SOME THOUGHTS ON 'LOOKING BACK' & A FEW PHOTOS OF LONE PINE, CALIFORNIA:))

ALL OF TONIGHT'S PHOTOS WERE TAKEN AROUND LONE PINE CALIFORNIA IN MARCH 2011
I would have to apply that ‘second verse, same as the first’ phrase once again today, only this is the third day of shed clean-up & reorganization. My efforts have now moved me into the carport storage area & I will continue my efforts there. A few years ago I would have had this clean-up project finished up in about half the time but the energy levels just are not quite where they used to be, plus it was another hot & humid energy draining day. 
 
THERE ARE ENDLESS MILES OF GREAT JEEPING ROADS AROUND LONE PINE
Forgot to mention something in Thursday night’s post about RV folks & it is this….I would say 98% of all RV people we have met first hand or on the internet are animal lovers. And, in my books that is an important judge of character. RV folks love their pets & there are very few people traveling out there without their best Pals. And many travelers do not just have one best Pal with them, they have several. We here at the Bayfield Bunch can sure identify with that:))
  
Below is a series of photos I took this past March along Movie Road in Lone Pine, California.  Even with the aid of a movie map it took me a fair bit of time to track down these exact movie set locations where some old dusty westerns were filmed years ago.  The captions describing the movies are first with the side by side photos of the movie sets below.  I tried to take the photos from the same original camera angles.  Randolph Scott was one of my all time favorite western cowboy stars so it was extra special for find the exact spot where he had once been.  Added bonus here was Richard Boone in that photo because he later became well known for his Paladin character in 'Have Gun Will Travel.'
      
IN THIS PHOTO MY WHITE COWBOY HAT IS SITTING ATOP THAT ROUND ROCK YOU SEE IN THE MOVIE SET AT LEFT WHERE A COWBOY DIGS A GRAVE (click photos to enlarge)
  
MY HAT IS IN THE EXACT SPOT CESAR ROMERO WAS STANDING IN THIS SCENE
   
HERE ,MY HAT SITS ON THE THE EXACT SPOT RANDOLPH SCOTT IS HAVING IS CUP OF COFFEE
 
THIS BRIDGE WAS USED IN THE MOVIE  'GUNGA DIN....BOTTOM PHOTO LEFT SHOWS WHERE THE MOVIE SET BRIDGE WAS ANCHORED TO THE ROCK & TOP RIGHT THE JEEP  IS SITTING WHERE THE BRIDGE CROSSED BETWEEN THE TWO ROCK FORMATION...I DIDN'T GET THE ORIGINAL CAMERA LOCATION QUITE RIGHT ON THIS ONE OR THE ONE BELOW.  i'LL GET EM RIGHT NEXT TIME I'M THERE:))

Tonight we welcome 1001 T.R.I.P. BRAZIL as our 296th blog Follower.  Welcome aboard fella & I hope you are able to find something of interest here:))

I came across a blog recently of a transplanted Canadian fellow living in the far off European country of Austria.  He is a good writer with a flair for humor as he chronicles the daily challenges of living in a non speaking English country complete with a non North American lifestyle.  You may find Bob's take on his challenging surroundings an interestingly funny read.  Check out, THE CARETAKER CHRONICLES:))
 
Received the following email this morning from Nan.  "Some time ago, did you write about a couple from Michigan.  The man had either a heart attack or a stroke and shortly after his release from the hospital, he fell in his Motorhome and later died?  I followed that blog for a while and am interested in how the woman is doing.  If you can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it."  No, that wasn't me who wrote about that but if anyone has any info on the Michigan lady maybe you could send it to me & I can either publish the story in the blog or email Nan back.
 
It seems the longer the time lapse the greater the change.  This is especially noticeable when we haven't seen someone for many years.  It also happens to areas, cities, towns & villages we may remember from an earlier era.  There is often a large difference between memory & reality.  Our mind remembers how things were such as a building, a street, a neighborhood or an entire town.  Upon visiting there many years later we find out a particular house is actually much smaller than we remember it.  What seemed like a long street years ago in fact isn't really long at all.  Has the street changed?  Has the house changed somehow!!  No, but our memory of what was has sure changed.
   
About once every year or so I like to take a casual drive through my old home town of Tavistock.  Most everything is still recognizable to me & yet much of it is not how I exactly remember it.  It has changed, right?  Well, yes in fact some of it has physically changed alright & the rest of it has undergone a mental change in my mind & both those things can be disappointing.  A Tim Hortons now stands in the spot where our little towns train station once stood.  People sip coffee now where I remember big puffing steam engines chugging into the station.  I grew up just a few hundred yards from the railroad tracks & train depot.  Just doesn't seem right a coffee shop should take the place of a small town's train station!!  We like things to be as we remember them & with every little thing that isn't there it seems to be a sad disappointment & disconnect.  It's all part of our early grounding I guess.  Kind of that secure 'touching base' kind of feeling.  If everything is exactly as we remember it I find there is feeling of security & a sigh of relief that the old home town hasn't changed.  One's childhood memories are still there & still safely intact.  I kind of like that old feeling.
   
