Saturday, January 15th, 2011

We have not found the correct name of whatever it was on the trailer tire in part six. The Husky dog that lives in the park model a couple of hundred feet from our trailer was bitten by something. No one knows what it was but they nearly lost the dog. They are not sure whether the dog was trying to eat it or what took place. Whatever it was may have been a form of Arizona Scorpion. The dog is 15 months old and will have a scar on its face. It was bitten by something up near its left eye that became infected. The dog had to wear one of those plastic shields over its head so that it could not reach the injury. To think that whatever it was took place so close to our trailer.

There are 637 sites here in the park and there must be that many dogs. Every time one looks out someone is going by with at least one on a lead and many have two. They are all sizes and breeds. Some are hardly big enough to hold up the end of a leash. The cost of maintaining a dog today is unreal. A routine vet bill here seems to be $400.00. My grandfather said there was no dog worth more than $1.25. We have no idea where he came up with that figure. One wonders what he would say to what people pay today. A damn fool is the first thing that comes to mind.

It is a week ago today that we received your letter Josie. My how the time flies.

We were over to Wal-Mart in Apache Junction and wandered around for awhile. We were out of fresh water was the excuse for going. Of course one can always pick up a few extras while there.

Today was another nice warm sunny day. We had a few wind gusts during the night but nothing serious. It did not move the lawn chairs sitting on the cement patio. We get the sun on the cement patio side of the trailer in the afternoon and either sit on the other side of the trailer or use the truck for shade. Bob and Karen were over and we killed a good bit of time in the shade of the truck.

There were some real old aircraft flying around today. They claim there is a bunch of them nearby and they will take people up in them for rides.

They had a patio sale here this morning from 8 AM to 1 PM. It is a fancy name for a yard sale. They had a car parked out by the front gate with a large sign on both sides advertising the sale. Karen had a table set up on her patio and did quite well with a form of jacket she made to put on after one gets out of the swimming pool. Joan walked around and visited all she could find. She bought a jar of pure honey and one of Karen's jackets only.

Joan and Karen were bike riding this afternoon after 3 PM. It is rather hot for that but they do not seem to mind it.

Bob, in the motorhome behind us from Montana, was telling me they caught quite a few rattle snakes in the park here last fall. They trapped them and took them out in the desert someplace and turned them loose. He claims they are holed up in their burrows in the ground now because the temperature has not come up above 50F at night. There was an interesting article in National Geographic on them in their November, 2010, magazine. Apparently there are quite a few around Medicine Hat, Alberta, with various other colonies of them around the west. The ranchers like them because they help weed out the groundhog population.

We made our regular dumpster run after supper and put a few pieces in the jig saw puzzle. It is coming along but rather slow.

That was our day and another good one.