Birds

 

We really enjoy all the birds that frequent the area and have 5 bird feeders hung in the trees beside our site.  The Finches are here year around as well as Sparrows, Doves, Quail and many other bird species that I cannot remember the names of at this moment and I am too lazy to look them up in our bird book.  The Finches are here every day dawn to dusk and such fun to watch, they are very active, and constantly vie for a space on the thistle bag and a very vocal as they sit in the trees and bushes waiting there turn to eat.  I can glance our the windows and see the birds while doing dishes, sewing or knitting and of course while watching TV, we have one of best spots in the park for bird watching and other campers come with camera in hand to take pictures.  We both are looking forward the hummingbirds returning which should be anytime now.  We hung up the feeder but so far no hummingbirds. 

We put the same seed in both bags but the Finches prefer the small bag

The mesh is finer in the small bag, maybe that is the reason

When it very windy the birds take shelter in the cactus.

A Sunday drive

Sulphur Springs Valley in the distance.

A beautiful day, sunny and warm 72 F/ 22 C with a light breeze, I am still feeling really punk with the cold but Woody asked if I would like to go for a drive and I accepted, I can feel crappy at home or in the truck and thought going out and about would be a good idea, so we loaded up the dogs, took some water and snacks, the camera, a box of Kleenex and headed out.  Woody wanted to show me the route that he and Charlie had taken so I could enjoy the spectacular views on the drive through the Dragoon Mountains.  We followed Middlemarch Rd. off State Hwy 80 just north of Tombstone and traveled along the desert floor through the mountains to Pearce, AZ  The road is all gravel with many washes and varies in width from two lane to barely one lane, in surface texture from not too bad gravel to rocky and of course the landscapes changes as one climbs from the desert up into the mountains.  I always find it very interesting to note the changes in the flora and fauna.  From Pearce, we traveled down the Ghost Town Trail to Gleeson Rd, made a detour to the Rattlesnake Man on the N Double U Ranch road, back to Tombstone, AZ then home.  The trip was about 69 miles/109 km, the travel over the mountains was only 19 miles/29km and at the top of the pass we were at 6000 ft. which is not very high but we had a beautiful view of Sulphur Springs Valley.  Traveling that short distance through the mountain pass took us almost 2 hours, travelling between 2 and 10 mph.  I don’t mind travelling mountain roads but did get a little nervous while crawling up to the pass, I could not see any road beside me when I looked out my window, it made me feel a little dizzy as I looked down into the valley, like straight down, no guard rail, I prefer to see a little bit of road on my right side when I look down, it was beautiful though.   We travelled through a small part of the Coronado National Forest, for more details follow the links.

Unfortunately the camera cannot portray the depth.

http://www.arizonabeautiful.com/tucson-southern/the-coronado-national-forest-cochise-county-arizona.html

http://www.gorp.com/parks-guide/coronado-national-forest-outdoor-pp2-guide-cid8927.html

One of the many washes we drove through

The Coronado National Forest covers 1,780,000 acres of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Elevations range from 3000 feet to 10,720 feet in twelve widely scattered mountain ranges or "sky islands" that rise dramatically from the desert floor, supporting plant communities as biologically diverse as those encountered on a trip from Mexico to Canada.

Beautiful little road but so narrow the bushes were scrapping the truck on one side as we drove through.

The sky islands of the Coronado National Forest are unique, in our travels we have driven through many parts of the forest
. 
It was a good day!  
 
Some pictures of the Rattlesnake Man's desert store,

"The Blacksmith Shop"

So many rocks, with natural plants growing among the shelves.

You can see he is out in the middle of the desert

Toys, some very old toys

Can you see the doll buggy and little girls sewing machines, did not ask if these were for sale

Thought the metal "Cowboy" was cool!

Laundry stuff, he did have organization to all his "stuff". 

Got the dreaded cold

Well I have my dear husband’s cold, so no pool and I sure do not have any ambition.  Woody is getting over his cold and feeling better, he did some leather work today and I decided to update the bulletin board by the front door. Figured that would not be too strenuous, surprising how much time I spent going through pictures, choosing some, making a couple of collages and printing out some singles.  I also scanned a bunch of cards that I have been neglecting to do, Birthday cards, Christmas cards, Thank You cards, etc.  I love looking back at the cards and the handwritten notes in the cards, from friends and family.  I still have the bulletin boards in our office/workshop area to do, they need some updating, and more cards to scan, might tackle that tomorrow, depending on how I feel.  The weather is beautiful, sunny and warm, was 22.8 C 73 F today in the shade with a slight breeze and I wore winter clothes all day even though the temp in the fifth wheel was over 80 F 26.7 C, I was just comfortable!    

