It Was a Beautiful Day Here Today So Where Do We Go?

More on that in a bit.

We were sitting doing our morning computer stuff when Gordon says "Do you want to go for a drive?" A drive is about all I'm up for, still not walking long distances. He found a scenic drive up the Catalina Highway. It's a very nice paved 2 lane road that rises to about 9100 feet at the top of Mount Lemmon. This is where people in this area go to cool off in the summer, hence the town at the top of Mount Lemmon is called Summerhaven. Summerhaven is actually at 7665 feet and that's as high as we went on the mountain but we were above 8000 feet at some points.

Here we are driving through Tucson on the way to the Catalina Highway.


Lots and lots of saguaro as we start up the mountains.

This was a huge saguaro. Must have been really old.


We saw this dude several times on our way up and on our way back. It's certainly a car that you can't miss! By the way La Bruja means witch in Spanish. The owner of the car is standing at the front fender.

Here's a view of Tucson from one of the overlooks.

Now we're getting higher up the mountain so you see a little bit of snow and some hoodoos.

Then snow lining the roads. When we were getting rain a week or so ago, they were getting lots of snow in the mountains.

More snow.

We stopped at a washroom in the park and had to drive over this snow, ice and open water.

Now we see icicles!


Lots and lots of icicles!


And really big snowbanks!

Finally we get to Summerhaven which is near the top of Mount Lemmon. Here are some ski chalets there. Pricey, I would guess!







The Catalina Highway was built between 1933 and 1950 by prison workers. They did a great job and this highway has lots of pullouts and overlooks.

However, being that high up what did we find was beautiful scenery but lots and lots of snow, the very thing we came down here to get away from. Hence, the title of today's blog. Why would I give up 70F (21C) weather on the desert floor to see snow at the top of a mountain. Good question and I don't have an answer for it that makes any sense.

But I do have lots of photos!

On our way back, we stopped at Wild Oats so I could pick up a couple of items then home! We were gone for most of the day.

Another Day of Not Much

Wow! I'm impressed! I got a comment this morning from the webmaster at the Desert Museum on my centipede photo. To see it, click here.

It was sunny but cold this morning so I decided to forego my walk again so went directly to my computer instead. I did manage to walk to the dumpster this morning and then stood outside talking to neighbors, Hank (on our left side) and Nellie (on our right side). Nellie and her husband are from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia and Hank is from Texas but is here in Arizona for a year. His wife manages nursing homes here.

I did a short walk in the desert. There's a few hundred feet on one trail that has little or no rocks in the path for a ways so I walked there and took some photos, yes, it's the same mountain, actually called Golden Gate Mountain.

Notice that the spines on this fishook cactus aren't red like they were just after it rained.

This little bush was almost brush a couple of weeks ago. See what a little rain can do.



This afternoon I lay down on the couch to read and fell asleep. I woke up about 2 hours later. Gordon had gone to the Desert Museum so I got a pot of stew ready while listening to Christmas music. It's really difficult down here to get in the Christmas spirit. I must add however that Christmas spirit was rarely big with me. Christmas has become far too commercialized for me. Gordon and I no longer buy gifts for each other. So we'll be spending a quiet Christmas Day here in Tucson. But here's a photo that my niece, Danica took this weekend of their yard in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.


Gordon got back from the Desert Museum shortly after 5:00 p.m. He had been at the cat show and was amazed at how well trained the bobcats were. He will probably have photos at www.pbase.com/merriwolf.

Another Laid Back Day in the Desert!

I decided to take it easy on my foot today, so no walk. Although I did walk as far as the mail box this afternoon where I got a letter from my sister in Toronto. Instead of my morning walkI worked on the Funny Farm Mind Game. Thanks a lot, Howard (rv-dreams.com)! Howard had posted the link to this game yesterday. So here you are, folks, may as well get more people involved!

I had planned to color my hair before meeting all our RVing visitors however that didn't happen, so I did that today. No more roots!

Before I got up this morning Gordon set out to walk to the top of the hills that you often see in the background of our photos taken from the rig. Three hours later he had accomplished his feat and returned happy that he had done it, but probably not going to do it again.

Also this morning I got a reply email from Usery Mountain Campground. We can't make a reservation but was told that there shouldn't be any problem with us getting a site. So I guess we're off to Usery Mountain Regional Park at Mesa, AZ on the 27th!

Today was another beautiful day, again around 70F (21C). I made my way out to our new lawn chairs behind the rig and sat there reading and listening to the radio for a couple of hours. Can you believe that a Tucson radio station played "The 12 Days of Christmas" by the MacKenzie Brothers, eh hoser! It had been years since I'd heard it so it gave me a good laugh.

More views from my lawnchair today.

