Nettie's Place, Wikieup AZ, 12/01/09 - 12/31/09

This is a continuation of the "outhouse saga." Because the pack rat had taken over the outhouse and finished filling up the hole, we were unable to use it until we dug a new hole.

Terry was going to wait until our son Ryan came for Christmas and assign him the job of digging the new hole, but he has a hard time waiting to get a project done sometimes, so he got out the shovel and started digging. When he finished and tipped up the outhouse to start moving it, he saw a pack rat running around under it.

So, he got out his pistol and sat all morning waiting for a good shot at that rat. (You can see the nice neat hole he had dug!)

Well, after several attempts, he finally hit the rat, but it was not fatal! The rat made it inside the outhouse and ended up on the bench. That gave Terry a good shot.

Who could shoot a little face like that! Yes, I actually did feel sorry for the little thing! He really was kind of cute.

But, Terry had no trouble going in for the kill! Here he is with his "trophy."

Ron and Alice were still with us until the first part of December. Then they left because they had some issues at home and because Christmas was coming up. It would have been hard for them to stay because they have never been away from their kids at Christmas before. We hated to see them go. We really enjoy traveling with them. We played a lot of cards and Alice and I put this puzzle together over several days time. We are hoping they come back out in a couple of months.

There is a cement porch around three sides of Nettie's Place. There was a hole in the cement and it had dirt piled around it. I would sweep most of the dirt back down the hole and fill it up.

A couple of days later the hole would be opened and there would be this pile of dirt again.

I did this several times and tried to catch the varmint who lived in the hole, but never did. Finally, I just left the hole open and swept the dirt off the porch. We are thinking that maybe a lizard lived in the hole because we would see several sunning themselves on the cement.

We saw several other creatures we hadn't seen before. I was sweeping the porch on day and saw a weed laying there. When I went to sweep it away, it moved. We called it a "stick bug" but I am not sure what it is. It was gray in color, but then later we saw one on a brown board and it was brown. I think they probably change colors, depending on what they are on.

There are a lot of quail running all over the desert, but there was a family that would cross our yard in the mornings. They were a lot bigger, about the size of a small chicken. No wonder there were a lot of hunters going by our place sometimes. A couple of those would make a pretty good meal, but I was glad that Terry didn't get his pistol out again!

We have some friends who live in Wikieup named Clay and Joy Sue. Joy Sue was friends with my Mom and Dad when they first bought land in Wikieup about 30 years ago. They raise rodeo stock on their ranch and they like to compete in steer roping at rodeos and other events.

Clay is pretty much a professional roper and does pretty good at it. We went and watched them practice one day in their arena behind their house. It was lots of fun watching them.

The first of October I started a Christmas project. I have made these slippers for years, but haven't made them for the kids for a while, and some of the grandkids have never had a pair. We put zipper ties inside each one for the boys and lotion and fingernail polish for the girls. This is a picture of the last bunch I made for the kids coming to Wikieup for Christmas. I made 30 pairs in all. Then after Christmas I shared the pattern with a lady at Church and she asked for a pair to look at while she made her first pair, so I made another one! It was fun making them, but I was kind of glad to be done--and all in time for Christmas!

Nettie's Place, Wikieup AZ 11/17/09 - 12/01/09

This is a "guess what and where" picture. You know, like the ones that are in the newspapers and you are supposed to guess what it is and where it is taken. !


Well, I expect Emilee (Stokes) to be a winner! I know that she hoped we wouldn't find any "rat-infested" outhouses in Wikieup, but as you can see, we did. Here it is, Emilee, if you get a chance to read our BLOG. It was almost as bad as the first time we went back to Wikieup after my Mom died in 2005. The last three years we have left enough rat poison to discourage them, but they must have gotten immune to the rat poison!


Well, it really didn't take too much time to get it spic and span again. I have always told our kids and their families that the outhouse is probably cleaner than the bathroom in the house, I use so much disinfectant and sanitizer out there! After we got it all cleaned up, we opened the lid on the seat and found that the rats had filled the hole with dirt, clear up to the floor line! We knew that we would be digging a new outhouse hole soon, but didn't know it would be this year! Oh, well, hopefully the smell of the cleaners will discourage the pack-rats until we get ready to move it over the new hole!

Thank goodness we were able to park our RV's down by the old washhouse where there is a septic tank, since the outhouse is out of commission. It has worked out really well, with Ron and Alice next to us. We both hooked up to water (from the neighbor's artisan well) and we share the sewer hookup. With each of us having a generator for electricity, we are sitting pretty good!

