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.

We're On Our Way

Tuesday morning after Easter we finished loading our trailer and closing up our winter home and it was time to hit the road!  We pulled out of our place in Gold Canyon about 8:30 and were on our way to Holbrook, Arizona.  This is a comfortable drive for us, about 180 miles.

After a one night stay, we moved on to Albuquerque for a couple of nights, then to Tucumcari, New Mexico.  Downtown Tucumcari has a number of murals.  This one focuses on the old Route 66, America's Mother Road, now generally following I-40.

From Tucumcari we have traveled another 116 miles to Amarillo, Texas. (Yes, I know.  That is a really short drive.  We prefer to travel this way.)  In the Texas panhandle we see lots of grain elevators and wind turbines.

Our eventual destination for this trip is New Hampshire for a visit with our son Doug and granddaughters Rachal and Samantha. Since the trip there is more than 2600 miles from Arizona, it will take a while. We have lots of fun things to see and do along the way.

Holy Week and Easter

This spring, per our usual schedule, we stayed in Gold Canyon through Easter so we could worship at our winter church home, Epiphany Episcopal Church in Tempe.

John assisted at all of the services during this most holy week of the church year, beginning on Palm Sunday.  The service began in the Parish Hall then we processed with palms to the church where John censed the altar.

Thursday we marked the Last Supper when Jesus washed his disciples' feet and instituted the celebration of Holy Eucharist.  Our Good Friday worship was marked with an empty altar and an empty cross.

Saturday night we began our Easter Vigil in the dark as we remembered the disciples waiting together in fear after Jesus' crucifixion before the first light of Easter is kindled.

The church is no longer bare but full of gold drapery and white flowers.

Easter Sunday the church was packed with worshiping Christians and three young children were baptized.

Even the Arizona desert flowers celebrate Easter. Each spring this beautiful flowers bloom--for only one day. I call them Easter lily cactus.

Then we were off on our summer travels.

We Come and We Go

We certainly do. At this time of the year snowbirds, winter Texans, whatever you call the residents of the snowy northern states who come south for the winter, are turning their wheels north where the temperatures over the coming 6 months or so will be more comfortable than they are in southern Arizona, southern Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. They will enjoy the temperate zone for half a year or so before heading back south sometime between October and January.

We are doing the same. Next Tuesday, after enjoying Easter at Epiphany Episcopal Church in Tempe and a visit with friends on Monday, we will be headed out as well. We are in the midst of cleaning the house, moving everything we will need for the summer into our Airstream. We have arranged to have someone check on our house here over the summer, turned in the paperwork to have our mail forwarded for the duration, had final get-togethers with friends we won't see till next fall and washed the truck and cleaned it inside. I am finishing some turning projects; the federal and state tax returns have been filed.

When we go for our daily walks in our resort we can see many of the other winter residents here have already left. This is a very predictable migration, as marked as the time when students return to school in the fall and are released for summer vacation.

Before returning to Colorado for July, August and part of September, we will be driving north to I-40 then east to address part of our bucket list by staying in the final 5 continental US states we haven't yet spent the night in--New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island--before visiting our son Doug and our granddaughters Rachal and Samantha in New Hampshire. We are looking forward to traveling.

We began RVing in 1988 and in 2005 we did our first volunteer assignments at Nails Creek State Park in Texas and Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. The following year we volunteered for a couple of months at Fort Parker State Park in Texas. That is where we met full-time RVers Frank and Chris. She introduced me to blogging. On May 21, 2006, I created 5thwheelwanderings.blogspot.com and published my first blog post. Since then I have published 1274 blogs and this will be 1275. We felt we got to know some of those bloggers as they shared their life on the road. And on January 29, 2009, we moved out of our Colorado house and became full-time RVers.

In the 8 plus years we have seen many people also begin full-timing and have made real friends--not just virtual friends--with some of them. In October 2014 we purchased our house in Superstition Views, ending our full-time lifestyle but not our travels. Some people who are full-timers live that lifestyle
for only 1 to 3 years. Sometimes they are traveling to find a good location to spend their retirement. Others are on the road for 10, 15 or 20 years. In the years I have been blogging and we have been reading RV blogs, we have watched at least six of those full-timers (including Frank and Chris) do just as we have done, buying a house for part of the year or setting up the RV permanently in an Escapees RV park. Obviously, traveling full-time in an RV is something people come and go from. We understand.

