Final Trip to Wikieup

Well, we headed back to Wikieup to spend a few days before we leave it until next fall/winter. Russ and Louise Manwaring stopped and spent a night with us on their way back to Idaho after spending their spring break in Arizona. Russ has one more day at work and then he is retired! Louise surprised us by telling us she is also retiring from teaching school the end of this school year! We thought she was going to teach a couple more years. We look forward to spending more time with them after they retire.
A good friend from my high school years, Ruth, and her husband John, surprised us by stopping by on their way to Phoenix for a baby blessing. They had breakfast with us. We hope to see them again in April when we stay in St. George for a couple of weeks.
Well, the snakes are out. That is the only bad thing that comes with warmer weather. We found a rattler right next to our back door. Terry thought he would do a little target practice on him!With his 22 pistol (and a shovel) Terry got rid of the snake. We are a little worried because Jill and her kids will be here to visit us in a couple of days.
We have had so much company coming and going, I had sheets to wash. I decided to hang them out on the clothes line. You can see Mom's old wringer washer in the background. I thought about telling you that was what I washed them in, but, I really washed them at the laundromat in town and just brought them home to dry.

Jill and the kids flew into Las Vegas, rented a car, and met us at the Trading Post Restaurant in Wikieup where we had a birthday dinner for me. (Yes, I turned the BIG 60!) Sixty is such an ugly number! It won't be much fun until Terry catches up with me in June.

The kids brought me a birthday pie that we took home and celebrated at the Arizona house!

Boe and Kamber were very determined to catch a lizard. The weather has turned out so nice that there were lots of them running around everywhere, even on our porch. Boe is deciding if he is really brave enough to pick one up. After pulling the tail off of this one, he finally was able to pick it up and hold it. We now have a 'Stubby" running around the house. Thank goodness lizards are able to grow their tails back!
The desert is beginning to bloom! Not too many of the cacti have bloomed yet, but there are lots of flowers all over. They are almost as pretty as Kamber!
Well, Terry's fears came true. Here is the mate to the first snake he killed, also curled up by our back step one morning. He must have been hiding under a board when we found the first one.
Terry wasted no time taking care of it. It was a much larger one than the first one. It had about twelve buttons compared to the six that the other one had. Needless to say, the kids didn't get to go wandering in the desert by themselves.

We made some "lizard catchers" and went for a walk, but stayed on the roads. It has rained so much that the grass in the desert is quite tall--a great place for snakes to hide!

The day was warm enough that we got to go play in the Big Sandy River. We found a place last year that is nothing but sand on the bottom and is a really fun place to go wading. Kamber likes to pose for pictures.
Boe is all boy and was covered from top to bottom with sand before he was through. He had to strip to get it all off (but no pics of that!)
We always play lots of games at the Arizona House. Electricity is at a minimum so it is a good excuse to not sit in front of the TV much. I can't remember who won this game, but we all had fun playing.

The next day we turned off the propane, unhooked the solar panel batteries, shut off the water at the well, and closed down the Arizona House. We didn't lock it up this year--just left a note to welcome any visitors, but asking them to leave it as they found it. We would rather have them not break any doors or windows this year if they think they have to get into the house. Hopefully all will be well while we are gone. I am always a little sad to leave each year and am so grateful to my Mom and Dad (and brother Bill) for leaving us such a great place to visit. We will be back next winter.

Sierra Vista

We went to Sierra Vista where my youngest brother, David and his wife Kari and son Blake, live. They were very accommodating and we had a really good time visiting and sharing a couple of meals.The have a very nice home they built several years ago. They did a lot of the work themselves. It is pretty much at the base of a mountain range. They have a great back-yard barbecue area and a pool. I should have gotten more pictures, but it is one of those times I didn't get the camera out very often.While we were at Sierra Vista, our friends from Emmett, Russ and Louise Manwaring, came and stayed with us for a couple of days. The Manwarings are bird watchers or "birders." So we went up Ramsey Canyon which is a bird and wildlife preserve close to Sierra Vista. There were some fascinating trees and plants. This is a tree that grew sideways and then several trees grew up from one of the branches.
The hummingbirds were just starting to come out. I was lucky to get this really good picture of one of them.