We share a satellite TV system with my sister back in Emmett. It came with a promotional RV package that we carry with us for our Condo. It came with a tripod and also a permanent base, which we hooked up to Mom's. After a phone call or two to Direct TV, we got it to work on the old TV in Mom's house. We had to run it through a VCR because there was no place to hook the receiver into the TV. But, it works and we can now get the BYU station and the Hallmark station--hurray!

There are always the repairs that need to be done each time we get to Wikieup. This year it wasn't too bad. The wind must have blown pretty hard at some point, because a big section of the carport roof had bent back and all of the 2 x 4's were all splintered. But, Terry is so good at taking on projects and working at them until he finds a solution. With a few bent nails and some bailing wire, he got the roof back together again! The Arizona sun has been beating on those boards for a lot of years and they just break in splinters.

We finally had to break down and buy new batteries for the solar system this year. The last time we were here, we could only use the electricity for maybe a couple of hours in the evening before the batteries would be drained. It is so nice to have several lights on, the computer running, and the TV going in the evenings and not have to worry about running out of electricity. Terry and I spend a lot of our day at the house, and Ron and Alice come up in the evenings. We sleep in the Condo. Walking back and forth from the Condo and the house gives us a little exercise!

We all went to Payson, AZ, where our sons Travis and Ryan live with their families, for Thanksgiving. We had such a good time. Wednesday night we all went to Travis' and had ham and little smokies and played pinochle. Pinochle seems to be the pastime when the Howards get together, with the spouses being patient as they are still learning to play. It was fun to watch some of the older grandkids hanging over our shoulders wanting to learn so they can play with the adults. Our kids all learned to play at an early age, sitting on the carpet in front of the fireplace on Sunday evenings. They never thought it was quite right that they weren't invited to play with Terry's family when the brothers and sisters and grandparents kgo together and played.

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Ryan's, with Lori's specialty pies and rolls! We ate and ate, then we rested and ate some more. . .

. . then we played pinochle and ate some more. I can't believe we ate most of seven pies in one day!

Ryan's kids, Chaz, Wesley, and Riley, got a little bored hanging out with the adults, so they spent some time playing the computer together.

Later that evening, as we were making plans as to who wanted to get up at 4:00 the next morning to go to shopping on Black Friday, Terry and I decided to go get all of our stuff from Travis's where we were staying (Travis and his family went to Mesa to spend Thanksgiving Day and night with Shannon's family), and just sleep on Ryan's couch so we could all get up early together. Well, I didn't end up going shopping.

Well, clumsy me, I tripped on a loose block in Ryan's walkway outside, coming back into the house, and landed on my thumb, knee, shoulder, and smacked my face! This picture was taken several days afterwards when I was healing pretty good. Later, Wesley asked me if I was glad that his dad was a "doctor guy" and had taken good care of me! I sure was. He had ice and wraps all done up on me and I am sure that is why I healed so fast. I am sure that I must have cracked a bone in my cheek because when I first put ice on it with a little pressure, it would pop. And now, even more than a week later, when I touch my face below my eye, it makes me feel like I have a toothache in my jaw. It will need a little more time to heal.

Terry and I had been asked to talk in Church in Wikieup, since we were going home on Friday. I thought I would be able to get out of talking bcause of falling, but it is hard to find anyone to take your place in a small little Branch, so we showed up. Besides, we thought there might not be very many people there because of the holiday. In Terry's talk, he said he wouldn't have went ahead and talked in my condition, so he had a new nickname for me. He said he was going to call me "Timex" because I had tak'n a lick'n and kept on tick'n. Not many in the audience laughted, but I thought it was hilarious! It tells you how old we are! Anyway, these talks should keep us off of the Branch President's list for this year.

If you have been following our BLOG the last several years, and seen pictures of Nettie's Place, this picture is a little different than the last one you saw. Also, I put this picture in for my brothers and sister so they can see that we finally got someone to come in and clean up along the driveway into the house. Dad had torn down an old house and put a lot of the remenents along the drive way, plus a lot of his other treasures. Well, after sitting out in the Arizona weather for so many years, the "treasures" turned into junk. Anyway, it looks really good now!

One of the reasons we were able to talk this guy into hauling away all of the junk was to give him this old car of Dad's. It was probably worth a little money if you found the right person, but it was worth it to us to just get things cleaned up. The last time this car was licensed was in 1996, and I am sure it was running then. Now, they had to haul it off on a trailer.

Today is December 1 and we went and did laundry. Trying to save a few quarters at the laundromat, and because I kind of enjoy hanging out the laundry, I did just that. It was a nice sunny day, around 80 degrees, and we now have very fresh-smelling clothes!