I also understand how hard it is to keep up a blog that is primarily about travel when travel is reduced to only part of the year. This is my first blog post since April 5. They will be coming more often beginning next week when we hit the road again. I am not looking for more RV blogs to read. I am spending more energy getting to know people here in our resort but not making new friends on the internet.

The most constant thing in our lives is not the people around us, the work we, the place we live or our lifestyle. It is change. And it keeps us on our tow and learning new things all the time.

Are We In Control Now?

Back in January I blogged that It's Out of Control. That feeling continued through last week. On Thursday John met with his cardiologist. After showing him the results of a two-week session of heart monitoring, she said she wanted him to have a pacemaker implanted this week. What? John has never felt any symptoms of heart problems. But after looking at all the printouts of his heart activity, we could see that the heart would pause until an electrical signal came from a different area of his heart to get it beating again.

Obviously, it is important that the heart keeps beating regularly and the way it should. What could he say but when do I go to the hospital? Tuesday morning we arrived at Mountain Vista Medical Center at 5:30 am. They prepped him for the surgery.

About 4 hours later he was giving the OK sign after being transferred from the recovery room to a bed in the telemetry unit where he spent the night. I returned to our house for a couple of hours, then it was back to the hospital so I could have dinner with him.

This morning we expected him to be released about 8 am. It was about 11 when he finally was able to leave and we were on our way 10 miles east back to the house. He looks a lot more at peace now, doesn't he? We hope were are back in control of our lives, for a while at least.

End of Season Get-Togethers

Snowbirds flock together in southern climes where they form relationships during the winter months. Then comes Spring and everyone prepares to go their separate ways to locations north. That means we have to say goodbye to the winter friends. So there have been lots of social events in the past few weeks. First we met our friends Ron and Barbara at Sweet Tomatoes for lunch.  We might run into each other in Colorado this summer, but for sure we will get together for some hiking next winter.

"In our resort the "dead enders" had a party for their own groups and the "loopers." Those terms refer to the streets we live on.  One cul de sac is the dead end and the adjoining road loops around, returning to the entrance to the dead end.  Here is the line waiting to get something to eat.  We all bring dishes to share and the husband of one of the host couples grills some of the meat from his many hunting trips of the past year.  Yummy!




We even had Tommy G providing music for that party.
















As you can see, there were a big bunch of us there.  Notice the small RV that closes off the open end of the dead end--and provides some shade.




Last week the women of the neighborhood gathered for a presentation on Norwex products.

Linda was the sales consultant who told us all about the chemical free cleaning products.  It was good most of the women were more into cleaning than I am.  She wouldn't make any money if everyone was like me.

The last gathering (at least as far as I know now) was the third annual April Fools Day brunch.  We all brought our favorite breakfast/brunch food and there were so many good things to eat.

That gathering ended with a cake for Jack's 65th (he said) birthday.

We understand that 88 sites in our resort were scheduled to check out Saturday. The flood is beginning. Already the local traffic is lighter. Our plans are to head out in two weeks, right after Easter. From what we understand, by July it will be pretty much a ghost town here. The quiet before all the snowbirds start returning in October. It's a great lifestyle. We get to enjoy the good weather year round and make friends in lots of places.

Family comes for a short visit

Our son Eric and his family stopped by for one night on their way to California for Spring Break. We relaxed and talked outside for a while before dinner, enjoying our time with grandchildren John and Kylie and their parents Liz and Eric.  Kylie is a junior in high school and they are spending the week looking a possible colleges in California for the fall of 2018.

Here Kylie is showing her brother and parents a video she is preparing of their trip.  It was fun to be a small part in the video and we look forward to watching the finished product.  You can see her family is enjoying it, too. 

We wish they could have stayed longer but we are glad we could provide an overnight place to stay on their way.

The Desert Blooms

It's spring and you really can't beat the Arizona desert in spring.  Desert plants are blooming all over our resort and even on the highway medians.  We love it!

This plant is in the median west of our resort near Basha's grocery store.

The bougainvillea bushes are absolutely stunning this year.

These pink flowers are so pretty.

