Catching Up with Family and Friends

We haven't just been sitting here in Arizona, doing nothing.  We have had good times with family and friends.  Over their spring break, our son Eric and his wife Liz, our grandson John and his friend came to the Valley of the Sun to see us and escape the cold and snow in Colorado.  We had a great lunch at Garcia's with them.

Before they left, we also visited them at their resort, Tapatio, for another good lunch.

Yesterday, we met our friends Barbara and Ron, at the Peralta Trailhead and had a beautiful hike on the Dutchman Trail.  I had forgotten how many saguaro cactus and cholla cactus grew in that area. 

 

 

 

The US Forest Service volunteer in the parking lot told us to look for two rock formations, the cathedral and the three bears.  We think we found both of them.

We also hooked up our Airstream trailer to our new truck and went to Tucson for a few days.  The truck pulls the trailer great.  And we enjoyed a visit to the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

There were organ pipe cactus

crested cactus

and creeping cactus that looked like snakes!

We also saw beautiful human creations in the gardens.  Many of the benches were artistic creations.

Look at this garden wall.

Someone put in a lot of artistic effort to make this wall chart so we could identify the herbs and flowers in one garden.

Oh yes, we have both been able to get both of our Covid vaccination shots!  

All in all, we are enjoying our winter here in Arizona. 

OKC Surprises

We had spent time in Oklahoma City before and visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial which marks the site of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.  It was very moving.  This time we found several surprises that are not nearly as heavy but very interesting.  There was so much to see it will take at least two blog posts to cover it all.

We visited the Myriad Botanical Gardens in the downtown area.  The Crystal Bridge is an indoor tropical garden with many really beautiful plants.

Outside the building we saw a pond with attractive landscaping, including beautiful ornamental grasses.

You can see the Cristal Bridge in the background here.

Inside we saw amazing flowers and plants.  This is a clam claw flower.

I didn't get the names for all the attractive plants we saw.

The variety of orchids was really amazing.

This is some sort of cactus. I had never seen a white one before.  We also saw plants we think are typical in southern Arizona, including a golden barrel cactus.  I guess they are technically tropical too.

As we walked outside again, we saw a lot of amazing fish in the ponds around the Crystal Bridge.

We really enjoyed the gardens, but there was a lot more to see in the area.