A minor diversion

 Chasing Trails: A Short Fun Book about a Long Miserable Run
by George Mahood

Cute, very cute. A nice change of pace. But nowhere near as good as his longer books in the "Did Not Finish" series. I enjoyed it, for free, pretty much. But I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend as a "must read" even for fans of Mahood.

Another of my YA books and a really good one

Paperweight

by Meg Haston


Not to knock this story, but on an aside: I'm really confused why so many people write books about anorexia cases that begins with a traumatic, triggering incident. That sort of thing happens, I guess, but not all that commonly. Much more often the "traumatic, triggering incident" is something like this:
- I sat next to Ashley on the bench and was freaked out by the gaps between her stick legs. I should have that!
- My mom bought me a cake and then yelled at me because I was too fat for my dress.
- I skipped a meal and suddenly realized that I could do this always--I had the power!

So you see, I find the condition much more interesting when it appears to occur without an obvious cause. As it usually does.

That aside, this is a great story. masterfully written--you're right in Stevie's head throughout. You cry--and occasionally cheer--for her as she deals with her demons. I'd highly recommend it to almost any young person or anyone interested in the subject.

okay memoir of woman who learned to like RVing, but I'm glad I didn't spend money on it

 The Reluctant RV Wife
By Geri Almand


The story was good but the writing, or maybe it was the paragraphing? put me off. It seemed endlessly repetitive.  No doubt it was repetitive for the writer too--sore knees, knee operations, conflict between wanting to stay at home with her prize-winning garden and wanting to see new places; husband with itchy feet; and repeat. Those were the themes that echoed on almost every page. Squeeze in a little loneliness and sense of disconnection, and you've got the whole book.

But I'm not saying I hated it, I'm just saying it wasn't at all what I hoped for. She had all the elements of a great story, she just failed to put them together in a way that made me love it. I wonder if there was any editing involved at all? Probably so, but not nearly enough.

If you're considering RV-ing or even full-timing, you might find this interesting. A lot of it. And hopefully, a lot more than I did. I really enjoyed the "home downsizing" section at the end, and the occasional descriptions of parks and scenic beauty scattered throughout.

Consistency you can count on

 Murder Creek
by Donna Ball

I can think of nothing to say about this book that makes it stand out from any of the others. The whole series is consistently GOOD. And I even wondered a little if there's some growth in the characters going on. Like maybe Raine has finally got the idea that her impulsive (and adorable) dog is going to jerk the leash out of her hand and take off when he sees or smells something that advances the mystery plot. Because this time, I don't think that happened--it was her fiancees' daughter who was holding the leash.

More suspense than I can bear...almost

 The Housemaid

by Frieda McFadden

I'm taken aback. Amazed. and Out of Words to say. This was the most frustratingly un-put-downable book I've ever read. Girl fresh out of prison and unable to find a job takes a live-in housemaid job. The lady who hired her was sweet and wonderful; the husband was too, and only the gardener warned her in almost unintelligible English....
Danger. Leave. Go away.
Things started getting weird right away but the housemaid took them in stride and did her best to persist because...parole. The suspense just didn't stop--until--

Can't say. Just be warned there are some wildly headwrenching plot twists in here. You won't be prepared for them, so don't try.

One thing the author might have done differently is told us certain facts early on. We wouldn't have recognized them as clues back then. When she reveals them near the end, it's AHA! Wow!  But if she'd revealed them earlier, it would have been more like, OH FREAKING AMAZING--OF COURSE!  That's why and I should have guessed it!

And that's all I can say without spoilers.

Almost tearjerking...when people weren't being total a*holes

 The Long Haul
A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

Goodreads is getting a 5-star rating on this book! Yes, I listened to the audiobook instead of reading the paper copy, and yes, audiobooks are usually better. But even without that boost, this is great.

All I can guess is that the ne'er-do-well high school student who started out with a part-time job in the trucking company near his neighborhood, then blew off college and eventually quit, was a very, very smart guy to write so well. Even if he had a ghostwriter helping, and I rather think he didn't...let me see...

I don't see any mention of it. He's just a darn good storyteller. And he held back the best until the end--smart of him. Only the epilogue is a little smarmy and I think he deserves that.  Sorry I don't want to relate it here--no spoilers.

