me. Though garlic IS a pretty sturdy plant.

Tom

12/19/2020 08:07:31 pm

That sounded like an interesting question so I looked it up. Apparently the local Indians used this area for obtaining paint pigment, which is not all that odd considering this area is highly mineralized and has a couple of deep pits where copper mining took place.

Because the Spanish, who got here shortly after the Indians, had trouble understanding the Indian word for paint the Spanish started calling the area "Ajo" because it sounded like the Indian word for paint. Now if the Indians had just gone to Walmart, and bought some cans of spray paint it would've saved this town having to live with the name of garlic for a couple of hundred years, And it would've been called o'oho which is the Indian word for paint all this time.

Since there are still a lot of Mexicans and Indians living here, folks have to be real careful when there cooking something that has garlic in the recipe and make sure they're using the right translation or your Garlic bread rolls might be very colorful but tastes pretty bad

Tom

Linda

12/20/2020 04:03:28 pm

Your mention of 20 feet from the train reminded me of the time I was taking photos of a local delivering a bulkhead flat carrying a load of lumber. One of the crew suggested I needed to stand further back because if one of the metal straps holding the lumber down broke it could hurt me pretty badly, something that had not occurred to me. Safety first. But, risky sometimes makes for better pictures. :)

12/20/2020 04:33:36 pm

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of reasons for staying away from moving trains, it's not like they've never jumped the tracks before. Back in the day when I was staying at more RV parks, I got to know moving trains pretty well, because it seems like RV parks are drawn to train tracks like moths to a flame. I realize it's because properties cheaper next to the railroad track, but you would think the perspective RV Park owner would realize trains are very noisy and that's not a big selling point to keep your RV Park filled up.

But for me is not really the rumble and the roar as they ramble on down the line, it's all that whistle blowing at the road crossings that bothers me at night. Fortunately at Dateland there's no road crossings around so I never heard a train whistle the whole time I was there, and trains were going by every hour or two.

Fortunately I'm lazy enough that taking a risk for getting a picture is not high on my list of things to do. Since I always park the Arctic Fox facing North so my panels catch the most sun, my trailer door always faces East, and you'd be surprised how many sunrise pictures I've taken while I'm standing in the doorway in my pajamas... Now THAT'S lazy.

Tom

12/21/2020 04:03:01 pm

We don't live very close to the train track here but when the wind is blowing from the south we do faintly hear them whistle for crossings. They are in the process of eliminating those grade crossings, though, so soon we won't even hear those.

I agree that I slept through many trains passing RV parks in which we were camped unless they blew their whistles. Never could sleep through a nearby train whistle.

Then there was the time we were traveling by car and spent the night in a hotel across the street from the UP mainline in Nebraska. Sleep? What sleep? I mostly like trains but not that night.

12/21/2020 04:37:34 pm

I think my worst train night was staying at an Escapees Park near Hondo Texas. The tracks were about 100 yards away, if that, and there was multiple train crossings near that campground. I knew the train situation was not good when they informed me of the noisy trains as I was checking in.

Seems like there was several trains an hour that went by, the trains were going slow so the racket lasted for a long time. Each engineer blew his whistle four or five different times before it got out of earshot. And of course the engineer would blow the whistle three or four times at each crossing. It seemed to never end. I can boondock in Walmart parking lots and sleep like a baby, but I didn't stay there very long.

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

Unpacked, Hunkered down, and ready for the holidays.

Leave a Reply.

Archives

CONTACT THEBOONDORK