Joan on the Road...of Life

Diablo Stadium, Tempe, AZ...Angel's Spring Training! What a fun baseball weekend we had. Grandson Bryan joined us to get immersed in baseball. We spent almost all day at the park watching the Angels practice and then play...against the Padres, then the Giants. Great game on Friday...and surprise defeat on Saturday; Giants scored 9 runs in the 9th inning to win 11-6. Bummer!! Thank heavens for sunscreen...90 degree clear sky sun...we would fry without it!

What a great way to see America at play. Drinking beer, hot dogs and mustard, joking with everyone around you, singing the National Anthem with 9000 people!...brings tears to my eyes. And where is this lousy economy. Here are 9000 plus fans plunking down an average of $10 per ticket and at least $20 per person in food. ($8 per draft beer!!!!) So here's a family in front of us that drove to Tempe from Santa Ana, CA to see the Angels. Staying overnight in motel, dad is forking out 20 dollar bills to feed the kids...not a cheap adventure. And everyone is having a blast. The greatest stress of the day was to get there on time! It was really fun to get up close to the players. Bryan got 5 great autographs. So we're already planning this adventure for next year.

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It's funny how easily we get settled into a park and the surrounding area. Guess we are just nomads. The park we're in has mostly "park model" homes...our street is about 1/4 motor homes and the rest are permanent park models. On Saturday we had a block party for "J" street. It was realllllly hot so we ate early, then played horseshoes and bocce ball. We took our bocce set and played like we did at Vail where people just kept subbing in. Someone gets tired...hands the ball to someone else and a new team is born.

The potluck dishes that people brought were really good! I felt guilty because I was lazy and took deli salads. I really need to have a couple of special dishes that I take to these affairs...signature dishes as they say. We talked to neighbors who are doing all sorts of variations on snowbirding...not too many are actually fulltimers. Lots of Canadians are here for the winter and lots from MN and WI. A few people, like our neighbor Betty, live here year round. It gets really hot in this area but they just treat it like people in the east treat subzero weather...stay inside with the air conditioned.

Today was laundry day and I talked to a couple who had just learned that their storage unit...the whole place...had burned down and they lost all their belongings. They are just living here while a new house is being built. They were almost in a state of shock. I had never thought of the whole place burning. Makes me think harder about how to really protect all our pictures.

Last night we took a long bike ride around the park after it cooled off a bit. It's a friendly place and very well maintained...a good place to stop for awhile.

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Arizona SR79 from Tucson to Phoenix is a really lovely desert drive with a wide variety of plants in abundance. The picture is at a rest stop along the two lane highway where the saguaro were plentiful and beautiful. One thing I notice about the desert is the many different plant perfumes...very subtle and sort of intoxicating to me.

We are settled in at SunLife Resort in Mesa on the same street we stayed on in November '03...the doggie street. We've saved up lots of things to do in Mesa as every store we need is close by. We'll be staying here a month while we mail our tax package back and forth to the tax guy in Irvine. Our grandson, Bryan, will be visiting us next weekend and we'll be going to some Angels Spring Training games. Actually that is the reason we came to Mesa in March...and since we like it here..we're settling for a little while, even though the temps will be in the 90's. Of course we'll be visiting Aunties Alice and Helen and all the cousins.

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Our second adventure in Tucson was a visit to the Biosphere2, thirty miles north of the city. It was opened in 1990 as a closed environment to study the earth (Biosphere1). It's really interesting that it is a privately funded facility; major owner of the sponsoring organization is Edward Bass of Texas oil money. In the picture, the round structures are living areas, library, office, kitchen, lab. The glassed-in building contains the 5 biomes (self-sustaining community of living organisms)...rainforest, desert, savanna, marsh, ocean. Originally they had a shopping list of 3000 species of living organisms...from snakes to goats! There were 2 separate studies with people living in the closed environment...sealed in! It didn't work...oxygen built up and they really did not take into consideration how people would get along in this closed environment. It was supposed to also contribute to NASA studies of people interractions. It's seems hard to find info on this...but some of the studies are on this website. Biosphere2 is in the middle of the desert and is currently not being used for any studies...just waiting for the next proposal. It is considered to be the 10th engineering marvel of the world. Don't know what the other 9 are but I think Hoover Dam is in there somewhere.

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Yesterday's Tucson adventure was a trip to the Arizona Wine Country. Now don't think this is anything like Napa/Sonoma!! Here's Jim at the Village of Elgin Winery, which is just about the only thing in Elgin, AZ! We drove through some beautiful country, low mountains, to an elevation fo 5000 feet to find a few wineries (and nothing else!). At Elgin we bought the two most popular...Bisbee Copper which is a light, fruity, sit on the porch in a breeze kind of drinkin' wine. Needless to say, that is gone already! Second bottle is Tombstone Red, which it is said was the wine that the Earp brothers drank the night before the gunfight at OK. It is said best served with rattlesnake and scorpion. We'll probably skip that and drink it with steak.

