Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Well, here it is, nearly a week since I posted something.  We have arrived at our park, and now we only have 18 hours in our day!  It certainly seems that way! 

                                             This is our clubhouse, as we drive into the park. 

And this is our spot for the next four months.  There is a house on each side of us, but we still have a very large space.  We did get our motor home washed, so now we can put our rug out, and set up our chairs, so it looks like we will be staying a while.  I have started my quilting lessons on Monday and will go again on Thursday's, we started our geo-cache group caching on Tuesday's and our group hike on Wednesday's. 

This is our hiking group today.  I chose this picture, because Jim's sister, Barb has a friend visiting and she did 'somewhat' follow our blog, as we traveled this fall.  We took her geo-caching yesterday and she's hooked, so that was fun! Mary is on the far right, and the rest of us have hiked together since we've been coming to AZ.  We did 6.5 miles with 614 feet elevation today.  They will get progressively harder and longer. 

After we finished our hike, we drove a short distance to the Salt River, where we sometimes see the wild horses that roam out here.  This lone stallion was just standing in the water and didn't seemed to  be bothered by anyone.  We left him, and drove back toward our park, and we spotted another small herd, a short distance off the road.

This small group of horses has a young foal, and this is the best shot I could get.  We usually don't see them this little at this time of the year.  February and March are the most prevalent times to see young foals.  This is a winter past-time to take our chairs and sit by the Salt River and watch the horses. 

This photo is taken from our motor home, looking west at the sunset!  We will end our blog at this time, and we hope you have enjoyed coming along with us.  We've had a wonderful trip, and now it's time to settle in and catch up with the many people we have met in The Valley.

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Can you tell that we are winding down?  We just haven't done the things in Tucson, that we usually do, and the weather is mostly to blame.  When we can't see the mountains really well, we don't go out!  We did buy masks today to wear when it gets so bad.  They haven't had any rain in this area since August, so that is part of the problem.  We had a beautiful sunrise this morning and I'll post that picture. 

How do you tell it's a sunrise and not a sunset?  It came up in the east! Beautiful.

There isn't much happening at the fairgrounds this week, so the Sheriff's Department, Search and Rescue, had a drill.  It was quite fascinating to watch.

        This is a full shot of the men on the ground, one coming back down, and the helicopter.

We took our bikes to one of the paved trails in Tucson today, and did some caching.  This was another labyrinth that we saw, where a cache was hidden.  The bike path was very nice, and it had many bikers on it.  We started at the top of the hill, so it was fun going down, but a bit harder to get back up.  I was surprised I made it without stopping (or having to push my bike).

This is the bike path we did today.  Tucson has many paved trails and this one took us into the northeast part of the city.  We saw ranches with horses, cattle, and chickens all along the one section.  Tucson is planning ahead to put the trails in before too much development transpires.  It was overcast and not windy today, so a beautiful day to bike.  We found 20 caches. Tomorrow we leave for Apache Junction, and it will be good to get in and settled.  We have a lot scheduled for our first week, so it will be busy!  We like to get our coach washed right away, so we can get our stuff out of the 'basement', and make it look like we're staying a while.   We have a guy coming Monday to do that.  I start my quilting on Monday morning, and I'm teaching a class again, this year.  Jim will get the dish set up tomorrow, so we are ready for the big game on Saturday with Ohio State.  The men's basketball and football play OS Saturday, so it will be a full day!  We do think the Badgers are up to the task (football) and they own their own destiny.  GO BADGERS!  I'll probably post one more time, and that will be the end of the blog. We hope you have enjoyed coming along on our trip.  It was a very fun and enriching time, with us seeing and doing a lot of different things.  Most of all, we have fresh fish to eat this winter.  Thanks to Glenn!  We are forever indebted.  It seems ages ago, that we were bobbing around in a boat on the Missouri River!  It was relaxing and very fun!  Now we need to contact our two daughters, who live in VA and NJ.  I just heard on the news that an earthquake just happened this afternoon.  It's a 4.2, so hopefully, no damage.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

I've been lax on writing in our blog, but life has been a bit quiet for us lately.  We had a big sports weekend, some good and some not so good, but we haven't minded staying inside.  It's either been windy, with the dust blowing around, or yesterday it was 92 degrees, and the weather person said Tucson was the hottest spot in the nation.  Why are we here?  The high temps are to break tomorrow, so we will be biking and geo-caching on the many trails they have in the city.  It has given me time to get a good share of our Christmas cards and letters written, as we will get busy once we get into Apache Junction.  The news yesterday was interesting, in the fact that, due to the warmer than usual weather they are having in Phoenix, there are more calls to remove rattlesnakes.  They usually have one call a week, but they have been having 3 and 4 calls a day.  People store their Christmas decorations in their garages, and snakes crawl in there to stay cool.  It is quite a surprise to see a diamondback rattler,. when they start unpacking!  We have done a lot of hiking or caching in the desert, and we are surprised that we haven't come upon one. So, that's our news to date. 

