Photos

Okay now I've got the photos on both blogs. The first one saguaro cacti on the Slate Trail, the second Desert Tortoise (almost a foot long) and the third Cave Creek when there's actually water in it.

Photos from Cave Creek Regional Park

I accidentally posted the photos on Fridge Soup!

Cave Creek Campground

On March 3rd we left Pioneer RV Park where we had been stuck four months because of Eliot's neck surgery and moved over to Cave Creek Regional Park, a nice campground run by Maricopa County. It is very popular and has less than 40 sites with electricity and water and allows campers to stay in one site only two weeks. However after two weeks you can move to overflow which is also where new campers have to go when the park is full and then you get on a list. We came in on Wednesday making sure before we left Pioneer that our generator was working. Overflow was almost full to capacity (15) so we knew we would be there at least two nights. Eliot set up the satellite dish but of course we could only use the computers when the generator was on. On day four we finally got a site and now have electricity but it has just started raining so we don't know how long it will be before the weather interferes with our satellite reception. So whether (no pun intended) or not this will get posted tonight is to be seen. The sites are well separated and nicely set in the Sonoran Desert with abundant flora and fauna and well maintained trails. Eliot did a five mile hike today and his knee is now complaining loudly but I just walked around the campground for half an hour and did some chores. On Monday we will drive the truck down to Los Algodones, Mexico. Actually park on this side of the border at a parking lot run by the local Indian tribe and walk into Los Algondones to buy medicines which are so much cheaper than they are here. We will also check out some dentists. The town caters to Americans looking for cheaper medicine, dentists, liquour and opticians. Two years ago I got 12 crowns for under $2,000. I'm not entirely happy with them but couldn't possibly afford them in the states. I noticed the dentist I went to is no longer listed. Earlier I had gotten two crowns from another dentist which were quite satisfactory. But Eliot needs implants so we will make sure that they are well recommended dentists and we will check out the facilities.
Eliot closes on the house in Chino Valley on March 15th and hopes to leave for our trip to Alaska by May 1st.
I will try to get some pictures of the campground or trails on the computer so I can post them on the blog.

Alaska

A year before I met Eliot he went to Alaska. As soon as his wife died he sold his house and bought a Class A motor home and a Chevy Tracker to tow. He had taken his marriage vows quite seriously and although he would leave his wife for two weeks at a time to go hiking, he always called her and came back every two weeks to check on her although for 7 years they didn't have marital relations and said they were like two strangers. He hiked alone and then for two years with Tom, another hiker he met. He never had a girlfriend during those 7 years but after his wife died he did meet a woman at a campground and was with her more or less for nine months but she wanted to move to Missouri and also resented it went he went hiking with Tom. So he gave up on her. Then he found me on Yahoo personals with the keyword "hiking." And boy did we hike that summer and fall in the Canadian Rockies and then back in the states often with Tom. And we fell in love. I followed him in my little RV and then he asked me if I wanted to go to Australia. We traveled for almost 6 months all around Australia in a Land Cruiser with a pop-up top with a bed I had to make up every night and we didn't kill each other and we learned how best not to push each others buttons. So when we came back to the states I sold my RV and moved in with him. And the next five years we did lots of hiking and when he hurt his knee he bought ATVs so we could ride them as far as the wilderness and then hike in the wilderness, many times with Tom. I wish I had kept track of all the wildernesses we hiked in. We also went to New Zealand and Hawaii one winter and back to Australia for another six months and one winter the Gulf Coast from Big Bend to Big Thicket. That was the year before Hurricane Ike so we were hoping to go back this winter to see how different things would be. But I've already told the story of this winter in Phoenix and Eliot's neck surgery. For four years we were hosts at Pole Creek Lake Campground where I started this blog last summer. Since I said no more Pole Creek Lake Eliot said okay but we'll go to Alaska instead. He had a wonderful time the first time he went. So I'm willing to try it. My brother lives on the Long Beach Penisula in southwest Washington so I'm pretty sure we'll make it that far and hopefully into B.C. and who knows maybe we'll make it all the way to Alaska. And that's why I needed to go on anti-depressant medication and knowing we have someplace to come back to also helps. And I have to go with him because I owe him so much. He's taken me to places I never would have seen. And he's really very nice even if he's a Republican! We both miss Tom, He came up to Pole Creek Lake the first summer we were there and we were hoping to see him when we went to Texas since he lived in Oklahoma. He had been at Big Bend not long before that but wasn't feeling good. He put off going to the doctor until he turned 65 and had Medicare. But it was too late. He had metatasized lung cancer that was already in his brain and was dead in six months. So why not go to Alaska.

Maybe Karin returns

I was afraid after my last post I'd get no comments. I'm grateful for the support Bobbie and WWW. Yes, when real stuff happens you have to deal with I usually can handle that because the adrenalin (I think the British say adrenalin and we say epinenepherine) starts to flow. That's always been my problem, not so much not enough serotonin but too much reuptake of the norepinepherine in the synapses (I once worked for a neuroleptic psychiatrist and typed his whole book on neuroleptic drugs). One shrink I had said one reason depressed people lived on the edge was to make the adrenalin flow. And I've sure done some risky things in my life and a lot of stupid things. I realized after reading Eric Berne ( the transactional analyis inventor) how I played games and even figured out my life script when I took a course on TA but it wasn't until I went on medication that I could change my behavior. I knew it was time to do something now because I could only remember the stupid stuff and kept beating myself up when there actually was a lots of good times and good things I did. I loved working in a nursing home and helped many people over to the other side and in my better moments I can feel the presence of those guardian angels up there in the collective unconscious.
Eliot wants to take the 5th wheel to Alaska this summer but first he's buying an anchor home, a singlewide Manufactured home in an over 55 development in Chino Valley, 15 miles north of Prescott, AZ. We close March 15th so maybe we'll get to stay in it a month before traveling and that also makes it possible for Eliot to possibly get a knee replacement when we get back because there's no way he could recover from that in the 5th wheel. and it will be a place to stay when we can no longer travel. And I think he's mainly doing this for me for which I am very grateful. We've had a wonderful six years but this seventh since he hurt his neck has been very difficult.

Shutter Island

I shouldn't ever watch movies that have to do with insanity. There's just to many times in my life when I felt close to the edge and two of children were even hospitalized with brief manic episodes but I've never been manic. From adolescence on I felt either okay or not okay, meaning depressed. The closest I ever came to euphoria were at the births of my children. I always say those were the three best times of my life. and occasionally something would happen that would make me feel good for a couple of weeks, once a workshop with Paul Winter. Those times I was Karin, the other times I was Narren, the not okay Karin. I went to many therapists until I was finally put on medication. But I haven't been taking anything for quite a while but last week asked my PCP if I could try Cymbalta because I've been either depressed or anxious or worse like not wanting to wake up in the morning. He also wanted me to add tamotrigine which you have to start out very slowly because of the possibility of a life-threatening situation starting with a rash. It's supposed to even one out, yeah, like I'm ever going to become manic just because two of my children had manic episodes but they hadn't slept for four nights and my daughter had been on drugs. And now I have headaches. So I'm stopping the tamotrigine because it's more likely to be from that and not the Cymbalta and if there's one thing worse than being depressed it's a headache.
I actually was feeling better from the Cymbalta until I saw Shutter Island. The day before we watched a DVD "National Lampoon presents Repli-Kate"and I couldn't stop laughing for 5 minutes after the movie.

more about downloading

Eliot thinks it might be the downloading of automatic updates that takes a lot of MBs so now we've just told the computers to first let us know before downloading any updates.

Hope that fixes the problems because I'd hate not reading everybody's blogs.