A Lot of Catching Up To Do

Looks like another month has flown by without a new post, although I had good intentions. We've shaken things up around here so blogging has been put on the back burner but things have settled down so it's time to catch up. 

We are now happily relaxing in a lovely house near the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, NM, caring for two sweet cats until mid-August, but more about that later.

We like our new neighborhood.

A few weeks ago we visited Prescott, AZ for about 10 days to visit with several friends. We had a great time hiking, biking, eating out (Bill's Pizza, Tara Thai, and Hans and Lisa's house, all excellent), and enjoying many happy hours at The Raven Cafe.

Our favorite site at White Spar Campground

We spent one night at North Ranch SKP park in Congress on the way to Prescott and back, where this javelina walked behind our site.

He was on his way to the watering hole in front of the office, totally oblivious to people or cars.

Beautiful flowing cactus in someone's yard at North Ranch

In Prescott we hiked the Salida Gulch trail, new trails across from Thumb Butte, Wolverton Mountain and Aspen Creek trails.

Maureen, Eric, Hans, Jim and Lisa taking a break on the Salida Gulch trail

View from the trail

We always enjoy biking the Peavine and Iron King Trails.

Jim and Sandy on the Peavine, while John was out riding the "real" mountain bike trails.

Scenic Watson Lake from the trail

View of  Prescott from the Wolverton Trail

Fortunately, this was just a controlled burn

View from Aspen Creek trail

We really enjoyed our time in Prescott and it was great seeing Eric and Maureen, who have lived there for several years, John and Sandy, who were at a local RV park for a month, and Hans and Lisa, who now have a lovely home just north of town. 

The day we arrived in Prescott we got the Lazy Daze set up on our site and then took a hundred mile drive to Fountain Hills, AZ to look at an apartment. We got an email a couple days before from Park Place Apartments, which we looked at last winter when we were at McDowell Mountain, telling about their summer rent specials. There was only one available two bedroom on the Avenue of the Fountains side with a view, which we did not get to look at when we toured the place last December. We had ruled it out then because we thought the rent was too high, but they were offering a substantial rent reduction and giving 10 free weeks, and although we will be here until the middle of August, we negotiated and got them to postpone our move-in date to July 1. Since there is no rent due until mid-September we decided to go ahead with it, which means we will be making our way back there when we leave Albuquerque. So just like that, it looks like our full-time RVing days are over!

We had planned to leave the Lazy Daze on our lot at Jojoba Hills over the summer but decided to give up our membership so we wouldn't have to drive all the way back to California after we leave Albuquerque. Fortunately, our neighbors and some other friends bought just about everything we acquired with the lot, and the rest we gave away. Since we only had a week after getting back from Prescott, we were happy it turned out to be so easy.

Jojoba served our needs for the past year and a half, and it's a very nice park, but we just didn't care for the location. We did have fun playing pickleball there, and I enjoyed working with the landscaping committee. On our Wednesday morning work parties there might be anywhere from 15-20 people show up, but on the last project I helped with we needed more muscle to spread 14 tons of rock in the revamped cactus garden by the clubhouse. Over 40 people came to help, and we got it done in just a couple hours.

The power of volunteers

The finished garden looked great. We removed a lot of old, half dead cacti and planted a few new ones.

It was quite a challenge for us figuring out what to take to Albuquerque for three months, then cleaning out the RV and preparing it for storage. Having lived in it for almost 11 years and never storing it, we didn't realize how much work was involved. We hate for it to sit there baking in the heat all summer but it was going to do that at Jojoba anyway. For now we will keep it and see how much we use it before we decide whether we think it's worth the trouble and expense to store and maintain. We've only been at the house in Albuquerque for a bit over a week, but we are both happy knowing we don't have to go back to living in a 30' box when the housesit is over. We love having counter space in the kitchen, a washer and dryer, and not having to dump tanks. Those were things we adjusted to but we aren't missing any of it so far. We may feel differently as time goes on, but we had both become disenchanted with RVing and felt it was time for a change.

Jim cleaning off all the bugs at the storage lot in Fountain Hills.

We spent the night at a hotel in Fountain Hills after locking up the RV. Good thing it was less than a mile away since Jim had to go back twice for things we forgot.

This will be our new home on the right. Fearless Kitty Rescue is on the left.

I will probably be spending too much time here :-)

The saguaros were all in bloom

Back to Albuquerque and our job for the summer, caring for these two adorable cats. It is such fun having cats around the house again, but we won't be getting any when we move to Fountain Hills. Since Fearless Kitty Rescue is so close to our new apartment, we will be able to get a cat fix whenever we like.

Handsome Luke, who likes to follow us around and keep an eye on what we're doing.

 Keira, a very petite former stray with a scarred right eye. She has the cutest squeaky meow.

