Shadowy

Lucky me...I have a duo of furry friends who make sure I'm awake to see the first rays of sunrise each morning. We sit drinking our coffee (well, I'm drinking coffee...kitties prefer pawfee), and watch through these windows at the rear of the RV.

After a while, I have to get up and start taking pictures. 

Looking a little farther to my left, it looked like this.

There was an interesting lenticular cloud formation, hovering over the landscape like a flying saucer.

So that was this morning's sunrise. Backing up to yesterday morning, the park was all a'twitter with news of the shots fired the night before. The back story is that the guy, described by many as a "lunatic," has been a problem ever since he arrived about a month ago. The day before, he got into a verbal altercation with one of the other guests. The park management decided they'd had enough and taped an eviction notice to his door the same afternoon. That probably is what set him off. 

So, he's evicted from the park, and the sheriff was called to remove him. Trouble is, he barricaded himself inside his RV and refused to answer the door. The sheriff, Mike and our park employee neighbor were out scouting the ground behind our rig looking for shell casings, but found none. The sheriff asked if anyone had actually seen the gun...no...but we certainly heard the shots. We suspect that any casings were inside the vehicle he was driving.

In the end, the sheriff said there was nothing he could do to force the guy out and left the eviction process to park management. As far as I know, the guy is still here. Not sure how they're going to be able to force him out of here. It was all quiet last night, so hopefully, that will be the end of it as far as we're concerned.

We were kind of stuck here yesterday, waiting for a crew to come wash and wax our RV. I decided to do a photo challenge. I looked in my book and chose the first page it fell open to, which was "Shadow Play." Well, don't you know my shadow self was all excited about that. I told her I'd take her for a walk, but she had to bring her own camera. 

Walking around the park, we mainly saw a lot of fences. Chain fences...

Iron fences...

Fancy fences...

Complicated fences...

Humble fences...

Bike racks that look like fences.

Also, there were trees. Palm trees...

Leafless trees...

Shrubs, pretending to be trees...

I don't know what these are, but they have a leaf similar to a palm tree, but only grow to about knee height.

The pool area turned out to be a treasure trove of shadows. The deck chairs were a good place to start.

There's another umbrella. They're sort of like our shadow selves...always camera hogging and wanting to get in on the act no matter what.

Here, there was a line of shadows leading to the fire pit.

Also, there were shadows in the water.

And on deck...

And stepping down into the water. Looks like the pool could use a good cleaning. I don't suppose they bother with it much when the water is so icy cold in winter.

Also, the requisite drowning swimmer hook.

Finally, the scalloped roof line from this tile roof.

Oh yes, and we ran into Mike's shadow self out riding his shadow bike.

I was done taking pictures until I noticed this guy from the cleaning crew busy waxing the side of the RV.

When they were finished, we moved the bird feeders to the back of the RV, hoping to get some pictures of birds, and we replaced the catio. Just FYI, we replaced the catio first. We do have our purriorities. 

Mike lit our propane "campfire" and we sat out drinking our cocktails. It was a nice day.

The sunrises and sunsets are so beautiful here. Yesterday's sunset lit up the hillsides. So pretty.

There was a new recipe to try for dinner last night in the form of these Sheet Pan Chicken Fajitas. This is a great camping recipe and really easy to do. At home, I'd do this on a regular sheet pan, but in the RV, I have half sheet pans. As it turns out the two will fit side-by-side in my convection/microwave, and so that's how I did them.

You just slice everything up (chicken, bell pepper, red onion, and a little bit of garlic). Then it's seasoned with some chili powder, red wine vinaigrette, and salt. Then it's baked in the oven at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes, warming the tortillas in the oven during the last five minutes of cooking. So simple. Then we just loaded the filling into tortillas and ate them. They were very tasty, although quite spicy. I've rewritten the recipe to reduce the amount of chili powder by half. Also, I just used bottled red wine vinaigrette, and that worked great. So, I've linked to the recipe back there, but I found it in the Washington Post. You might need a subscription to open the link. If you have trouble, email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you.

So that was a full day, with sheriffs walking around, and crews here walking across the top of the RV. Kitties were in serious need of some shut-eye. Smitty snuggled up on his kitty hammock.

Sadie likes the bed where nobody bothers her.

We're talking about driving south and getting in a hike at Red Rock State Park, between here and Las Vegas. I haven't yet checked the website to see if the park is open, but I'm feeling optimistic about that. We may not be able to go inside the visitor's center (and we probably don't even want to), but I'm still hopeful the hiking trails will be open. We barely touched the surface during our visit last year, and it seems like a good way to spend the day today.

Eventually, I suppose I'll get out my sewing machine and do some sewing. It's kind of a hassle getting everything set up in the RV though, and so I need to be more motivated than I currently am.