Saltcedar, Tamarix ramosissima
                                                                          

I had to look real hard this time in this rather ugly desert that's surrounding us but I found it .....SPRING has sprung....again!



          Velvet Mesquite (Prosopis velutina)

 ?

 

Quite a lot of the 'snowbirds' are starting to leave us, slowly moving back to their summer places, mostly somewhere in Canada.          
                  

So instead of a full-on potluck we decided to go for a cocktail hour with appetizers this month since there's only such a small crowd  of us.

 

      

'Only some appetizers', ....yeah.... right.... there was still plenty of course!

Puh, I don't know what you're talking about....

We had some famous visitors from blog-land staying a couple of days at the campground this week. I don't know if you ever read the blog but this is the Scholl Bus of the Scholl family.
I never met anybody before that I've read the blog of, it was so cool to say hello and tell them that I'd been following theirs! Sometimes I feel a little lonely out there! (It doesn't help that mine is private, I know)
But maybe I've seen or met more people who blog but just don't follow, or recognize, them?
Their bus is hard to miss of course.

One of our guests had a little bit of a too good of a time at the Spirit Mountain casino and drove into the wall at the campgrounds entrance!
It was quite a crash but fortunately he was unhurt himself. His car fared a little less good and the wall got the worst of it as you can see.
It was quite the 'talk of the town' for a while. Nothing ever happens here.....

 

 

 

Having Iced coffee at Sharron and Merv's site

 

Wow, did it get hot this week! Temperatures of 92F(31C) to 95F(33C) !

…de mussen vallen van het dak! This Dutch saying literally translates to it’s so hot, the sparrows are falling off the roof.

I had to look this up (of course) and found out that this saying has actually nothing to do with sparrows falling off a roof but dates back to times when lots of the farm roofs, for insulation purposes, where covered with moss (mos). During very hot and dry weather the moss would crack and parts of it would fall down.
When the moss wasn't used anymore, the saying became misunderstood and the 'mossen' changed into 'mussen' meaning 'sparrows', somehow making more sense to fall of the roof when it would be hot enough. Not that it would ever be that hot in Holland!

Merlin found a cool(er) spot in the basement

 

It got warm enough to turn on the air conditioning (my limit inside is 86F), mainly for the dog (right), who has a thing lately that she only seems to want to be inside the RV for some odd reason?
I sure like to be able to cool down the bedroom for the night too tough and I'm also happy our electricity is free!!

My tomatoes are much happier these days and are coloring quickly now. They taste so much better than the ones from the store!

 

 

Since James has been promoted to greens superintendent he now has his own office :

                                                                 And a big workshop....

                                                              

So know we have free golfing at the Los Lagos golf course which is a step up from the Lake Dessert one. The grass, aka, the greens, are definitely much greener over here and the warmer weather has brought out the flowers (African daisies)!

We're golfing in the late afternoon again, around 5pm, when it starts to cool down a bit and are just making it through 9 holes before it gets to dark to see where you're going.
It reminds us of Lake Arrowhead where we used to do the same thing almost every day when we were members of the Country Club up there.
You usually have the course to yourselves and the evenings are so beautiful and quiet.
  
I've started a new knitting project for which I'm using the very first yarn I ever spun. I just liked to have it hanging around as a colourful 'hank' and proudly looked at it as my first spinning achievement but I finally decided to make something useful of it.





So guess what I'm knitting in this heat? Gloves! Off course, why not?
And yes, that's pretty crazy, I guess, but at least they're fingerless ones :)!

The warm weather has brought the farmer out on the fields again. Who knows what he's doing, just plowing away...

 


He has help from this little yellow airplane that makes long passes over the fields. I can't SEE that he's spraying but I'm pretty sure he is.

 

  

 

I don't think I want to know what it is.................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather is finally and quite suddenly warming up, yesterday we had a high of 88!
As always when the heat hits so unexpectedly nobody is prepared for it and everybody is complaining but it sure beats the 50s (or less) we had for the longest time!
The cotton fields of last October have all been plowed and since last week they are being irrigated too. I wonder if they rotate their crops, I don't have a clue what they have sowed, in fact I haven't even seen them doing anything yet.
It's going to be a surprise!


We're probably not going to see much of it anyways, come to think of it, since we're leaving in another month and a half or so.
After a lot of searching and talking and teleconferencing we found a job at the West Yellowstone KOA in Montana. Yeah! We're so excited!
It's a full time paid maintenance job for James, just what we wanted, and I'll have the summer off! Well, I've offered to lend housekeeping a hand in case of emergencies but they didn't think that would happen very often since they have a large crew. (Fine with me!)
They want us there at around the 7th of May and we're going to take a week or 2 to slowly make our way up. That means we're probably leaving here around the 21st of April.
I'm so ready for it, my hitch-itch is crawling all over me!





Because of the beautiful evening we celebrated with a BBQ! Very nice double-cheese hamburgers, as in blue cheese inside and Swiss on top, yumm!