The next day we went to the town of Bisbee. It is actually the County Seat for the same county that Sierra Vista and Tucson are both in. It is an old copper mining town that they have preserved from the time it was built in the early 1900's. The mine is no longer being worked. The population in the early years of the town was around 20,000 and now it is about around 10,000 (I think).
We found one of the local "residents" to be very friendly.
The town is build in a small valley and the houses are almost built on top of each other, with long cement and wooden stairs leading from the streets to the homes. They actually have some that are 1,000 steps long. Some are kind of crumbly, but they have tried to keep them preserved, and most are still used by the residents.
The streets are very narrow--some are more like wide sidewalks! It's a good thing Russ and Louise took their small car instead of us driving the dually!

This old VW bus kind of gives you an idea of what many of the residents are like. A lot of them seem to be dressed like the "flower child" era. It is a very "artsy" community and it was fascinating walking around the town.

We want to thank David and Kari for the fun time we had at their home and will definitely plan to visit again next year, if they are willing to put up with us again.

From Savannah to Montana

A salesman came to the park in St. David and had a Montana 5th Wheel with him. We should never have looked at it! Terry has always wanted a Montana, but we were not planning on getting one for another year or so. But, as you can see, we changed our minds. It is a 2005 (the Savannah was a 1998) and is about a foot shorter than the Savannah. It is similarly arranged, but with the kitchen on the other side and the TV and computer desk on the side with a large window in the rear. Terry always wanted that big window in the rear. The only thing is, when we are in an RV park, the scenery is usually the back of another RV! I told him that the window was his and so he has to keep it clean! I really like the computer desk. It is twice as large as the old one and there are two windows to look out of!We bought it at Beaudry RV in Tucson. They have an RV park as part of their sales complex. There is a place called "Transition Row" where they park your new RV and your old RV right next to each other and give you three days to move in, while having both RV's plugged in with electricity and water. It was a great way to do it.
Ryan is now living and working in Phoenix so he came down for the weekend and helped us move. It was so great having his help. After he helped us, he even made time to help our neighbors (an 82 year-old man and his wife) move some of their heavy stuff! For some reason, it seems like the newer RV's just don't have the storage space the older ones do. But, we finally managed to get it all in. Afterwards, we even took it to a certified scales and weighed. We were 167 pounds under the maximum weight for the Montana!! (Wal Mart, here I come.)
The recliners in the Montana were missing and in their place was a rocker/glider. They gave us some money to get another chair, so we just matched the rocker/glider instead of getting a recliner. Terry and Ryan had a good time putting it together (they finally resorted to reading the directions.)
As you can see, we are pretty settled in and our new chairs are very comphfy!! Now we are off to Sierra Vista, AZ, to spend a few days in my brother, David's driveway.

Mar 8-20, St David

We took Ryan to the airport Saturday morning, went back to Casa Grande and we were "on the road again" to St. David. It is about 55 miles south of Tucson, AZ. Travis and his four boys were going to Tucson the same day to spend their Spring Break week in a timeshare condo. Shannon went to London with her sister and then met up with them on Wednesday.

Travis and the boys came to stay with us for a few days. We had a pretty full house and wall-to-wall boys. It was one of the few times that I have been the only female in the house when our any of our family have been with us!
St. David was a really nice RV park. There was a nice little miniature golf course. I am not sure who was the grand champion, but everyone had fun.
The park has two artisan water "lakes" that are more like large ponds. There are lots of ducks and they are stocked with fish. Nathan caught the only fish we caught.
There was a nice pool that the boys all enjoyed. They kept doing cannon balls and dives into the pool. As this picture of Nathan shows, some of them got the photographer kind of wet!
I think this was maybe the first time the boys had played shuffleboard. (I didn't let them know it was an "old people's" game. Here is Nathan, Nicholas, and Josh playing the game.

