Spending Money and Going Nowhere

Currently one of the big lotteries is up to $474 million dollars and right now we surely could use a little of that, what with the dental work we've had done (routine maintenance and my broken bridge), the plug on our 50 amp power cord pulling loose again and causing 220 volts of electricity to go through the rig shorting out and frying our microwave/convection over, the torn awning topper, the ice maker that died, et al.  So there has been shopping and appointments and waiting for repairmen and a whole lot of nothing else going on. 

The good news is that the weather finally turned nice, the water is warm in the hot springs fed swimming pools here and we can drive just a few miles to mix with the hoity-toity residents of Palm Springs should we feel the need to see how the rich and famous live.  This is the area where you see gold lame' and lots of bling on the cotton tops shopping at Wally World, always a treat.  It's a pretty area where the desert finds just enough water to allow "real" flowers in the landscaping and not just cactus and bougainvillea.

Some firsts: this is the first campground that has ever handed us an instruction sheet on what to do in the event of an earthquake since we're currently located on the San Andreas Fault.  Second, while walking Patches yesterday she poked at a hole and I watched as a pair of claws came out to snap at her.  After pulling the cat away from the opening to a small burrow I watched through the opening as this translucent yellow critter crawled past through the burrow below, slowly exposing a wide body and eventually a ribbed tail--my first desert scorpion!!!  I no longer leave my aqua shoes outside to dry overnight after water aerobics.  Shudder.  Finally, we have had wonderful responses from three different mobile RV service technicians who not only show up when they say they will, but even arrive early.

A near miss; our soon to be RVing again friends Tim and Penny almost had us talked into working with them at a campground in North Carolina but the only positions left were working evening doing housekeeping which is pretty much a euphemism for cleaning bathrooms.  So we'll stay California for now, playing it by ear on our destinations if fuel prices continue to rise.  I'd like to wander Yosemite National Park and the Napa Valley vineyards as I'm sure there's a bottle or two of Cabernet Sauvignon with my name on it. 

Right now a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou sounds pretty good.

Denny's Nightmare

Denny said he was awakened by a nightmare this morning; when he told me what is was I had to laugh.

The background; Denny and I have friends we met while working at a campground in Virginia years ago.  Tim and Penny gave up the RVing lifestyle when Penny starting having problems walking due to a still undiagnosed neurological problem.  The two of them settled in Florida and then moved to Alabama where they started a successful business and created a home for themselves and their two cats.  But the wanderlust was still running through their veins.



Last summer they took a couple of weeks off and drove up to Maine to meet up with us and eat lobster.  That road trip by van was enough to get them thinking about doing some travel by RV so I started looking around for a company that could build some sort of lift for Penny's electric scooter to install on their newly purchased travel trailer.  I located a gentleman in Texas that came up with a really neat solution and all of a sudden I hear that the two of them have put their business up for sale and they are anxious to get to Texas to have the lift installed so they can get on the road.  I figured that any day we'd have them knocking at the door to our rig here in California saying "hey, good to see you!"



Yesterday I got a call from Penny saying that she and Tim took a quick car trip up to Cherokee, North Carolina to hit the casino there and take a look at a local campground that was advertising for seasonal workers.  Darned if Tim didn't sign up to work there for the summer!  Naturally the first thing Tim said to Denny while he was on the phone is "come work with me!!!"



And that's where Denny's nightmare came in.  He dreamt he told Tim yes.  Heh.

I'm So Confused.

Denny and I have been in California for the past two weeks.  However, because there is no shopping on this side of the Colorado River and because we are located across the river from Parker, Arizona the campground here uses the Mountain Time Zone instead of the official Pacific Time zone.  So when we arrived here we didn't change the clocks because we knew when Daylight Savings time began we would still be on the same time. ???? you say?

You see, Arizona does not recognize Daylight Savings Time.  Therefore, this morning when everyone else was "springing forward" an hour, we in effect stayed at the same time because 6 AM Arizona time was now 6 AM Pacific DST due to the fact that Arizona time didn't change.  Still with me?

All of which is moot, because I forgot that our atomic clock was still set to automatically shift to Daylight Savings Time for the Mountain Time Zone and therefore when I woke up at 6:20 AM wondering why the coffee pot had not started to perk and why Patches was not bugging me for her breakfast it was because it was actually only 5:20 AM.  Which I didn't realize until Denny asked why it was still so dark at 7 AM.  *sigh*  So much for not having to change the clocks.

