It's almost a wrap

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 together to determine the champion before we leave.  (I beat him pretty good as you can see by the score above.)

Then in March it was time for the "Blue Jacket Tournament".  They have a women's and men's tournament and needed people to sign up so I signed both of us up.  We thought it would just be for fun.  We were surprised to find ourselves in the semi finals after the second day.  Something was wrong in the universe.

Is anyone surprised that Irv won the men's tournament?

What you may not know is that I took third place in the women's tournament.  I'm quite proud of that accomplishment since I played women who had been playing for 20+ years.  I'm not sure how someone who has been playing for two months ended up in that group.  Now we are really welcomed into the group, I think we have shown our worthiness.

Little Miss G likes to come visit the park.  Unlimited miniature golf is one of her favorites.

Irv has been teaching her how to geocache too.  (Better her than me.)

She's also learning to be a future shuffler.

Irv has been looking for a cache at the metal art place down the road from us for a couple months without success.  There's nothing like geocaching on a busy city intersection.

Then there's the people we cliqued with.  Lay down your phone for a moment and they grab it and take a picture of themselves.  These guys left to go home last week so we're missing them.  "Our people" have mainly been from Oregon, Washington, and Canada.  Not a one of them has called me a damn liberal and I appreciate that.  (People from North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, etc. could sure learn some manners from them.  I've kept my opinions to myself but when they see the Colorado nametag they can't hold back.)

There's been lots of hiking.

We were attending line dancing lessons, but when we got Covid we isolated for two weeks and were never able to catch up with the new dances we missed so we dropped out.  We also had to drop out of Spanish classes after missing for two weeks.

What I'm going to miss more than anything is time with this girl.  We've had lots of pool time.

And we've taken her on several outings.  It makes me tear up to even think about leaving her.

We've been spoiled with live bands in the courtyard every afternoon.  I love how "old" people aren't afraid to get out there and dance even in the daylight.

I had planned to get so many paintings done while here.  Here's one of the Tetons I started right after arriving.

Here it is a couple weeks later when I started adding color.  Guess what?  It's still not done...too many other activities.

More saguaro watching.

We decided to try stained glass making.  It required two classes before you're allowed in the workshop.

The first day was cutting and grinding the glass.

We learned how to use all the tools and cut those shapes.

The next day was the soldering class and how to put all those pieces together to create a piece of art.

Believe me, that soldering is not as easy as you might think.  We did okay for beginners.

We've had so much fun at the dinner dances.

We've enjoyed the wonderful fitness center they have here.  We'll be hitting the gym regularly once we're home to work off three months of fun and eating.

Everyday there's something fun going on and a lot of it involves shots.

Living and playing among active "seniors" has been wonderful.  Everyone here enjoys life and staying active instead of sitting at home on the couch waiting for the end.  We worked hard, saved hard, and now we're playing hard.  Life is too short to not live it to the fullest.

Many of our Canadian friends are now in isolation before making the trek back north.  They want to make sure they can get back into their country before their health insure expires.  The world is open for business again...time to live fearlessly and explore!