One day we all went to Tombstone. There were lots of "Kodak" moments to be had.
Here's another one.
Terry and Spencer were trying to have a conversation with this gentleman, but they couldn't get him to talk much!
We went to Boothill Cemetery and walked through all of the grave sites. There were some pretty interesting stories to read about.
The rough and tough "Howard Gang." They are wanted Dead or Alive in some parts of the State of Arizona!

The boys went back to Tucson after spending Sunday through Tuesday with us. On Thursday we met up with them at the Karchner Caverns. They were amazing to see. They were discovered by some cavers (people who like to explore caves) in the 1980's who were exploring a sink hole in the side of a mountain. They kept the caverns a secret for 14 years until the State of Arizona passed a bill to make it a State Park so that they could be protected and preserved. Thanks, Travis and family, for the great time!

We really enjoyed the St. David RV park. We met some really nice people. One of our neighbors came over one day and said they were going to Costco and asked if we needed anything. Then she brought us some chocolate cake the night before we left to say good-by. I even got a haircut from a retired hairdresser who is now an RV'er. It was a great haircut! We look forward to staying at St. David again sometime.

Casa Grande

After getting back Emmett, we left Las Vegas and went to an RV park in Casa Grande, which is about 30 miles south of Phoenix. I feel so bad because this is the first place we have gone (and we were there for two weeks!) that I didn't take any pictures. We had such a good time there. There were so many activities and meals and entertainment that we were busy all of the time. I had pulled a tendon in my ankle and Terry was fighting a bout of gout in his heal, so we rode our tandem bike a lot. Everyone knew who we were because of the bike.

I went to water aerobics and to stretching exercise classes. We went to a couple of seminars and we played pinochle one afternoon. We ate at the clubhouse several times and went to their entertainment at night.

On the way there, one of the tires on the condo blew apart. We were barely able to get off of the freeway to a motel parking lot before it went flat. We changed it there and had to buy four new tires after we got to Casa Grande. Terry had been telling me that the tires were ten years old and needed to be replaced! One of the seminars we went to at the Casa Grande park was on tires. Well, Terry had also been telling me that the pickup needed tires, especially on the front. Well, needless to say, we got new tires for the front of the pickup. Thank goodness it was a new month from the week before when we got the Condo tires (that means it is a new budget cycle).

One day Terry came back from a walk (to the restroom) and said there was someone who just pulled into the park with Idaho 1G license plates! It turned out to be Lester Wallace and his wife. Terry and he knew each other so we visited with them several times. Also, our son Ryan had a job interview in Phoenix while we were there, so he was with us for a few days. One of his best friends, Erik Thomas from Emmett, lives close by with his family, so we got to see them also. It seemed like "old home week!"

Back to Vegas and Emmett

After the Cruise, we went back to Las Vegas where the Condo was sitting waiting for us. Ron and Sharon Vickery surprised us by ending up in Las Vegas also. They had traded in their motorhome on a different one, with a slide. It is really nice and they sure have a lot more room.
I was glad to see them because I left for Emmett a couple of days later to testify in a Federal jury trial concerning a personnel situation when I was the County Clerk. It turned out in my favor, so I was really relieved. Terry was able to do a few things with them while I was gone.
While I was in Emmett, it snowed a couple of inches one day. It was really fun for me to see the snow, knowing I would be headed to warmer weather in a few days. I got to stay with Lorrie in our house. It seemed kind of strange and I felt like it was more her house than mine, which I was glad to feel. I got to see Ryan and Lori and the kids. And, as an added bonus, Jill and Dan and kids came for the weekend because Dan had State Wrestling in Boise. Bob and Lolita had a birthday dinner for Terry's brother Ron, so I got to see lots of people when I was home for those few days. Although, it was kind of scary leaving Terry in Las Vegas all by himself!!

