It was in the low 50s when we got up the this morning, clear and with the sun rising from the mountains in the east. David and Norm, our volunteer neighbors, were heading off as we made coffee. They must start at around 7 am.
After breakfast we wandered over to the community trailer to see what the condition of the bathroom was. It was pretty bad, as was the rest of the trailer. It had obviously not been used in a while and needed a thorough cleaning. It also smelled bad inside. I noticed this yesterday and had left virtually all the windows open overnight, but it didn't seem to help much.
Our first, unassigned, volunteer task was to clean up. Ellen tackled the bathroom and I the kitchen. Fortunately, there were lots of cleaning supplies in the various cabinets. By noon we had cleaned the bathroom, all the appliances, washed all the surfaces and vacuumed and washed the floors. We were beat and we were done.
As I was cleaning the refrigerator, I found the source of the bad odor. There was the head of a dead mouse poking out from underneath. I pulled the refrigerator away from the wall and disposed of the putrefying rodent. Ellen and I then thoroughly cleaned both the floor and the underside of the refrigerator. It started to smell much better in the trailer. It is about three hours later and it looks like it isn't ever going to be a sweet smelling building, but it is no longer intolerable.
After lunch, we finally got to take showers in our newly clean bathroom.
When I came over in the morning, I brought along my MacBook and new iPad. Both had upgrades pending. They just sat on a table churning away all morning. The Mac is up-to-date, but the iPad is still downloading data that was not part of the backup. It will probably do so into the evening with the massive 2 megabit/second connection we have here.
The Sonoran Outpost, the compound for volunteers and visiting researchers, is not very big. It is set up sort like an RV park with all the sites in two parallel rows. There are six trailers, including the community trailer, and seven RV sites with full hookups. Two of the RV sites have large permanent sunshade structures under which a large fifth-wheel trailer will fit. (They were both taken when we arrived, but are so tall that Speedy would have still been in the sun.) There are also a couple of outbuildings and several large propane tanks, probably for heat and hot water in the trailers.
This is all surrounded by the tall, razor-wire topped fence, with a motorized locked gate. We seem to have been locked in for the day as I cannot figure out how to leave without a vehicle. The gate opens with a keypad from the outside and seems to open when a vehicle passes over a buried sensor on the inside. I can find no button or switch that will open it to pass through without a vehicle. There is a pedestrian gate, but it is locked with a padlock.
We are not literally locked-in, as we could just disconnect Speedy and drive out, but this puts a crimp in our intended mode of on-refuge travel, by foot and bicycle. The visitor center and offices are about a mile away, which seemed like a distance that did not require a car. All will be revealed when we meet Daniel, the volunteer coordinator... I hope. A key to the pedestrian gate would be acceptable, maybe a permanent refuge truck might be even better but it would do nothing for our fitness.
It is about 3:30 pm and Ellen is in air-conditioned Speedy working on her computer, while I'm in the un-air-conditioned community trailer (but I have a better connection). I'm also waiting for our first laundry to finish drying and the iPad is up to Montana as it downloads the Sygic application maps in alphabetical order. So, I'll stop for now and finish this up a bit later, maybe we will have met Daniel by then.
Nope. Daniel didn't stop by today. We will stop at the offices tomorrow morning in Speedy. If there is nothing else going on, we'll probably go back to Tucson to get a few things we need. One is a Wi-Fi repeater with an external antenna. For some reason, the Wi-Fi is really poor inside of Speedy, but just fine when sitting at the picnic table next to the van. Go figure!
Ellen put together some photos.
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