Some of it is simply factual--ins and outs of how the moving industry works. Some is simple narrative--how he does his job and deals with all the oddball people he encounters along the way. And some is essay-style musings on humanity and why movers are considered the blood-sucking scum at the bottom of the cesspool of living. Interestingly, after helping so many people move their treasured possessions from one house to another, he gets a very negative attitude about possessions in general and moving them in particular. Some of the people, especially the retirees who go from the Northeast to Florida, themselves question whether or not they really wanted to move all that stuff.

And there was this one very peculiar old lady who couldn't seem to make up her mind even at the last minute. Her original estimate of what she wanted to move was very, very low, but when he questioned her item by item, yes, it all ended up going. And the bill, of course, was way over the quote. She seemed surprised about that--was she really so very clueless as she acted or just trying to pull a scam? He never found out.

Not all people were horrid, though--he had three or so examples of people whose moves were positively "nice" and even life-affirming. Both to them (sort of) and to him.

Gave up...too heavy

 She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
Carl Zimmer


I'll have to note this down as a DNF. It was an awfully good book, but at over 400 pages (400 BIG pages), I grew discouraged and took it back to the library. I caught myself skimming, and that was no way to treat such an enlightening, interesting book.

If he'd edited out about one-third of the chapters, I'd have finished it. Because the stuff I read--really read--was fascinating. I read about how heredity was "discovered"; how human intelligence testing resulted in the institutionalizing and sometimes sterilization of people whose main issue was poverty; and then a whole bunch of information about mitochrondial DNA and bacterial that finds its way into our body, is passed down from mother to child (or even father to child in cases), and either enhances our life, preserves it, or occasionally destroys it.

All great stuff, and a valid course material for a graduate degree study. But too much for lazy old me!

So sweet it needed pancakes

Rescue You
by Elysia Whisler

Don't get the idea that this is anything other than a love story and you'll be satisfied. I thought it was about dog rescue!  

There's a little dog rescue but there's a lot more body building and massage therapy. Interesting stuff, all, and well explained. Great, great characters; some extraordinarily well-related action sequences, and a whole lot of mushy stuff that never came to the point of oozy. The author did a good job walking the narrow line between "no sex at all" and "way too much sex," in my opinion.  The amount that she included seemed just enough to complete the story but not so much that you were blushing throughout the scene.

I was very pleased. But there should have been more dog. More good dog.

Since one of the main characters ran a rescue organization and tended to go outside the law a little bit in her efforts to free abused and neglected animals, there was a little more detail on that subject than I wanted to read--we had to know what she was seeing in order to understand her behavior. But the descriptions weren't so graphic or scary that I had to put the book away. Just skim to the next paragraph and get on with the good stuff. And there was a lot of good stuff.

Scary trek north on the Appalachian Trail

North
by Scott Jurek

Horrible awful--and awesome. Can that combine in a book?

What was horrible was the punishment he put his body through...and spirit. It seems odd to beat oneself up so badly just to beat a record, but it wasn't "just" to beat a record. We don't think it so odd that native Americans fasted on a mountainside for three days to give themselves holy visions. Or that people take long, solo journeys to understand their souls. So why should we fault him, for running so hard and so long and ignoring so many crippling injuries?

I guess not...but running through pain seems one of the scariest things a person could do.

Almost more interesting than his own story, though, is that of his wife and trail support crew, Jenny Jurek. She went through some stuff! Wow! And no slouch of a runner herself, either. It must have been murder to sit on the sidelines--except she didn't--she was as much a necessity for the journey as he was. She drove on the sidelines...and back roads, and 2-lane highways, and muddy parking lots....

Great story, and some of the many quotes that I will not include here, are memorable. Wish I'd written them down.

Neither great or mediocre, but I enjoyed

Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running With My Dog Brought Me Back From the Brink
Nita Sweeney


This will be a conflicted review. I applauded her, enjoyed her, and almost couldn't get enough of her running struggles. But the narrative was so very, awfully repetitive. I know she couldn't really help it--it was written in mostly chronological order, day by day or week by week, as she pulled herself out of sleeping-until-noon depression to training for races, to the brink of a marathon try. Will she make the distance?