Comment modification

I took off word verification after Bl*gger put that annoying two word form up, but since then I've started getting spam comments so I've put it back in place.  Sorry folks.

Edited 03.03.2012:  Okay, I'm trying it the way some have suggested in the comments below and removing the word verification once again.  I have to admit I can't read the darned things myself.  But no more anonymous comments.

Rollin’ Down the Rivah

This is the view from our dining room table for the next two weeks.  In the morning it’s bright and vivid and in the afternoon the mountains turn red and the light softens the edges of everything around.

Although we are on the California side of the river the campground uses Arizona’s Mountain Time Zone because there are no towns near us on this side of the border so they align with the time zone of the town of Parker which is across from us.  Weird, but time is relative, right? 

This is a wonderful area to relax because there really isn’t a lot to do otherwise.  There is a golf course nearby, but they have raised their prices so much that Denny and I refuse to play there.  We have explored the monument at Poston dedicated to the Japanese-Americans who were placed in the relocation camp in the area, as well as hit a few geocaches, drove out by the Nellie Saloon (although it was closed during the week) wandered up and down Hwy. 95 and squeezed our way illegally across the Parker Dam which is no longer wide enough to drive a dual wheeled truck across since they’ve put concrete barriers along the edges of the road after September of 2001.  Therefore this week we have made appointments to be worked on by a local chiropractor (who is wonderful) and will install the final window treatments in the bedroom, I’ve taken down our Hughes.net satellite modem and router due to frustration with tech support and have followed the suggestions of a RVing friend and switched to an air card with a fairly large data plan.  I don’t think it will support two people playing computer games so I’m weaning myself from the various F*cebook games online and downloading more library books to my Kindle.  The weather is still not as warm as we’d like, but it’s certainly better than the craziness that’s going on in the Midwest right now with the snow and rain storms and tornadoes.  All of which makes eventually settling in the western portion of the States a little more sensible.  Maybe.  Not there yet.

In the meantime, the morning sunlight has dropped a giant fistful of glitter on the river and I feel the pull of its siren song.  Catch ya later.

 

 

 

Searching for a Place to Settle

I mentioned in yesterday's post that Denny and I looked at a housing development in Wellton, Arizona as a potential place to live.  A commenter asked if we were truly going to settle down.  The immediate answer is "no", but Denny wants me to start considering where I might want to live permanently when we tire of traveling or if something would happen to him.  He is, at age 72 soon to be 73, twelve years older than me.

Thus this winter we have been looking at houses or local housing developments; not to the point of going inside homes with a realtor but driving through neighborhoods after searching for houses for sale online.  What I have come to discover is that I shudder at cookie-cutter houses set shoulder to shoulder on miniature lots.  This from a person who lives in a tin can on wheels in gravel parking lots in the winter, I know.  But when I do settle I don't want to be able to reach out my arm from my house and touch my neighbor's house.  

We have looked at homes in Mesa, Gold Canyon and Apache Junction as well as in Wellton and a little here in Yuma.  We have inquired about a gated community in Arkansas in the Hot Springs area; there are golf courses and swimming pools and there would be a lot of activities and folks available to play with but we'd also have some space.  There's also a lot of summer heat and humidity there, which neither of us care for.  When we were in Flagler Beach, Florida last year I priced beach front property there and keep an eye on homes that are more inland, but recent hurricanes make buying hurricane insurance in Florida difficult.  The same for the area of Gulf Shores/Orange Beach, Alabama which is another area we favor.  We are taking into consideration bugs, tornadoes, hurricanes, humidity, cost of living, cost/availability of property insurance, locale amenities, mountains/lakes/oceans.  When we find an affordable area it doesn't always have one of my requirements; the above mentioned mountains or lakes or oceans.  Because my permanent place will have to have one of the three, I'm afraid.  When I'm at the beach, that's my favorite place but when I'm in the desert surrounding by craggy mountains in the wintertime then that's my favorite place too.

And so we look and discuss locales and drive away undecided.  When a single lady drove into our campground the other day I mentioned how much easier it was to back in a motorhome (they have back up cameras installed) than a fifth wheel and Denny said that perhaps that's what I should do instead of having a house.  I told him that if I went that way, I'd actually go smaller with a Class C as those would be less expensive to maintain with smaller engines, smaller tires, better fuel economy, blah, blah, blah. I'd tow a small car to run around in, of course.  Certainly it would be an option.  

But are we seriously considering buying a house at this moment and stopping our travels?  Not a chance.  

