PATAGONIA LAKE STATE PARK (AZ) - WEEK 2



MONDAY - Today didn't get off to a very good start!

Shortly after we finsihed eating breakfast there was someone knocking on THE POD's front door. I looked out the window and saw a police officer standing there.

After opening the door the officer explained that I wasn't allowed to park ROVER on top of the rocks in our campsite and would have to somehow fit it on the asphalt, even if I had to park it perpendicular to THE POD and straddle the driveway.

I told him, "No problem, I'll do it right now", he then drove away. What I would have liked to tell him is that we've been here for over a week and numerous times a day we see park employees, rangers and even park police drive by and not say a word about the fact that ROVER is parked on the rocks.

Our campsite is right next door to the hiking trailhead and the rangers are here all the time, out of their vehicles, checking that trail brochures are available at the kiosk, that all the cars have "day use passes" in the windshield instead of "camping passes" (campers are not permitted to park in these spaces) and occasionally they'll even take the time to hike down the short ¾-mile trail that the bird watchers all seem to enjoy so much.

Why no one asked us to move the truck until now I don't know?



TUESDAY - When I first moved ROVER off the rocks I placed it on the far left side of the driveway in front of THE POD. That meant the passenger tires were right on the edge of the asphalt. I didn't want to park in perpendicular because it would make it difficult to leave the campsite without driving down into the ditch.

The scene of the accident!


Later in the afternoon I went out to the truck to get our credit card wallet out of the safe.

I opened the passenger door, reached in and retrieved the credit card wallet and then made the big mistake of taking a step backwards to be able to close the door without looking where I was.

It all happened so fast. First I spun around and tried to keep myself from falling, but that didn't happen. I put my hands on the top row of landscape stones just before my feet slipped on the loose rocks and then hit my left knee on the lower portion of the wall.

But I wasn't done yet injuring myself, not even close, then I slipped again on the loose rocks and fell against the tree, scraping both my forearms and narrowly missing hitting my head on the sawed off tree stump.

Fortunately this is where the adventure came to an end. I took a quick inventory of my body parts and found nothing sprained or broken, so I quickly got to my feet before anyone saw me and no one was the wiser.

Tricia immediately went into nurse mode when I entered the trailer and quickly cleaned me up, applied the NEOSPORIN® Ointment and bandaged my knee.

These photos are from four days later and I'm happy with the healing process so far.



WEDNESDAY - Late last week we realized there were several Amazon Locker locations in Nogales where we could ship our order to. Not knowing when our next opportunity would be to receive packages we put in a small order and it's now in town waiting for us to pick it up.

So around lunch time we climbed into ROVER and headed to town.

Before picking up our package we decided to eat lunch at the same Chipotle's Restaurant where we ate last week.

After picking up the package we went grocery shopping and then filled ROVER full of $2.93 gasoline so he's ready to move us to our next campsite.



SATURDAY - We did it! 14-days on one fresh water tank (39-gallons) and we still have 25% (10-gallons?) showing on the tank gauge.

We've got no idea exactly how much water is left in the tank, RV tank sensors are notorious for false readings, but we do know one thing for sure, it's not completely empty!

When we leave here tomorrow we'll empty our waste water tanks and refill the fresh water tank until it flows out the entrance pipe. That's because we'll be starting another 8-day stretch where water will not be available.

Making the water last 14-days here wasn't too difficult. We took showers in the bathhouses and we had 12-gallons of drinking water in 4-separate containers available for drinks and cooking with, still it's something we struggled with when we first started out living fulltime on the road.

We've come a long way with our resource management, it's not just water (although that's the toughest), it's food, gasoline, electricity and propane too.



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