Ridgeview, Bullhead City AZ 11/7/09 - 11/17/09

Bullhead City is just across the Colorado River from Laughlin, NV. It is only about 30 years old. Laughlin is pretty much all casinos, with a big indoor mall. They are continually building more casinos and Bullhead City continues to grow, also.

This picture is looking down the road from where we are camped. If you walk to the end of this road, at night you can see all of the lights of Laughlin. It looks like a miniature Las Vegas. There is also an airport just across the road from the park, with the park being on a hill. It is fun to see the planes come and go. If it is a big jet, it is so loud it vibrates the Condo. We go take advantage of the good deals on buffet meals at some of the casinos in Laughlin.

We have stayed in this park several times. The first time was before we retired and my Mom and our daughter Jill and niece Megan were with us. We just had a little (not self-contained) camper on the back of our pickup. The first thing they told us was that we were not allowed to take the camper off of the pickup. I am not sure what they thought when we had a hose hanging out the side of the camper into a bucket to catch our dishwater! We had a port-a-potty in a closet. Jill had to sleep in the back seat of the pickup. What great memories! This time, we got in a lot of card playing time on the table in front of the Condo. It was great weather.

Oatman, AZ, is a "ghost town" about 30 miles from Bullhead City. There are lots of little shops that are willing to take your money. Here is a stange looking "donkalope."

And even a stranger looking cactus!

I have always tried to get Terry to try on one of these "hair caps" but he never would--until Oatman. It kind of gives you an idea of what he would look like with hair, don't you think? I am not sure it would be an improvement.

One of the things Oatman is famous for are the wild burros that roam the town. The last time we were there was in the spring when they were loosing their winter hair and they looked really scraggy. They looked really good this time and were very friendly, especially if you had carrots in your hand.

Alice was even brave enough to pet them. Then we saw one practically chase a lady across the road trying to get at the ice cream in her hand.

Another thing they do in Oatman each day is have a shootout. After the bank is robbed and all of the bad guys are dead, they go around, at gunpoint, and ask for donations for the Shriners. It is pretty fun.

We ended up going to Lake Havasu one day and met Ron and Sharon Vickery. They took us to a Veteran's Day celebration at one of the parks. We met a woman who was a little girl in Viet Nam during the time Terry was serving there. She thanked him so much for his service and said that the American soldiers made her feel safe. She was eventually adopted by an American serviceman who married her mother, and they all came to the United States. She has written a book about some of her experiences. We bought one and she wrote a really nice message in it to Terry. Most of the proceeds of her book go to Veteran groups. It is called, Beyond the Rice Paddies, and is sold on Amazon.Com. (I promised to give her a plug on my BLOG!)

We had a very strange neighbor who was camped next to us for about a week. She was an eldery lady (at least 70) and she just camped in her car. I took her over some hot rolls that I backed one day and she asked if I wanted to look inside her van. It was pretty amazing. She had taken the back seats out and had a her sleeping spot down the middle. All around her she had things she needed--fridgerator, TV, places for her clothes, little cupboards for her food. She cooked in an electric pot and a microwave. She apparently used the parks facilities for some things. I know she went swimming every day and did her laundry a couple of times. She said that she had had trailers and motorhomes in the past, but it was a lot easier and less expensive to just use her van! It was the second one she had used. Everyone to their own thing!

We had a fun experience when we attended Church. On the program it listed the leadership of the Ward. The name of the Ward Mission Leader was the same name of a previous Teton County Clerk in Idaho who was in office the same years I was. I looked up and there he and his wife were, sitting a couple of rows ahead of us. I don't know who was more surprised, me or him. We had a nice visit and caught up a little bit on what we were all doing now. We continually realize what a small world we live in.

Las Vegas RV Park, Las Vegas NV 11/3/09 - 11/7/09

We left St. George and headed to Las Vegas. The park there is an older park, but very nice. But, being old, some of the spaces for RVs are quite small, and the roads are very narrow. It was made before all of these "condo-size" RVs came along. So, we "wiggled" into the spots assigned to us and had a nice time!

We only stayed four nights in Las Vegas, but decided that was probably long enough. Ron and Alice had never been in Las Vegas before, so we had to go down on the strip one afternoon and evening. It isn't our favorite place, but it is really fascinating, especially if you haven't been there before.

I think my favorite place is Cesar's Palace. It is huge and takes up more than a city block. It has some forum shops that are down some "streets in Rome," all inside the casino. The "sky" goes from night to day in one hour. All of the shops are very expensive so we just window shop.

They have two places where there are statues that "come alive" and one of them has a fantastic light show. Here we are waiting for one of them.

This show has Brutus and others who come alive and it used to have quite a light show. It was very disappointing this time, because not many of the lights even worked.

