I’ve put this off long enough!
This isn’t the half of it!
I’m tired of stepping through the portal to hell whenever I want to retrieve something from the back of the PTV. It’s a tangled mess back there. Sand and dust all over everything, all signs of organization gone.
Once we come down off this bluff near Flagstaff, the crew and I are driving into summer.
If the wind isn’t too bad, we leave in the morning for Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado River. Just like in a regular house, the winter clothes need to be put away and the summer clothes brought out. I choose what clothes and shoes I want inside the BLT and the rest go into a box in the PTV where I can access them, like a closet. The winter stuff is positioned in the deep recesses of the PTV’s cargo area.
I need to dig out the inflatable canoe.
It’s a two-seat canoe and weighs about fifty pounds. It’s been buried under storage boxes directly behind the bench seat. I pull the canoe up over the seat and find it fits nicely between the bench seat and the iron grate behind the driver’s seat. This is great! It will be easy to get the canoe whenever the crew and I come upon an opportunity to go out on some water. I also bungee the canoe seats and life jackets to the grate and hang a tote bag there. It holds various things for boating, like water shoes, rope, etc. Life is easier if things are packed according to category. All the canoe stuff is behind the driver’s seat, even the Coleman air pump that inflates the canoe.
As time goes by, I find better ways to pack my gear.
Now I have plenty of room right inside the back doors for one large, plastic storage box devoted to garbage and trash. I can seal up the stink and not have to smell it for weeks at a time like I did recently!
Somehow in the middle of cleaning out and repacking the PTV, I decide to clean the bathroom! I wonder if all this energy is coming from the diet. It’s Day Four and energy is supposed to rise. Tomorrow will be the last day of the first phase (eating high protein, low fat, exclusively).
The crew and I go into Flagstaff to prepare for our drive up to Lee’s Ferry.
First I stop at Petco to get Bridget a personal flotation device. They don’t have any. In the same shopping area is a Home Depot. I run in and ask where the leftover lumber is. I find a nice piece of 2×10. I ask the Home Depot guy to cut off the split part which leaves me a four foot board. Unfortunately the only other decent pieces are not as wide, but they’ll do. I pick up three of those, each slightly shorter than the 2×10 piece.
Why the rush to buy lumber?
Camper reviews of the Lee’s Ferry campground mention the sites are not very level. All I have are some little, plastic, pretend, leveling blocks. They don’t help much. These planks should do the trick.
After topping off the gas tank, we stop at Safeway.
Since I’ll be going into the second stage of my diet this weekend, I stock up on frozen veggies, plus a few fresh items. I have a good supply of no-salt canned vegetables back at the BLT. The second phase is alternating lean protein days with vegetables and lean protein days. I’ve learned to enjoy a breakfast every morning of fat-free milk with oat bran stirred in. I switched from Chobani Greek yogurt to Fage (pronounced Fah- yeh) Greek yogurt. It still has 23 grams of protein per cup but a lot less sodium (85 grams) than Chobani. I like the taste better, too.
Okay, enough diet talk!
Bridget, Spike and I enjoyed this camp high up in the Coconino National Forest northeast of Flagstaff. In the short time we’ve been here, everything has become drier and dustier. Forest fires are breaking out in Arizona. I’m looking forward to a camp near water. I know Spike will like that, too. And Bridget, well, she’s happy when we’re happy, bless her heart.
Wow! If all goes according to plan . . . tomorrow I’ll see the Colorado River for the first time!
rvsue
rvsue and her canine crew 