Ah, the Autumnal Equinox on Lazy Sunday

With two people, our 36 foot long fifth wheel is plenty big enough. With three people it is crowded and claustrophobic at times. My mother had been staying with us since Wednesday since electrical service had not been restored to her neighborhood. Having her here made me realize how patterned and subject to routine our lives are, by dint of observing how patterned my mother's life is. I had to stumble out of bed at 5AM (which was late for Mom) to be able to assist her in walking down our four entrance steps to the driveway below so she could have her morning cup of coffee and cigarettes. There is no way in her currently shaky physical condition that she could have dealt with the steps, a coffee mug and preventing Patches from slipping out the front door. Mom and I did that for three mornings until her next door neighbors called with the news that the power was back on Saturday morning. I think we were all relieved.

Denny and I plugged in all the appliances the neighbors had unplugged for Mom while she was gone (they feared an explosion or fire when the electricity came back on), turned off all the lights that had been on and restocked most of the items in Mom's refrigerator that had been thrown out. Once Mom was settled in, Denny and I headed back to Cinci since we had a new stove ventilation kit to install.

Since nothing is ever easy when you are replacing 37 year old parts with new parts, that job took longer than we thought so the two of us didn't get as much done to the house as we'd like. The carpet installers will be here Tuesday, so we have to finish up the last minute jobs and then get all the tools and junk we have laying around up off the floor so those guys can do their work. Today we took the time to put the auxiliary fuel tank and tool box back in Black Beauty since the bed liner we had installed has had plenty of time to dry and cure. Then we took the rest of the day off because there were important things like the Bengals' game, and a NASCAR race and the Ryder Cup on television and hey, this is the seventh day of the week, right?

Because it is close the the autumnal equinox, today's Lazy Sunday post pictures are of the clear, deep blue skies of fall.

And yeah, I know. If I write a complete post, then it's no longer a Lazy Sunday pictures only post. Sue me.

The road leading to Zion National Park in Utah creates a sense of anticipation of the beauty within its boundaries with its mountains of red and white stone showing the way.

Awesome rock spires and clean air are what you see at Zion NP, thanks to the many trolleys that haul tourists inside the park, rather than thousands of individual cars clogging the roadways.

Basalt walls and distant mountains at Yellowstone National Park. Fall is a fantastic time to be there due to smaller crowds, but the cold air hitting the hot springs means many photographic opportunities are blocked by fog and mist.

Mountains fascinate me. They are as varied as people due to volcanic activity and upheavals and mineral content. I never tire of them. Here are white cliffs along the Yellowstone River.

Entering the Kolob Canyon section of Zion National Park I saw this small white cloud in the sky which reminded me of smoke signals.

Speaking of the difference in mountains, here we have the mountains of West Virginia at Pipestem State Park. Denny and I always suffer a form of "culture shock" when we return east after spending months in the desert. The lushness of the mountains in the southeast are a treat after the stark beauty of the mountains of Arizona. And the sky here gets almost as blue as out west.

While the primitive living conditions of the Native Americans who built the Aztec Ruins are not appealing to me, New Mexico is a state we are considering as a place to settle. Someday. Maybe.

But the place for the best sunsets and the bluest skies I've ever seen? Arizona. This, of course, is the famous Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, but we found skies this blue in the fall no matter where we traveled in the state. Arizona calls to both of us.....