Home Bodies

I've been doing my earth mother imitation this week: baking, sewing, looking around Yuma for homes.  Yeah, that ain't happening.  The living in Yuma part.  Yuma is one of those areas that just doesn't really appeal to me.  We stay here because we have a membership campground here which means we can stay for two weeks at a time for free.  Frankly, two weeks of smelling cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage is enough for me.  You see, we're surrounded by lettuce and all sorts of green veggies at the eastern end of Yuma where the fields are cycled endlessly; harvest, till, lay irrigation pipe, seed, water, harvest, till, lay pipe.....

We finally drove east to Wellton, Arizona to play golf at the Links of Coyote Wash after driving by the golf course for several years.  Denny and I absolutely fell in love with the Santa Fe style homes there but the five hour round of golf for such a short golf course was irritating to us.  The owners of the complex are creating a whole section of RV lots to be sold around the development which means there would be even more competition for tee times on the golf course so we'll pass on this area.

A daytrip to Los Algodones was scheduled so the two of us could enjoy the fish tacos and tamales at our favorite little stand in the middle of town.  Of course a couple of things found their way into bags and I now have yet another yard toy to haul around.  I just couldn't resist a rocking roadrunner.

Beyond that Denny and I didn't do a lot; I've developed arthritic like pain in both knees over the last week and we're trying to figure out what's up with that.  Today we ventured out for breakfast and while topping off our gas tank prior to leaving Yuma tomorrow I met up with this darling lady.

What I noticed first was the "Mad Dog and Gramma" sign on the back of her three wheeler.  Seems her husband was a police officer in California who patrolled a Latino area where the local baddies gave him the name of "Mad Dog".  I didn't really want to know why ;)  But this cheerful widow who has been riding bikes for the last 35 years has now taken over her husband's three wheeler and rides with a group twice a week which was why she was gassing up this morning.  She says she makes a point of getting out and about to stay young.  Yay for her!

And finally, tonight's sunset; the clouds seemed more like lava flowing across the sky.

Tomorrow the view out of our windows will change after a not-so-very long drive.  I'm ready.

Making It Ours

I've made it clear in the past that the fifth wheel we ordered from Heartland Mfg was not the fifth wheel we received in December of 2009.  Because we had already sold our Palisades fifth wheel to a friend and had arrived in Indiana in the dead of winter we were kind of between a rock and a hard place so we went ahead with the deal and took possession of what I immediately named "The Beast."  At the time, the name came from the fact that the unit was two feet longer than our old fiver, but it soon became appropriate due to the number of construction and warranty issues we had to deal with to be able to stay on the road.

Over the last two years in addition to the repairs, Denny and I have been making a variety of modifications to the rig, the most recent being cosmetic.  Our project for the last week has been removing the unbelievably cheaply made window toppers and building new wooden valances which I then upholstered.  I also ripped off all the gawd-awful black and tan border trim on the walls.  

The before and after photos:
The bathroom.  Before:

New border. After:

The crappy window treatments.  Before:

This shot shows the sleeper sofa that came with the unit.  I couldn't stand the upholstery nor the hard cushions so it was replaced with a recliner and glider rocker.

Patches' claws were rough on the leather recliners; she doesn't claw the furniture but she does race around the rig pushing off from the chairs which made pin point pricks in the upholstery.  They were given away also and replaced with upholstered arm chairs with a microfiber fabric.

You will note that Patches had to be part of the photo showing the new chairs and the new window treatments.

While I will always be angry at the changes and cheapening of the product that Heartland made to our rig in the month between the time we ordered it and the time we received it, at least we have made it more homey and more "ours".

The expense involved one package of wallpaper border for the bath--$8.00.  A 4x8 sheet of 1/4 inch plywood and a 2x4 sheet of 1/4 inch plywood to make the window valances, around $20.  3 yards of fabric at $4.87 a yard, a bag of quilt batting and a new stapler which also uses brads for $19.99.  The satisfaction involved in finishing the job and how it turned out?  Priceless. 