Oh and look, Merlin has a girlfriend! Isn't she cute? She thinks he's great but he is sort of half afraid of her! Hilarious. She tries to invite him to play, stalks him and makes these fake-attack moves and he just thinks she's out to get him!

 

 

It's a beautiful cat, she just showed up one day and we have no idea who she belongs to, certainly not to anybody here at the campground. She's skittish but looks well fed. She reminds me somewhat of Pumpkin, our little girl who passed away in 2009.

Pumpkin

 

Sadie is not doing so great lately. She is losing the strength in her rear right leg and went from stumbling a lot to barely being able to hold herself up on that side and falling down on her butt a lot.
I've started to walk her with a sling under her belly. It's not that I have to hold her up all the time but it's more to keep her in balance so she doesn't fall over.
Poor girl! She still wants to run, silly dog, it must be so frustrating!

And here's proof that the dutch celebrate 12.5 year anniversaries and that I was not (as some have said) just out to get a party going.
My sister celebrated her 12.5 years on the job last Friday, she got a nice present, dinner and they decorated her office desk!

 

Congratulations sister!

 

 

 

Well,..what do they say again ..best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray...?
 
We never made it to Kingman on our anniversary due to the weather man predicting snow and high winds in the mountains!
Not to be deterred by this we opted to go to Laughlin instead and visit 'Casino Row' since the weather here in the valley was going to be nice, at least until somewhere in the afternoon, after which it was supposed to cloud up some.

Laughlin's casino's are much smaller and much less luxurious than the ones I've seen in Vegas and overall they look a little 'tired'. Laughlin in general seems to have fallen on tough times, same as everywhere, with the economy in the state it is and all, and looks rather rough around the edges I must say.
The city itself claims it makes it a welcome alternative to those who find Vegas too loud, too unfriendly, too expensive and sometimes too dirty or seedy and boasts being friendlier, 'rustic' and slow. I guess that's another way of putting it!






Laughlin is the third most visited casino and resort destination in the state after Las Vegas and Reno, and is one of the top five destinations for American RV enthusiasts.

It was founded in 1964 by Las Vegas casino owner, Don Laughlin. He flew his helicopter over the site one day and saw potential in it. So he purchased some land and built the Riverside, a small motel and casino. It quickly became a huge success and went through various expansions. A city had to be named where it lay, so it was named Laughlin after its founder.

The 1980s saw huge growth in Laughlin as eight other large casino resorts rose up south of the Riverside. To accommodate the increasing traffic between Laughlin and neighboring Bullhead City, Don Laughlin spent $3.5 million to build a bridge between the two cities, which he donated to Nevada and Arizona.





I think we liked the Colorado Bell best, having the biggest curb-appeal and an interior theme somewhere in between the Titanic and a pirate ship.
We don't gamble much, thinking it a waste of our precious money, so I can't say much about the casino-end of it other than to me it sounded just like all the other ones I've been in!

We walked along the boardwalk which borders the Colorado River and connects the Riverside with the Colorado Bell and enjoyed a nice Starbucks Latte on one of the benches along the way looking out over the river.
There is a water taxi that shuttles between casinos and also brings you to the other side, to the parking lots along the river in Bullhead city and there's a peddle boat that takes you for a tour along the river banks and which claims to serve the best Margarita's in town.






We had a nice buffet lunch in the 'Bell'. In terms of dining, the operative word in Laughlin is still "cheap", ours cost us $7.95. Had it been Wednesday we could have had it for $4.95! Oh well...

Laughlin doesn't have long-running, permanent entertainment shows like Vegas, but it does get concerts on tour all the time. Only the artists that perform here tend to be names that haven't been popular since the seventies or before. 
Some of the celebrities being promoted for upcoming tours are Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, The Diamonds, Smokey Robinson, Merle Haggard and Engelbert Humperdinck. I didn't know they were still performing ........ to be honest, I didn't know some of them were still alive!


After lunch we took a short trip to the Davis Dam, a dam on the Colorado River about 70 miles (110 km) downstream from Hoover Dam and 88 miles upstream from Parker Dam that impounds the Colorado River and forms Lake Mohave.

I'm not much into dams (how un-dutch) but it's something to see and there's not too much of that around here!

 

 

We also visited the Colorado River Historical Society Museum.

It's housed in an old church building and has displays, artifacts and memorabilia of the Tri-State area.

 

 

 

Also on the property is the first post office in Bullhead City. The building was originally located in Oatman. It was brought to Bullhead in the late 1920's or early 1930's to serve as a general store.

 

 

 

  



So that was it for our wedding anniversary. A nice relaxed day during which we actually talked a lot about our live together so far. It was nice to reminiscence, we already made so many great memories. Good times, tough times, but we're still together and enjoying it!
Let's hear it for another 12,5!

By the way, I found some more about wedding anniversaries:

The earliest references to wedding anniversaries date from the 1800's. They seem to have originated in the Germanic region, where the custom was for the spouse to give his wife a silver garland when they had been married for twenty-five years. Gold became the second traditional wedding anniversary, after fifty years.
Note however that the average life expectancy was not as long as it is today ! In several European countries, therefore twelve and a half years of marriage were celebrated using Copper as the anniversary symbol. Around 1875, another newcomer was the fifth anniversary, with wood.

