Save the Seniors
Today was another gorgeous, clear day in Capitol Reef. But clear, blue skies also meant another day with little opportunity
for interesting photos. We walked over to the orchard to photograph the deer herd among the trees when the sunlight finally reached the canyon floor.
The deer have a definite daily routine. They hang out in the orchard during the morning hoping people will share the reject apples with them;
which everyone seemed to do. About 5:00, they leave the orchard and graze in the campground for about half an hour and then meander over to the picnic area
to finish feeding and settle in for the night. Since it was only 10:00, the deer were in the orchard as expected, but all the ladders and fruit picking poles
were gone. The deer cooperated and we got some good deer images, but we had also hoped to re-supply our apple stock. Without the fruit pickers or ladders
that wasn't happening. We also noticed the signs and scale for weighing the apples were gone. When Carol asked the campground hosts about the missing fruit pickers,
she was told the orchard closed that morning. Evidently, an email was sent out and that was that. I'm assuming the remaining apples were too high in the trees,
and the Park Service was concerned that someone would fall off a ladder trying to reach them. We noticed a sign on an earlier apple picking foray
that said most injuries involved senior citizens falling off ladders. Evidently, the park service removed the ladders, etc. to protect the seniors who might fall. That almost hurt my feelings....
At the edge of the apple orchard was a cool red and white retro trailer. It had been completely re-painted and restored. The trailer was pulled by a red Nissan pickup and everything in the campsite was red or white. It looked like an advertisement in a magazine.
Since we were going to be in camp, I decided to do some motorhome maintenance. Earlier in the week, I had pulled out the motorhome manual and discovered there were some routine maintenance items that hadn't made our to-do list. I handled a couple of minor lubrication items before tackling the fun one. We are supposed to clean the air vent filters annually. Evidently, we got annually mixed up with once a decade. I took each vent cover down, removed the filter, and Carol washed the filters and laid them out to dry. We also cleaned the stove vent while "we were on a roll." We have the freshest smelling air around.
Now, if we could just figure out why we have to run our generator two hours a day. Our solar power system and batteries worked great at Doheny in January, but our solar system doesn't seem to be charging our batteries at all here. And our batteries don't seem to be holding the charge from running the generator. We're running the generator an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Since the hours we can run the generator are very limited, that makes it very difficult to photograph the sunrise or the sunset unless it's close to camp. I'm assuming it's time to replace all our house batteries. I'm glad we only have three more nights without hookups. Sunday, we'll be at Ruby's Inn outside of Bryce National Park with full hookups and Internet. Back to civilization!
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