Saturday, November 25, 2017

It looks like I haven't posted since Wednesday.  Can you tell we are winding down?  We have a short week left in Tucson, and will arrive in our park Dec. 1.  In the meantime, we had a nice Thanksgiving Dinner, plenty of leftovers to tide us over through today, so it freed us up yesterday to do some geo-caching.  We found a frontage road close to us, and it went nowhere!  Someone put some nice camo bison tubes out there, and most were easy to find, but a couple of them took us a while.  They were hidden in picky AZ trees, and we found out that we bleed RED!  A couple of them were hard to find.  Now we know why the geo-cachers back in WI have a hard time finding this same type 'in a pine tree'!  Nasty!  We were able to ride our bikes and geo-cache, so that was wonderful!  There were no vehicles on this dead-end road, so it was most enjoyable.  We found all 17 placed on that series, and we are now over 5100 caches found to date.  We have plenty of others loaded for this coming week, and we will save them for when the temps drop on Tuesday!  I heard on the weather news this morning, that Tucson hasn't had such high heat temps since the 1930's.  There is no rain in sight, either.

Ooops, my Thanksgiving Dinner is sideways, but you can see that we enjoyed a feast like the rest of you! 
I also just finished my 5th baby blanket on this trip.  I'm knitting them 'for future use, to give to great grandchildren, if that ever happens'.  I loved the last one I did, as it has hearts knitted in it, and it was so fun to make.  I'll do that pattern again, in pink and probably green.  No rush!  Today we will watch Michigan and Ohio State, and then this afternoon, the Badgers play Minnesota.  We hope they can keep it going, and they can't think beyond this game!  We watched the Wisconsin Badger basketball game last night with Milwaukee, and they have improved immensely since their last game.  They are so young, but they will get there!  I probably won't post anything until we do something, which might be Monday.  Have a great weekend!  For us, it's football and staying cool! 

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Well, here it is Wednesday night already!  We did move from Willcox on Tuesday, got settled in at the Pima Co. Fairgrounds, and hurried off to stock up on groceries before the big rush!  We usually spend Thanksgiving in Tucson with other RV friends, but with everyone going in different directions, we are alone this year.  We don't mind.  We will still have chicken and dressing (a turkey is too big for two people!), potatoes, cranberry salad, veggie and pumpkin pie.  See, we keep up the traditions of the holiday weekend! We'll also have leftovers, so when we are out and about, we'll have an easy warm up meal when we get back.  The winds blew this morning, and it made it very dusty outside, so it's a good thing I was confined to the house with my cooking. 
We take this time to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.  I'm going to end with our sunset last night.  Our sunsets are just gorgeous in the southwest.  I guess it's all those 'particles' in the sky that give it that beautiful color!

Monday, November 20, 2017

Happy Birthday to our daughter, Judy today!  I'm sure she celebrated this past weekend.  We had lots to celebrate, especially in the world of sports.  Well, with the exception of the Packer game.  What a disaster, but we sort of knew that going in.  I'm happy now, as the Wisconsin Badger basketball is starting.  They are a young team this year, but they always seem to do well.  They had a good game with Xavier last week, and even though they lost, they played well.
We are winding up our three weeks here in Willcox, and have had a great time.  Next year, we will stay a month.  We move to Tucson tomorrow and will stay until Dec. 1, when we check into our resort park for the winter.  It will be good to plant our roots for a while, after being on the road nearly three months, but our life has been very enriched with the things we've seen and people we've met.  Speaking of people we have met......We had a couple park next to us in this park for a week, and they have sold their house in Massachusetts (Cape Cod) and invested in a beautiful 42 foot fifth wheel.  They are going to bounce around this area until February and then they are coming into Bonita Vista, where we are for the winter!  What are the chances of that?  They will stay through March, so we will look forward to seeing them again. 

This is Bob and Karen, and we really enjoyed visiting with them.  They are just 7 months into their full-time RV life, and are excited about it. 

We're drawn to eagles, as Adler means eagle in German, and we saw this metal sculpture while geo-caching last week.  We're done posting pictures of rocks!  One more thing to add to this post today.  Jim was banging my GPS around the other night, until it got annoying!  I thought he was going to have it in a zillion pieces!  After he quit banging, he cleared all the data off the GPS, reloaded it, and IT WORKS!  Now, I can walk in my own direction!  We will be doing some geo-caching in Tucson, so I'm glad I have my own GPS again.  Jim has found some bike trails in Tucson with caches along the trail, so we look forward to that.  The downer to going to Tucson, is that it is going to be very warm there!  La Nina is going to affect AZ this winter and it will be very warm, so we need to get used to it.  I guess all we need to do is think of our friends back in the Midwest, where it is predicted to be colder and more snow! 

Saturday, November 18, 2017

It's been a football weekend.....that isn't over yet!  Friday we were able to watch our hometown team of Waunakee, take its sixth state championship in football.  They played at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, and we were glad to be able to watch it.  Ron Dayne's son plays for Waunakee, so he was thrilled to play in the stadium that sent his father on to be a Heisman winner.  Today, we watched the Badgers win their much talked about game with Michigan!  We all know that the Badgers are a second half team, but we thought they had a ruling overturned in the first half, that halted their momentum.  They proved to be the better team today, and hopefully, they can win their next game with Minnesota.  They will be in the Big Ten Championship game, and probably with Ohio State.  It's all how it plays out.  We will be watching the Michigan and Ohio State game next Saturday.  Tomorrow we will watch the Packers and the Ravens game.  Every win at this point, is a bonus, with having Aaron Rodgers out with an injury.  We're pretty lazy today, but it feels good!