It’s So Hot…

It’s so hot right now…

… our tropical plants are begging to come back inside the house because they can’t take the heat.

… the weather forecasters underestimate the high temperatures for each day in the weekly forecast.  They never, ever, ever forecast 105 degrees or higher, and that’s probably  a blessing in disguise for us, even if it is living in denial.

… I feel like breaking out in song when a random cloud actually blocks the sun for a few seconds.

… the dogs think they’re being punished when it’s time to go to the backyard to do “business” in the afternoon.

The dogs were not happy as I made them sit outside in the heat to take their picture after their recent grooming.  Girly Girl’s expression (on the left) pretty much says it all.  But that’s $178 worth of grooming sitting right there and definitely warrants at least a photo. 😀

… we can’t even escape to the mountains a few hours away because it’s as hot there as it is here.

… running errands anytime after 10 a.m. is not a pleasant experience, and getting out between 3-6 p.m. is… well… just a little crazy.  I never said we weren’t a little crazy, though.

I don’t function well when it’s 113 degrees outside, and getting in a car that’s been sitting in the sun outside a store in this kind of heat is a near-death experience.

… unshaded playground equipment can reach temps up to 188 degrees.  Truth!  There was a report on the morning news today that proved this fact.

… firing up the oven, or any other heat producing appliance, just does not happen.  At. All.  This is officially “dining out” season.  After all, we need to help support all those businesses that are missing the college kids this summer, right???

… clothes dry in half the time by simply hanging them outside vs. using a regular clothes dryer.  This a really good thing, since using the dryer inside the house is really not an option anyway.  Dryers produce heat, and we also need every penny we can save to put toward our electric bill to run the life-sustaining A/C.

… RV travel is not even a fleeting thought in our minds right now.  We are not gluttons for unnecessary punishment.  One time, we actually RV camped down in the canyon at Palo Duro Canyon State Park in July, which is quite possibly the hottest place in the universe in July.  This was in our young and foolish days about four years ago, and we quickly learned that we’d made one of the worst decisions of our married life.  Thankfully, we survived.

… living in a grotto is pretty much a requirement.  Curtains closed, lights off, doors opened as little as humanly possible equals a winning plan.  If I didn’t know otherwise, I would swear everyone in town is away on vacation.

… the birds fight for drinks from the hose dripping water under our big tree.  I’m really not sure how much water is actually making to the tree roots for that reason.  I would run their birdbath, but the water actually gets too hot for them to drink!

… I’m not sure how we actually survived in our house before we had our solar attic fan installed a few years ago.  That thing is a blessing straight from Heaven.

… Facebook friends regularly post about how miserable our state is this time of the year.  They are absolutely correct.  In fact, some of the funniest weather memes ever show up this time of year for that reason.

… the grocery stores put Gatorade front and center for customers to find easily.

… the patches of milkweed in our backyard are finally dying a slow death.  Bye, bye.

… spending time reading a good book in the afternoons provides a nice break from the heat.  I can even pretend I’m back in elementary school earning more sticky stars for my summer reading chart.  (FYI, I’m reading The Lunar Chronicles books, thanks to the recommendation of my sweet librarian friend and an unexpected $30 settlement credit from Barnes and Noble that paid for the first four ebooks.  Nothing like free summer entertainment!)

I’m halfway through reading these four books, and what a creative and delightful read they’ve been so far, a perfect summer book series.

 

… mowing the yard, even early in the morning, is a real sweat-producing workout.  I willingly took this chore on myself a few years ago and…

What. Was. I. Thinking!!!

Still, I haven’t missed a week of mowing yet this season with my brand spankin’ new lawn mower, and I’m now thinking that I’m pretty much Wonder Woman for doing that.  We’ll see how the rest of the summer goes.  If nothing else, it’s a great excuse to head over to Chick-Fil-A for a large diet lemonade when I’m done.

… I’m remembering fondly the crippling foot of snow we received back in early January… yes, the same one I fussed and fussed about for more than two weeks afterward.  Oh yes, yes, yes… please bring it back already!  I’m pretty sure the dogs would agree, too.

… we were inspired to finally make plans for our fall RV travels while also hoping that the usual break from the stifling heat actually shows up in September.  Sometimes the heatwave surprises and lasts well into October, though, so we are hedging our bets and headed north once again on our next long trip after Labor Day.  The mere thought of temps in the 70s during the day and in the 30s overnight in just a few weeks makes me feel all giddy inside.  We will even need to take coats!

We are so ready to get this RV show on the road again!