Years ago, one of my jobs entailed driving people to & from the Toronto Airport.  Many of those folks were elderly Dutch folks who had come to Canada after the war & many of them were returning to Holland for a first time visit since leaving the country so many years before.  Often times I would be at the Airport to pick them up again after their trip & return them home.  Many of those people were so disappointed & heart broken at what they saw, or should I say, didn't see on their return to their Homeland.  Holland underwent a massive rebuilding after the war with many areas, towns & villages being totally rebuilt.  The people returning home hoping to see their old house, school or village found everything had changed & in many cases whole neighborhoods & villages had vanished only to be replaced by all new suburbs, roads, industrial & commercial buildings, etc.  The people would tell me how sad it was not finding their old familiar & comfortable surroundings of so long ago.  Only thing left now are their memories. And, you know, maybe that really isn't so bad after all.
   
GROANER'S CORNER:((  At income tax time, did you ever notice that when you put the two words 'The ' and 'IRS' together, it spells.........'THEIRS'!!
Is it true that you never really learn to swear until you learn to drive?
What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?
Do Lipton Tea employees take 'coffee breaks?'
If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would they call it Fed UP?
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EMAIL THE BAYFIELD BUNCH:))
stargeezerguy@gmail.com
OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/
The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right
now...... AL.

RV FOLKS....JUST WHO ARE THEY ANYWAY

ALL OF TONIGHT'S PHOTOS WERE TAKEN AT NEVADA'S VALLEY OF FIRE STATE PARK IN MARCH OF 2011

Herman’s Hermits had a song in the mid 60’s called ‘Mrs Brown You Have A Lovely Daughter'.’ There is a line in that song that goes, ‘second verse, same as the first’ & that pretty well sums up my day. Today was basically a repeat performance of yesterday as I spent the entire day working away at our shed clean up. Judy wondered what we were doing with all our stuff & I can say that our burning barrel has been working overtime. The Jeep is loaded to the rafters with stuff destined for the Goodwill & Kelly has made a couple dumpster runs.

   

Ruth & Ken at FIVE-JUST ROLLING DOWN THE ROAD have just lost their beloved dog Maggie. Having recently lost our Max & Checkers a few months ago our feelings & thoughts are with them & their remaining dog Jackson & rescue cat, Arthur. We understand oh to well how you are feeling right now. I hope Maggie gets to meet Max & Checkers.

   

While working away at the shed clean-up today I got to thinking about RV people.  Who are they, where do they come from & why do they live the way they do in the types of rolling homes they do.  It is my opinion that RV people, whether Full Timers, Snow Birders or Week-end Campers are a very special breed of people.  We have met fellow RV'ers in our travels both on the road & on the internet & they all share a common bond.  They are all very fine caring folks sharing the love of travel & the outdoors.  All of the Full Timer's have had to make some very big life changing decisions at some point in their lives to transition from a stationary lifestyle to a fully mobile lifestyle.  I admire the courage, conviction & dedication that takes.  I admire the Snow Birds for having the same frame of mind & making their dreams happen whenever they can.  Same for the week-enders as they show a love for getting out & into nature even if it's only a few weekends here & there.

   

It is the overall willingness & challenge of change that sets RV'ers apart from many other types of people.  Not afraid to try something different, not afraid to be somebody different.  As soon as many RV Folks announce to friends & family they are planning on a Gypsy lifestyle, friends & family are often dismayed & view them as 'different.'  A typical reaction might be..."What, are ya nuts!!!!  Personally, I love & welcome that 'different' label:))  For all of us it is just the way we happily are.  And for some of us, the term 'different' takes us out even a little farther.

 

     

Within the RV community, Kelly & I are not quite your normal RV folks.  It has been my experience that your typical RV'er is very outgoing, friendly, extremely sociable, loves food & loves talking about food.  Happy hours are big as are RV rallies.  In general, RV people just love to get together & hang out with fellow RV folks.  Always there to lend a hand with a recipe, a BBQ tong & a word of advice.  Always helpful.  Of course there are many variations in all this but I think you understand what I mean when I say it is a great community of people all around. 

  

Within the community we all have our likes, dislikes, preferences & ways of doing things.  As readers know, Kelly & I are not RV Park people, we're not big on museum type stuff or touristy spots & we generally keep ourselves away from cities of any kind.  We prefer staying off the Interstates & enjoy the peace & excitement of traveling secondary roads wherever possible.  I think the majority of RV folks love the big RV rallies but we avoid them.  But, I must confess that up until last winter we had been to Quartzsite 4 years in a row.  Yikes!!  But, I must  also add, we boondocked far away from the maddening crowds. 

