It was time to move on. We need to start working our way homeward.
The unlikely green carpet of the desert has dried to crackling brown, although the bushes and shrubs are still doing well.
Our shoes, once painted mustard yellow with pollen from wading through that greenery,...
...are clean again. We've done our share of spreading the pollen about on the desert floor.
Despite my whinging about the heat, we'll miss the quiet of the wash nearby, with its bird song and occasional leaf-rustling breezes. We've had the privilege of seeing a full-blown desert superbloom. The blossoms we had celebrated are fading, but some new blooms are starting that we'll be sorry to miss. Honey mesquite, hitherto unnoticed, caught our attention with the sweet perfume of its new blossoms. Maybe it's velvet mesquite. Anyway, it's almost citrus-sweet, and I never knew that smell before this year.
We cooked over the campfire one last night for this location, and divided our time between watching the stars and watching the fire as it burned down. I think we saw more than a dozen satellites, as well as the ISS, in under an hour.
Then it was a simple dinner. I gave a nod to the alliteration (for "extra points") in the Challenge: cook your way through your freezer topic, and came up with Bacon, Brats, Brussels Sprouts and Spuds. (The bacon was seasoning the sprouts and spuds, but needed to be listed first for the alliterative connection.)
While I was at it I blistered and softened 3 eggplants over the fire. The next day I peeled them and stowed the flesh in a little lemon juice. They're quite soft. Half has already gone into baba ghanoug thanks to some tahina sauce I'd made the other day; the other half will probably go into an Egyptian salad, but I haven't made up my mind yet. Sultan's Delight is also a lovely thing, but it's more work and more calories.
The peeled and softened stuff may not look like much, but it's silky and good, just waiting for other ingredients to make it downright delicious. This is a wonderful way to use excess cooking heat.
We've moved on eastward, to a commercial campground outside Tucson. We've traded the quiet and birdsong of the wash for the noise of a freeway; satellite and star watching for neighbors' party lights. It's a bit of a reentry shock. Still, we had a good view last night of the barest sliver of a new moon:
and, when we were ready to come inside, a dinner of breaded and oven-roasted pork steak with tomato/cucumber salad.
...and Yippee! We have 110v power without starting the generator!