But, the statues did "somewhat" come alive. I guess it was better than nothing, because the other group of statues with Cesar didn't work at all! So at least we got to show this one to Ron and Alice.

As we left Cesar's Palace, there was a big pool about three stories down from where we were standing and we threw pennies in it for good luck!

We have crossed Hoover Dam at least once a year for over 20 years now and have never stopped long enough to go on a tour. So, we decided to do it this year.

Hoover Dam is built on the Colorado River and is the boarder between Nevada and Arizona. That is also where time changes from Mountain Standard Time to Pacific Standard Time. There are two identical clock towers on the dam. This one is on the Arizona side. . .

. . .and this one is on the Nevada side.

During the tour, we went down into one of the diversion tunnels they used to divert the river while the dam was being built. They warned you that if you were claustrophobic that maybe you shouldn't go on the tour! We took the tunnel down and got to see the huge turbines that make electricity. Then we took the elevator clear up to the top of a tower above the dam. (Terry really likes riding in elevators and going to high places--NOT!

This is on top of the tower, looking down on the dam. At one time, it was the tallest dam in the world.

This is looking down to where the water comes out of the turbine. You can see how high we were by how small the automobiles at the bottom look! The dam was mostly made to help with the flooding of the Colorado River and for irrigating purposes. The electricity it produces is just a by-product, but the electricity pretty much pays for all of the upkeep of the dam.

They are in the process of building a new road to bypass the dam. Traffic gets so congested by all of the pedestrians that it sometimes takes a long time to go through. Also, there are security risks with people going across the dam. (They do a security check on every vehicle before they go over it! I am sure it is bombs they are checking us for!) Of course, the new road has to go over the gorge of the Colorado River. Terry says he is still going the slow way and is crossing over the dam!

I zoomed in on this picture of some men working on the new road! I hope they have good life insurance! They are hanging above one of the columns on the new road.

This is a picture of a picture of the proposed new finished highway. Maybe I will go with Terry over the dam!

As they say, "what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas." I guess that is true. We are heading next to Bullhead City to our another adventure!

St. George RV Park, Huricane UT 10/20/09 - 11/3/09

We went to St. George RV Park, which is actually in Harrisburg, UT. Harrisburg is just a little community that was settled by the Mormons years ago and now only has just mostly the RV Park and then another park with permanent park model homes and a few RVs in it. Our address is Hurricane, UT and we went to Church in Leeds, UT. St. George is about 15 miles from the Park.The Park is only a few miles away from Zion National Park. We spent part of a day going through it. The rock mountains are truly amazing. We went here several years ago with our friends Ruth and John Lunt, but it was in January and a lot of the park was still snowed in. These three rocks are called the "Patriarchs."

It was fun taking Ron and Alice through with us. As usual, I took tons of pictures of the rocks. These are just a couple of them.

We stopped at the lodge and while Alice and I were in the gift shop, Terry and Ron played a friendly game of chess!

As we were going through the park, we were wondering if anyone ever tried climbing these rocks. We were sure that no one would even try because they are just straight up and down. Well, we spotted these two people climbing the rocks! I zoomed in on them for a better look. We couldn't believe they could actually do it!

Another day we went to the Johnson Dinosaur Track Farm. This Mr. Johnson was leveling out his land to farm and discovered dinosaur tracks. Eventually, he donated his land and all of his discoveries as a museum.

These tracks were made in the mud and then were filled with sand and through the years, were compressed into rocks. So, these tracks are the formed rocks on top of the tracks in the mud, and turned upside down and taken out of the mold made in the mud.

Here is Alice and Ron looking at the many exhibits that are in pretty much the same place they were found, but are now enclosed with a building. They are actually still excavating right in the building itself. It was pretty fascinating.

During our stay at St. George Park, our granddaughter, Sarah's daughter Jenna, got baptized in Tooele, UT. So Terry and I left on a Friday to go to her baptism on Saturday. We took some back roads to get there and ran into (almost literally) a bunch of sheep. You can see that we also "ran into" some snow! Sarah actually still had part of a snowman in her back yard that the kids had built a few days before. It made us appreciate going back to the 70 degree weather in St. Geroge the next day!

Here is sweet Jenna with her dad, Ryan, just before she was baptised. Ryan baptised and confirmed her a member of the Church. We are so proud of Jenna and her decision to be baptised and Ryan's worthiness to perform these important ordinances. Jenna was baptised on Halloween so the night before we got to share in their Ward Halloween party and trunk-or-treat. After the baptism we had a great meal of soups that Ryan made, with some of Ryan's family, and Shay and his kids were there. Thanks to Sarah and Ryan and their hospitality. We enjoyed being with them and the kids, even if it was just a short trip.