I'll leave it to you to find out. Despite my struggles with the endless repetition of her narrative: injuries, loss of confidence, fear, lack of motivation and all the rest of the stuff that comes along when a person is trying to start a new habit, I enjoyed the book a great deal. And I don't know how a person could trim it down and still be true to the story.

So, cheers, Nita! Jog on!

Good audiobook with lots of sass

 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
by Deesha Philyaw

Not what I expected, but good all the same. I'd expected stories of people and their lives, intertwined with their churches and all the conflicts between posture and reality--like maybe a story about a deacon's wife by day/hoyden by night. Or stories of churchgoing followed by the "letting down the hair" afterward.

Although there were a few churchy themes running through the narratives, that part was mostly off the page and mentioned, then discarded. In a few stories the ladies' writing have issues with their highly religious mothers who disapproves of their lifestyles. But that's not the point, and they themselves have left the church.

in one narrative I don't think the church is ever mentioned. The narrator is a woman who likes to take on male lovers and she is telling them how and how not to behave in order to please her in bed. Are we to assume that in her "other life" she's a church lady?  If so, I didn't get it.

One very long story is about a girl's growing up with a mother who denies her needs for growth, love and approval. The mother entertains the preacher on Monday nights and makes a "special" peach cobbler for him, but neither herself or the girl get to share it.  Later, she and the preacher retire to the bedroom for some vigorous humping, but the matter of her own religion is never discussed.

It ended up being a fascinating story, probably my favorite. Almost "worth the price of the book."

But despite the misnaming of the book, it was great and had some very good storytelling--Yeah!

Mammoth's Arizona Adventure, Day 10 and return trip

Fri 17 March

Van Horn RV park wasn't such a bad place, but in the morning it was severely cold. Miserably cold. The wind had shifted to the east--odd, for Texas--and it just stripped the heat out of us. Since we'd lost an hour, I set my alarm forward by about 20 minutes, to 6:50, and for the first time this week the alarm woke me up before I did.  I only snoozed twice, mainly to give Ed time to get out of my way and to have his first cup of coffee before we walked dogs.

With all that early arising, we only beat the departure time for the day before by two minutes. 9:32 instead of 9:34. How is that possible?

I dunno, but it's typical. Our typical "quick" departure is at 9:30, our typical "lazy" departure 10:30 although we've been known to leave as late as eleven. But there was no particular rush--we only had a four-hour drive. Which, incidentally, took the whole four hours and then some more. There were a lot of slow uphills in the first leg, and then a huge, 15-minute slowdown around Midland.

We'd considered just driving straight though to home, but only if the weather forecast had called for icing. At Van Horn the Friday night forecast had a chance of a "wintry mix". But our destination, Lake Colorado City State Park, did not.  It wasn't supposed to get lower than 36 degrees and there was no chance of precipitation.  So there would have been no reason for the misery of subjecting ourselves to a 9-hour drive for no good reason.

Our site

Colorado City is a nice but typically boring Texas park built around a reservoir. The reservoirs in this part of the state are all extremely low right now. During our walk, Molly and I went to the boat ramp, which was closed due to lake levels. However, there appeared to be two boat ramps out there and one of them looked usable to me. Not that we walked down to see.

This park is only memorable for all the ground squirrels. There are holes all over the campground and nearly all appear to be occupied. Molly thought so, at least. I don't think she's seen one yet although both Ed and I have.

One thrasher in the tree by our site serenaded us when we arrived. Best I can conclude is that it was a Sage Thrasher. If it was a Curve-Billed Thrasher, it was a juvenile and I can't believe that since it's only mid-March and it was singing very well.

Ground squirrel hole

Also saw a robin, a woodpecker that was probably a Ladder-Backed Woodpecker, a yellow-rumped warbler, some white-crowned sparrows, two White Pelicans soaring overhead, and cardinals, of course.

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out this daylight savings time thing. It's 7:17 pm now and still very light outside, but so very sharply cold that I don't care to be out there. Yesterday I took Molly for her evening walk at about eight o'clock, and it was still light outside when we returned. I'll probably do the same thing today.

Sat 18 March 2023

Return day. Nothing to say--remarkably uneventful. A little long, at over five hours.

And home.


