Adventures Continue 4/13/22

My Granny wanted to send us some of her wind and cooler weather this week and it worked! This week has been drastically different than last – I’m typing this in sweatpants sipping tea! It’s been so cool that we haven’t turned on the AC in several days meaning we don’t have to spend as much in gas to power the generator. It’s a win all around! Thanks, Granny!

But before this cold front came through, we headed to the lake to cool off. We got some things to grill and a light-the-bag bag of charcoal, put on our swimsuits, packed up our empty water jugs (might as well fill up while we are there!), and headed to Lake Pleasant! The water was so cold, but it felt so good! We dove and splashed and simultaneously got clean and cool while we waited for the charcoal grill to be ready to cook our dinner. It was such a nice time we will have to do it again when it’s hotter next week. The only downside was that Jeff lost his glasses in the lake. Ugh!

One evening, while Braydon and I were walking around the back of the bus we heard an interesting sound. We walked quickly by it before fully realizing what it was – a rattlesnake! I called in through the window to Jeff asking if he wanted to come see it. What a sight it was!! Coiled up with its head raised just like in the books, his tail was rattling to let us know he was there. We couldn’t have a rattlesnake around with Braydon and the cats playing outside, so Jeff jumped into action with two long sticks and quickly cut off the snake’s head. After showing Braydon how dangerous they could be, we buried the head and skinned the snake. Here’s to hoping we don’t see any more near us for a while – it’s best to let them live in their own space away from us.

We were supposed to update about the compost today, but we haven’t emptied it yet. Next week…! It’s taking a while to get the compost to dry out and we’ve been working so much that we haven’t dumped it yet. We did get the hole for it dug, though, and while digging it, we found a scorpion! Dissappointingly, we still haven’t seen a scorpion at night with Braydon’s UV/Blacklight. Scorpions fluresce under UV light but the human eye can’t see UV, so they add a blacklight so that you can see where you are shining it. Maybe it’s best that we just don’t see one of those either!

Recently, we noticed that the front tires of the Jeep were bald on the inside. While we were aware we would need new tires on it soon, we didn’t expect it to be THIS soon and when we saw how bad they were, we started to search for a new set. Annoyingly, we could have probably gotten a few more months out of the old ones, but our alignment was out meaning they had worn very unevenly. After calling or stopping by every tire place in the area and even calling the manufacturer of the tires we had, we realized that we just weren’t going to be able to get the same ones we already had. C&R Tire in Anthem was super helpful and we had several associates working on different computers to find us tires that were in stock, with 10-ply sidewalls, that would fit our lifted Jeep with wheel spacers! Finally we chose some Cooper A/T tires with a good mileage rating. They fixed the alignment and got the tires mounted and out the door in just one day! What a difference new tires and an alignment can make! We are so thankful to C&R for their great work!