OUCH!!!!

 December  28, 2020

I was hiking with Lynn yesterday at a Preserve in Phoenix.  We were almost finished when I saw that there was a geocache not too far off the trail. Of course, I had to look for it. I found it right away, but instead of going back to the trail the same way, I saw a short cut. BIG MISTAKE.  There were many cholla  cactus around, but, I thought I was being careful. Cholla's are also called the jumping caucus. Seems like you don't have to get too close and the stickers jump onto you. They are very hard to get out because there are little  curved barbs at the end that really dig in. You usually have to get them out with a tweezers  or pliers, of which I had neither.  I got one on the back of my hiking pants. Couldn't walk without it pressing into my leg. The worst one was large and covered 3 fingers on my right hand.  Have never had one on bare skin. Tried to shake it off but that made it worse. Lynn was able to get the one on my leg off. The one on my hand was much harder. I was almost in tears it hurt so bad. Finally using my hiking stick, I was able to get it off. It left alot of little barbs but I carefully got them out. I have tweezers and a fine tooth comb in my bag when I geocache, but had left it at home. I will never again leave home without both of those tools. I still have a couple in my hand that hopefully will work themselves out. 

The pictures are of the cholla cactus. In the description of the hike, it says there is a chola forest.  I'm used to a forest  having tall trees, not waist high cactus

Saw this car on the trail. Looks like a jeep was off-roading and fell into a ravine and caught fire. Wish I knew more about it. 

Overall view from the trail

SMALL WORLD

 December 29, 2020

A few days ago I was coming back from getting the mail and there was a maintenance man in a golf cart raking the sand in the next site. He asked me where we from in Washington, he had noticed the license plate on the truck. I said Renton, 11 miles south of Seattle. His wife graduated from Liberty HS, the closest HS to where we live. Our son graduated from there. We talked about the ice rink, Jerrbery's, a restaurant, the IGA grocery store and Doofers, a tavern.  His wife grew up not too far from us. He said he graduated from Mount SI. Couldn't believe it because that's also where I graduated from. It is located in Snoqulmie, just a small town on the way to Snoqulmie Pass. Of course, I graduated many years before him, I'm as old as his grandmother. Who would have thought I'd meet somebody  in AZ that went to the same school as me and whose wife grew up in the same town that we live in.

Such a small world somwtimes!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 December 25, 2020

Merry Christmas to all. This has certainly been a crazy  year with COVID. Hopefully 2021 will be a better year and end all this craziness.  We have all had to change things around, especially during the holidays. This is the first time in many years that my family in Washington hasn't gotten together for Christmas. Hoping it will just make next Christmas even more special.  Because we are retired, our routine hasn't really changed that much. We are together 24/7 anyway and we rarely go to restaurants. The biggest thing for me is that my gym closed, so I am taking classes on Zoom.  We decided to continue on with our snowbird trip because we are still in our own little bubble, just in better weather.  

Our Park still does all their activities but we haven't done any of them. Too many people, too close together. All we have done is see the Christmas Golf cart parade last night.  People decorated their golf carts and went up and down the streets of the park. We had our propane fire pit going and I fixed hot spiced wine to watch everyone go by. Unfortunately there were only 3,  but  we did then walk around the park to see all the lights.  They did throw out candy and Denny got 2 pieces. He was happy!

The pictures didn't turn  out very well but wanted to show you anyway. I took them with my phone and don't know how to adjust for dark

My heart goes out to all the families that have had to deal with Covid, especially those that died. So tragic, can't imagine how they feel. We have had 2 people in  my family on my Dad's side that almost died, but luckily they pulled through.   Thank heavens. Kudos to all the first responders on the front lines!! Without them, there would be alot more deaths

HIKING AND MORE HIKING

 DECEMBER 23, 2020

I have been hiking twice a week. On Mondays I hike with Lynn, my friend from Kirkalnd, Wa, on Mondays. They moved to Scottsdale full time a few years ago. These pictures are from 2 of the hikes we have done so far. 

This first picture is another tree decorated for Christmas.  All of these ornaments are breakable. I would think it would have been hard to carry them all up the trail with no breakage. 

Hiking in the desert is so different than hiking in the mountains. They say the desert has it's own beauty, but so far, I can't see it. I am spoiled by the Northwest greenery and mountains

These are some of the pictures from hiking with my cousin, Elaine, on Wednesdays. On one of the hikes, my other cousin, Ann, joined us. I already showed you some in a previous post. 

RAIN IS A WONDERFUL THING!

 December 10, 2020

I never thought I would say such a thing being from Seattle. 

It started raining in the middle of the night and lasted til about noon. They really need it in the Phoenix area. It hasn't rained for 110 days.  Eventho I had to change plans because I was going on a hike, it was a welcome sight to hear and see.  Everyone was hoping it would rain all day, but unfortunately it didn't. There were large puddles in the sand by our RV. Within minutes of the rain stopping, there were no puddles. It looked dry as a bone. It certainly showed how dry it was to soak up so quickly. 

