Mouse!

I did another two week camping trip in my Minnie, driving up to the Rim area on August 21st to spend time with Dale. He had been in a dispersed camp just off Houston Mesa road north of Payson for a couple of weeks, so I joined him there. We set up my solar to give it a whirl. It was putting in amps, but since it had been unplugged for several months, we had no idea how far below 100% it was, but it was well below 14.4 volts. So we just let it charge for as many hours of sunshine as we had.

The ranger came around on Monday to read us the rules (stressing the14 day limit mostly), and we told her we were leaving on Tuesday to move up onto the Rim into the Sitgreaves forest. She seemed satisfied we were not homesteading there and complained to us about "homeless" people who plant their RVs in the forest and spend all their time making a mess.

Our camp near Houston Mesa

We saw blue skies in the early mornings

True to our word, we did move up to the Mogollon Rim on Tuesday morning (the 23rd), after a stop at the Walmart in Payson. Dale had previously camped in FR171 Rim campground just below Willow Springs Lake, so we went back there. His favorite site was taken, so after driving past all 48 other sites, we settled into space 16. The driveway entrances on the majority of the sites were in horrible muddy condition, and ours was no exception. In addition, our site was filled with large (and small) rocks. But it had the most important features, and that was a southern exposure for solar and a northern exposure for Starlink. Plus it was plenty large enough for us both to tuck back in away from the road.

Our rocky, wet campsite

 

Mogollon Rim view

Little white bear in the woods

All that rain brought dozens of mushrooms

The only outings we took was to drive up to Willow Springs Lake and into Heber one day, and into Payson another day. We didn't really need anything, but just did it for a change of scenery. Otherwise, we mostly babysat my solar panel, trying to get my new Lithium Ion battery up to float. It seemed my one solar panel was not going to cut it due to the fact we had so much rain and clouds every day. So midway through the first week, Dale disconnected one set of his own panels and brought them over and hooked them up to my battery. After about five more days, we finally got the battery up to 14.4V, where it settled back down to 13.4, which is technically floating. After that, it floated each day before noon.

We had discussed on What's App ordering a battery charger on Amazon and Richard & Dianna offered to bring it up. I decided not to invest in that right now, but we did invite R&D to come up for a weenie roast picnic lunch with us. They thought a drive up to the pines sounded like a nice (and safe healthy) outing, so came up on Tuesday, the 30th.

Willow Springs Lake

 Daryl & Gisele were driving up to a church family camp in Pinetop for the Labor Day weekend, and since their route came right by our campground, they stopped and chatted for a couple of hours.

One morning I was sitting in my recliner drinking coffee and heard a rustling near my stove. I put my ear over there and traced it to the oven. I opened the door and saw the cutest little gray and white mouse looking out at me from among my frying pans (which I store in there). As cute as he was, I didn't want him in my rig, and commenced efforts to extricate him. I set up an electric rat zapper, first under my sink beside the stove, then after a couple of days of no success, I moved it to the floor of the cab, where I had heard him scuffling about one night. Still no luck. With Dale's help (and me standing by) we removed the frying pans from the oven, but my little house guest was no longer among them. I placed the zapper in the oven for one night anyway. 

This effort lasted until I drove home on Sunday before Labor Day. After getting my rig emptied and prepped for storage, I figured he must have abandoned ship in all that time and activity, but JUST IN CASE, I set the zapper trap on the kitchen floor, went out, and locked the door. Sure enough, three days later, I found him in the trap. 

He never felt a thing. R.I.P.

Poor little guy...