Cold, Colds and Mundane Tasks

I was surprised when I realized it had been two weeks since I lasted posted something here.  We've moved from St. David, Arizona to Gold Canyon and will move to Mesa on Monday and we've done very little during that time.  Denny and I have both been fighting colds or allergies of some sort--our symptoms come and go over a period of days.  Thus we've stayed home a lot, or simply taken long drives as we look in different areas of southern Arizona for any place we'd eventually like to call home.  I've come to find I'm not a fan of cookie-cutter zero lot line plats of homes although in this economy we could certainly pick one up at a really good price.  Our current campground is expanding their offerings with a new section of manufactured one bedroom/one bath adobe style homes with roof top decks that have a great view of the Superstition Mountains but also the propane tank sales and service business in front of the houses.  The homes have been beautifully decorated and landscaped but in size are only 780 square feet to our current 400 square feet so I don't see the point of purchasing something like that.  It's pretty obvious I'm really not ready to settle down yet once I start listing all the bad things about an area or plat of homes instead of the benefits and attributes.

We have played golf a couple of times and this week when we finally felt up to it we started our remodeling project; removing the original window treatments in the main living area and building new valances/lambrequins/window toppers.

The old: charcoal gray material with beige paisley pattern gathered over a piece of wood with side panels in beige.  All the curtain rods at the bottoms of the windows have snapped off due to poor placement (they are all at a height where the chairs bump into them which meant that most of them were broken one month after we took possession of The Beast.)

When we took the original valances down, we discovered the six inch tall valance was made by stapling six inches of material into gathers around a 2 1/2 inch wide piece of 1/8 inch plywood.  The black velcro is for holding the side curtains to the valance.  Wonderful workmanship, no?

A trip to the local big box hardware store netted us a small piece of plywood to create a new topper, the local senior citizens' playground (aka W*lmart) in Benson had a great piece of material in colors that reminded me of the desert and a second trip out to a different big box hardware store had me walking out with a new staple gun that not only was more comfortable for me to work but it could also shoot brads--bonus!  Denny cut the forms, I found a suitable jar lid to create a rounded edge to the corners of the side pieces (hey, Denny gave up his jig saw and other handy-dandy fancy saws when we sold the house) and we used the truck bed as a work bench for cutting the wood.  Because the day was lovely and Patches decided for the first time to actually sit quietly outside (while usurping my chair) I took advantage of the sunshine and covered the wooden topper with quilt batting and the new material.  Win/win.

The result? A more finished look, I think.  The colors have been heightened by my use of the flash; they are much more muted and blended in the natural light.  One (small) window down, seven more windows to go, including one that is six feet wide.  That will be fun!  We'll wait until next week to buy a large sheet of plywood once we're in the new campground since we have no room to store it until we're ready to start work on the next window.  After all, tomorrow is the Superbowl and there won't be any work getting done then!

Needless to say, I have to add the totally gratuitous photograph of a sunset before closing this post. Hope whichever team you are rooting for wins tomorrow; me, I just watch it for the commercials.  ;)

Wandering Around Willcox

If you follow Interstate 10 across New Mexico into Arizona driving towards Tucson or Phoenix you're going to pass the town of Willcox.  In the past, Denny and I have driven to the Cider Mill in Willcox from St. David, Arizona to purchase frozen apple cider but we never really looked around the town while we were here.

This year I decided to arrange a stay of a week's time so we could play golf in Sunsites and check out the Rex Allen Museum and get some cider.  Well, two out of three is not bad.

It seems the town of Willcox has been hard hit by the recession and a lot of the local restaurants and motels have closed down.  The Cider Mill was victim to the economy also, shutting down after selling locally grown apples and apple products for twenty-plus years.  When you ask folks where to eat they recommend the Big Tex BBQ place or "The Plaza" which is a little restaurant at the truck stop along the interstate.  Driving through downtown there are almost as many empty storefronts as there are those still in business and there's not much traffic on the roadways.  It only takes a few minutes to navigate most of the town, so after driving around a bit one day we stopped at the Rex Allen Museum.  


Growing up in the 50s and 60s my heroes were cowboys: Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, the Rifleman, Sugarfoot, Sky King and more.  Rex Allen wasn't a name I was familiar with but I figured he was a contemporary of Roy Rogers and that was good enough for me.

Located on N. Railroad Avenue near the middle of town, when you pull up to park across the street you discover a statue of Rex Allen himself as well as a separate memorial to his horse, Koko.  Once Denny and I went inside the museum, we were immediately informed by one of the staff there that Rex had been cremated upon his death and part of his ashes were scattered by Koko's memorial at his request while the other half were scattered at Rex's parents' gravesites. 

 

It will cost a couple all of $3 to tour the museum; $2 if you are a single.  On the day Denny and I visited we were met at the door by two employees who had obviously worked together a long time; like an old married couple they finished each others statements and bantered back and forth like an amateur comedy team.   It turns out that one of the men was from Ohio originally while the other was a native of Willcox.  Denny and I chatted with them almost as long as we spent wandering the small museum.

