Living in the Moment

I was outside our rig reading a book. When I came to the end of a chapter I folded the page, set the book down, and closed my eyes……. And just sat there absorbing my surroundings, feeling the warm wind blowing across my body, listening to it rustle the flag on our neighbors rig. Soon I was hearing other subtle sounds like the cricket in the nearby grassland and the sand hill cranes roosting ¼ mile from our rig. Does it get any better than this?

We are boondocking two hours southeast of Tucson at the Whitewater Draw WMA (Wildlife Management Area). Our neighbors are Jim and Brenda Jordan who turned us onto this area a few weeks ago are parked just yards away. You can stay for 3 nights free, no water, no electric, no dump stations no frills whatsoever. After spending 5 weeks in Tucson this is just the place we needed to be.

What caught me off guard was the fact that we were not really here. Over the past week Barb and I have been planning our spring and summer travels….Where will we go?  When will we get there? What route will we take? What is there to see along the way? Our minds were hundreds of miles and weeks ahead of where we actually were.

Sometime you need to remind yourself to slow down and live in the moment. It's not like we have been parking cars in the sweltering heat of Florida for 12 hours a day, we were in a beautiful spot and not enjoying it to its fullest. This may sound strange coming from someone who is just traveling from place to place, but we have caught ourselves doing this more than once, looking ahead to where we are going next and not thoroughly absorbing where we were at. So with a change of attitude, that’s what we did. We relaxed, read, played with the dogs and bird watched over our 3 day stay in the area.

The WMA has several trails around the wetlands where you can see a variety of waterfowl, shorebirds, deer, javelina and other feathered friends. Over those three days we woke up before sunrise twice to watch the sandhills head to their feeding areas and watched the sunset each day when they came back to roost.

Thousands and thousands of Sandhills

Javelina!

Avocet

The mule deer bucks still had their antlers!

Shovler

I was told this was a Vermillion Flycatcher

Sand Pipers

Cinnamon Teal

Gadwall

On our second day there we jumped in the truck with Jim and Brenda and headed over to Bisbee to check out the sights and walk the town. Along the way we came across the adjacent town of Lowell which in the end we enjoyed just as much, if not more than Bisbee. Lowell has very few actual businesses that are open. In fact I only saw a Co-op Market and a restaurant. The remainder of the town looks like everyone dropped what they were doing several decades ago and just walked away……the cars, the buildings, the signage were from decades gone by and very cool to see….

The following day Jim and Brenda left leaving us alone with the sandhills. We enjoyed the day taking walks and honing up on our photography skills. This was our first time staying in a WMA which is surprising given how much we love the outdoors. We will now be looking for more of these hidden gems in the future!

Sunset with our rigs in the foreground

Departing from Whitewater Draw we drove two hours back to Tucson....but first a stop at......

Dairy Queen!

We spent one more day with Forrest, Somer and Lily…..well really it was a ½ day. Time for one more dinner together before we continue our journey north. So what are our spring travel plans?  We plan on being in South Dakota the first week of April where we will continue our land search…. There I go again! We have 2-3 weeks before we are there and have lots of adventures planned between now and then. Winslow, Petrified Forest, Antelope Canyon….lots of places to see and lots of opportunities to live in the moment.