Monday January 9th 2017

At sunrise this morning it was in the 40s. This is an improvement from yesterday’s 30s. I was also prepared for a cold morning. The electric heater was out of storage and ready to use. I turned it on about 7:30 and went back to bed. It was nice and comfortable when I finally got out of bed. By the end of the day the temperature was in the mid 60s. This cold snap is over.

The snowbird season is in full swing. When I went to the grocery store today, every other car was from a northern state or Canadian province. The volume of cars on the road in shopping areas is near capacity. I’ve taken to looking at license plates and the age of the driver if I can. It gives me an additional clue about what kind of strange driving behavior I might see.

It isn’t necessarily bad driving that I’m concerned with. It is the unpredictable behavior like cutting across 3 lanes of traffic to make a left hand turn at the next intersection or slowing down to a crawl because you don’t know where your turn is located. My approach to similar situations is to continue past the location and make a U-turn up the road. Someone is probably watching my U-turn and making similar comments.

Other than grocery shopping and driving around the area, I didn’t do much today. Walking around the campground I noticed that a couple of sites in the long term area are now open. I suspect they may actually be rented to people that are taking a few day side trip. The long term area has electric meters and the shorter term area doesn’t. My one month stay is considered short term, but two would be long term. The short term sites were all full for the weekend, but a couple of those are open now as well.

Pelicans on the boat lift.

I continue to check the river during my walks for interesting wildlife. Today all that was visible were a couple of Pelicans that like to hang out on one of the boat lifts. All of the pilings are capped with cones to prevent them from roosting so they hang out on the aluminum boat lift. I suspect it needs to be washed down regularly. I wonder if these are snowbirds or natives?