Cruising in February

Last year during our family reunion, we talked Terry and Nancy Imlay (my uncle and his wife who are just a few years older than us) into going on a cruise with us. None of us had ever been on a cruise before. So, we stocked up on our seasick patches and medicine and booked a Mexican Riviera cruise for February, 2008! It was really hard to limit the number of pictures for this blog (I only took about 1,000), so I hope you don't get too bored looking at all of them!

Here we are, all set to go on our great adventure!

Whoa! What a big ship. There are about 2,000 people with 900 crew on the ship. There were 14 decks (I made the mistake of calling them "floors" and got corrected by a uniformed sailor!), and our staterooms were on the 12th deck.

Well, here we go! We are actually doing this! We are getting on this big ship!

Howie is checking out the bed in our cozy little stateroom. We are used to sharing small spaces since we have lived in an RV for over a year!

And I am on the computer (as usual). I was excited about being able to have connection with my air card in every port so I could do my medical transcription for our son--until I got home and received the bill for $242 for "international Internet."

Most of the action was on our deck. It was where the pool was, with live music most of the time.

This is one of two main activity places. It was a lounge and on the other end of the ship was a large theater. Most of the evening entertainment happened at these two places, along with several smaller lounges and areas.

This is in the very center of the ship where there was a spiral staircase and glass elevators.

The deck outside of the buffet is where we ate a lot. It was on the deck just above our staterooms, so it was very handy. They had food there 24 hours a day! It was very yummy food!

Nancy and I participated in a line dancing class--and Howie got ahold of the camera!

I think sometimes we wore Terry out! He was the only one that got a little seasick, but it wasn't until the last day or two, but he was a good sport to hang in there!

Don't we look pretty "worldly" sitting here in the lounge on a cruise ship sipping our non-alcoholic drinks!

CABO SAN LUCAS

Cabo San Lucas was our first port. Howie decided that he liked it best of the three ports we went to. The water was too shallow to get the ship into port, so we were "tendered" into port in our life boats. They held 150 people and could be closed so they were almost air tight if the water got bad during an emergency. Glad we didn't have to use them for anything but tendering!

A nice shipmate took a picture of the four of us being tendered in the lifeboat to Cabo San Lucas.

The first place we went to was a place where they blew glass and made figurines, vases, dishes, and other things. It was quite a process of adding hot colored glass to a blown piece of glass to make something beautiful.

This is the oven where they melted the glass. All of the items were made out of recycled glass.

This is the finished product--a little turtle with a hat.

The next place we went was a little restaurant on the edge of a mountain looking down onto the Sea of Cortez (it is kind of the same water as the Pacific Ocean.)

This is looking down from the restaurant to the beach.

I had to take a picture of the sink in the ladies' restroom. It is actually the place where you washed your hands!

Terry and Howie (we tried to call him Howie so we weren't always confused) were good to hold the tour bus while Nancy and I were busy looking at the charming sink in the ladies' restroom!

We went to a cactus garden where there were so many beautiful cacti. Here is our guide standing in front of the cactus that Tequila is made out of (the one with long, thin stems). I didn't know Tequila was made out of a cactus!

I have been telling Howie that now that he doesn't do much manual labor any more (that was always his excuse) that he could start wearing a wedding band. He donated his original one for a new gold band for me many years ago. So, when we found a narrow wedding band in the gift shop of the cactus garden, we bought it and had a little private ceremony on the tour bus!

Before we left Cabo, they took us to a town common area where there were some little shops we could go in. They said that most towns had a gazebo in the middle of their town in the commons where all of their celebrations were held.

You can tell how excited Terry and Howie were to shop. But, they waited patiently for us.

