Month: March 2015

TUCSON,AZ

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A few years ago we came to Tucson to meet an old school chum for lunch.  Not knowing about the International Gem  and Mineral show the only room we could find was in some dive where I don’t think they even changed the sheets. It was horrible, and we took away bad memories.  HOWEVER, we gave it a second go when friends Laurie and Henry decided to leave the snows of Boston behind and come to warm and wonderful AZ.

image Mark and I went to Suguaro National Park which has sadly declined in number of cacti over the years.  We enjoyed a short hike viewing the park and its denisons up close and personal.image image image We also went to a Spanish Mission, San Xavier del Bac which was built in 1783.  It is known as ‘the white dove of the desert’ and was quite a feat for the times.  It is still serving the people of the area and is quite beautiful.  image image Remember the OK Corral and The High Chapparal?  Those and so many other old westerns were filmed at Old Tucson Studios.  We went there and spent a really enjoyable day looking at all these goofy old buildings, sets, houses, churches, gunfights, and stunt performers show.  image image image image We met our sad ends, though.  Hahaha!

imageAdditionally we went with Laurie and Henry to the Pima Air and space museum.  It was so interesting seeing all the old planes and the airplane ‘boneyard’ at a nearby Air Force base.

Then just to complete the circle from our last visit, we again met up with my old Wyoming pal, Sue and her husband, Butch.  The best thing about traveling like we are doing is to reconnect with our friends from across the years.  We are leaving for this summer’s expedition April 15 and plan on seeing many of you along the way!  Stay tuned!!

A LONG WINTER BUT WITH DRY HEAT!

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You may well ask, “What have you been up to since we last heard from you?”  Short answer is enjoying the wonderful weather and scenery of the desert Southwest.  Long answer follows.

It took us a couple months to get all moved in and settled in our fab new house.  And suddenly it was Thanksgiving and subsequent holidays.  When we lived in North Carolina our friends, the Tymas, came to our house for Thanksgiving right before they moved to Phoenix.  That was 18 years ago but they reciprocated in fine style by having us and our nephew, Matt, for a feast we will not soon forget.  Thanks, guys!!

Christmas came and so did our daughters.  We loved our adventures during the visit.

The Desert Botanical Garden at night was magical!  We enjoyed dinner and music and froze our buttooties off.

image image Desert Botanical Garden at nightimage image

image image imageFrank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West.  The beautiful and FLW style of bizarre.  We missed the Lego model of house and grounds.

We also went for a hike at the White Tank Mountains but apparently I didn’t take any pictures of that.  Saw petroglyphs and just had a really enjoyable day.

We were sorry to see the girls leave but eagerly awaited Mark’s brother Doug and wife Susie’s arrival.  While they were here we helped Matt remodel his new house.  Tore down walls, painted the whole thing, put in new woodwork, and laid down new flooring.  Haven’t worked that hard in a long time!  It looks great now, though.

Ok  I have to confess now.  When she was here, Kallie took all my pictures off my iPad so I could download the new operating system and I don’t know how to retrieve them without all of them reloading.  Soooo, I’m going to post this blog and switch to the laptop and figure this out.  Be back soon!!