Back to Usery Mountain

Can you believe it is the first day of another month? It's February already!

It was a day for catching up. We got a packed box of mail from Daughter Mary Mae that needed to be sorted through; part of it tossed; part of it read; part of it saved for another day.

It was the day to pay for electricity, sewer and garbage charges here at Valle del Oro. With all of the cold nasty days we had last month, I was very glad to see that the electric bill was actually less than two hundred dollars!

It was a day to restock the larder. We made a trip to Costco and then over to Safeway. That bad part of all of that is having to put groceries away when we got back home. It meant breaking up packages of hamburger and steaks and re-packaging them for the freezer. I also broke down and bought a new toaster -- one that I can actually toast bagels in. (I'd say it's not too bad to say it's only the third toaster we've had in over fifty-three years of marriage! Even though Forry doesn't understand why I wanted a new one...)

It was also a day to go learn something and have some fun. We met our friends Vic and Bill out at Usery Mountain Regional Park about five PM. Bill needed a drill to make some small repairs to his RV. Forry got his out for him when they were at our house last night, but it needed charging. So he charged it and brought it along tonight.

We were at the park in time to go to one of the Ranger's talk entitled "All About Gila Monsters." One of the things about being retired is my disregard of what day of the week it is. When we made our plans to go out to the park for the evening, we didn't think about it being a Friday and NOT a school night. The room was full of kids.

Then we went on a Ranger-led Animal Flashlight Walk. It was billed as a night hike to see nocturnal animals. But if you can imagine 70+ people, half of them children, all of them with flashlights, you know that we didn't see any animals. We did see a scorpion, which glowed under the flashlights as if they were black lights. It was sort of fun to take the mile-long walk in the dark with Victoria. I think Forry and Bill were the "tail end Charlies," but it sounded like they had a good visit as well.