STAY IN YOUR SEATS WHEN THE SEATBELT LIGHT IS ON!!

Last evening was a little, shall we say, "turbulent". The winds started picking up about 5:30PM, and by the time we went to bed I felt like a flight attendant trying to serve meals in high turbulence. Our 'ol HitchHiker was really shakin'.  We jumped into bed and I was watching to see if the "fasten your seat belt" light would appear on our ceiling. ...and then came the rain....and it came....and it came...in sheets it came!!! It finally subsided enough for the sandman to make an appearance and we both fell asleep. I woke up about 2:30AM and looked out my window to see stars like someone had sprinkled glitter in the sky..It was absolutely beautiful....and calm...No sign of the stormy evening ever happened..at least in the dark there were none...However, when we got up at 7AM, and we walked the laundry down our road, there were some camping chairs lying around, a few satellite dishes on with their faces in the dirt, and a few puddles ...Here are "The Ponds of Hickiwan"...

...That would be Dennis walking back to our camper from the laundry.  Luckily, our Hughesnet dish was still lashed upright..Den had a 6 gallon (50 lb.) jug of water hanging from the center and 6 8" nails (2 on each leg) driven into the ground. He was really worried it would become a casualty of last night's winds...
  While we were folding laundry (yes, I did say WE), Den conveyed his concern about tomorrow's weather. We had planned on driving the 90 miles up to Buckeye AZ to the WalMart tomorrow.  I needed an RX filled and we figured we would get groceries and some RV stuff we needed. Den said the projected forcast for Ajo was not very good. We are under a High Wind Watch tonight until Friday at 11AM, locally damaging winds possible...sustained winds 32 mph, and (now here is the clincher) maximum wind gusts at 74 mph...Well, by golly, gosh almighty! We decided to do the drive to Buckeye today and stick around tomorrow in case we had to chase our internet and satellite dishes into the Sonoran Desert...not to mention keep an eye on the HitchHiker so she didn't fly away...So onward we went 90 miles North..Buckeye is a suburb of Phoenix.
  We traveled through Ajo and about 10 miles North of there we were going through the Barry Goldwater Air Force Range..We were treated to a fighter jet ahead of us in the distance...I think you can see it waaaaay in the distance in this photo..

....OK, he is REALLY waaaaay in the distance, but I have a love affair with military aircraft, as I already warned you.
We drove through a really rugged area called Crater Range, still on the Air Force Range, and I snapped this shot...

..."on the fly"as usual. Den had decided he should buy some heavy duty ratchet straps at WalMart to tie down our computer dish...straps that have a chance in a duel with 74 mph wind gusts....I am thinking to myself, "Tomorrow could be a character builder"...
Actually the drive was very enjoyable...I never tire of the Arizona mountains. We were about 20 miles outside of Ajo when we saw the signs to "slow ahead...agents present", meaning it was a Border Patrol checkpoint...

We stopped at the given spot. We had agents on both sides of the truck. The agent on my side had a drug sniffing dog and he didn't speak (the agent, not the dog, duh. My high school English teacher would be appalled at my sentence construction.) The agent on the driver's side was very cordial and just asked where we coming from..I said Illinois and Dennis said Ajo...at the same time...Are we looking suspicious now??? He just laughed and told us to have a good day...Sometimes I just need to shut up and let Den do the talking...especially with Border Patrol agents!
 We got into the outskirts of Buckeye and began to see a lot of green planting in the fields. I thought it was a sod farm, but Dennis the farmer told me it was Alfalfa...

I wouldn't know alfalfa if it walked up and bit me, unless it was the one in Our Gang..(For those of you too young to remember Darla, Spanky and Alfalfa....I hope this drives you nuts!!)
 We found the WalMart and I immediately dropped off my RX bottle, at which time the young lady behind the "drop off" counter told me they needed to call my doctor to get permission for the refill...and this could take a long time to get the fax back. I figured, OK, we could hang out here getting groceries for about 1-2 hours. I can easily wander our WalMart back home for that length of time..Dennis though???? NOT! He suggested that I call my doctor's office and expedite it, so I did....And guess what??? My good Dr. Steinberg is not in the office on Wednesdays, so it may not be until Friday to pick it up...JUST GREAT!....90 miles again on Friday?..I don't think so! We left, and I will figure out this dilema later...
This is my driver....

...looking way too serious...
Dennis was ecstatic with his 4 new ratchet straps and couldn't wait to lash them onto our computer dish. He was not ecstatic thinking about driving back to Buckeye in the next few days..I made an executive decision on my own healthcare..This RX is not for something life threatening..and my doc said he might take me off of it soon, so I will call him tomorrow and ask if I can go off it now, due to the logistics of the situation...."I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR!!"
 We are back at the camper now....Den went out and played in the sand with his ratchets.

 I took this out our back window...I am not a lover of big winds whipping at me....and the winds are really picking up as we speak..
Tomorrow is going to be interesting , or so it seems. I am going to slow cook some beef shanks with veggies, (hopefully creating beef soup for supper), and we will lash ourselves to the crock pot with bungee cords to allow us to bounce around the camper, if need be. If there is no blog from Cave Dwellings tomorrow, you only need to check the upper jet stream and see if a large HitchHiker is looking like something out of The Wizard of Oz...more later...maybe LOTS later....