Staying close to home

Beautiful day here today, sunny, little wind and warm (21C/71 F), unfortunately Woody is suffering from a bad head cold so cannot really enjoy this beautiful day.  He very seldom catches a cold but when he does it is usually full blown.  Tonight Johnny Bencomo is entertaining and the park is serving brownies and ice cream in celebration of February birthdays and we will not be able to attend, very sad as Woody’s birthday was February 1^st, plus we really do not like missing Johnny’s entertainment but we do not want to spread the germs around, this flu/cold has been floating around the park since before Christmas, we thought we had escaped it but not this time. Ah well, it is not life threatening just not fun being sick! As I type this I am feeling like I am coming down with the cold also, which means I will not be able to go to the pool daily, now that is serious! 

Dragoon Mountains

WOW, it has been over a year since I last posted on our blog, not a good thing and I know I will regret not keeping our blog up to date.  With encouragement from some friends I made a commitment to myself to make time each day for making notes to transpose to our blog, today I shall be true to myself and keep that commitment! I will do some catch up posting but not much.

It is interesting how difficult it is to create the habit of writing down ones thoughts and experiences once you lose the habit.  I am not sure everyone suffers from this but for me forming good habits takes commitment and bad habits just seem to sneak into my life without any effort on my part, why is that???  I have developed one good habit this winter though, I am back going to the pool regularly for exercise, Woody says he is going come with me and use the gym equipment while I use the pool which will be great, we both can do what we enjoy and stay in shape!

Woody went for a drive today with friend Charlie through the Dragoon Mountains, a range of small mountains about 25 miles long running south-south east through Willcox. The mountain range is one of Arizona's "sky islands". Mt. Glenn (7,520 ft/2,292 m) is highest point in the Dragoon Mountains. The Little Dragoon Mountains are the continuation of the Dragoon Mountains north of Texas Canyon. The mountains were included in the short-lived Dragoon National Forest, which was established in 1907 and combined into Coronado National Forest in 1908, in the Douglas Ranger District.  Cochise Stronghold Memorial Park lies near Mt. Glen on the eastern slope of the range and the historic town of Tombstone can be found at the southwestern portion of the range. Tombstone is 10 miles from our winter home of Tombstone Territories RV Park. The mountains also boost a few ghost towns.  

 Woody said it was a beautiful drive and we shall make the trip one day and will plan to stop at the Cochise Stronghold. The round trip is about 90 miles (144km) and many of those miles are “primitive roads” which means it is rocky, gravel and only maintained about once a year, which means traversing those roads is very slow going and one only wants to be driving on them in dry weather.

You can click on any of these pictures for a larger view.

 The camera is good but a camera can never capture what the eye can see.

New Work Space

We have been shopping for a new corner desk for my space for over a year and today we drove to Tucson to check out one in person that we saw online.  We purchased the desk along with a small storage cabinet, now comes the fun of installing it in my workspace.  At the same time we added some insulation to the back door and covered the insulation with a pre-finished wall board.  This entailed emptying all our storage cabinets, getting rid of the old desk, dismantling the mechanism which is used to open and close the huge back door, remember this area used to be the garage for carrying toys like our quad, but we  sold our quad an made the space into a “workshop” for Woody and an “office” for me.     We have made many changes to our fifth wheel, the last major one installing new carpet in the living area and garage on Sept 6, 2009.  If you want to see the old set up of my “office” space go back to Sept 6, 2009 post titled “New Look”.  This reno took a couple of days but we are both pleased with the results.

The double door cabinet is a new addition along with the desk.

Storage cupboards cover the back wall which was a huge garage door. You can see a small portion of Woody's work space on the left.

Lazy

Woody and I are both tired but very happy to be at our winter home and are being lazy today, the park is having a big breakfast today but we just didn’t have the energy to go.  Woody did look after the music for the Jam Session last night as he promised he would, but he said he felt like a Zombie, just going through the motions but he knew his efforts were well appreciated so it was worth it for sure, I didn’t go, will wait until next week. 