See the moon. This was taken at about 2:00 p.m.


Later in the afternoon, we decided to go out into the desert (not very far due to me being unable to walk) to take our Christmas photos which Gordon uses on his website every year instead of sending Christmas cards so log into his site over the next week or so to see it.

A Day of Goodbyes

Yeah! I'm over 10,000 hits and it's not even the end of the year!

I managed to do quite a walk around the park this morning. It was a beautiful sunny morning and turned into a gorgeous day with highs around 70F (21C).

Ellie and Jim and the puppies came over around 10:00 a.m. when they were ready to leave to say good-bye. I walked back with them and took some photos of them as they were leaving. I was sad to see them leave. We'd only spent a few hours together but they are really nice folks. I'm sure we'll run across each other again in our travels. They also really like the Rockport, TX area. Sure hope so!

Mr. Bo Jangles and Jasmine come to say good-bye.

And away they go!


After they left we got ready and went into town. Gordon's shoes had worn out and he badly needed new ones so we stopped at Walmart to see if they had anything before going to Payless where he had seen some that he liked a week or so ago. Walmart had a pair which he bought so we wound up staying there, getting our hair cut there and then picking up groceries. We had lunch at the Taco Bell which is right in front of Walmart, then stopped at Food City to get water and rutabaga which this Walmart never has. I feel another stew coming up shortly! On our way back to the RV, Gordon's old shoes went into the dumpster!

My haircut, not new but shorter.


When we got back I wrapped my foot again as I think I probably did too much today and elevated it for while. I received an email from my sister telling me that they had 18.5 in. (47 cm) of snow yesterday. YUK!

She also told me that a former coworker of mine had passed away. Somehow I had missed that. It's part of my morning ritual to check the obituaries in the Ottawa Citizen. I was shocked and saddened to hear that Breconridge's Director of IT had passed away. He was only 47 years old and a nice, nice person. He was one of the first people that I met when our Nortel group was purchased by BreconRidge in 2002. So goodbye Dan, may you rest in peace!

Walks and Visits

This morning I decided to try to go for a walk. I managed to walk around the loop here in the campground. I took this photo while still standing on the pavement in the RV park.

After breakfast, I walked over to Jim and Ellie's and took some photos of the dogs. She walked back with me and then went to do her dog grooming. Gordon had gone out to the Desert Museum to take some photos and had really good luck with the birds posing for him today. He said that the place was packed today though.

Here are Ellie and Jim's Schnauzers, Mr. Bo Jangles (Bo Bo) and Jasmine. Bo Bo is black and Jasmine is silver.



It wasn't warm enough to sit outside so I read for a while, made a couple of bracelets, read some more and fell asleep. Ellie came over late in the afternoon for a while after she got her chores done.

We did have a spectacular sunset tonight. I took these photos from the bottom step of the RV.



And here's another photo that Denyse from our rv-dreams chatroom sent me of her sister's yard (St. Louis) after the ice storm with some snow thrown in for good measure.

A Busy Day With Friends!

First of all I'd like to wish my sister, Betty a Happy Birthday today! Here's a photo I took of her at Niagara-on-the-Lake in October.

Today we had made arrangments to meet Ellie, Jim, Jo and Fred for lunch at Coyote Pause. Coyote Pause is another restaurant where you order at the counter and they bring your meal to the table. It's basically and breakfast and sandwich restaurant as they close at 2:00 p.m. The food was good and too much. I had to bring home a doggie bag!


We had a nice lunch and visited for a couple of hours at the restaurant then we came back to our RV for another couple of hours of visiting. Since it wasn't very warm outside (although it wasn't bad in the sun) we stayed inside. Six people in an RV is about all it can handle at one time! Fred and Jo brought Boo Boo with them so we have lots of photos of Boo Boo. Unfortunately not a lot of them turned out as she moves too fast! I do have a lot of blurry photos of her though.


And here's Ellie on the floor playing with Boo Boo.


The Ladies - L to R - Ellie, Sandra, Jo

We had a lovely time. Fred and Jo are leaving tomorrow for points southeast of here however Ellie and Jim will be here until Monday morning so we'll see them again tomorrow. This is just such an amazing lifestyle. You meet so many great people!
Gordon did get our chairs set up today and here's a photo of one of them. Neat, aren't they? The other one is laying on the ground waiting to be set up. They are in one self contained package.

After the folks left I called my older sister for her birthday and it's snowing in Toronto! Hee Hee!

Too Much for a Title

Ellie & Jim came over later in the afternoon yesterday after I posted. Here's a photo of them. Gordon mentioned to me this morning that I haven't clarified who Ellie and Jim are. Ellie and Jim are also fulltime RVers and I have been chatting with Ellie on the rv-dreams chatroom for many months so it's great to finally meet her.

