Kofa Wildlife Refuge

The Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in western Arizona is huge at 547,719 acres. We started out touring the southern section of the refuge by running the Big Eye and McPherson Pass trails. Both are very scenic, particularly, in the mountain areas. However, the trails are rough and you have to drive fairly long distances to get where you want to go.

If you are ever in the area, I would recommend visiting the Castle Dome Mine Museum to see what an old mining town looked like in its heyday...

Update (2/28/2024): Unfortunately, I woke up this morning feeling nauseous and unable to eat breakfast, so I am going to head home early. Hopefully, it is nothing serious but I do not want to be out in the middle of nowhere if it gets worse.

Update (2/29/2024): I am feeling better and beginning to get my appetite back. A friend suggested I might have had a bit of the stomach flu that apparently is going around.

Road Trip

Ken Darby has joined me for a road trip to explore the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge located on the western side of Arizona between Yuma and Quartzsite. On the way down to Yuma, we stopped at the Dwarf Car Museum south of Maricopa where Ken almost bought a convertible...

Dodged A Bullet

My Polaris RZR developed an intermittent noise while returning from a recent ride. My neighbor, who owned a Polaris dealership, thought I might have a bearing going bad in the transmission, so I took it to the local RideNow for service. The first thing they told me was if they had to replace the transmission, it would be $3,200!

Saturday, I got call from the service manager saying "you are not going to believe what the problem was". It turned out that the left rear wheel was about to come off. It was missing one lug nut and the other three were just hand-tightened. The threads were not damaged, so all they had to do was button it back up and I was ready to go. Instead of $3,200, I was able to get out of there for $80 (they charge $165/hour for labor).

OHV Crash

The only thing I know that travels faster than the speed of light is a rumor in a RV park, so when one of our residents rolled his side by side today, it was not long before everyone in the park knew about it. Fortunately, the driver was not seriously hurt (which speaks well for the safety of these machines), but I suspect he will have some aches and pains tomorrow. 

Note cholla cactus in the windshield and tires
(click on image to enlarge)

Live Streaming Video

I have been playing around with ways to live stream video from my smartphone to the Internet. Most of the apps I tested were a little too complicated, particularly, for those who are not tech savvy. The VDO.Ninja site solves that problem by making the process incredibly simple without having to download any software. Just go to https://vdo.ninja/, click on "Add your Camera to OBS" where it will automatically recognize your phone's camera and then all you have to do is hit "START". It will create a URL that when entered into a browser, will show your live video. That URL can be sent to others who can view that same video via the Internet. Here's a YouTube video that will give you more detail...

Foreign Aid

In my opinion, our government should not be borrowing money to give to foreign countries (including China and Russia) when we have a $34+ trillion dollar national debt. The interest alone will be our government's second largest expense in 2024. Sadly, there appears to be no accounting for where the money goes; I suspect a lot of it winds up in the hands of corrupt officials. It's like we have become the "sugar daddy" for the rest of the world.

Click on image for more information

What triggered this post was former President Donald Trump saying that "all foreign aid should be issued as loans from this point forward, rather than giveaways". What a great common sense approach to reducing our debt! Unfortunately, because the idea came from Trump, the current administration will never consider it.

Liberal Nightmare

Ohio enacts constitutional carry law and crime decreases...

Unique Junkyard

There is an interesting junkyard in Casa Grande that has a lot of very old cars and trucks...

Sadly, I can remember when most of these vehicles were new