Rest of Our Trip

Travelled to Twin Creeks Campground in Buffalo, WY from Lewistown, MT. the campground was very icy, snow had melted some and then froze, the owners had not sanded any of the roads, we slide down a small incline as we left the check in and proceeded to our campsite, I was worried we would not make it out of there the next morning evarea en with the truck in 4 x 4.  Walking the dogs was not fun, they could walk on top of the crusted snow, but I could not and walking on the roads was not an option, needless to say we did not walk far!  We waited to leave here until the sun had melted the ice a bit so we could get traction and with the truck in 4 x 4 we made it out of the campground and travelled to Colorado City, CO.  It was a beautiful warm day, great for travelling, we stayed at a beautiful little KOA, just outside Colorado City, yes I know we said we did not like KOA Campgrounds but had no choice on this trip and it turned out to be a great little place to stay.  Some pictures below of their Christmas decorations, we will stay here again no problem.

The above are just some of the Christmas decorations, every open grass area was decorated and they had a nice dog play pen, overall this is an extremely well kept campground.  We wanted to stay another day to visit friends in Pueblo West but the weather man was forecasting a winter blizzard lasting until Saturday so we called our friends and told them we would not be seeing them this trip and I checked the weather online to see how far south the storm would be a problem, turns out we have to travel all the way to Elephant Butte, NM to outrun the storm. 

 
 We got up early and left knowing it was going to be a very long travel day (about 8 hours with stop for fuel).   We usually stop in Santa Fe, NM so planned on stopping there for fuel, big mistake, no place to fuel up that we can get the fifth wheel and truck in or drop off the fifth wheel and fuel up the truck, we wasted time and fuel following signs to service stations that advertised diesel, good thing we carry a small extra fuel tank as we had to stop and pump before we could continue our search for fuel.  Good thing we had an old Flying J truck stop directory in the truck as I found a couple of truck stops listed further down the highway, another lesson learned, don’t look for fuel in Santa Fe there is nothing along the highway and the stations that advertise diesel just off the highway are only for small trucks.   We made it to Cedar Cove RV Park which is close to Elephant Butte after dark and being on the road 9 hours, not fun.  I got out of the truck and took the dogs for a little walk while Woody was getting registered and I felt like I was still moving, parking in the dark is not fun either, the Workcamper guided us into our spot and gave us some light while we hooked up.  We were both glad to be parked for the night, feeling very travel weary.  After relaxing awhile I checked the weather and low and behold the snow was coming to Elephant Butte the next day, so we decided we would travel to Deming, NM the next day, we thought about going all the way to our winter home in AZ but that area was experiencing high winds.  We spent November 30^th and December 1^st in Deming due to winds in AZ, I called the park on Dec 2nd to make sure there were no high winds blowing there and the weather was great in Deming so we left on the last leg of our journey.  When got into the Lordsburg, NM area we ran into snow!!!!!  Sure did not expect that although the elevation is higher than Deming, NM or Wilcox in AZ which is just a ways across the border.  We knew there was a possibility of rain showers but did not think it would cold enough for snow.  I watched the temp dropped as we drove, then the rain turned to snow, we drove in the snow for about 1 ½ hours, we discussed stopping as the snow was starting to accumulate on the highway, the big rigs had slowed right down and were travelling with their flashers on as we were, the visibility was terrible but we kept on going and finally drove out of the snow after we crossed the border and got close to Willcox, AZ.  We both breathed a sigh of relief to be out of snow, driving in snow is not fun when pulling the fifth wheel!  Honestly we have never been more relieved to arrive at our winter home than we were this year, I actually shed some tears of relief and happiness when my feet hit the ground and I felt like I should get down on my knees and kiss the ground, I did say a prayer thanking the Good Lord for our safe arrival!

Crossed the Border today

We made it Lewistown, MT today, weather was great, and the border crossing was okay, the border guard we encountered was very grumpy, must have been having a bad day.  He asked questions that were not necessary, e.g. how come you are so late crossing the border, you usually cross earlier, it was not so much the question but the attitude, plus other comments he made, e.g. “how come you are going to AZ, it gets too hot there, I used to live there…” , he was just surly.  Woody smiled and answered his questions and thanked him for his concern for our welfare.  Just past Great Falls I heard a noise coming from the front of the truck, told Woody to stop the truck (he couldn’t hear it with his hearing aids), so we pulled over, lifted the hood and lo and behold the new fan belt was fraying, wow did not expect that, Woody cut off the frayed piece and we carried on, wondering what could be causing the new belt to fray and praying we would reach Lewistown before the fan belt totally frayed which we did of course.   One more stop to cut of another piece that frayed and that was it.  Another Guardian Angel came to our rescue in Lewistown, Mike who manages the campground is an auto mechanic and airplane mechanic, after hearing our story regarding the fan belt he took a look and found the belt tensioner was worn out which he replaced for us, we even got a discount of the parts, now I know the Good Lord is looking after us.  We spent a couple of nights in Lewistown and left praying that would be the end of issues with the truck.

