Gardening in 112 degree weather

It's easy!

Don't do it!

But what if you have to plant, dig, move bags of potting soil, carry heavy plants, etc?

Easy.

You get up in the middle of the night to do it.

Living in the desert in the summer requires adaptations.  Ours is that we start our day at 3:00 a.m.  But because we had planting to do, we got up even earlier today.

And worked in the dark.  Quietly.  (although none of our neighbors are around this time of year and, uh, even if they were around their hearing often isn't that great.....at least if it's like ours).

Then we took an hour bike ride.....in the dark:

Then we walked to the pool and went swimming for an hour. 

By 7:00 a.m. had walked 1/2 mile, swam for an hour, cycled for an hour (13 miles), planted half a dozen plants, showered, and had breakfast.

How to live in the desert.

To boldly go where no Prius has gone before

We have decided to go all in on our new way of exploring public lands.

Six months ago we bought a Toyota 4Runner TRD Off Road.  It has everything one needs for getting anywhere a Jeep Rubicon could go, except a Rubicon looks ridiculous going to the grocery store.........and it's a Jeep.

We decided on the Toyota because of the obvious--Toyota quality.

We have taken two camping trips in it, both times getting to places where our Desert Turtle (i.e., our Ford 350 Dually 4WD) couldn't get to.  One was the back roads of Death Valley.

The two trips we took last spring really whetted our appetites for more, and for more rugged places to go to camp and hike.

So, we beefed up the 4Runner by having a winch installed.  Now it will be near impossible to get stuck.  The winch can haul us out of anywhere.

And to get it we had to get a special front bumper installed that looks just plain aggressive.

The guys at the shop loved it.  They also liked the fact that although we don't seem like the type (we are, ahem, old and need I say that one of us looks like a very girly woman?), already our 4Runner has scratches (the term is "desert pinstripes:) and dents on the skid plates....from running over rocks.  As the guy said, most people get these high-end off-road vehicles and then just take the kids to soccer practice in them.

When we had our oil change last week the mechanic said that it looked like we had been out in the sand because one of the filters was getting clogged with it (as designed).  We said "more than once."

Doesn't our new winch look awesome?  We can't wait to get stuck!

So, we sold our Prius.  It got great gas mileage.  In addition, it got great gas mileage.  And when you drove it to the grocery store, it got great gas mileage.

After all, great gas mileage is a ton of fun!  Not like a Desert Rat with a winch that will take you to impossible-to-reach places in the desert where you can have adventure after adventure. 

Boy, do we ever miss "great gas mileage."

We're here: 1470 miles later

Boy have we ever driven a lot together.    We are at close to 60,000 miles in 8 years on America's highways and roads.  (this doesn't include around town driving).

We got up early, 3:00 a.m., so we could do the final close-up of the house and be on the first ferry off of the island (4:40 a.m.).  We had to pack the bed, for example.  And even though we did our best to not accumulate more food, Vicky packed two coolers so we didn't waste what we had left. 

We thought it might be more difficult leaving our home for the last time than it turned out to be.  This is probably because we have had time to adjust to the loss.  And because we knew we had a destination that held promise for the kind of life we now need at our age.

Our final ferry ride:

Just before the Oregon border we went through Horse Heaven Hills.  A lot of wineries in this area.  We have been through there many times on the Inland Empire bike ride with Jules.




We have learned that long drives are better if we stop periodically and walk for 10-15 minutes:

First night's motel:

The drive through Nevada on US 93 is an interesting one.  It is long, straight, boring in spots:

and beautiful in spots:

Road construction always meant a delay, because US 93 is a 2-lane highway.  Instead of sitting in the car, we used these opportunities to do some walking. 

Our second night was at a casino.  We had stayed there before, twice with Ian in fact, but always at the RV park.  It was more fun with Ian.

 Arriving at Leisure World:

Celebrating at Serrano's.