Boondocking near Safford, AZ

We've been here on the desert on BLM ground near Safford for a week now. In a nutshell, it has been pretty quiet. We had some rain yesterday or last night and we had one day of blowing winds. But nothing that we couldn't live with.

Yesterday was a very interesting day in our motorhome. Three months ago, we bought some sunscreen material so that Sandy could sew a front window cover for the motorhome. We've been carrying it on the dash for 3 months and yesterday, I decided it was time that we get serious about sewing it together.

Little did I realize how interesting it would be working on it, I am a "close enough" person, while Sandy wants it letter perfect, down to the sixteenth of an inch or so. It reminded me of years ago when I listened to my dad and a neighbor discuss another neighbor's team of horses.(I think one of them had borrowed the team at one time.) Anyway, that team of horses just really didn't fit together. They started at different times, they had a different gait (step length), and a few other short comings. I didn't think much about it at the time and only later learned that a good team of horses just seemed to work well together in many ways.

Well, we were able to get one panel nearly done, which is progress. But there were some little things that drove this engineer nuts. To check that the panel was square, I wanted to measure the diagonal length each way. Nope, that was unacceptable. We had to use the old carpenter's square and extend it across the 5 foot length. It was "close enough", which surprised me.

To hold the screen on to the windshield, we had purchased some disk magnets. (One of the vendors at a recent rally was selling sunscreens made that way.) The biggest problem we had with the magnets was holding on to them. On the outside, it wasn't bad, as they were inside the screen material seam. The matching magnet on the inside sometimes had a mind of its own. We nearly lost one magnet when it to jumped off of the window when I was holding it and up about 2 inches to latch onto part of the steel framing. Eventually, we did recover it with the help of 10 other magnets, some copper wire and a kitchen knife to spring it loose.

We only did one panel and we didn't finish it either. The magnets held it on last night and even today in our light wind, it stayed put. Last night I ordered some more magnets, bigger around and twice as thick. One thing we know for certain is that we don't want any fingers or skin between two magnets when they get close enough to hook up.

There are about 20 rigs here in our little corner of the desert. While it is close to the highway, it is not well known. So no traffic from other users.

Tomorrow, it is back to civilization. We are going to spend a week in an RV park in Deming, NM., then the tentative plan is to head NE to the site of the first Atomic bomb testing. The army opens the area up twice a year. Tourist have 6 hours to drive in, view the area and get out. They assure us that we won't glow afterward.

Gene