Still in Milk River

We are still in Milk River!  It snowed then the weather turned very cold (-30 C -25 F with wind chill), winds blowing from the west with gusts up to 100 km per hour).  The water pump in the fifth wheel quit so Woody was going to drive to Lethbridge to buy a new one, the truck would not start even though we had it plugged in, Ron who manages the Campground came over to boost the truck, no way, the batteries started to smoke so the batteries are froze, it is Saturday, nothing open until Monday, so we sit with no wheels to go anywhere, not a good feeling.  We were lucky that Ron came to our rescue and checked in everyday, he took Woody for propane, groceries, and to make appointment to fix the truck. We never take many groceries when crossing the border, there are so many items that are not allowed we find it easier to shop once across the border. Good thing the campground has showers in a heated building, we can get water from the taps there because the water tap we should be able to use to fill our tanks is frozen.   Monday they towed the truck to the garage to thaw, replaced the batteries and after Woody picked up the truck we decided he would drive to Lethbridge on Tuesday to pick up a new water pump, it was still too cold to travel and risk the fifth wheel freezing up, as long as we stayed put, the furnace keeps the tanks heated, uses lots of propane but at least we are warm.  I am wondering if we will ever get out of here, I am thinking maybe the Good Lord just does not want us to head south this winter; Woody assures me that all will be okay and we will make it to AZ. On Tuesday the weather had warmed up so off to Lethbridge Woody goes, receives a phone call from the garage telling him the fan belt was starting to fray (they had forgotten to tell him yesterday) so he took the truck in on Wednesday to get that replaced, no point in taking any chances.  The snow has melted and we are enjoying sunny warm (11.9 C/53 F) weather, I called daughter Tracy as I did every night since arriving at Milk River for a weather forecast, weather is good south so plan on leaving tomorrow.

Made it to Milk River

Drove to Milk River, AB today, great weather and we drove in and out of snowy areas all the way but the highways were dry for the most part.  The campground in Milk River does not have Wi-Fi or TV so I called daughter Tracy for a weather report for Lewistown, MT our next stop, not good major winter storm until Saturday, guess we will be stuck here for a couple of days.

Delay in trip south

Well our planned get away to AZ has been quite an experience this fall between weather and other issues.  We decided to stay for the November Onoway Fish and Game Monthly (second Tuesday of the month) meeting in hopes of getting an agreement signed for next year working at Imrie Park as we have done for the last three years which didn’t happen.  We were assured that we were definitely wanted back but until they received the budget which won’t happen until February or later the agreement could not be signed.  The club is going through some hard changes right now and they are hopeful the club will be running smoothly again after the elections in March.  Wish we could be home for the elections but that is not possible unless of course we end up staying here for the winter and I am not sure how I feel about that right now, part of me says find a place and hang out here for the winter and the other part is screaming to get out of here.  The weather turned against us November 10, the day we planned to leave with high winds, then we had an propane issue, more weather issues, and yesterday after hooking up the lights on the fifth wheel were not working properly so we stopped at Dale’s (Country Automotive) in Onoway and the mechanics found the module that controls the lights was not working correctly, so they had to order the module which would take overnight luckily our friend Ron Johnson offered his yard to park overnight which was awesome, we are hooked up to power, warm and comfortable.  I am a nervous wreck, my stomach is in knots wondering what will happen next and wondering if we should stay here or attempt to go south, for some reason I have had a bad feeling about this trip south for a long time.

Jan. 17th to Jan. 21st

Well here it is Friday and I have not made a post to our blog, cannot believe how the time just slips away. I still do not have the videos transferred from our expiring external hard drive due to the fact my beloved wonderful computer had the hiccups. My first step was to use the restore system and when that did not fix the issue I ran every program I have one by one to try and solve the issue and spent many hours reading online regarding the error message I was getting and the sad part is if the computer has the same issue again I probably won’t remember exactly what I had to do to fix it, but it running smoothly now and I do have a feeling of satisfaction for having solved the issue! Once I got my computer running smoothly I did all the year end financial fun stuff! I have a database set up in Access which tracks all our expenses and I create all the year end reports; it is scary and interesting to see where our money went! I can also see the difference in our spending habits over the years which is cool!