Later, more materials were added, and the list was continuously updated by commercial companies, to increase the sales of presents. 

 

 

Have you ever eaten elk? Or deer? Well, we hadn't but that has changed since last Friday night when Jim and Linda threw an impromptu venison BBQ!
They were leaving the campground and had some elk and deer in their freezer that they didn't want to take with them on the road so they figured we might as well all have a sample.
They made some huge elk burgers, big slabs of (white tail) deer steaks and side dishes were brought by all attending.
The weather was great so we could actually hang around the BBQ outside for a while while the meat was cooking.

We both really liked the elk, the deer a little less but that might have been because it was a little too rare for our taste.
We only had a small group showing up, I guess not everybody was brave enough to try it, so there was way too much meat and I ended up overeating as usual at these potlucks. I swear, next time I'll eat less, I'm always stuffed!

I had a good laugh over Sue's T-shirt that she had specially made somewhere:

 

She and her husband have woken up in the mornings on more than one occasion during their travels asking each other " Where the f.. are we?" so they call themselves proud members of the' Fugarwi Tribe' :)

After the meal some hung around to play poker. James is trying to teach me (I'm a terrible card player) so until I'll get the hang of it I prefer to just watch.  (they try to make me play but I'm pretty sure it's only because they want my money! Not that the stakes are that high, the buy-in is only $5, but still...)

I've been working hard on my New Years resolutions and I'm proud to say that I made good on one of them! Voila, I finally finished my socks!
They came out really good, fit me like a glove (or a sock) and are really comfy. They have a nice circle pattern on the cuff but it's rather hard to see  in the picture because of the striped wool I used.

 

So now I can start something new. I have a couple of different hand spun yarns laying around, now I just have to figure out what to make ?

 

Nothing much else to report for now other than the fact that tomorrow is going to be an important day for us!

It will be the day of our 12-1/2 wedding anniversary. Can you believe it? Twelve and a half years?!

 

Now I probably have to explain to my American audience that in the Dutch culture, the 12-1/2 year wedding anniversary is a huge deal. While some might mark their tenth anniversary as an important milestone here, it’s the 12-1/2 anniversary (half of 25) that brings on the congratulations and celebration in the Netherlands.

The Dutch don’t hold any significance for 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 year anniversaries but choose to celebrate the all too metric 12.5 years (!), 25 year and 50 year anniversaries only!! Funny!

 

So although this would normally (if you have your family or friends around) ask for a big party we've decided to keep it small and private and finally make that day trip to Kingman tomorrow, have a nice drive through the mountains and come back via Laughlin where we'll have a nice dinner at one of the casinos.

I'll post about it soon but here's one of our wedding pictures of

8-19-2000, ...ahw....how cute! 

 

 

 


 

Sunrise over the Mohave Valley at around 7 am when I start cleaning the restrooms.  

 

It's been a rather boring couple of weeks here in the valley, nuttin' much going on at all. The weather stayed cool and very windy, forcing most of us to stay inside most of the time.

We've been working our 3 days on and 4 off without much interesting happening in that department either.

 

That is until the last 2 days when all of a sudden the weather turned and we had a couple of gorgeous days well into the 70 degrees! Everybody that had been hibernating came out of their rigs and various blindingly white body parts were exposed to the blessed sunshine!

 

Since we had not been able to do much yard work until now we tackled a couple of areas at the front of the Park while we could.

 

 

 

 

 

Before                                                                      After

 

 

This bougainvillea was completely overgrown with grab (crap!) grass. It took me a while to pull it out while trying to avoid it's nasty thorns. Despite my gloves I wasn't very successful. My arms are looking like the cat attacked me something terrible and I have some nice big thorns deeply embedded in my fingers that will have to fester out by themselves I'm afraid. 

 

Here's some pics of James 'in action' at the office. There's usually very little going on. (they're already getting nervous when they have 2 arrivals ;)

Still, at the end of the day it's nice to put your feet up!
                                           

Last week I managed to add another library card to my collection. The Mohave County library encompasses a huge district from Lake Havasu in the south to Cloride in the north and has a rather large e-book selection which is the (only) part of the library that I'm interested in.
With my 'local card' there was no problem at all to apply and get the card and like the previous ones I acquired this one was free also.
I'm getting quite the library to choose from!

 

Like I said I've got not much to talk about or many pictures to show so I'll bore you with another one of my baking accomplishments.

These are (half) whole wheat baguettes made from the same 'no knead bread' recipe I used before. Since I forgot to check on them at their final baking stage  (I was fighting with that nasty Bougainvillea) they got a little too crunchy maybe, although James thought they were perfect.
But than, he's rather partial off course (or doesn't want to jeopardize any future baking?)....

Unfortunately, the weather isn't going to 'hold', they're predicting rain for the weekend. It sure looks like it!