TRIP NOTES

1. A 6-hour trip starting out is acceptable, provided it's on interstate highways or other easy roads and the camping spot is easy access. Monahans Sandhills worked very well.

2. Bob's Red Mill Oatmeal, blueberry-hazelnut, is awesome. The single-serve packaging is a little wasteful, but at least it's all cardboard with just a single round of plastic wrap at the top. I tried another brand last time--Pure Elizabeth--and it tasted okay but the container was coated with plastic. Also the oatmeal exploded in the microwave but I think that was because I didn't follow instructions.

3. The salmon salad, on the mini wraps with baby spinach leaflets, was excellent. Also the homemade hummus on snack mix (Ghihiradelli brand.) But watch the candy next time.

4. All these places are great: Monahans Sandhills State park; Rusty's RV Ranch; Picacho Peak State Park; Rockhound State Park. Go back. Go back!

Mammoth's Arizona Adventure, Day 9

Thu 16 March
Rockhound State Park to Van Horn RV Park

It rained during the night--I woke up several times and heard the dripping, but I wasn't bothered enough to get up and see. When we awoke it was pretty much dry again, other than a fine dusting on the motorhome and the steps. The temperature had dropped (cold front came through) and the northwest wind was fierce. It got worse during the day.

The trip was uneventful, except for the hair-raising, butt-clenching ten miles through El Paso. Big city traffic and lots of it at high speeds; walls along both sides of the road in some sections; and lots of 18-wheeler trucks.

It was a pleasant surprise to cross the time zone in the mountains just West of Van Horn. We lost an hour again, but since we were expecting it, it was nice to finally get back in the same timezone as our families back home.

 Scenery on the road

After all the days in eaceful, scenic beauty, I wasn't expecting much out of our first stop. And I was not surprised.  See my review:

REVIEW
Van Horn RV Park, gravel, $40, more than long enough
Not expecting much except courtesy and convenience, and got exactly that.
They have a lot of dust out here, and Van Horn RV Park is right in the middle of it. Someone, sometime, has tried to clean the place up--to put in trees, a playground and a pond, but it was a long sometime ago. It's awful junky, dry and dusty now.

But the people at the desk were especially nice, the sites are long, and the utilities work fine. My only complaints are the price--$40 for one night--and the burs in my shoes and my dogs' feet. They have an especially bad crop of the tiny, round, sticker bur that we find in campgrounds all over. I suggest boots for the humans and booties for the dogs.

There's a bit of a view of mountains in the distance, but nothing you'd want to sit outside and ponder. There were a couple of teenage boys out riding four-wheelers at high speeds through the campground and stirring up a lot of dust. They weren't bothering anyone, it was just a little loud and annoying. No big deal, though.

Mammoth's Arizona Adventure, Day 8

Wed 3/15

Anna's Hummingbird!  Ed spotted it, working the bushes. it seemed to like the little yellow flowers.

Constant stream of traffic, going east, going west, going. I want to be going on, not going back. To Oregon, maybe--I've never been to Oregon. Or the western Canada coast. Or Alaska. Going!

I want to be at home, taking care of my plants, rubbing my cats, watching my birds and hoping for migrants. But even more, I want to be moving on.

LATER

Tomorrow is Edward's last day of class, yippee!  By this time tomorrow, he may be headed home.

Not us, though. We're at Rockhound State Park. We had a long, slow drive which shouldn't have been so long nor so slow. There was a "6-minute" slowdown on I-10 which turned into a 30 or 40-minute slowdown by the time it was over. Just road construction with a lane closed, so it shouldn't have taken so long.

We weren't in a hurry, though. We arrived with a blow coming through--very strong wind and rain threatening. All in all, there was problem one-one-thousandth of an inch of rain total, and then it blew itself out. The wind is still blowing now, but no longer a full-force gale.

It's a great place. Wide-open vistas, lots of bumpy things close and far (not exactly mountains) and rocks galore. Big boulders, little pebbles, and everything in between. 

 

Molly and I took a long walk up the trails, mostly in search of a windbreak. When we went in a cirle around on the right-hand trail, the wind stopped a time or two. But after a while we were so far off course with the winding trails amid the rocks that I decided to turn back. The fact that it was spitting rain by then influenced my decision.

