Our last week at Lake Pleasant

 

The temperatures in the valley are continuing to rise, and the hibernating critters are starting to make themselves known (haven’t seen any rattlesnakes yet, but I did see a Gila Monster on the road today!) . . . so it’s time for us to move on!

 

Our hosting commitment ended on March 31st, and although we considered staying a little longer to take care of some business, we ultimately decided to move up to Nevada for a few weeks to take advantage of more economical flights from Las Vegas to Michigan.

Since we’ve been here for the last 4-1/2 months (really – 4 and a half!?!), Nicolas had a whole list of “checks” to complete on the rig before we moved, plus he wanted to wash the car, the truck, and the dog!  He’s been working on his “to do” list for the last couple of weeks, and finished everything up this weekend.  I’m not sure what we’re going to do when he isn’t with us . . .

Yesterday and today we did a bunch of laundry, stocked up on groceries, and packed up the garage.  We have one less thing to pack up, though . . . last week, Tom sold his motorcycle!

He found that he wasn’t riding it as much as he thought he would, so he decided to go ahead and unload it now, rather than waiting until we got back to Michigan in the fall (NOT the ideal time to sell a motorcycle in Michigan!).  So now we have lots of room in the garage, and that will make shorter stops (when we don’t fully unpack the garage) easier for Nicolas to use his room.

But it wasn’t all work and no play this past week . . . a couple of the maintenance guys had some buoys to move around on the lake, so we tagged along with them. 

 

We drove to the north end of the park, where we met them at the boathouse. 

Along the way, we saw this guy on the side of the road.

 

As Kyle and Jeremy moved buoys around to mark low water areas, Kyle also pointed out interesting features around the lake.

He’s been working at the lake for over 10 years, and he’s hiked almost every mile of the shoreline so he’s really familiar with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We saw several birds around the lake,

including great blue herons on Blue Heron Island.

 

 

The Agua Fria inlet to the lake has been closed all winter for bald eagle nesting, but was getting ready to be opened up again this week.  Since we were on official business, we were allowed to enter the closed area.  We didn’t have enough time to go all the way to the current nest, but Kyle was able to show us the “old” nest.

Kyle wasn’t sure why this one was abandoned, but it hasn’t been used for several years.  There are two pairs of eagles that call Lake Pleasant home, but only one couple is mature enough to have eggs.  Unfortunately, this year’s nesting was unsuccessful and there are no new baby eagles on Lake Pleasant.  Kyle told us that if the eggs had hatched, we would have been able to participate in banding the new eagles, and maybe even hold one of them . . . that would have been really cool!

Besides our boat ride, we also went back to Cave Creek this weekend.  The town was having their Fiesta Days Rodeo, so we went to check it out.  There wasn’t too much going on in town – just a few arts and crafts tents, and a motorcycle rally (Tom was having withdrawals!!).

We did wander through an interesting shop,

and saw some fun stuff.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was some nice patio furniture,

 

and then some that would be more of a conversation piece! 

Then there was Pluto . . .

and some cool metal flowers hanging on the walls.

 

Cave Creek is an interesting, artsy kind of town, with lots of choices for dinner.  We ended up at the original El Encanto Mexican Cantina, since we haven’t had mexican at all since we’ve been here . . . it was very good.  They have several other locations around Phoenix, and we’ve heard that they are all good.

 

 

 

 

 

We took a drive by the rodeo grounds,

but there wasn’t anything going on there in the afternoon.  We decided not to stick around for the rodeo, but instead got shakes at Big Earl’s and went back to the campground for the evening.

Tomorrow we’ll be moving on, as will another host, Peter, who is moving down the road to the shooting range for the summer . . . . so tonight the 2 remaining hosts planned a pizza dinner as a farewell party for all of us.    

 

 

It was a great way to end the season with our new friends, and hopefully we’ll cross paths with them again sometime, somewhere!