At Sonoita Winery we bought a couple of bottles that are still on hold...pretty labels and good taste. Best thing here was 2 T-shirt finds. Mine says "Whip me, crush me, make me wine!. I had passed up this shirt in New Mexico and always regretted it...so delighted to find it. Jim's shirt says, "I spent all my money on women and wine, the rest I wasted." I'm so glad I am one of those women!

I love this life! Such relaxation and pleasure in really simple things.

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This was our view driving on Interstate 8 from Yuma to Tucson through the Sonoran Desert National Monument. This is one of the few places in the world that the Saguaro Cactus grows. The more you look at these trees/plants the funnier they look. I couldn't help thinking of Snoopy and his cousin, the doggie who lives in the desert and sits by the cactus. Most of the Saguaro growing on the roadside are 20 feet or more and are abundant on the floor of the desert. Also, though it's hard to see the sides of the road are covered with blue lupine.

We're now located at Rincon Country East Resort where 80% of the sites are occupied by "park models" which are 12 x 50 mobile units that a lot of snowbirds (55+) live in for 5-6 months a year. This is the quietest park we've been in...I feel guilty when the dogs bark!...and everyone is in bed by 10. I'm sure we're the only ones with light burning til midnight.

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Another beautiful day in Yuma found us at Imperial Date Gardens chugging down date shakes (really smooth and sweet), buying date nut bread and a tray of delicious medjool date creations. Actually the date garden is in Bard CA across the border from Yuma Crossing where missionaries long ago found a place to cross the Colorado River and reach California. The dates are so fresh, soft and sweet! Hope they're good for us!

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Some of the most notorious criminals in the West were housed here in the Yuma Territorial Prison. It is said that the killer of Johnny Ringo served time here...however, we know that Doc Holiday killed him because we saw that in Tombstone. This must have been a real hell hole in the summer...pretty grim now.

Posted by Joan at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes I think I'm too connected to the weather! Too much clouds and rain and I'm the same way. Now, I'm happy to report that the sun is shining and will probably continue to blast away for days...so I'm smiling. The temp is inching up to the 90's next week. It's finally time to put on the shorts and the suntan lotion...hooray! But knowing me, next I'll complain about the heat. I'm sooooo glad to see the sunshine! Here comes the sun...good day sunshine!

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The Yumans probably love this but 3 days of rain in a muddy campground is enough for me! We're moving tomorrow to Desert Paradise where the streets are paved!...the poor doggies haven't had a walk since our Monday escapade in the mud. Yuma is not at all like I expected because it is very flat and agricultural. On the road to our campground we're seeing lettuce, brussel sprouts and other assorted green crops. Today we ran into a road block where someone lost a load of lettuce that was smeared across the highway.

There are strawberry fields somewhere because there is a stand on every other corner. I was expecting sand and more sand...which we saw coming into the city in huge sand dunes. All the flat land is surrounded by low mountains, probably an ancient lake bed. And all these crops are not growing due to rain; typical monthly rain is 0.2". There are canals and irrigation ditches all over coming from the Colorado River.

Now that the rain has hopefully stopped we can do a bit of exploring. Today we drove around town to get mail and groceries. Probably drove 15 miles of streets and saw NO grocery stores. Then we got to the WalMart supercenter which was jammed...maybe it's the only grocery store in town.

Last night we enjoyed a great dinner with Renee and Tom. Renee took a spur of the moment trip with Tom to El Centro on his business and then jogged over to Yuma...just a 60 mile dinner trip to say farewell again.

New pictures are posted on the YZGuys server.. of our travels in December/January.

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Here's me at the Grapefruit Festival in my new red hat.

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What happens when our satellite connection, Mr. Moto, fails us? Well we had four days in Borrego Springs disconnected. We had to change sites and a wispy little tree must have been right in the way. So with no internet we had to find other things to do!

Borrego Springs has a substantial grapefruit crop that is celebrated in the annual Tickled Pink Grapefruit Festival. So we went thinking this would take 45 minutes of our time..maybe. Turns out there were some lovely craft items for sale and a lady who sold hats...red hats. So I have declared myself Queen of my own Red Hat Society! It makes me smile to wear the darn thing.

On Sunday we met the crazy neighbors next door who were there for a golf outing of friends. Our Bassets introduced us to them and we spent a couple of hours drinking and laughing. In the midst of our partying, Adrienne got a whif of a rabbit and took off like a bandit with Rocky close behind. So here we go, me in my red had which is about 18" wide, through the shrubs to catch the dogs! We were successful but that required another beer!

Took off for Yuma on Monday and are settled in at Yuma Lakes on the Colorado River. Rain for the next two days will provide us with lots of fun because the ground here is sand, gravel, dirt. A Basset Hound walking through this comes out with a muddy belly! So I'm out there with a dishpan, sudsing off the dogs to try and keep the mud outside. And there's nothing quite like the smell of wet dogs!

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