Rain changes everything in the desert.

It looks different, it smells different, and it certainly feels different when the water from the Pacific bumps into the mountains in Arizona and enlivens the countryside.  Yesterday we pulled into our new soggy campsite.  With moisture falling from the sky leveling perfectly was not an option, so here we sit on a bit of an angle doing our morning update.  Today as we are confined to our 400 sq feet we can reminisce the dinner we had in an 8,000 square foot mansion last week.  Most of the bathrooms had more space than our RV.

On the upside our living room has three or four hundred square miles of streams, wildlife, and soon hopefully blooming flowers.  Fog is obstructing the mountain tops and the rain pouring down up there will make some great water falls.  There are several canyons around here that will be gushing with water and it might be worthwhile to make the six mile hike to see them.  The desert is very clever about storing water, and this refill will slowly soak in for months.  We sit on what was once the largest man made lake in the United States.  The lake we sail on in the summer is now the third largest man made lake.  Our home lake in North Dakota is so much bigger than Lake Roosevelt.  Lake Sakakawea has points where water stretches to the horizon and you feel like you are on the ocean.  Lake Roosevelt is about the size of the portion of Lake Sakakawea that is backed up in the Little Missouri.  Lake Sakakawea covers 307,000 acres, and Lake Roosevelt covers 21,493 acres.  That makes our home sailing lake about 15 times larger.  However, Lake Roosevelt has about 15 times more recreational facilities than Lake Sakakawea.