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The adventure

We’re back in Mesa. Tomorrow, we turn over the motorhome for repairs. We have to move out of it for a week. What to do with ourselves in the meantime? We’ve decided to rent a motorhome and go on a trip! We called Cruise America and rented a 30 foot Class C. We’re off to explore Arizona.
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Organ pipe

All the usual suspects (quail, curve-bill thrasher, cactus wrens) swarming the campsite. A couple tiny verdin flit about the bushes. A small flock of house finches. A cardinal outside the window. A raven croaks past. A shiny black phainopepla. Mourning doves fly on whistling wings. A gila woodpecker peers down off the top of the nearest saguaro. A rock wren, a black-tailed gnatcatcher, a yellow-rumped warbler, and finally, a single canyon towhee. There are not a large number of different kinds of birds here, but there are birds everywhere.
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The incident

Annie seems to have recovered from the great “cinnamon roll” incident. Three weeks ago, in a weak moment as we were checking in to Dakota Ridge, I bought a giant cinnamon roll to eat in the afternoon. I took a few bites, then went outside to hook up the coach utilities. Next time I came back inside, there was no cinnamon roll to be found. There was a dog, and some crumbs on the floor, but nothing more. I immediately suspected the worst, and my suspicions were confirmed when Annie started barfing up cinnamon roll. Her stomach was a mess for days.At first, I thought she was a bad dog for eating my guilty pleasure: a cinnamon roll the size of a small dog. But the more she barfed, the more my understanding evolved. She isn’t a bad dog! She is a hero! She saw what was going to happen to me. She fell on the pastry grenade, and absorbed the explosion; aftershocks to be felt for a week. She protected me from myself.Thanks Annie. My hero.