The weather has been beautiful all week, no freezing temps at night with warm sunny days we just cannot ask for more.

We attended a Soup and Sandwich Potluck Tuesday and as usual the food was awesome and we all brought home leftovers! Potlucks are great, you eat food prepared by someone else and at the same time have the opportunity to visit with friends and meet new folks at the park.

The last three mornings we have been serenaded by a wonderful bird that perches on the tree top and sings his heart out and hangs around for about 3 hours, I think it is a Mocking Bird but I am not sure, bought a bird book last year and cannot locate the darn thing, can you believe one can loose stuff in such a small space. The other nature type story is of honey bees eating our songbird seeds. I asked our Activity Directors if they had any idea why bees would be eating seeds and they did not (they have lived in the area for years), so I went online to check it out. Turns out that when the weather is warmer than usual they come out looking for food, there are no flowers, etc., for them to snack on so they find bird feeders, empty most of the seeds on the ground snacking on the pollen that is in the dust when the feed is bagged and also will eat Millet and some other songbird seeds. The hungry little bees can empty a six cup feeder in about 4 hours and the birds will not challenge the bees but they will eat the seed that the busy little bees dump on the ground. We waited a couple of days to refill the feeder (we have other different type feeders that the bees do not bother) and Woody strained the seed to get rid of the dust, well 20 minutes after hanging up the feeder the bees were back, so now we are feeding the birds and the bees!

This is not a good picture, I took it from the wrong angle and you cannot see the bees that are against the tree truck and also the bees that are in the tray of the feeder, this photo was taken at 1:42 pm.












This photo was taken at 3:14 pm and you see it is empty except for a little dust, most of the seeds are on the ground and the bees left a short time later.

We are going to attend the Jam Session this evening so will go and have dinner. Hope you had a great day!

Jan 12th to Jan 16th

Highlights of the remainder of the week:

Wednesday evening we celebrated the January Birthday’s with home made brownies and ice cream prepared and served by our Activities Directors Jim and Anne and a performance by Johnny Bencomo, always a great time. Friday we attended the Jam Session and Saturday we decided to go the Flea Market in Sierra Vista, didn’t buy anything but Woody met a knife maker who had some gorgeous knives, I was looking for a lady we bought bread from last year but she was not there, after lunch we drove to Elfrida, AZ (about a 45 minute drive) to check out a leather smith that a leather smith from home had mentioned, we didn’t find him but did check out the Art Centre which was cool. Elfrida is a small unincorporated community of about 1000 off Hwy 191.

The rest of the week we spent just doing our thing, Woody working on his projects, I spent time moving a mountain of items from my external hard drive which is acting like it wants to crash, i.e. sometimes it runs and sometimes refuses to run. We have very precious pictures on that drive, examples being family pictures I scanned a few years ago of my family dating back over 80 years plus many years of our family growing up and so many memorable occasions too numerous to mention, I am happy to report I retrieved them all. Next week I hope to retrieve the videos, that involves hours of transfer time and that means that I dare not use my computer while the transfer is happening but I have to monitor as the hard drive keeps shutting down, then I pray I can get it working again, so wish me luck! After I retrieve all the pictures and video’s I will transfer them to another newer hard drive, I thought about burning them to DVD’s but decided that was not feasible, (besides unless I use very expensive DVD’s they crash also) a DVD holds 4.7 GB per DVD and I have well over 100 GB, the other option is to upload each to a online service which is not feasible either and again no guarantee that option would be safe, I will take my chances with the external drive. One thing with an external hard drive, even if it crashes totally I can take the drive to a computer repair shop and pay around $100.00 for retrieval of the data, ah the joys of our digital world eh!