 

There is actually a tiny glimmer of hope for a bit of a break from this weather madness this week.  Supposedly, we actually have a little chance of rain, and the high temps will only be in the low 90s???  If so, it will feel like winter has returned because that is over 20 degrees cooler than some days we’ve had lately!  Hope is always a good thing, and we’ll gladly take whatever relief we can get at this point.

Sometimes we just need to laugh a little and just get through the day as best we can.

Stay cool, friends.  This heat wave, too, shall pass.

I hope.

Celebrating “Moon Day”

Today is the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.  Since the headlines don’t even mention this monumental occasion today, I wanted to share it here.

If you would like to relive the first moon landing in a virtual way, why not open the “Relive Apollo 11” Twitter page from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and follow along as you can throughout the day?

While I’m not a fan of Twitter in general anymore, feeds like this one are actually a lot of fun and share this history in such a creative way.  Every year now, the “Relive Apollo 11” Twitter feed shares this memorable event in a “real time” way, taking us back to events as they happened over those historic days.  Today would be a great day to follow along, since the moon landing actually occurred on this day.

I’m following along and hope you can, too!  Here’s the website! 😀

Tweets by ReliveApollo11

 

Lights in the 4th of July Night

I mentioned in my previous post that I finally had a great opportunity to capture the Milky Way and a few other fun nighttime photos on our recent trip to northern New Mexico, and I wanted to share a few of them today.  I took these photos after we watched the awesome fireworks show in Raton earlier that evening on the 4th of July.

I hope you will view this post on my actual site and not in the WordPress reader today, as these photos will show up much better there.

While Hubby and I have witnessed the amazing dark sky stars many times on our RV camping excursions over the past five years, I’ve really never had a good opportunity to photograph them for various reasons.  On this trip, however, I finally had that opportunity, even though I didn’t have my tripod.  I simply improvised by setting my camera on picnic table at a nearby campsite that was not being used, and I propped the end of my lens on a little box, using my cable release to hold the shutter open for about 30 seconds on most of the photos.

Beautiful Milky Way

Milky Way and a great shooting star

Milky Way with a little ground perspective and a small shooting star at bottom left

Big Dipper above our friends’ RV (He was walking around the RV with his flashlight.)

Big Dipper in the west (outlined in Photoshop) and a little shooting star at upper right

Three of the young adults with us were outside with me as I was taking the photos, so we decided to have a little fun doing some light painting.  It was the first time that any of us had attempted this, and we had a lot of fun.

Here is one of the better light paintings of the night, just as it came out of my camera.  So fun!

Finally, I ended my photography exercise that evening by capturing a nice photo of our RV under the beautiful starry sky.  It is a photo that I will treasure always, and I hope it helps to visibly show just one reason why we dearly love RV camping in the remote areas that we tend to frequent.

 

This brief exposure to night photography only makes me want to go out and try it even more.  The young adults with me had a great time, and I wish more young people would take up photography as a hobby.  It seems like such a great fit for many that I know personally, and I know that those three will always remember our fun time together, just as I will.

Fun and Frustration – Our 4th of July Trip

We enjoyed a fun holiday trip over the 4th of July long weekend, meeting our son and some friends to go RV camping in northern New Mexico.  The weather was cool and beautiful and was such a welcome relief from our July heat at home.

We had a total of four RVs in our group, and this was our first trip to camp with that many couples and a few grown kids in the mix.  We shared lots of good food and laughs over the course of three days, and I think a good time was had by all.  Of course, we always miss our “Lil’ Firecracker” daughter on this holiday, since it is also her birthday.

Driving on Highway 64 between Clayton and Raton, the scenery is vast and beautiful, a truly great drive in the RV!

 

Driving past Capulin Volcano National Monument on Highway 64

 

One of the couples in our group is still pretty new to camping in their trailer, and they quickly discovered that their sewer hose wasn’t long enough.  Fortunately, we were carrying a new hose extension, so we just gave it to them.  I was happy that we were able to help them out because there wasn’t a store anywhere nearby where they could buy one.

Northern New Mexico provided us with cool nights, warm days and a daily afternoon shower or two.  On one day, though, the afternoon showers actually became afternoon storms with some pea-sized hail in the mix.  Fortunately, everyone managed to get their awnings put away before it hit, and no damage was done to any cars or RVs.

The view from the front window of our RV at our pretty campsite during one of the afternoon rain storms.  When it wasn’t raining, this view stretched for a very long distance to the south.

 

View of the mountains just to the west of us at our campsite.

 

Our nice campsite on a typical late afternoon with rains moving in from the mountains to the west.

