I guess I haven’t written in a while. We toured several houses with Joanie and found one we might have loved if we were looking for a four bedroom house to live in with space for everyone to visit and room for our coach and a friend’s coach as well. Price was not the killer. We realized we are not looking to furnish a new house nor are we prepared to close our home in Rochester. We really want a place for the coach and at $400 a month plus electricity for a pad in a campground who needs to own land and pay taxes and do upkeep. Glad we looked, glad we did not make a foolish decision (for us), glad to move on.

We waited to hear from Richard (Richard’s RV Service) about our convection/microwave oven. And we waited, and we waited. Finally, a week and a day after he took it he appeared with our repaired convection/microwave oven at 5:30 on Friday night. By 6 pm he was gone with a bad check from us. . . oops. Carol got her hands on my money market checkbook and wrote a check on it to Richard.. She does not have signature authority on that account. Called Richard and arranged to leave him a good check with the campground office before we left.

We were finally free to head for Senator Wash. You can locate it by entering it into Google maps or just do a Google search for it. We are in the south shore camping area where we have stayed a couple of previous times. We are on the shore of a pumped storage reservoir just above the usual high water area. When we arrived the water level was about 30 feet from the high water mark and we set up camp about a foot or two above that. This seemed to be at about the usual low water mark . As we approached the camping area we were concerned because it was Saturday of the three day President’s weekend and from past experience we expected the place to be mobbed. We were both relieved and dismayed to find plenty of space for us. Where is everyone?

We have been here five days as I write this and the weather has been cool and there have been high winds and even some rain. Since we arrived they have continued to drain water out of the lake and so far as we can tell there has been no pumping to refill it. I am looking across the lake bed and see nothing but mud flats from where I am camped across to the far share. Yesterday we walked across the flats on our way back from a long walk. None of the beach camping area is on the water at the moment. I am sure that by this time next week we will have water up to the high water mark a few feet from the wheels. We have had the company of Kurt and Margaret Sauter from British Columbia since we arrived. They are not related to my assistant, Kathy Sauter Meintel. Kurt is Swiss and a Canadian citizen. He has a delicatessen on Shuswap the tourist area halfway between Vancouver and Calgary and gets away for the winter because business falls off significantly when the tourists and summer residents leave. As I write they are packing up to move on, having overstayed their allotted two weeks in this particular Short Term Visitor Area (STVA in government speak). We will miss their company, but there are others we have met who we have spent time with in past years.

I am hoping to post this today with a stop at the Yuma Proving Grounds (YPG) near where we are camping. This is a US Army proving ground for a lot of military vehicles and track mounted weapons. Also the Golden Knights parachute team practices here. We have free access to the base and many of its facilities and the bowling alley has free wifi available. So we will see if we can get on line there a little faster than here. Otherwise I may try using my phone as usual. 

We got distracted when we arrived on the YPG grounds.  Paratroopers were falling out of the sky all around us.  We took our lunch and chairs to the patch of public land  between the three landing areas and watched as the Golden Knights, the 82 Airborne, and the navy Seals took turns jumping out of planes and hitting the marks in the middle of their respective fields.  For a grand finale, well not finale as they do this once an hour from 0900  to 1530 five days a week, all the teams put up a total of 20 jumpers who fell from 6,000 feet while forming a large formation before breaking and opening their chutes.  Great fun, we watched one full cycle and wandered off to do other things.

The water is rising in the lake.  We may be on a lake shore again soon.