Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. For some reason that I can’t explain, Americans tend to make a big deal out of it and declare it a party day. Donna and I always have good reason to celebrate Cinco de Mayo – 14 years ago I married Donna on the fifth day of May. Our 14th anniversary means we’ve spent more than half of our marriage on the road!

We started off Cinco de Mayo with a great breakfast dish – fried egg tacos with chili jam. The chili jam is a sweet and spicy condiment Donna made that was very tasty. The fried egg is served over a warm tortilla coated with Greek yogurt.

In the early afternoon, I loaded our Sea Eagle 370 two-seat inflatable kayak in Midget-San. Yes, you can fit a two-seat kayak in a Midget if you pack carefully.

The only issue was the oars. Even broken down into two sections, they were too long to fit in the trunk – I mean boot.

We drove out on AZ260 into the Apache National Forest up to the village of Greer. Greer is a little tourist village with mostly rental or vacation cabins. It’s a well-kept area where most of the buildings are log cabins with colorful metal roofs. The attraction to the area is fishing, hiking and Sunrise Park ski resort.

We went there to check out the Greer Lakes. Greer Lakes are a series of reservoirs, Bunch, Tunnel and River, fed by the Little Colorado River. The Little Colorado originates in this area and is a tributary of the Colorado River. It flows 340 miles from the White Mountains to the Grand Canyon near Desert View where it joins the Colorado River.

Going southbound into the village, we missed the turnoff for the reservoirs. There wasn’t good signage and we couldn’t see the water from that direction. After driving through the village, we realized we must have missed the turn and backtracked. Northbound on the highway, we saw one of the reservoirs and drove into the recreation area.

We found boat ramps at all three of the reservoirs, but decided not to unload the kayak since it was windy, and because the reservoirs were fairly small and the shoreline mostly uninteresting.

After looking around we headed back to Springerville RV Park. This RV park is fairly small with 50 sites, 14 of them are long pull-throughs. I don’t think there have been more than a dozen sites occupied in the time we’ve spent here. It seems like most people are only here for a night or two.

After we returned from Greer, I met one of our neighbors. He and his wife are from Texas and spend several months each year traveling in their Foretravel IH45 motorhome. Foretravel motorhomes are very high-end. I have to admit to a little coach envy looking at his 45-foot coach. He said he bought it three years ago to replace another Foretravel he had. After they bought it, they drove from Texas to Alaska and back. He put over 40,000 miles on it in three years in part-time traveling! It took us nearly six years of full-time traveling to hit 40,000 miles in our Alpine Coach.

If you closely at the photos, you can see the radiused corners of the sildes instead of the usual square corners. This is because the coach is equipped with pneumatic seals on the slides. Once the slides are put out, the seal inflates and provides an airtight fit. When you retract the slides, the seals deflate and the slides are pulled in. Nice!

We usually dine out on our anniversary, but no restaurants were open for dining in, only take out. We called in an order for takeout at Booga Red’s – a restaurant in Springerville. Donna had a two-chicken and cheese enchilada with verde sauce plate with whole beans and rice. I had a combination plate with one chicken enchilada with verde sauce and one shredded beef enchilada with red sauce, refried beans and rice. It was good and I wouldn’t hesitate to eat there again. They included a large bag of tortilla chips and salsa with the order.

This morning, I took the car cover off Midget-San and put the paddles behind the seats again. (We left the boot packed upon our return from Greer yesterday.) We headed out on US191 toward Nutrioso and parked at Nelson Reservoir on the west side of the highway. It was a bit breezy, but we set up the kayak and gave it a go.

We hugged the west shoreline to avoid the stronger wind coming from the south on the open water. We paddled south for about 25 minutes.

Nelson Reservoir is about a mile long – we didn’t paddle the full length. Going into the wind was a little tough, but we thought we would have an easy cruise back to the boat ramp. It wasn’t that easy. It took just as much work to get back. The wind kept pushing us off course and we had to make corrections every minute or two. But it was fun and good exercise.

The weather is unusually hot here – we should see a high of 84 today. But that’s better than the 102 degrees forecast for Mesa, Arizona where we were five days ago. The forecast here calls for more normal highs in the low to mid-70s by the weekend. Most days have been windy with sudden gusts. The 10-day forecast calls for winds over 15mph each day.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!