And Then It Rained Some More!

It started to rain again last night and rained off and on all during the night. It was raining pretty hard on our way to church this morning. I had to chuckle as I pulled an umbrella out of the cupboard that the Phoenix convention bureau had given me (and other members of the Executive Board) last year when they were trying to convince us to have our Biennial Meeting in Phoenix in 2013. It reads on the inside: "If you lived in Phoenix, you wouldn't need to be using this!"

The rain slacked off a bit this afternoon and we went for a walk after watching the disappointing outcome of the Canada vs USA gold medal hockey game (US lost 2-3 in overtime). This feisty little guy was very gamely protecting his territory and scared off at least two contenders as we walked along. He's a male Anna's and if the sunlight catches his feathers just right, the black on his head and chest is a brilliant iridescent red.




This is the formerly dry wash that runs along the back of the mobile home park!




As we drove home from church this morning we saw that many of the man-made catch basins were also full of water. As I write this, it has again begun to rain...

Tonto Natural Bridge State Park

Forry saw a little phrase on a map of Arizona that said Tonto Natural Bridge and wanted to find out what it was. We couldn't find any pictures of it, even on the internet -- the one picture on the Tonto Natural Bridge State Park website was only of the opening at the bottom.

It is tucked away in a tiny valley in the middle of a forest of pinon and juniper trees high in the mountains. It was documented in 1877 by David Gowan, a prospector who stumbled across the bridge as he was chased by Apaches. Gowan hid for two nights and three days in one of the several caves which dot the inside of the bridge. On the third day, he left the cave to explore the tunnel and green valley surrounding it. Later he returned and claimed the valley as a homestead. After changing hands several times, it was bought as a state park in 1991.

The bridge is believed to be the largest natural travertine bridge in the world. It stands 183 feet high over a 400 foot long tunnel that measures 150 feet at its widest point. We hiked down the trail all the way to the bottom (I was pretty proud of myself!). Fortunately it was a cool day and we were able to take our time. The valley itself is beautiful and then you come upon this incredible structure!

Unfortunately this spectacular bridge is not well known nor well publicized. The docents said they almost get more visitors from Australia, Germany and other countries then they do from the US. The foreigner come with great descriptions in their guidebooks while we could not find more than a sentence mentioning it in any tourist information!

Tonto National Bridge State Park is on the list of 13 state parks that the State of Arizona is planning to close in March of 2010 as part of their budget cuts....

More From the Desert Museum

The almost full moon over the desert yesterday --

One of the very tame desert wrens who guarded the grounds --

A couple of the Mexican gray wolves who are being re-established in Arizona --

Today we drove out to Saguaro Lake created by a dam on the Salt River. There were not a lot of birds around -- coots and grackles and starlings and Western grebes. We did see some piebald grebes and lesser scaups -- both of which were new ones for me (though Forry's had them both for a long while...).

Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum

We saw some interesting sights today! We drove back up to the outskirts of Tucson to the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. It's quite a place. It has a museum, a small zoo, two different aviaries, galleries, lots of nature trails and, of course, a gift shop.

The animal displays are strictly the animals of the Sonoran desert. I got a good picture of one of their mountain lions (Forry got one of the Mexican wolves that I'll post tomorrow.) --

The museum is located adjacent to the Saguaro National Park. My cacti book says this kind of formation on the top of a saguaro is very rare - and they really don't know for sure what causes it --

They have a rather large prairie dog town and as it was warm today, several of the inhabitants were out lounging in the sun --

The ocotillos are beginning to bloom VERY early. The book says they generally bloom in mid-April (which is when we saw them last year!), but they are well on their way.



And look at how green and leafy the plants are! Last year, the ocotillos we saw in bloom looked like dry brown sticks with red on their tips.

It was a long, but very good day. When we got back to Mesa this evening we went to Tia Rosa's for a scrumptious dinner of chicken enchiladas with mole' sauce.

I got a good chuckle this morning when I got a call from Sister Roxy after she had read yesterday's blog about the HP Mini. She and Rich had also gone out and bought one yesterday! LOL

A VERY Early Birthday Present!

On the left is my new VERY early birthday present! Forry bought me an HP Mini computer today!

When I was packing last week to go to the Executive Board meeting, I debated packing my computer. It's great to have it. Although I can blog and read my email on my iPhone, it's hard to access documents or take notes. Since I am still limited on how much weight I am supposed to pack -- let alone lift up over my head -- I have been paying the $15 and checking my suitcase. BUT, you don't want to put your computer in checked baggage! The computer itself isn't all that heavy, but by the time you add the cords and the adapter, it gets pretty heavy to pack for very far and so I left it home.

