Life on the High Plains

After several days of 90+ temps here in the valley of the sun, we finally got a bit of cooldown so we decided to go on one final hike before we head home later this week. The plan was to go to a trail that leads to some cliff dwellings.  We jumped in the truck and headed out, but when I plugged the information into Google Maps we were surprised to learn it was almost two hours away.  It was already 3:00 p.m. so we went with Plan B. The Tonto National Forest has many recreation areas that are near Mesa so I chose to go to Saguaro Lake.  This lake is a reservoir along the Salt River that was formed by the Stewart Mountain Dam and was completed in 1930.  It's lined by canyon walls and as the name implies, an abundance of saguaros. Spring is a beautiful time in the desert as the plants are blooming.  Unfortunately, the saguaros aren't in bloom yet...they are an amazing sight with blooms on the ends of their arms. Clouds were looming in the distance so we knew there ...

 Irv and I did a thing last week.  To most people this thing would not be a big deal, but it's been 30 years in the making for us. Due to Irv's military service and our being stationed in Germany during the late 1980s and early 1990s, we been barred from donating blood. You might be wondering why that is.  Well, it was to prevent the transmission of Mad Cow Disease (a brain disease).  Military bases in Germany got its beef from the United Kingdom back them and it might have been tainted with the disease. After 30 years the FDA decided to lift that ban so that millions of former service members and their families could donate blood and plasma.    I've been waiting for this day for a long time.  I'm a big believer in supporting your community and quite frankly, there could come a day that I would require blood from a stranger.  I have a blood type that is a little more rare that the average person so I hope to get on the rolls of someone who could b...

Did you know there's a riparian area right in the middle of Gilbert, Arizona--a city of about 250K people?  It kept popping up on our All Trails map so we decided to go check it out. (Riparian is my new word for the summer.  It is a lush, fertile area surrounding rivers and other waterways that are located in ecosystems that are vastly different such as a desert.  They support all forms of wildlife who otherwise wouldn't thrive in the desert.) Wildlife spotting were sparse.  Lots of ducks and other waterfowl. It was siesta time for many of them. There were also cottontails that had no fear of people. Beautiful shot through the reeds at one of the ponds.  There were lots of bird watchers out here.  If that's your passion this would be the place to go. Some kind of big white bird across the way.  Maybe some kind of heron? We had been told there was a roseate spoonbill living here this winter and my goal was to find him.  No such luck on this day tho...

How is it possible that three months can go by so quickly?  Deciding to leave the high plains of Colorado to come to the Phoenix area for the winter was one of the best decisions we ever made. Last year we visited several 55+ RV resorts and ended up selecting one of the biggest parks in Mesa that had hundreds of activities to choose from.  It's always hard finding your "people" in a place like this especially since most of them have been coming here for years. On one of our first days we walked by the shuffleboard courts and the people there invited us to come over and learn how to play.   We were hooked!  We started participating in nickel shuffle every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.  You choose an opponent by selecting a chip from the can and each player puts in a nickel and the player with the highest score wins the nickels.  Irv and I have played each other twice, he won one one and I won the other.  We're hoping to have a third match toget...