An afternoon rain wasn’t quite making it all the way to the ground at camp.

We certainly enjoyed this trip in our new-to-us RV, as it is much roomier than our previous RV inside.  It was especially nice to have the extra room while our son stayed with us, as well as more privacy between the living room area and our bedroom.

Girly Girl enjoyed jumping on our bed in the mornings to wake us up and look out our window, the one we left open overnight.  It wasn’t unusual for her to spot a rabbit or a deer walking by in the mornings, too.

 

For the second time, we attended the amazing fireworks show in Raton, having attended it for the first time in 2014.  We were happy to return and take more friends with us this time, but, unfortunately, our son had to drive home on the afternoon of the 4th and had to miss it.  We secured a fabulous spot early to watch the show, right in front of the historic train station where Amtrak stops in town.  This is such a neat area of this town, too.

Our spot where we watched the great fireworks show near the train station at right.  This is such a neat part of town, too.

 

Read the signs on the front of this store! 🙂

Just before the fireworks show.

I opted to leave my good camera behind at the RV, and I’m kicking myself now that I chose to do that.  We were so close to the action, and at it seemed that the fireworks might literally land in our lap at times.  Next time, I will not make that mistake, if we are fortunate enough to attend the show again in the future.  I challenged myself to do the best job I could do with my phone camera, and I managed to get a few decent shots, even though they hardly compare with what I could have captured with my good camera, tripod and cable release.  Still… I’m fairly impressed with what my little phone camera was able to do, too.

 

 

After we returned to camp for the night, the stars were out so nicely on a dark sky night, and I captured some neat long exposure photos that I will share in my next post.  This was the first time that I photographed the Milky Way, so it turned out to be a “bucket list” photography experience for me.  I posted one of these photos in my previous Wordless Wednesday post, too.

The most interesting part of our trip was definitely our drive home.

Traveling by RV is just not the same as traveling by car, and the longer we travel in our RV, the more we realize just how different it can be and how we must be willing to adapt, when necessary.

Once again, Mother Nature stepped in to play havoc with our drive home on Tuesday, the 5th.  While the weather was pretty great over the holiday weekend in New Mexico, the very next day, a terrible heat wave quickly hit along our drive home and caught us a bit unprepared, along with other travelers.  As we approached Amarillo shortly after lunch, the temperature was already over 100 degrees and only looked to get hotter, possibly much hotter.  The RV air conditioners did their best to keep up, but when the outside temp on our RV house thermometer showed 107, we threw in the towel and decided to pull off at an RV park where we had previously stayed.  (It’s a great park with top notch facilities.)  We could also see storms building quickly closer to home.

The weather only got worse as the day progressed, and we are so glad that we opted to pull off for the rest of the day and just wait it all out.  Storms closer to home became quite intense with rain, hail and very high winds.  By dinner time where we were stopped, the winds from the back of those storms gusted up to 60 mph at times.  It was also the first time that Hubby actually had to help me shut the door to the RV, as the wind from the south was catching it just right and made it very hard to close.  Closer to home, two trucks were actually blown over by those high winds, too.

It was definitely not a day to be driving a high profile vehicle, and when the winds became so rough, we finally decided to just keep our great site for the night, get a good night’s sleep and head home early the next morning in time for Hubby to go on in to work.  It was a pleasant drive the next morning, and Hubby was at work shortly before 9 am.  I was done with laundry by noon, so it worked out just fine, was definitely less stressful and was much easier on our rig, for sure.

When traveling by RV, sometimes you just do what you have to do, and this was surely one of those times.  While we have pulled off on a few other trips for a few hours, this was the first time that we were actually delayed overnight.  Fortunately, we had a good option to take, and we took it.  We were definitely not the only RV travelers that took that option to pull off, judging by how many others were pulling in right behind us.

We’ve pretty much decided now that if we are going to travel in our RV in the hot summer months, we need to only drive before noon… or even earlier depending on where we are driving.  The weather was not forecasted to be *this* hot, so we cannot depend on the forecasts.

More and more, I just don’t see us ever taking to the road as full-time RVers.  While we could likely be quite content to go on some extended road trips or possibly full season trips, I think we are both discovering that we are “fair weather” campers, especially where heat is concerned.  I just want no part of it, to be honest.

Of course, I’m writing this on the heels of this one driving day, which turned out to be the hottest day in two years in the Amarillo area.  Give me a few days/weeks, and I will probably just laugh about it.  I’m not there yet, though, because as I’m writing this, it is still 113 degrees outside at our house.

Ugh.

 

 

Wordless Wednesday – Starry, Starry 4th of July Night