We had looked at some of the Acer mini-computers that people had at the Health Sector Assembly last October and thought that might be the real way to go. Then HP came out with one

that is the same small size! Since Forry and I both have HP computers, we decided we would stick with the same brand. Anyway, when we were at Costco today, Forry bought me an early birthday present! I've been playing with it ever since we got home. It's sweet!

Another Moving Day

Auntie Violet's new home at the Sun Life RV 55+ Resort --

This morning was a "get up early" morning so that we could once more move to a new site. Most of the parks only allow a seven day stay during their busy winter season at the fifty percent discount rates. Therefore, we stay a week at a time at once place then move on. There are so many RV Parks (most of which are 55+) in the Phoenix area that it mainly means we move no more then a few miles from one park to the next.

This again seems to be a very friendly park with mostly park models (see the one next to Auntie Violet in the above picture) and rather narrow streets. Forry had to make some fairly tight turns to our site on "M" street, but his guide in the golf cart who parked him did a great job of getting him around.

We watched the hockey game between Canada and Germany tonight -- Canada shellacked Germany 8-2! It's a good thing they weren't that hot when the USA played them the other night!

Thunder and Lightning and RAIN!

The view out of Auntie Violet's door this morning as it POURED! And there was THUNDER! And there was LIGHTNING!




I got really WET when I opened the door and leaned out to take the picture!

This is the sky an hour or so later --

As I commented on FaceBook earlier today, we have had more rain here in the "desert" the last month then we EVER have in eastern Washington in a WHOLE year!


We were going to out to do some exploring today, but it was just way too wet. We had rain showers off and on all day. We did go to the Post Office and picked up Forry's prescriptions, then to Fry's grocery and picked up some salad stuff and a barbecued chicken for dinner. And I did finish the laundry I had started yesterday.


We've been watching the Ice Dancing finals at the Olympics tonight. While not nearly as exciting as the hockey games we watched yesterday, they are nevertheless amazingly beautiful.


This is the gorgeous sunset we had tonight --

Hockey!

When we lived in Spokane (in another life), we had season tickets to Spokane Chiefs hockey games and loved spending time at the Arena watching those young men skate. As we were watching the hockey games at the Olympics today, I realized how much I missed that. Russia and Slovakia played this afternoon and tonight we watched the USA beat Canada 5-3 in a hard fought game. (Finally discovered that MSNBC and CNBC were also showing different parts of the Olympics -- so didn't miss tonight's game while NBC was showing Ice Dancing.)

After arriving home last night after midnight from the airport, we weren't very early risers this morning and have spent a fairly quiet day today. We did walk across the street and took a look at the Park Models they have on display here at the RV Park. These buildings have to be kept to a certain size to still qualify as "mobile homes" and fit into the sites at an RV park. They usually have a kitchen, bathroom, combo living/dining room and a bedroom. Most people add on what is called an Arizona room that covers the back portion of what would be the driveway portion of the lot. It seems like many of the people we have chatted with who live in them often still have houses in the "north" and come down to live in their park models during the winter. Some of the parks we've been in have more of these than they have actual RVs.

Home Again!

I had a Anti-Racism Team meeting this morning at 6:30 AM! We had to get together and decide what we wanted to report back to the Board this morning. We had an interesting Board meeting -- two other agency boards met with us by conference call. We met to decide by a unanimous vote that we would go ahead and proceed with building a new facility in Elkhart. It was definitely a different experience.

I rode with a couple of the other Board members back to the airport in Norfolk (many of the others had flown into Newport News), stopping on the way for a quick lunch. We had a quiet flight into Detroit on a plane with lots of empty seats. The flight from Detroit to Phoenix was nice as well, I had the whole row of seats to myself. It was also fast -- we actually landed almost 25 minutes ahead of schedule!

It's nice to be back at Auntie Violet with Forry!

Another Long Day of Meetings

We left this morning at 7:30 and returned at 9:30 tonight. That makes for a long day of meetings. This afternoon we were able to tour Calvary's facilities which range from the church facility complete with a TV studio to the school which accomodates classes for two year olds to 3rd graders to a full print shop which does work for NGOs and not-for-profits as well as themselves. They have between 700 & 1000 people in attendance at Sunday worship. Pretty impressive.

I tried to watch the Olymics last night, but couldn't keep my eyes open. I don't think tonight will be any different.