   

The vast majority of RV'ers we know do not mind being camped close to or around other people but that's not for us & we go way out of our way to find quiet spots where our nearest neighbor is Mother Nature herself.  Again, while most of the people we know are content to stay in one spot for months at a time or even the whole winter, Kelly & I are again different, especially me.  I like to stay on the move with maybe not staying any longer in one spot than a couple weeks or maybe a month.  I always look forward to the exciting challenge of change, something new, something different.

 

Some people's travel priorities are other people.  Meeting up with & staying with friends & families.  Some people are just people people.  Again, Kelly & I fall off the chart here.  For me it is all about scenery & beauty of the land.  I love the tranquil starry desert nights, the days of peace & serenity that for me can only be found in the quietness of nature itself.  Both Kelly & I share these feelings but I am probably a little more over the top about it. 

   

Regardless of likes & dislikes, disagreements & occasional clashes of opinion I think we RV folks have one of the greatest communities & lifestyles going on out here in the world.  And let me quickly hasten to add the RV Blogging world as well.  Some of us may have had our tiffs with each other along the way but I still feel we are like a band of Brothers & when something good or bad happens to any one of us, we all feel personally involved & care deeply.  Some of us like Kelly & I may not be rushing over to sit around your happy hour campfire rings, attend your rallies or head off to the city shopping with you.  We may not be going for walks, long drives or eating at fine restaurants with you but you are all in our thoughts & you are all important people in our lives.  I try to make that apparent each night here in the blog.  It is so much easier & comfortable for me to communicate with everyone from right here at the keyboard than it is to talk with people face to face.  I do not consider myself a great conversationalist so when Donna from the CAVE DWELLINGS left the following comment on my post the other day, I sent her a silent 'thank-you.'  She said, "I think you are still a real sociable guy..through your fingertips..that's how you do it now!!"

Thank You:))

GROANER'S CORNER:((  

An English professor wrote the words: "A woman without her man is nothing" on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote:
"A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class wrote:
"A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Sorry guys, but you know the lady folks are right....AL:))

EMAIL THE BAYFIELD BUNCH:))
stargeezerguy@gmail.com
OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/
The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right
now...... AL.

AND, JUST WHAT DID FELLOW RV BLOGGER IVAN HAVE IN COMMON WITH ENGLAND'S WILL & KATE TODAY:))

   

NICE NIGHT FOR A BICYCLE RIDE IN THE SONORAN DESERT...HICKIWAN TRAILS RV PARK, WHY ARIZONA... FEBRUARY 9TH 2008 

Another hot & humid day but we decided to tackle a second shed clean up anyway. When we moved here in the fall of 2002 there was only one shed on the property & no basement under our park model. We didn’t even have an attic. We basically had zero storage space. In the summer of 2003 I somehow managed to build us a wooden storage shed, which amazingly enough is still standing to this very day. It was quite an undertaking for a guy with few building skills & even less confidence but I somehow managed to come up with an 8 x12 wood structure complete with a peaked roof & shingles. And even a window if you can imagine that. Only thing I did not build myself was the roof trusses. Nothing is square, nothing is level & the wooden floor bounces when I walk on it because I forgot to put in those smaller pieces between the main 2x4’s under the floor, but what the heck, it keeps our stuff dry & out of the weather. And, I’ve got vines growing all over it kinda hiding the whole darn thing anyway.

 

In 2004 Kelly & I ended up with the unenviable chore of having to clean out my Mother’s large two story 5 bedroom house. It was jammed to the rafters from the basement to the attic with over 40 years of stuff, stuff, stuff!! Took Kelly & I nearly a week of long hard slogging every day to get that job done. Needless to say, some of that stuff ended up at our place. We helped my Uncle Harry move to an assisted living facility a few years later & we again ended up with more stuff. A couple neighbors needed their shed & garage cleaned out &….yep, more stuff. Another neighbor’s house burnt & they moved to a smaller unit so we once again ended up with…..yep, more stuff!! We had a two car carport built in the fall of 06 with more storage space at one end & filled that with overflow stuff from the other two over stuffed sheds. And then there’s the stuff that we ourselves have accumulated over the years. So yep, we sure have a ‘stuff’ problem here alright but we are finally making some progress. I’ll be back at it in the morning again.

Fellow RV Blogger Ivan from from ROADTRIP 2010 had himself a real chance encounter with Britain's Will & Kate today.  Drop on over to Ivan's site & he will tell you all about it.  And, he's got pictures.  Right up close one's too:))  That Kate's a beauty alright.

