Winter Adventure Winding Down

The time is quickly drawing to an end when we'll head for home. The Sonoran desert of Southern Arizona has become a familiar and endearing environment, at least for the winter months. We continue to build our community of friends as well as time spent with Dad's cousins down here. Our neighbors come from many places across the U.S. and Canada. There is so much to see and do that is not available at home. This winter we have also been blessed by extended visits from my sister, Jane, our dear friends, the Liljenquists and the Gardners and Les and Matt. I also got to spend one day with my brother, Don, and Dixie from Alaska. But It's now time we'll be taking off shortly. We will leave clear blue skies, warm days, a wonderful pool, live entertainment, palm trees, desert vegetation in bloom, city life and the view of the Superstition Mountains. We will trade that for more living space, a quieter environment, small town atmosphere, old friends, majestic mountains, pine trees, clear streams, green grass, wildflowers, blooming lilacs, closer to grand kids and a beautiful home and yard. There is just no place like "HOME." But winding down has not necessarily reduced our level of activities. With Dave and Laurene here we have taught them geocaching and spent several outings looking for little worthless treasures where technology, the fun of the search and some exercise are the benefits.

We have spent nearly every night at the pool and played a little shuffle board. We have also played Pegs and Jokers with the Gardners. Laurene quickly acquiring a liking of this game so much so that they bought their own board from the park resident from whom we bought ours. So far Laurene and I are neck and neck with Dave and Dad at eight games won apiece. We spent Tuesday, April 3rd, touring on Canyon Lake aboard the "Dolly Steamboat" and visiting nearby Tortilla Flat up the Apache Trail. While there we saw a bald eagle nesting at the top of a tall rock pinnacle and scenic cliffs and rock patterns along the lake shore.

We also got to see a number of big horn mountain sheep. We even got to see two rams butt heads and heard the thud as they collided.

Wednesday we toured the Desert Botanical Garden in downtown Phoenix near the Phoenix Zoo. That was a beautiful, peaceful surrounding with an unimaginable variety of desert vegetation, much of which was blooming. It was difficult to select a few to post from nearly 90 pictures taken that day.

The garden also had it's share of birds and little critters.

We like to get away from home each day because starting April first there is major construction going on behind us in the park with equipment noise, dust and fumes beginning at 6:30 each morning until early afternoon. We won't miss this but it will be all done when we return next winter.

On Sunday evening after church meetings we got together with Dad's cousins, Milo, Ivan and Ruby and Ruby's family, Alayne and kids for a nice pot luck dinner and conversation. We then returned to the park to bid Dave and Laurene goodbye as they will be leaving early tomorrow morning for home.