We stayed busy yesterday. After I posted to the blog, Donna went for a challenging bike ride. Every bike ride from here is challenging. It’s an incline leaving our site and then from the Bush Highway you climb Kong Hill up Power Road or you climb over Usery Pass where the summit is 2,115 feet. Yesterday, Donna chose to go up Kong and made a 26-mile loop.

I showered and gathered up our laundry. When we’re dry camped, we don’t use our washing machine. It  uses too much water. As I was getting ready to leave, I was pleasantly surprised to see Mark and Emily Fagan park their truck alongside our rig. Mark and Emily are full-timers that blog at http://roadslesstraveled.us/. We met them in San Diego after Donna connected with Emily online. We hope they join us here at the Phon D Sutton Recreation Area with their fifth wheel trailer. We had a short visit and I gave them the grand tour of our new home.

I split the laundry load between a backpack and a cloth tote bag that I hung between my knees on the scooter. I rode to the Laundromat at the corner of Power Road and Main Street, about 11 miles from here. What was I thinking? It’s Sunday and the Laundromat was busy! Sometimes I forget what day of the week it is. It was a good thing the the Fluff N Clean Laundromat has lots of machines.

View from Kong Hill – look for the river

By the time I came back from the Laundromat, Donna had completed her bike ride and showered. She told me we would have more visitors. Her friend, Dara and her husband Ron Schulenberg, paid us a visit. Donna and Dara used to bike together when we lived here. After we visited for a while, Donna, Dara and Ron went for a hike along the river. I didn’t join them because I had one more chore on my agenda. Our scooter has been a dusty mess since we were in Quartzsite. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I rode to a self-serve car wash and power-washed the scooter. They had a soft water rinse to avoid water spots and the scooter looks good again.

Ron and Dara by the Salt River

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but last Friday, on the way back from Apache Junction, we made a stop in our old neighborhood. We visited our old neighbor and friend, Lana Jansen. Lana is letting us use her address to receive our mail and some items we ordered while we were in Quartzsite. She had our new induction cooktop already.

Cast iron skillet on the induction cooktop

Last night, Donna tried out the induction cooktop for the first time. She put some oil in her Lodge* cast iron skillet, placed it on the cooktop and set the heat to medium (five on a scale of 10). She was preparing crab cakes. A couple of minutes later, the pan began smoking as the oil was getting too hot! There will be a learning curve with induction cooking – but the crab cakes came out fine.

Crab cake with sweet potato and green beans

Today, I want to scratch a couple more items off of my “to do” list and hike up a trail Donna told me about.

*Just so you know, if you decide to purchase one of these through the Amazon link in this post, I’ll earn a small commission. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!