The Perils of Publishing

For many years John has been writing about the people and events of his life.  In January 2016 he joined a class here in Arizona about writing your life story.  The class helped him focus on putting the stories together so they can be published.  What that took was writing a few segments linking the various periods of his life into a coherent story.  Coleen, who mentors the class recommends a self-publishing web site, Create Space, a product of Amazon, as a place to publish life story books.  Over the past 5 days or so, we have been working at uploading the material so it can be published.

            Perhaps the biggest hurdle in that process is the perfectly awful Verizon internet we have here in Gold Canyon.  At times from late morning to late evening, it can take 3 to 5 five minutes for a web site to open.  I rarely have the patience to wait for that happen.  But we have uploaded a PDF file of the book, received feedback from Create Space, fixed the problems and uploaded again—for a total of three times.

            Then there is the book cover.  We worked on it, uploaded content, looked at it, changed it on our end and uploaded it again.  Then we decided we didn’t like that layout.  Today we contacted the web site, someone called us back, we learned we needed another template to do what we wanted, and finally got that uploaded! 

            The next stage is for people at the web site to review the contents and give us feedback.  When we say everything is the way we want it, they will print a proof copy and send it to us.  It everything is OK, we can move forward.  Or we can make changes again.

            I have been blogging for 11 years and publishing a blog is simple compared to this.  Each year I even get a hard cover book of my blogs for the past 12 months.  But publishing a book or stories this way is more complicated, especially when the internet is s-l-o-w to non-existent.  But we are almost done!

            This isn’t going to be on the open market for sale to anyone interested.  We will have copies printed for family, only.  Hopefully John’s brother and sisters, our children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews will be interested in the content, at least sometime in the future.  The people in the class who have put together family histories say their children will read the chapter about them but often not the rest of the book.  But we know from our own experience that these topics aren’t of much interest until we get into at least the last half of our life.  Hopefully, it will be of interest either when we die or even later.

            Oh yes, now I am working on my life story, as well. The title of John’s book is It’s All About People, Dead and Alive. I may call mine I Was There, Too.

Hiking and Eating

Spring has definitely arrived in our part of Arizona.  Friday we walked from our resort to the backside of Silly Mountain.  The poppies are blooming.

We have had above average rain and the desert is really green.  It's not often we see the ground this color here.  It is so nice.

After our walk we met our friend David and Alice and their daughter Teresa (I hope I spelled her name correctly) for lunch at Janie's Burrito Café in Gold Canyon.  We enjoyed the food and the time with friends.

Social Gadabouts

Last weekend we were really social gadabouts--certainly not our normal routine.  Thursday we attended a party next door where our neighbors had just expanded their patio.  Friends offered to provide some music and everyone brought an appetizer to share.  Our neighbor Doug invited us, saying he wanted us to be aware of the party--either so you could come and enjoy it or to warn us it would be kind of loud.  It was both loud and enjoyable.

Saturday morning Deacon Lynn and her husband invited all the clergy and their families at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Tempe to brunch before all of us who are snowbirds left for a few months.  Everything was delicious and we enjoyed time with others ministering in this place.

Saturday evening we attended a birthday party at Buca di Beppo in Chandler for our friend Karen, also a member of Epiphany.  It was a fun evening with excellent Italian food.  What a great evening!

The rest of the week has been quiet and laid-back, also a good way to spend our time.

Water and Frisbee and Sailboats

Since John had a clergy retreat in Prescott this week, we took the trailer and spent a couple of nights in Point of Rocks RV Campground. We were right next to Watson Lake and the Granite Dells.  It is a beautiful place to walk.

In addition to several fishing boats and canoes, we saw this tiny sailboat on the lake.  It is entirely wind-driven but a radio-controlled motor changes the angles of the sails and the rudder to direct where the boat goes.

We see radio-controlled airplanes in a number of the parks we stay in and there is fierce competition with radio-controlled race cars in our resort.  This was our first time to see sailboats like this.

The Prescott park next to Watson Lake also has a Frisbee golf course.  A number of young men and women were playing the day we were down there.

While John attended the retreat, I stayed at the trailer, using my computer and walking. Prescott calls its trail system the mile high trail because of the elevation there. The low Thursday morning when we prepared to return to Gold Canyon was only 28 degrees.  We were glad to get back to a (slightly) warmer part of Arizona.