Noticed we have two new blog Followers today so the Bayfield Bunch welcomes Cjan from DAY TO DAY FROM MY HEART & Debra from FIND AN OUTLET. Debra lives near Bisbee Arizona & I came across her blog about a month ago regarding the fires in the Huachuca Mountains. You will find her blog lively, directly honest & to the point!! She pulls no punches in her thoughts about her Government, her State of Arizona & the ongoing Mexican border problems going on literally right in her own back yard.

Tony, a fellow RV’er brought it to my attention in an email today that BAYFIELD'S BEACH has reached a Top Five listing by a U.S. coastal beach expert stationed in Florida.  Yaaaaaaaaaaaay Bayfield:))

We actually dusted off our seldom used bicycles today & Kelly made a trip to the mail room. I did a few wheelies in front of the house to scare the neighbors & beat a hasty retreat back up the driveway. The first two years in the Southwest with the Motorhome we strapped the bikes on the back & took them with us. Never did like carrying them there & we always seemed to have problems with the bicycle carrier, etc. In fact the last time before today that I recall riding my bicycle was at Hickiwan Trails in Why Arizona back in February of 2008. I really enjoyed racing the bike around on the hard packed desert floor dodging around the Saguaro Cactus, Mesquite trees & prickly Cholla plants. I, like a lot of other kids when we were young, was a bit of a hot dog on a bicycle & I still have that in me today & much prefer riding just about anywhere other than a flat boring road somewhere.

KELLY'S BACK WITH THE MAIL - CLEANING HER BIKE - AIRING UP THE TIRES ON MY BIKE 

A lot of people are smart enough to approach a simple problem from an obvious logical perspective. Not so in my case this morning. It has probably been a couple years since I snapped the light on in our wooden shed & of course when I hit the light switch this morning the light did not come on. It’s quite a conglomeration of extension cords I rigged up about 7 years ago out to that shed.  Some are buried in the ground & some are strung along the shed's roof overhangs.  Looks like somebody dumped a big pot of spaghetti in our back yard.  Took me awhile to figure out what cords went to what sockets etc because I have outdoor lights all hooked into that mess of wires too. Finally noticed what appeared to be a damaged extension cord at ground level under a shrub & figured ‘aha’ that’s it. Minutes later I was sitting in the flower bed with my wire cutters, scissors, pocket knife & electrical tape. A few snips here, some wire stripping there followed by matching up the wires & soon I was taping the splice up figuring the problem was solved. It wasn’t!! More climbing up on my ladder along the shed eaves amongst a twisting mass of Virginia Creeper following extension cords to figure out where they went. All cords seemed to be firmly joined together. I was stumped……until I later walked into my workshop & saw the orange extension cord plug hanging on a nail beside the electrical receptacle. It was not plugged in!!!! It had probably become unplugged the day before when we were cleaning up the workshop shed. Had I thought to first check the most logical cause of the wood shed light not working I would have saved myself about 40 minutes of frustration this morning. Like I have said before, some days I just have to give this old Noggin of mine a shake…………………………….

And, once again I would just like to thank all the readers of my blog out there for all your support through the comment section here on the blog & the many warm personal emails many of you have taken the time to send.  I know it isn't always easy getting through my moody ramblings sometimes & I know I step on some toes along the way but for you folks who have hung in with me over the years I just want to say a special thanks.  And for you newer folks I say welcome & hope you are able to read my daily musings with interest, understanding & an open mind...............................10-4:))

GROANER’S CORNER:(( Been awhile since I posted my version of Blogger's Anonymous.  Being very familiar with AA years ago I based my Blogger's Anonymous on their 12 step program.............

BLOGGERS ANONYMOUS’

Step One:  "We admitted we were powerless over Blogging - that our free time has become unmanageable."

Step Two:  "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to a simpler time before computers."

Step Three:  "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our Spouses as we understand them."

Step Four:  "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our Blogger thoughts & Blog archives."

Step Five:   "Admitted to our Spouses, to ourselves, & to another Blogger person the exact nature of our blogging woes."

Step Six:  "Were entirely ready to have our Spouse remove all nasty posts from our Blogs."

Step Seven:  "Humbly asked Her/Him to remove our shortcomings, our spell checkers, & our publish buttons"

Step Eight:  "Made a list of all fellow Bloggers we had commented to, and became willing to make amends to them all."

Step Nine:  "Made direct amends to such Bloggers wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them, their Blogs, or their Blog followers ."

Step Ten:  "Continued to take personal written inventory and when we were wrong promptly didn't blog about it."

Step Eleven:  "Sought through humbleness and fear to improve our conscious contact with our Spouse as we understood Her/Him, begging only for knowledge of Her/His will for us and maybe our keyboards back to carry that out."

Step Twelve:  "Having had a Blogger's awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to all fellow Bloggers, and to practice these principles in all our restructured Blogging affairs."   

Hi, my names AL & I am a Blogger:))

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EMAIL THE BAYFIELD BUNCH:))
stargeezerguy@gmail.com

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/

The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right
now...... AL.