So I put my hood back on and cinched it back up, then returned to the trailhead. There we sat in a shelter while I called my brother, then we started up the trail that went more or less directly up the side of the biggest hill. We found a magnificent windbreak leeward of a huge boulder.-
   

But eventually went on. Oddly, it grew warmer as we went higher and I was able to take my hood off.  Lots of birds but very hard to see. I got a great view of a Cactus Wren and also several good views of the black-throated sparrows all over. Those birds are handsome!

Also others, but they always managed to duck under the rocks and out of sight.

Sigh. Return to gumbo, made a week earlier and preserved in the freezer. Marvelous. Camping is the life.

We took another walk at sunset. The wind was less fierce, but chillier.  A pair of ravens soared silently overhead, with only two gentle croaks to tell me they were there. Heavy clouds with only a streak or two of orange, but lovely. Twittering in the bushes.

And that pretty much marks the end of the trip. Oh, we have two more stops on our way home, but they're just stops, not destinations. An RV park and then a Texas State Park we've been to before. It was convenient and cheap, and that's all I remember. But maybe we'll see flowers there, too. Lots of 'em here!

Mammoth's Arizona Adventure, Day 7

 Tue 14 March

Long day today for the dogs--they were left behind. We headed out at about nine to go to Tombstone. It wasn't part of the original agenda, so I didn't book an overnight stay near the town. But when I happened to see it was "fairly" close to our park, I decided to offer it as an option to Ed, who loves that sort of thing. But the distance was way over my hard limit for side trips--one hour--and ended up taking us about 1-1/2 hours.

I'd read on the web page that you should buy your tickets to the OK Corral gunfight when you first arrive because they sometimes sell out. So we did. And then as we were walking across the street to kill some time before our 1:00 show, a guy hawking the "other" gunfight was in the street, advertising the "only gunfight in Tombstone with professional actors, just finished shooting scenes for some sort of well-known show (I'd heard of it), and a comedy." Of course, the only times available for that one were one-o'clock and three, and three would have been too late for us. If we saw a three o'clock show, we wouldn't have returned to the dogs until 5:30. Too late.

 

So we blew it. But I don't blame myself. The web site didn't say anything about "three" gunfight reenactment troupes in town. We ended up going to two of them, one in the bar and one at the OK corral.  They were both a little lame, in my humble opinion. No one fell off the roof or were dragged by their horses or returned from the dead and required a second killin'. They were just straight reenactments, one of some  shootings that occurred in the bar and one of the famous duel.

No matter, we enjoyed ourselves all the same. When we returned to the dogs, Molly and I had a couple of hours for a long walk. Since I'd gone up the road to the day-use area before, and didn't think I'd have time to walk all the way back up to the top of Picacho Peak before suppertime, I decided to go down the road to the entrance station.

It was more up than down, or so it seemed. There is a gravel/rock walkway, just the width for one person, all alongside the road up and down. Molly and I took it, her going in front at the end of the leash. It was probably too early for snakes and despite all the beautiful flowers, not so overgrown that I couldn't see where I was placing my feet. Or Molly hers. So it was safe to let her go first.

 

 

We didn't see much, but it was a delightful walk all the same. Only a cactus wren or two. I heard a black-chinned?? sparrow but didn't see it.  I have a funny feeling that if there weren't so many people around, there would have been a lot more wildlife.

Mammoth's Arizona Adventure, Day 6

Monday 13 March

Why do problems always insist on following us? This time it was May's car not starting. Ed arranged to have it towed and then he sweet-talked a repairman into taking a quick look at it.
 
After that was under control, we took a road trip to the Arizona-Sonaran Desert Museum. It was way too crowded to enjoy anything. The aviary had pretty much nothing except doves and a few ground birds of some sort. The hummingbird display had a few interesting birds, but it was so crowded you couldn't move or stand still, either one The plant displays weren't great, either--not compared to the garden we were camping in.

 
There were probably some exhibits off the beaten path that would have been interesting, but Ed's hip was hurting and he could barely make the meandering circuit through the little bit of the grounds that we did do. The place was nothing like I remembered it. At all. Not cool.

We then drove through a loop of Saguaro National Park. It was lovely, but driving was boring. It would have been nice to walk the trails. But that was not possible.

