Here’s the house, the living room, the office, the patio, and the Beverly Hills Cat Mansion.  Additionally we have two bedrooms and two baths so come visit!!!

Whoops!  Forgot this in the last post,but here we are in Arizona! What is here?  The Grand Canyon, Suguaro National Park, the Hopi Nation, the Navajo Nation, the Hualapai Nation, the Havasupai Nationand so many others.  Mark’s brother Doug has a son who lives here and he visits several times a year.  So he found a place where he thought we could winter.  The place is west of Phoenix and is called Pueblo El Mirage.  It is a 55+ Golf and RV resort.  It is incredibly beautiful if you love the desert and we fell in love at first glance.

Walking around the place we discovered a little village of Craftsman styled houses and made the leap and bought one.  I know, precipitate, but we love it here.  My brother says we had to look far and wide to find a place more conservative than North Carolina but our liberal roots haven’t been challenged too much here.  The school board is just as weird as the one in Raleigh, the sheriff is on trial for contempt of court, and the lady at Lowes doesn’t believe in CFL or LED light bulbs.  But the paper leans way left and we haven’t met many challenging people.  There are a bunch of houses with solar panels, they are working at saving water from the aforementioned Glen Canyon Dam, and a bunch of geezers like us leave in the summers saving on air conditioning costs.

Because I can’t figure out how to cut and paste on this page right now, I’ll add pix of the new place on the next post!

Just about everyone who lives or has visited the West has been to a dam somewhere.  So we came to Page, AZ and Glen Canyon Dam.  This enormous project began in the year 1956 which is also the year my brother was born, no connection.  It was completed in 1966 and did t completely fill up until 1983.  It collects water from the Colorado River and then distributes it to five states.  The dam was nearly destroyed in 1983 by floods but disaster was averted.  When the dam was started the first thing that was built was the bridge from one side to the other.  It shortened a 200 mile one way trip from one side to the other.  Wow!!  Lake Powell is the second largest artificial lake in the country and, as are all these reservoirs, is quite low.

Needless to say we were quite impressed with the dam, the lake and the town of Page which was specifically built for the workers but has remained a unique and picturesque place.

So I bet you all thought I forgot about posting but we have been living an even bigger adventure which we will get to soon.

after a wonderful stay in Salt Lake we rounded ourselves up and went to St. George which is one of our favs.  We intended to hike in Snow Canyon but our wimpiness asserted itself when we arrived and it was 98 degrees in the shade.  So we settled for a drive through the canyon and following are some pics of the great geological scenery

This last picture was the sight of a great epiphany for me.  My best bud, Suzan, and I came to what we referred to as “boot camp” when we turned 60.  The camp has since gone on to become one of the spas for The Biggest Loser!  Anyway, every morning we would go on a hike and one day we went here.  Aside from it’s astounding beauty, this little slot canyon was a special Native American place.  They carved the steps across the bottom and up the wall above the waterfall.  Back in my college days I did a lot of rock climbing and this seemed like a big challenge for me so I asked our hike leader if we could do it.  The wall on the right we climbed is about 15 feet high and the waterfall is about 12 feet tall.  After I got to the top of the falls this overwhelming sense of accomplishment came over me and I refer to that day when I think I can’t do something.  I guess we’re never too old!