Home alone in the RV

One day they went for a drive and went back to Lake Bonito where they had been in July '09. This is the Lake with fishermen/women/kids just thick on the shore. Looked like everyone in several states came to fish that day!

The lake is dammed from small rivers and it is very pretty along it with lots of yellow flowers and driftwood. The picnic grounds were full as well as the campgrounds but think it was all tents. Not a good place for us cats to camp!

Did you ever see Pistachios growing on a tree? They stopped at one of Dad's favorite places but it was 101 degrees so they didn't do the tour. We were glad to be home in the air conditioning and not with them.

Eagle Ranch is a must stop according to Dad. He needed to get a small bag of "Heart of the Desert" Pistachios to take home with him. Eagle Ranch is on the east side of Alamagordo, NM.

This is a view of White Sands National Monument looking west on highway 70 going toward Alamagordo, NM. They said they decided to not go walk about on the sand this year since it was way hot not even out on that white sand. So instead they went to see the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" in a nice new air conditioned multiplex theater on the east side of Alamagordo. Their moto is "when on vacation, do whatever you want"!

PS. We are back home safe & sound--Maggie & Mollie are such great travelers and didn't even want to get out when we arrived home late yesterday afternoon! We had trouble with the Matrix RV internet service as well as all the thunder storms, so Maggie wasn't able to finish the blog before we left. They haven't missed a beat since getting back in the house & are sleeping in the sunporch as I finish this. We 4 had a great vacation!

What they do when they leave us home alone in the RV

Every morning they went for a walk around the campground. They brought along harnesses and leashes for us, but they never took us for a walk with them! Of course, Mollie would have been scared and she only walks backwards when she has the harness on, but I like dogs and I would have liked to go along. When they came home they always smelled of dogs because they stopped to talk and pet friendly dogs--seemed like everyone had a dog! This is the first giant Schnauzer we had ever seen anywhere, it was as big as a boxer!

We had nice trees and a lot of birds, but they told us that we would see deer like they did last summer and we didn't see even one by our RV. They got in that little "NM orange" car every day and went somewhere. We stayed home and watched the birds, napped, ate and all that kind of stuff.

Mom loves hollyhocks because she says they always had them when she was growing up in Iowa. They have them all over NM and these were at Laughing Sheep Farm which is 1 mile west of Lincoln, NM. It is a big farm with a gourmet restaurant that serves all fresh food grown on the farm or locally including grass fed meat. It made them remember growing up in rural places with gardens, fruit trees and their own chickens & eggs. They told us they had salads of all kinds of "greens" and a quail, rice & fresh veggies soup for lunch at the farm.

Boy, Mollie and I would have liked to chase these chickens that were out walking around the farm yard! There were geese, too, but they can get mean I hear.

And here's Dad standing by the farm pond. It started to lightening and thunder so they headed to the car before it poured down rain. It pretty much rained some every day and there were some really big thunder storms.

Little Creek RV park, Alto, NM

I'm Maggie, Mollie's adopted sister. I was someone's pet but got lost and have lived with the McGinnis' about 3 years now. This is our first trip to the mountains in NM and Mom is letting me help with the blog. She doesn't even mind my putting my head on her hand, says it helps her know what I want to say on the blog!

Last trip I kept trying to get on top of the privacy screen that covers the cab but since it was just cloth, I couldn't sleep up there. So my neat dad made a plywood piece just the right shape to go under the curtain and now I can sleep up by the tv any time I want to!

One of our 3 feeders is on the window over the couch and I just love to lie here and watch the hummers eat!

Mollie loves to sit up on the back of the couch, too. Sometimes we just have to sit and watch for the next birds to come and eat.

But we do also do our regular things like I'm having a snack while Mollie takes a nap. She's older than I am so she needs to nap a lot!

Sights of our trip to NM

We have all watched the hummingbirds for hours. We have several kinds, this is a female broadtail.

Another broadtail hummer sitting on top of the feeder pole.

This is a picture of one of the hummers hovering over the feeder as she eats.

One of our feeders is hanging from the awning just outside our dining table and we can watch them as they come and go to eat. Sometimes there are several at a time but they move so quickly we don't seem to be able to get a good picture!

Sometimes I just bask in the sun by the feeder and just wait for more birds to fly in to eat. This is a wonderful spot to hang out!

Here we are camping at Lake Fryer

We had a really good view of Lake Fryer which is in a small canyon. There were lots of fish and we wished Declan, Marni, Tim and the other fishermen in our family could come and camp with us! Maggie would go and look out the door, but was good and got back whenever they opened the door. We would have liked to go out but there were too many dogs and some barked all the time! That made me pretty nervous.

You can see some of the campers across the lake from us. It looks really pretty and calm but an hour later, we had quite a thunder storm! My family was proud of me because I stayed pretty calm even when it thundered from about 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sat. Sometimes all 4 of us sat on the couch together just to be sure we were safe! I have been afraid of thunder since I was a little kitten but it doesn't bother Maggie much.

We did keep a good watch on those dogs! Sometimes we needed to check on all the kids running around, too. And there were lots of birds, too. We can't wait until we go to Ruidosa, NM in 2 weeks and get to see all the hummingbirds and maybe deer! We know we get to go along because we were such good campers this time!

This was my favorite place to rest after all the other spaces I tried. I am in front of Maggie's bed but this was a nice cool place and very quiet. No one bothered me here. I'm sure they'll let me sleep there again on our next camping trip.

And my silly sister, Maggie, liked to sleep up on the dash! She couldn't even see out because they had those sunscreens up. I think she just likes to show off. She would probably even ride up there--Like Dee & Bob's Little Kitty did on their trip to Alaska--but our folks made us ride home in the shower again. They did let us out when they stopped to eat lunch in a picnic area but there were 3 noisy trains and I didn't like that at all! There were too many mosquito's to get out & eat outside, but Maggie almost got out an open window! That got everyone excited. This trip was lots of fun and we can't wait to go camping again!

Their first camping trip

Here I am, Mollie McGinnis and I will be 12 years old Oct 1 and it is my first camping trip! You can see my family thought they should cover the couch with a pretty sheet so I would shed on something that could be washed. And right close at hand is my basket of treats, toys & cat food. I traveled with my 'sis, Maggie, in the shower with our potty between our 2 beds and with the shower door locked so we couldn't get out to look out the window!

But believe me, once we were parked we took our places looking out! Maggie is quite intent on watching birds.

We lounged a lot as we were tired from the 2 hr trip north to Wolf Creek Park on Lake Fryer just south of Perryton, TX. We did get a lot of praise as we didn't make a peep in all of that long ride!

And our family did provide us with our own room as we are accustomed to having at home. This is just a glimpse, but you can just see me in my bed on the passenger side of the cab of the RV and Millie's bed is on the driver's seat. There was a great space for our new Breeze potty system--Aunt Marni told Mom to get it. Has a drawer in the bottom that they put in something that looks like a Pamper & they just take that out & put in a new one when it gets wet! The other stuff goes in those pellets on top--no fuss, no muss, no smell. We were quite happy that we are curtained off from their part of the RV and have our own privacy--we just slip under the curtain. I was very good and slept in my bed at night, however, Millie got up and played a lot which got her in trouble sometimes!

And when we got bored with our own beds, we just slept on theirs! You see there is even a little tent for a camping theme on our throw for napping on when we need a change of space.