Visit with friends

Left about 10:30 to visit Gary and Deb who live south of Wilcox, AZ about 1 ½ hours drive from here, Gary is the leader of the Jam Sessions at our winter home and they had invited us for lunch. We took the dogs with us, they were invited, and we knew we would not be home until 5:00 PM or later. We visited a couple of times last year so knew the time would pass quickly as it always does when visiting friends. Unfortunately we have no pictures to share as I forgot to put the card in the camera (left it in my computer). Gary and Deb live out in the desert with a view of the Chirichahua Mountains and on our way home travelling the small dirt road leading to the highway we saw 5 Coues deer, we stopped (we were on travelling about 10 KPH), they crossed the road, and then stood in the desert like they were posing, man did we miss a great photo opportunity. Deer and coyotes are prolific in the area along with some cougar and other desert creatures. We arrived home around 5:30 pm and about 15 minutes later had a visit from an Albertan Gordon who camped at the park for a few days and was the person who had repaired our furnace shortly before we left this fall. He and his wife (Linda) had left Alberta Nov. 20^th travelled through Montana, Idaho and Utah, to Quartzite, AZ and had a horrendous trip, snowed most of the way, said he kept the truck in 4 x 4 most of trip and did a lot of white knuckle driving, that is the very reason we do not travel down I-15, too many high mountain passes through the Rockies but he and his wife wanted to see the Grand Canyon which they did and even though it was cold and snowy it was beautiful. Gordon is a character and we so enjoyed his visit, wow another visitor from home!

For information on the Chirichahua Mountains I have included the links below, as with any area we visit there is some interesting history, great scenery and in this case wonderful friends.

http://www.americansouthwest.net/arizona/chiricahua/national_monument.htm

http://statistics.arizona.edu/zeeb/butterflies/habitats/Cave.html

http://www.americansouthwest.net/arizona/chiricahua/national_monument.html

This and That

Went swimming this morning for the first time since Christmas, the water was cool, the pump had quit and John (owner of the park) forgot to cover the pool. The pool is enclosed but there are screens all around the top which allows heat to escape in the summer but of course allows the cool night air in and it did freeze here last night 23.9F (-4C) so we did our exercises and I hit the showers to warm up, some of the girls headed to the hot tub, oh man we are so spoiled, the water was actually warmer than any lake I swam in at home! Upon returning home I grabbed a bit to eat (always need a snack after swimming) and decided I really needed to take down the Christmas decorations. I always have a hard time putting away our Christmas decorations, I so love our little tree with its lights in the evening and it was the same at home, we left our tree up until after Ukrainian Christmas which is one week after our New Year celebration. Our little home seemed a little bare after packing up the Christmas decorations but it was time.
Woody went shopping while I was at the pool and stopped in to visit Cheri at Blue Opal on the way home to let her know what gems he planned on using and tried to pay her, she would not accept any money, she wanted to gift the gems, such a generous lady. While there Albert, who will be reopening the shop as soon as possible asked Woody if he would like to come in and polish stones and then sell them for a commission of course, he told Albert he would have to discuss the offer with me, he is considering the offer. After lunch Woody continued working on a belt buckle he is creating for himself, so far it is going very well and I cannot wait to see the finished product.

Working together

I spent a lot of time working with some of the pictures we have taken to upload to our blog, first job is to choose the pictures, then each picture usually requires some cropping, balancing the levels and all require sizing as we take all pictures at the highest resolution available on the camera. Pictures I use in DVD’s and/or print I use at the high resolution, but to save space and upload time I resize all pictures, blogger has a limit on the space I am allotted and our internet dish company also has a limit of daily usage so I have be careful when uploading or downloading. Besides working on the blog I scanned, sized and printed a design for Woody’s leather craft, if he finds a design he wants to try in any magazine or on the web, I play with it on the computer until it is just the size he needs and I love doing that for him and he is very appreciative, we make a good team!

Woody vists Bill and Barb

A quiet day today, Woody went to Tombstone to visit Bill & Barb to check out how they are doing selling their business, they were doing very well, had sold most of the goods from the store and had most of the equipment packed up, if you recall he is the 3^rd generation leather smith that Woody had hoped to work for this winter. The building that housed the business was put up for sale and Bill decided to shut down the shop as he sells more on the internet than from the shop so will continue to work from his home. Bill invited Woody to visit their ranch anytime he wished and I am sure Woody will do just that. After returning home Woody did the laundry while I continued to spend time catching up a bit on our blog. I doubt I will get ever be caught up as it is just too far behind. My New Years resolution was regarding our blog, specifically to work on our blog at least for an hour each day. When I include pictures, one post can easily take 3 hours, inserting pictures is very time consuming but without pictures the whole premise of our blog is lost. Not all posts have pictures or need pictures but many do and you know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” and this is so true when it comes to our blog, it is fun to look back now and will even be more fun in our later years.
Yikes I just checked the weather at home, there is a snow warning with blowing wind, expecting up to 5 inches (15 cm) of snow, feeling so blessed to be here with temps up to about 59F (+15C), oh yeah and with the wind temps at home are -4F (-20C) not nice at all.

