~Tuesday, January 17, 2023~
Day 948
A pretty windy night once again with intermittent rain. Some areas south of us, particularly Pima County, have been on flood alert. In fact, we found out our neighbors Jinny and Alex, had plans to move to their new camping location in Catalina, AZ today, but found out the roads are closed. So on a hope and a prayer, they asked our campground host if they could accommodate them one more night (always challenging at this ever popular campground). Their site was already taken, but one other campsite was available due to a cancellation. Too bad they had to move sites, but at least they could stay in the same campground. Interestingly enough, when Jeff and I took our evening walk, we found a handful of sites open which leads us to believe people are having a hard time getting here with all these storms lately. Hopefully Jinny and Alex can get back on the road tomorrow.
After a delicious omelet breakfast, Jeff felt a little under the weather with a bit of nausea. So while he took a snooze to sleep it off, I completed my Christmas thankyous, cleaned the trailer and switched out my cold climate clothes to lighter garments that will be more suitable for the Louisiana Bayou. It won’t be long before we’re there!
I guess a few hours sleep did the trick since Jeff immediately went into project mode, continuing to work on those darn stairs. It certainly has been challenging, but he’s one determined guy to get this fixed himself.
As we wound down our day, we decided to take a chilly evening walk through the campground, veering off onto one of the many trails in the park.
As we do every evening we’re here, we looked up towards the challenging Flat Iron Trail expecting to see a few headlamps from hikers coming down the mountain…..likely just after getting their sunset fix from the top. I don’t envy them trying to find the trail in the dark along with all the boulder hopping that’s required on the descent. But something else caught our attention in the desert. At first we thought it was the sound of one happy group of campers enjoying a nice evening by the fire. Ah, no. That would be a pack of coyotes waking up from their daytime slumber and they sure sounded close…..enough for us to turn around and get back on the main road. Maybe they could see Sadie with us and viewed her as a threat or eagerly welcoming the night. Whatever it was, we were intimidated by the sound and didn’t want to stick around to find out what all the “singing” was about. Happy hunting.