Bring A Dessert ...

Today was really a day off, just a day at the good old Sonoran Outpost.

It was mostly time to catch up on processing photos and finishing up Speedy Journal posts. The only interaction with the refuge was to ride to the visitor center and get the "pinger" for our hydrology measurements and the keys to a truck for tomorrow. We will be going over to Arivaca Cienega tomorrow morning to do the weekly well and gauge sampling, before going off to Thanksgiving dinner in Brown Canyon.

Also a new Speedy ("it's always something") issue has been found. There are actually two, but I just discovered the latest. We have been hearing a loud squeak when going over bumps after driving a while. It seems that some bushing must be expanding as it heats up and starts to squeak. After we got back yesterday, I crawled under Speedy to try to find it. I think it is where one of the inner tie rods attaches to the center link. The right side connection definitely felt warmer than the left. But that wasn't the new problem.

As I was looking up at the steering linkage, I noticed that the left idler arm was covered in oil as was the steering box and the hoses to and from the power steering pump. We just had the steering box replaced (as faithful readers of the Speedy Blog know well). This morning I tried to find the source of the leak and it seems to be a steering fluid cooler mounted next to radiator just behind the grille. The steering fluid is a bit low but not critically. Time it find a Dodge dealer.

The other project I started today was to try to get the hydrology data into a more consistent form. The measurement project started only last year and last year's data is a bit spotty, without dates of collection, just week of the month. Unfortunately, the spreadsheet only shows 48 weeks for last year. I'd like to do some year-to-year comparisons but need to find the missing data, if it exists.

While I was working on this, Ellen was working on dessert. We are going to dinner tomorrow at the home of one of the refuge staff up in Brown Canyon. Ellen asked what she might bring ... the answer was, as it usually is, dessert and these folks don't even know Ellen.

We have a kitchen available in the community trailer with a fairly clean working oven, so she was game to give it a try.

Happy thanksgiving to all our family and friends!

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