After three weeks of having the Springerville RV Park nearly to ourselves, things picked up over the holiday weekend. There were only eight to 15 sites occupied until last Thursday when the weekenders starting coming in. By Saturday the park was 70% full with only 15 or so sites open.

Of course, the Memorial Day holiday was the big draw. Donna and I usually attend some type of memorial service on this day, but we haven’t found anything in the area this year. I’ve noticed a number of people confuse the various military holidays. There are three that come to mind:

Armed Forces Day – this day occurs on the third Saturday in May and honors those men and women in uniform currently serving our country.

Veterans Day – this day falls on November 11th and honors those that served our country but have hung up their uniforms.

Memorial Day – this occurs on the last Monday in May and honors those that gave all in service of their country and can no longer put on a uniform.

It seemed like most of the people that came in to Springerville RV Park for the long weekend were ATV enthusiasts and were acquainted with each other. In Arizona, many ATVs can be licensed and driven on the street. The people here in the park would leave in the morning in groups of four to six vehicles and head east or west on US60 presumably to offroad trails. There are many designated trails in the area.

It looks like fun to me, but Donna has no interest in offroad adventures.

Last Wednesday, I ordered a pizza for takeout from Goobs Pizza in Eagar. I drove over to pick it up and saw a road closure on Main Street at Airport Road. Luckily, I could access the shopping center parking lot from Airport Road where the pizza place was. When I picked up the pizza, they told me the road closure was due to the high school graduation.

Since they couldn’t hold an indoor graduation ceremony, what they did was organize a graduation parade. The graduating seniors drove cars, trucks or rode on trailer floats through Eagar and Springerville. I was wondering why so many people seemed to be loitering on the sidewalks when I came through town. I was held up leaving the shopping center for 10 or 15 minutes – you gotta love small town America! Later that night, while we were watching Netflix, there was a short, but very nice fireworks display that we could see from our living room window, presumably to celebrate the graduates.

On Saturday, Donna and I took a long drive in Midget-San. We headed west on US60 back to Show Low. We wanted to check out the farmers’ market there. The terrain along this route can be described as temperate grassland. I was initially surprised when Donna spotted pronghorn antelope on the north side of the highway. Looking around, I shouldn’t have been surprised, it was definitely antelope habitat. We saw several more along the way.

With restrictions easing, it seems like many people are dismissing the Wuhan coronavirus. Everyone has to make their own decision on the level of risk they expose themselves to. I was disappointed to see how many people at the farmers’ market didn’t practice social distancing and how few wore masks – especially among the vendors. Wearing a mask serves two purposes, not the least is protecting others around you. If I were to cough or sneeze while wearing a mask, I’m not sending a cloud of potentially infectious droplets into the air. So, when we are in close proximity to others, Donna and I wear masks.

I always thought Show Low was a strange name for a town, but didn’t give it much thought. Where the farmers’ market is held, there was a statue and placard describing the origin of the name.

Next to the farmers’ market was the Show Low Trump store. They had a Trump rally with free hot dogs, live music and the 2020 Trump bus was scheduled to arrive around noon. They had quite a crowd and lots of people shopping in the store for shirts, hats, bumper stickers and whatnot.

We drove back to Springerville via AZ260. On the way out of town, on White Mountain Road, we stopped at Harbor Freight. I learned that the jack stands I use when working on the Midget are being recalled by Harbor Freight because they can fail and drop without warning! This would be disastrous if it happened while I was underneath the car – there’s not enough clearance. The jack stands involved are the six-ton and three-ton models with part numbers 61196, 61197 and 56371.

I read some information on the recall and the Chinese manufacturer claimed the failure is due to “worn tooling” creating parts out of tolerance. Sounds like a reasonable explanation – until I saw the jack stands being recalled were manufactured between 2013 and 2019. So, we are to believe “worn tooling” was used for six years! I’m done with Chinese products.

The drive back on AZ260 was pleasant and very scenic. We drove through pine forests through the White Mountains. It was intially on tribal lands, then through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest on to the familiar route down from Greer. The elevation topped out at 8,550 feet above sea level. The entire loop to Show Low and back was about 100 miles.

The temperature over the past five days have been very comfortable with daily highs around 70-72 degrees. The afternoons are generally breezy – downright windy at times. The overnight lows have been in the lower 40s and even dipped into the 30s a couple of times. A warming trend is forecast for the rest of the week. We plan to pull out on Saturday and head up to Cortez, Colorado next.

*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!