CHRISTMAS ON THE TRAIL

 December 9, 2020

I went hiking with my cousin, Elaine yesterday. She and a friend of hers had decorated 2  trees on the trail.  They carried the ornaments at least 2 miles to find the right trees. It was nice to see a little Christmas in an unexpected place. Last year they had decorated a tree at the top of "The steps". Someone built 350 steps up the side of a hill. Alot of people added ornaments, but there were some complaints about "defacing nature" so they had to take them down. Amazing what some people complain about, the ornaments were temporary, not permanent.  We hiked 5 miles, certainly different hiking in the desert than at home in the mountains!

There is a big rock that has some Petroglyphs on it. It was a smart move to put a fence around it or I'm sure it would have been defaced.

COMBO HIKING/GEOCACHING

 December 4, 2020

As many of you know, I love to geocache. We started in January, 2011. It is like a treasure hunt except you don't keep anything. It has taken us many places we would have never gone to. I have friend Bernie that winters in Surprise, AZ. He is an avid cacher. Usually we drive to the caches, but some you can only walk/hike to. We went on a combo hike/caching adventure to find some geoart. Geoart is a lot of caches that are placed in a design. This one was called the Bowtie, but looked like the Chevy logo to us. We thought it would be an easy hike, around 6 miles of flat desert. The first 18 were that, but then for the 19th, we were staring straight up at a hill with still 500' to go. We had to climb straight up and back down to get to it. We were not expecting that. There were very large  boulders to climb up. Some were too big for my short legs so Bernie had to give me a hand to get over.  We found 34  caches in all

I have been hiking 1-2 times a week with my Rebel Ladies hiking group. We would hike around Issaquah or for longer ones, go up to Snoqualmie Pass. I thought I had done some hard hikes, but this hike up and down the mountain the hardest I have ever done. 

All of the yellow faces are caches that I have found

 This is the back side of the mountain on our way down.  The front had big boulders but the back had smaller rocks that were loose sometimes, but that can be very dangerous, easy to slip on

In the far distance you can see the mountain. From this angle, it doesn't look very steep, but it was when you go straight up and over. 

View from the top

View on the way down

When you cache in the desert, there is no trail, just bushwacking  where the compass takes you

Bernie, my geocaching buddy holding a geocache container. This  was a water bottle, but it can vary from the size of  my fingernail to a large box.

Another container

CHRISTMAS HAS COME TO THE MONSTER

 December 5, 2020

I take a few decorations with us, but not alot. I don't want to take up alot of storage space for something that we only use for about a month. Everything is soft, I don't want anything glasss or fragile that might break. I change them around even year to make it a little different. I have looked for new ones, but haven't seen anything I like better. 

 

 

This is our home away from home for 3 months

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

 November 21, 2020

We left on our winter snowbird travels on Saturday, Nov 21st. With these crazy times of Covid, we discussed whether we should travel or not. Even though AZ is a hot spot, we decided to go because we wouldn't be doing  anything different down there as in Renton from , but at least we would be in better weather. We are very careful, don't go to very places places, always wear our masks and use lots of hand sanitizer. 

We decided to do something different this year. Denny is getting tired of driving to so many places. We usually  stop every 2-4 weeks at different cities.  This year we decided to only stay at 2 campgrounds. We are staying at Buckeye, Ca for 3 months and Palm Springs for 2 months. Only 2 parks this year compared to 11 last year. 

We have done this route so many times, we know exactly how far we can go each day and what parks to stay at. We stopped at Albany, Or. ,  the first night, 259 miles, 2nd night, Weed, Ca, 289 miles, 3rd night, Patterson, Ca, 316 miles and the 4th night, Bakersfield, Ca 225 miles.  We usually go south from here to Menifee, Ca, our usual  destination, but not going there anymore. Because Az is further, we stayed at Needles, Ca for our 5th night, 264 miles. From there to Buckeye was only 123 miles, our shorts drive.  All total we drove 1476 miles in 30 hours over a span of 6 days. 

Along the way, we saw alot of the burned areas from the wildfires earlier this year. Seeing the devastation is different than hearing about it or seeing it on TV. It was amazing to see. 

We have a RV GPS that sits on our dashboard. We put in the dimensions of our RV and it will tell us if the road is good for us to drive on.  We have learned to pay attention to it and if it says, not rated for an RV, DON'T go on it. The first year we had it, we were leaving Jackson Hole Wyoming. It looked like a good road in the direction we wanted to go, eventho the GPS said, not rated for RV's. We went anyway. BIG MISTAKE. Less than a mile on it, it became a road we didn't want to be on, very steep, very curvy with no place to turn around. By the time we got to the top, the radiator was over heating. I think that happened to alot of people because there was a huge parking area to pull over on to cool down. We learned our lesson, follow what it says! In the picture below, you can see how foggy it was for a few days.

At Bakersfield, we stop at the Orange Grove RV Park. It is in the middle of an orange grove. When  oranges are in season, you can pick all you want, there are 2 trees at each site. Eventho they were heavy with fruit,  they weren't in season. We have picked a couple of plastic grocery bags full before. They were delicious, you can't get fresher than that.