This morning Ellie dropped over to introduce us to their Schnauzer puppies, Bo Jangles and Jasmine. They were going out sightseeing and grocery shopping,

I decided that I needed to get the laundry done today. I managed to get my sneaker on my foot and it actually felt better being encased in something that gave it some support.

After lunch I asked Gordon if he wanted to go for a drive. I was getting bored. On the way out we saw that Ellie and Jim had returned so we stopped by. Ellie had picked up some strawberries for me as I didn't know at the time that I would be able to put on a shoe.

Anyway, off we went for a drive. Our first stop was to find a restaurant for Ellie, Jim, Gordon and I to meet up with Jo and Fred. We stopped at a local Mexican place, no ambience and what I call local color so we tried another Bar & Grille, more bar than grille. We stopped at a place that Jo had recommended called Coyote Pause. I had looked at their menu on line and didn't think Gordon could eat much of what they had however we went in and talked to the lady at the counter and she even seemed to know what a gluten intolerance was. Amazing!

We continued on and wound up at Madera Canyon which is about 40 miles south of Tucson near Green Valley. It's a pretty spot with snow-topped Mt. Wrightson standing over it. We drove almost to the end of the road taking some photos before returning and taking a different way home.


Yes, that is snow!I wanted to see if we could find the Walmart Neighborhood Store on Valencia so we went west on Valencia then turned off on a side street which took us to Irvington Rd. then a bumpy unpaved section of road took us to Sunset which took us to Kinney and home!

We stopped to see Ellie and Jim again, picked up the strawberries and while there she sent an email to Jo about tomorrow.

Now I have to remember to get a photo of Ellie and Jim's poochies.

Oh, and here's a photo that fellow chatter, Dee sent me of the ice storm at St. Louis where her sister lives.

We Meet Ellie!

Finally a day that started with bright sunshine! It wasn't particularly warm but it sure was nice to see the sun.

The good news is that my foot seemed much better this morning. A lot of the swelling had gone down and I was able to put more weight on it than yesterday. It wasn't throbbing the way it was yesterday either. My morning was spent reading, surfing, games on my PDA and watching TV.

I was sitting on the couch at about 1:15 p.m. looking out the window when I saw a Bounder drive in. They've arrived! Ellie came over first and chatted for a few minutes when they first arrived. We're getting together later.

That's about it for my day other than finally getting MS Messenger working.

Ouch!

We had heavy fog this morning but at least it wasn't raining so I got to go for my walk and even did a couple of short runs. It's a good thing because it won't be happening again for a while. More on that later.

Our RV in the fog.


After breakfast, I proceeded to give the place a good vacuuming and cleaned the bathroom. I was about to start on the floors and the bedroom when I fell off the step and sprained my ankle. Actually it's more the right side of my foot which is black and blue and badly swollen. So I won't be able to get into shoes anytime soon, I don't think.


The fog burned off and the sun came out around 10:30 a.m. and by that time I was lying on the couch with my foot wrapped in an elastic bandage and an ice pack on it. I'm not happy! I can limp around as long as I don't put my full weight on it but going up and down stairs is a bit hairy.

Needless to say, not much else got done today.

A Beautiful Rainbow!

Hey! Enough with the rain already! This is the desert, send the rain to North Carolina where it's needed! Again I woke up to rain on the roof however today it didn't stop so no morning walk today. Instead I got on the internet and stayed there for a lot of the day.

I have had a Yahoo email address for years and it's the one I use most now since my email address on Gordon's domain gets so much spam. I use it as a secondary address now. I've been running across friends on Yahoo chat lately and it's been great! So, all my friends out there, join up for Yahoo chat so we can keep in touch more easily. There's Facebook too although you can't chat on Facebook - yet.

In June of this year I added Sitemeter to my blog to count the number of visitors. However it does more than that. What I find interesting is it tells you where the visitors are located (for the most part). It also keeps various bar charts and other interesting things and it sends you a weekly report by email. It's handy and it's free! I'm trying to reach 10,000 hits by the end of this month and it looks like I'm going to make it. Last year I just reached 10,000 hits for the whole year, this year for 6 months. Thanks everyone! Now if I could just get more comments.........

Since it rained most of the day, we didn't do much, read and napped. Just after 2:00 p.m. Mountain time the sun came out and it rained and there was this glorious full double rainbow over the mountains. Gordon was asleep so I ran to wake him up and we both went out to take photos. It was still raining though so I didn't want my camera drenched so I brought it in and dried it off. Unfortunately I couldn't get the whole rainbow with my camera but it was a beautiful one!


Then the clouds came in over the mountains again.