Jan 3rd to 7th

The weather has been nice, a bit of cloud, temps 54F (12C) Monday to 70 (21C) today (Friday).

Monday I delivered our card to Lenore and Mike, Lenore was not home and Mike said he wanted to wait to open the card until Lenore came home which I certainly understood and thought it was very thoughtful of Mike. Other than ordering a couple of knife blanks for Woody, and the usual daily things like walking the dogs, cleaning, etc., there is not much to report.

Tuesday I was very proud of myself, I took the dogs for a walk on the trails in the desert and managed to walk a full mile, that is a first for me in just about a year, (since I have been having issues with my hip), it sure felt good to walk without any major pain. I hope that means that my hip is slowly healing. Other than doing some major cleaning and working on the blog that is about all I accomplished. Woody keeps busy with his leather projects, he is working on a belt for himself which I urged him to do, nothing like wearing your own creation, he is also working on items for Wild TV which is presenting some challenges for him. Leather is not forgiving, one slight wrong move and the project is garbage, he at least can use the scraps of leather to practice on, so not all is lost and it is the only way to learn. I ordered another knife blank for him today so once they arrive he will be a busy boy!

Wednesday the highlight of my day was a visit from Mike and Lenore, they dropped over to thank me for the card, and they are such thoughtful sweet people. Lenore invited me to go “Street Walking” in Tombstone, I laughed saying that did not sound good, but of course what she meant is window shopping with some of the swimming gang, I thanked her but declined, walking is still an issue as I found out on my morning walk with the dogs, it would have been fun otherwise, some of the girls made themselves costumes so they will fit into the 1880’s look. Many people dress up in Tombstone so you fit right in. Woody made a trip to the gun range with his buddy Rolly to do some shooting; they left around 1:30 and got home around 5:00, almost late for “Miller time”! The weather was perfect for shooting, no wind although Woody said it was a little chilly at the range, and he had to put a jacket on. This is the first time they went to the range this winter but I am sure they will go again before the winter is over.

Thursday was a busy day, we dropped the dogs at the groomers at 10:00 am while they were getting all pretty and clean we did some shopping. After picking them up at 1:30 pm we came home took them for a walk and settled them at home then went to visit with Cheri Saunders who had invited us over for snacks, etc. Cheri is the owner of Blue Opal since her business partner and friend Mike passed away about 5 months ago. We met Mike our first year here and became friends and were very sad to hear he had passed away which we found out shortly after our arrival when Woody stopped over at Blue Opal to say “Hello”. We visited until around 5:00 pm and while there Cheri offered Woody some Mother of Pearl for Woody “to play around with to see if he could incorporate it into some of his leather pieces” (in her words). Woody was surprised and pleased with her generous offer and thanked her excitedly. After dinner Woody worked some on designing some leather projects, incorporating the Mother of Pearl, I did a little work on posts for the blog until Cookie started whining and looking so sad, she wanted to sit on my lap, she really hates it when she doesn’t get her lap time, yeah she is spoiled but how can I resist when she looks up at me with her sad brown googly eyes. When she was just a small puppy I really spoiled her by letting her sit on my lap while I worked on the computer, she is too big now to do that but of course she doesn’t know that so I shut down the computer and watched a little TV with her and Muffin in my lap, not a bad way to finish off the day!

Today our friends Dale, Janice and the boys flew back to Alberta from Tucson, hope they had a good trip, will have to email them and see how the rest of their trip went and find out what they had a chance to explore in Phoenix and Tucson.

Friday was a nice day 70F (21C), sunny with some wispy high cloud floating around and some wind. Not much to report, we did not even go to the Jam Session at the park in the evening, this is first time we have chosen to not attend since 2008 and only the second time we missed a Jam Session, we choose to go and see Johnny Bencomo at the Landmark Café a few weeks ago instead. Woody worked on a belt buckle for himself incorporating a few Mother of Pearl gems, it did not turn out as nice as we both anticipated, the design on paper looked good but somehow did not look real attractive on the leather a little disappointing but he is not deterred, will try something different with the Mother of Pearl after giving some more thought to the design. I will post a picture of the buckle after Woody completes one to his satisfaction.