Real cowboys wear spangles.  Most of Rex's outfits were created by Nudie, while his boots were by Tony Lama.   In addition to being in movies, Rex Allen had a long recording career and worked in radio, making many public appearances, usually with his beloved horse Koko (nicknamed the Miracle Horse of the Movies.)

The minimum requirements to be a cowboy, as posted in the museum.

 

The museum is divided into several sections dealing with Rex Allen's various careers, family and life growing up in Willcox, but the room I found impressive was the one dedicate to the local cowboys--those ranchers and farmers of Willcox.  Most of the portraits here have been painted by very talented local artists and show the determination and true grit it takes to carve out a life here in the high desert.

It's not going to take you a long time to cover the entire museum, but it was an interesting way to spend the morning and bring back memories of sitting in front of the TV on a Saturday morning enthralled by the cowboys racing across the small screen.  And that was certainly worth the $3.  

Journal Entry June 3, 2003

I had started to post this while we were in Oklahoma City and got distracted with RV issues.  I will occasionally be posting blogs covering some of our travels from before I started blogging in 2005.

Tuesday, June 3 We had thunderstorms early this morning, but no winds so the rain came straight down and we didn’t have to close the bedroom windows, which was weird because it flashed and banged and you would have thought there would be high winds. The weather cleared up after dawn, so after breakfast we drove downtown to the Oklahoma City Memorial. I’ll tell you, I’ve never been to a place where my eyes kept tearing up over and over due to the stories and pictures and videos and photographs and words inscribed on granite and concrete and the memorials left in the original protective fencing. It was touching and awe-inspiring for all the stories of heroism and bravery and pain and terror. There is the outdoor memorial area, with the empty chairs representing those that died that are placed in rows to represent the floor where the person was at the time of the bombing, the reflecting pool and two gates with the time of 9:01 on the east end, representing the time of innocence before the bombing and the west gate has 9:03 on it, which represents the time that Oklahomans were changed forever, since the bombing occurred at 9:02. The museum is in the Journal building, which was badly damaged but left standing next to the Murrah building. They have areas inside that show the damage to the building, with the concrete blocks in rubble and damaged office furniture crushed, doors blown outward, etc., as well as videos of survivors and rescuers and volunteers and relatives and friends of those who were lost, pictures and videos of the bombing and of the world’s reaction to it, and the most touching room was the room of pictures of those who died, each picture set in a shadow box and for many of the pictures relatives and/or friends had placed mementos relating to that person in the box, like a child’s favorite toy, or something of special importance to that person. That was a hard room to view. I’m so glad we went there.

The entrance to the memorial showing the time the bomb exploded.

One hundred and sixty-eight chairs; one for each person killed.  Each chair is inscribed with the name of one lost and each chair is lit at night.

Simply titled "Jesus Wept", this statue stands with its back to 168 pillars.

 Written by one of the many search teams looking for survivors.

 Personal memorials left by friends, family and those passing through.  Periodically items are removed and cataloged and the fence fills again.

 

"Forever changed".  This wall at the opposite end of the reflecting pool shows the time the explosion ended and the beginning of the way our country now had to think about terrorists.

I was looking back in my journals to see when we were here last exploring the city and found my journal entry on our visit to the bombing memorial. As I reread it I realized I really didn't do justice to the museum or to the people who created this memorial or to the people who died that awful day. But our visit left me emotionally overwhelmed and I just couldn't summon the words to describe the emotional impact the entire memorial area had on me. This is one of those places that you just have to come and experience for yourself.

A Missile and A Mission

Duck and Cover--for those of us growing up in the 50s and 60s practicing this drill was standard procedure in elementary school.  So when I was perusing the list of places we could visit in Tucson, Arizona it was natural for me to be intrigued by the idea of visiting a Titan Missile silo to see one of those awesome harbingers of doom.

Located just a few miles south of Tucson in Sahuarita, Arizona there's just a small sign by the turn off for the Titan Missile Museum.  After we parked by the Discone Antenna (ignoring the radioactivity sign at our own peril) we entered the small storefront/museum entrance to discover we had missed a tour by 15 minutes and had another 45 minutes to wait for the next tour.  The tour itself lasts one hour and there is an admission fee with multiple types of discounts for seniors/military/AAA, etc.  There are a few displays and plaques with the history of the Titan missile program but most of the area is given over to touristy souvenirs in the shop. 