We haven't yet gone out and done any exploring around Albuquerque since we've been enjoying just hanging around this comfortable house and taking long walks around the neighborhood. 

It was cold, windy and rained some our first couple days here. We awoke to snow on the mountains but it melted quickly when the sun came out.

We can walk for miles on the streets of the neighborhood, or be on a trail in less than a mile.

This deer is actually in a yard between two houses, but the houses are far apart and the yards must be left natural

It's very hilly so it's easy to get a good workout even if we stay on the streets

Hazy view of Albuquerque

Foothills trail

Another part of the same trail

Start of the Sandia Tramway as seen from one of our hikes

We may have to do this on a hot day since the tram goes up to 10,000'. There is also a 7 mile trail to the top, with 3,700' of elevation gain, and you can take the tram down.  We need to get back into hiking shape for that one.

I think that's all the news from our world. We have RV friends coming to town over the next few weeks so I will try to keep the blog updated. I also intend to stay caught up with blog reading to see what we are missing this summer and maybe give us some motivation to get back out on the road again. For now, we're content hanging out with cats and enjoying the views. Oh, and the 55" TV is pretty nice, too.

Pleasant views from almost every window in the house.

A Short Trip to San Diego

We recently spent a couple days in San Diego visiting with Terry and LuAnn, who were house and dog sitting there. It was a bit cool and windy but we had fun taking one of the dogs, golden retriever Kaiya, to Fiesta Island's dog beach. Poor Sugar, a sweet older yellow lab, was dealing with some skin allergies and per vet's orders wasn't permitted to romp in the sand and water. 

Kaiya only wanted to chase the ball. She had no interest in playing with other dogs, try as they might,

The ring toy never left this one's mouth.

Kaiya waiting for Jim to throw the ball, again.

The funniest dog was Blueberry, a feisty French bulldog who grabbed the ball tosser from LuAnn and wouldn't let go.

What a face!

But the award for cuteness went to this Maltese who hid between its owner's legs for protection from all the bigger dogs running around.

One day we walked around San Diego University, a lovely campus with flowers everywhere.

  

Impressive landscaping

LuAnn, Terry and Jim admiring the fountain

USD is a Catholic college with tuition over $50,000/year

We just had to try out the big chairs

View from our walk

No trip to San Diego is complete without visiting a couple breweries. A friend of Terry's from high school was also in town, so he met us for dinner at Amplified Aleworks on Pacific Beach. We enjoyed the food and beer, and after dinner took a little stroll along the boardwalk.

It's always nice to see the ocean again.

The next evening we opted for Pizza Port, a brewery and restaurant in Ocean Beach that we visited three times when we spent a month in San Diego several years ago. It was as good as we remembered. 

Meanwhile, back at Jojoba Hills, we are getting ready to head out in a few days for Prescott, AZ.

Still quite a few flowers in bloom.

It's definitely Spring!

Summer Plans

We finally have a plan for most of the summer, which we hope will be a nice change from traveling in the Lazy Dazy. Terry and LuAnn have done some house sitting over the past year through House Sitters America, which costs $30/year to join, so I signed us up and put our profile on the website. Within a short time we got several emails from people looking for sitters but they were not in the right time frame. After searching the ads I found a three month sit taking care of two cats in Albuquerque, NM from mid-May through mid-August and contacted them to say we were interested. We had a Skype interview with the homeowners a couple days later, and after checking our references they let us know the next day that they would like us to come. We are very excited about living with cats in a "real" house for a few months. It's close to the mountains and just a mile and a half to the Sandia Peak tramway where there are lots of hiking trails. We've been to Albuquerque a few times but never got over to that part of town so we will have plenty of time to explore. There are also numerous places to play pickleball, both indoors and outdoors, and many breweries, within about ten miles of the house. 

After that we are not sure, but I suspect three months in a house will spur us on to make a move out of the RV, or we may miss it so much we continue on as is. We will see how it goes.

The weather has been perfect for being outside lately, so here are some photos from a hike we did with LuAnn the other day in Anza Borrego on the Pacific Crest Trail.

We missed the turn and realized as we were rock scrambling that this couldn't be the PCT.

We hiked over 3.5 miles from Scissors Crossing north towards Warner Springs. It was surprising that there was no PCT signage.

Agave in various stages of bloom.

                                                                                                                                                                        

     Many cacti are already flowering.

                                                                                                                                                             

There were flowers, flowers, everywhere.

   We spoke with several section hikers and two through hikers on the trail. At this point they are 80

   miles into their 2,650 mile hike.

Chia plant

The painted lady butterflies are still migrating so Jim had to wash the front of the car when we got home.

On another note, Jim spotted this balloon out the window one morning last week. Little did we know that just a short time later the world-renowned pilot would be killed during an accident upon landing about 20 miles from Jojoba Hills. Here is the story if you're interested.