This rock marks the point where the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez meet. There is a natural arch in the middle. They say that a couple of days a year, the water is at the point where you can walk through it. To the right of the rock (where you can't see) is a small beach between two rocks that can only be reached by water. It is called Lovers Beach. Some of the tours go out there for snorkeling and kayaking.

This was a beautiful sunset looking from the boat as we left Cabo San Lucas.

MAZATLAN

Our second port was Mazatlan.This was the bay coming into Mazatlan.

Our tour took us first to an adobe brick "factory." It consisted of one man (his family helped on the weekends) on a little plot of land with a mudhole. He spread sand on the ground, mixed his adobe (consisting of mud, sand, and donkey manure), and shoveled it into a 4-brick form laid on the sandy ground. He could make about 1,000 bricks a day.

He would then take the bricks and make an oven with them, start a fire inside which would burn for about 24 hours, when the bricks would be dry.

We then went to a place where they made tiles. Again, it was a one-man-show. It was amazing how he make the tiles. His workshop was a little lean-to behind his home.

On the way to the back of his house, we passed the women of the house washing their clothes. They were lucky enough to have an automatic wringer washing machine like my Mom had when I was a little girl. I could smell the bleach as we approached their home and it sure brought back memories. Their hanging wash was very bright and clean!

Our next stop was at a bakery, also in the back of the family's home. We all got a sample of the bread they made in the earthen oven. It was delicious!

Next we went to a furniture making "factory" which was a larger lean-to-type building with a small building attached where they sold various tourist souvenirs. One of the most interesting things there was this elderly gentleman sitting on the concrete floor weaving baskets. He seemed to really like his picture taken.

The furniture they made was beautiful, but I kind of liked this hammock swing. But Howie said we didn't have any place to hang it in the Condo!

Later, we went back into town where the City offices were. This is a picture of what would compare to our City Hall back home. It was in an open mall. The windows openings have shutters, but no windows. They had beautiful wood furniture.

This is a rocking chair in their City common area. It shows that furniture making is an important industry for their city. It was quite easy to climb into, but I about broke my neck getting down!

PUERTO VALLARTA

Our tour in Puerto Vallarta was a horseback ride in the country. It was a lot of fun. The saddles were real Mexican saddles that were made of wood with no padding and some of the bridles just had a rope for a rein.

Here is Howie on his trusty steed!

I had a little white horse that would not leave the side of the lead horse, no matter what I did to it.

This is a very common "country home" where a family with several kids and maybe more than one generation lives in it.

Most of the work of the women is done outside. Most homes had outside ovens and fireplaces. Here is a woman washing her dishes. They are constantly doing laundry which usually consisted of a bucket of soapy water to wash the clothes in and a fence or strung clothesline to hang them on.

After the horseback ride, we had a chance to taste several flavors of Tequila. We watched while Nancy took a taste. She decided that was enough for her!

HEADING HOME
We got back on the boat and spent two days at sea on the trip home.

We kept busy eating, playing Bingo, eating, going to entertainment, eating, napping, eating, just plain relaxing, and eating.

One night they had a "pastry extravaganza". It was amazing! I took this picture of the mirror above some of the "pastries" and flipped it upside down! It was the best picture I could get because all of the people were in the way.

Nancy and I went on a tour of one of the ship's kitchens. This man is making some kind of gravy or soup in this big pot. I am sure they had all super-sized utensils to be able to feed almost 3,000 people 24 hours a day.

In the kitchen and actually, in all of the eating areas, they had carving made out of various foods. Here is one carved out of a watermelon.

Howie and I got dressed up and went to the formal dinner. We had lobster tail and giant prawns! It was soooo good. They took formal photographs of us, but here is an informal self- portrait we took before we left our stateroom.

I hope all of you get a chance to go on a cruise at least once in your lifetime. It is quite an experience. I really want to thank Terry and Nancy for letting us talk them into going with us. (Hey, Terry and Nancy, we need to start planning our next adventure, okay!)