So, back at camp, I took a long walk with Molly along the trail that ran beside the road, all the way out to the day use area. (When I say "beside the road", I don't mean adjacent to the road. It followed the road but kept making detours away from it--lots of times you couldn't see the trail from the road or vice-versa.)  I didn't realize that the day use area was at the trailhead to a trail that went all the way up to Picacho peak. If I had, I would have brought water and we would have went on up.  (The day use area had a parking lot and pit toilets. No water)

 As usual, we encountered almost no people -- two small groups -- on the trail, but when we reached the day use area it was full of cars.  All we saw in the way of wildlife was one lizard and a gorgeous black-chinned sparrow that posed for me.

If I'm known how gorgeously wonderful it was at Picacho, and how many little trails there were to travel around, I'd have skipped the day's trip to the museum and the national park. There are plenty of Saguaro to enjoy at Picacho, and we never even got time to stop by the visitor center. And there were tons of cactus to Identify.  And even though the parking lots were full of people, on the park grounds away from roads, the people were spread out. They all seemed to be enjoying the wildflowers and taking pictures of the "big bloom"--and I don't blame them.

 Cactus Wren

Black-Chinned Sparrow with an attitude

Gila Woodpecker

Cactus Wren

House Finch

Picacho Peak

Barrel Cactus -- see the curved spines

Good night at campsite

Mammoth's Arizona Adventure, Day 5

 
Picacho Peak, Sunday 12 March

It was a medium-length drive, pretty uneventful. We did as other campers have recommended and filled up our water tank at the Flying J Truck Stop on I-10. It was about 10 minutes past the park, but not a problem.

They had a water fill station easily accessed with gas pumps within reach, so while the tank was filling, Ed was able to use his RV fuel card and fill up with gas. I noticed they had a dump station there, too. Very nice!

Then we went back to the park. Since our check-in time was fairly late, 3 or 4 pm, we were somewhat worried we'd get there and have to wait. And we did--but not for the reason you'd expect. It was "Wildflower Season" at Picacho Peak, and the line of cars waiting to get in was unbelievable. A sign at the turnoff said to expect a 1-1/2 hour wait, and they weren't kidding.

 

It might have only been an hour. When we finally got within a few places of the entrance, a nice ranger ran up to get our info and then ran back to print our stickers. All of the cars in front of us were day use people, flower peepers. So it was a shame we had to wait at all, but the ranger explained this only happened a few days a year. It was Sunday afternoon, too, so the crowd was unusually large.

And the wildflowers were awesome! It was like a huge, overflowing garden in the desert. Flowers of many colors--orange and yellow poppy-like things, bluebonnets, purple plumes--tons of them. Everything was blooming except the cactus, which typically bloom later in the summer. Not that mattered--I never expected to see so many saguaro with their feet anchored in gorgeous colors.
 

 
Our campsite was almost as lovely as the drive up the hill. It was full of flowers there too, but not as big and showy ones. Even without water hookups, it's a great, great campground!
 
Our site was about halfway up the slope to Picacho Peak, with a big chunk of dark hill in front of us and a long, sloping valley down all the way to Interstate 10. After dinner we sat out on the picnic table and looked out across the valley, amazed at the constant stream of traffic on interstate going into Tucson. Plus the long long trains--two sets of tracks taking trains both east and west--cool to watch from a great distance. Endlessly fascinating.

Watching people going made me want to go on and on, to the ends of the earth. Mind you, I loved being where I was and wanted to stay a long, long time, but I wanted to be going on, too. How is that possible? Why is that possible? What is the meaning of this need to get up and move and see all the things in the world? (Not to mention feel them, hear them, touch them, smell them) Why?

Back to here and now. In those few short hours, I saw a few birds: Gila Woodpeckers, Cactus Wren, Black-Throated Sparrow, doves of some sort which I haven't taken the time to ID, and House Finch. And Ravens, of course. Love 'em. But are they Chihuahuan Raven or Common Raven? Dunno, but I'm thinking Common Raven.

Pyrhuloxia (at Rusty's)

Ladder-Backed Woodpecker (at Rusty's)

Red Crossbill (female; at Rusty's)

Red crossbill (female; at Rusty's)