Your tour starts with a brief video explaining what you'll be seeing inside the missile silo and then you are led to the open area on top of the silo complex where a tour guide explains the mechanics of the missile itself, including its size, its propulsion system and fuels, the outer security systems and spoke about working there, as many of the guides are former employees of the base.

 One set of four motion detector systems along the outer perimeter of the missile silo area.

Then we walked to a metal staircase the led to a glass topped area that looked down into the actual silo for the now-deactivated Titan II missile.  Unfortunately the glare of the sun on the glass meant I was unable to get a photo looking down into the silo.  Those beige panels are the huge sliding sections of roof that covered the silo and that rolled open for launching the rocket.

Next we traipsed down 55 steps to the inner sanctum of the missile silo, entering through three ton steel doors that had to be opened with special codes that were once burned after they were entered.  Our tour guide, Bob, explained the tasks and preparedness drills the staff went through on a daily basis and even showed a dry run of what a launching would have been like.  Of course, no missiles were ever actually launched from any of the bases.  Back in the 60s there were a total of 54 missile silos; 18 in Tucson, AZ, 18 in Little Rock, AR, and 18 in Wichita, Kansas.  The silo here in Tucson is the only one still in existence.

The long hallway leading from the command center to the missile launch silo.

The halls weren't built for tall guys.

Looking through a cut out in the wall at the deactivated Titan rocket and warhead.

Looking down towards the base of the silo.

Bob, our tour guide, was a font of information about the Titan Missile base, the program and the mechanics of the rocket itself. If you are interesting in learning more I found a great site here. What I should have done was bring my small digital recorder because the amount of information given is vast and it was all fascinating.  Unfortunately, I find that as I age I can look around and listen and process, but I can't always do all three at once.

After leaving the Titan Missile Museum we headed for the Mission San Xavier del Bac just a few miles north off Interstate 19.  I've seen photographs of this history church on other RV blogs and wanted to see this "white dove of the desert."

The Mission of San Xavier del Bac is still in use as a church and is available for weddings and funerals for the Native American Tohono O'oodham people who worship here.  There are no admission fees to visit the church and you are free to wander the grounds and the church itself as long as services are not in session. 

 Now a National Historic Landmark, construction of the current Mission San Xavier del Bac began in 1783 and finished in 1797.  The artwork and craftsmanship inside are amazing for the time and restoration has been ongoing for years due to lightning and storm damage as well as earthquake damage.  Built of brick, stone and lime mortar originally, over the years cement plaster was added and now the restorers are removing that cement plaster and working on returning the walls to their original lime plaster. If you look closely at the first picture (double click to enlarge) you can see the difference between the completed tower on the left versus the tower on the right side of the photo. 

There is a small museum and gift shop on the grounds, as well as a snack bar and a couple of shops operated by local Native Americans.  In the parking lot you'll find several stands with local folks cooking tacos and Indian fry bread for sale while the music of a wooden pipe wafts on the breeze.  It's only a recording coming from one of the nearby shops, but the sound is magical here in the desert standing in front of the white dove.

An Unintentional Christmas Present

When our youngest son called on Christmas morning, he asked what Denny and I had bought each other as gifts. I told him that we hadn't bought specific gifts because we tend to buy things we need like new golf bags/shoes/shirts and call them "anniversary" presents or "birthday" presents no matter when they are purchased. And then we throw/give away something old.

I always find something to buy at the Mesa Market Place (swap meet/flea market) and this year was no exception; I purchased a lovely hand blown art glass solar powered mushroom yard decoration. I called it my birthday present and figured that would work for Christmas also (after all the two are only four days apart.)

But then we moved from our campground in Gold Canyon, Arizona to a county park campground in Mesa and that's when Denny and I discovered we had given ourselves a Christmas gift after all; a beautiful desert setting where we were serenaded by birds in the daytime and coyotes at night. During our week long stay here the two of us have run errands, visited with friends, done some sightseeing on back roads and hit the flea market again where we bought a new pair of binoculars (20 x 70 power) which we have used to pick out distant hikers on the mountainside, followed jet contrails in the sky and watched birds in flight and lizards scrabbling on the desert floor. We have breathed deeply and relaxed completely and that in itself has been a gift.

So Darb, for Christmas we gave each other a campground. And since we've enjoyed ourselves here so much, for Valentine's Day we're giving it to each other again.