On last Sunday morning, the first of December, I hauled my rig from Willcox back to Cave Creek Canyon. I had arrived back at Tucson airport Saturday night at about 8:30 after my Thanksgiving week Chicago visit, and on coming back to Lifestyle RV Resort in Willcox discovered a very cold Wheelhouse and a very defrosted freezer and refrigerator. My battery-powered 12V system didn’t last long while running the furnace even at a low thermostat setting, and, with no power to control things, I had to re-hook my home-on-wheels up to 120V to get the heat going and then switch fridge back to electric and toss a bunch of food in the trash.
My Thanksgiving journey to Chicagoland was great. I enjoyed hanging with Joel and his Golden Prince, Buddy, and spent an afternoon lunching and bowling with my sister Lisa. On Thanksgiving, Joel, Lisa, and her husband Randy and I went and saw Knives Out in the afternoon (highly recommend!) before going to Wildfire Restaurant for a wonderful turkey day meal for four with delicious all-you-can-eat food.
It was also good to get back to my hometown for a holiday to get away from the RV Park in Willcox. Staying there wasn’t as pleasant as I had hoped it would be. It’s a lovely park with a great staff and a fantastic pool/spa/gym area and other amenities, but the spa was out of service for most of my visit, and the negatives outweighed the positives for me. For example, it is situated near train tracks, and the trains would run all night, every night. I’m both a poor and light sleeper, and I heard every single one. Additionally, it is nearby a stockyard and cattle mooed throughout the night, which I found very disturbing. Add all sorts of dogs barking incessantly in surrounding neighborhoods even in the wee hours of the morning, and feral cats on the grounds that had the place reeking of cat piss, and I certainly wouldn’t return. The one welcome sound was the flocks of thousands of Sandhill Cranes that would pass overhead at dusk as they traveled from their feeding grounds back to roost. The Willcox Playa and nearby Whitewater Draw are famous for congregations of migrating cranes. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and get to Chicago. I needed a break from my routine here and didn’t regret leaving for a month, but I am thrilled to be back at my corral homestead.
I woke up very early that Sunday morning, long before the sun, and hitched up to head back to the mountains. The Portal area had had five days of rain, and I was worried that the corral would be a mud pit like it was when I first arrived this year back on February 23. So, I planned to get to camp as early as possible while the ground was still frozen. It was a race against the sun’s warming rays, and I had my eyes glued to the thermometer in my truck, which of course, changed continuously as I went through elevation changes and warmer areas. Thankfully, the corral wasn’t wet when I finally got back to Cave Creek Canyon at around 8, and I spent the next couple of hours setting everything back up the way it was a month previous.
Although much of my time in Willcox was spent relaxing, and I didn’t end up making some day trips I had hoped to during my stay away from Cave Creek Canyon, I was only one hour away from Ash Creek Canyon in the Galiuro Mountains. That was a range that I needed to search for tarantulas in, and I detailed my success on my second visit there in the previous blog entry. My first attempt to find the area didn’t go well, but on my second visit, I collected one tarantula (see #124), and on my third and final search of the area, I brought back two tarantulas. These specimens were shipped to Brent Hendrixson for analysis and deposition in a scientific collection.
Aphonopelma sp., female, Galiuro Mountains, Graham County, AZ, November 15, 2019
On one of my last evenings at Lifestyle RV Resort, I was sitting on nice canopy-covered patio furniture near the clubhouse working on my laptop and drinking a beer. I saw a large bird fly in my peripheral vision and realized it was an owl. It landed and perched in a tree just at the fenced edge of the property. I rushed back to my camp to get my camera and hurriedly changed to my long lens (150-600mm). The Great Horned Owl was cooperative and watched me as I took a quick hundred images, one of which is shared below.
Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), Willcox, Cochise County, Arizona
My first week back in Cave Creek Canyon, I had a couple of days to myself and then hosted at the VIC (Visitor Information Center) on Wednesday and Thursday. On Saturday evening, I operated the merchandise table at the 8th Annual Friends of Cave Creek Canyon meeting/party. It was a chili dinner and fundraiser with live and silent auctions and a few presentations on our organization’s efforts in the area.
Earlier that day, I had a wonderful experience at my homestead. Again, I had an amazing wildlife observation while working on my computer. I was working on the 2020 catalog for Northwest Zoological Supply, the company outside of Seattle, where I used to be General Manager. I saw a Rock Squirrel outside my window and watched it occasionally as it moved about my “yard” and the corral. I also would glance outside as Coues Deer would pass through my homestead. The Rock Squirrel would perch on the corral’s fence posts, and I continued to spend a few moments here and there watching it as I thought about the project. Suddenly I saw a Bobcat just outside my window. As it moved closer to the corral, I noticed a second Bobcat following ten feet or so behind it. The first cat went into the corral as I rushed to grab my iPhone and start videoing them through the window. The second paused just outside my steps near my picnic table, and then I saw the first Bobcat attack the Rock Squirrel that I had forgotten about during the excitement. The video below shows the first cat walking back towards my Wheelhouse with the squirrel wriggling in its jaws, and then its partner following behind it as they casually walked just outside my window and past my truck to devour their lunch. [Apologies for the terrible quality. Hurriedly using a phone, pointed out a window, very excited and forgetting to try to tap screen for focus, does not yield good results].
I don’t celebrate Christmas and haven’t for years. However, this year I decided it would be fun to decorate my Wheelhouse. Part of the enjoyment will be surprising visitors to the canyon who pass after dark and notice the RV with icicle lights, which look nice with the rope lights I always have beneath my rig and the patio lights that surround its perimeter. I even bought a little live island pine as a Christmas tree. It is decorated and sitting outside on my picnic table. A friend gifted me with a little artificial tree that I’ve ordered little lights for and it sits on my dinette table inside. I’ll conclude this entry with a few photos taken yesterday at my homestead.
