Onto New Mexico!

We took a 46 minute flight from Phoenix to Albuquerque, got our rental car, then drove 2 1/2 hours north to Taos.  This is a beautiful town that is quite an artist community, has a lot of interesting history, and really keeps with the Pueblo/New Mexico style.

These shops would look a lot nicer without the cars in front.

The courtyard of Kit Carson's home!  He was an American frontiersman who would have lived in this home in the mid 1800's with his hispanic wife, who was 14 when they married.

Just another building.

Then we headset out of Taos for a 25 minute drive to see the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.  I was nervous about driving across it since I don't like bridges.  But it didn't look like a bridge when driving across, so there was no problem.  It's 565' to the bottom of the gorge.  There were also Big Horned Sheep along the cliffs, overlooking the river.  And beautiful sky.

The Rio Grande, from the bridge.

A Little Exploring in Paradise Valley, AZ

Before we headed to New Mexico we spent the day with my sister in the Phoenix area.  We came upon a beautiful little memorial/park honoring Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona.

This was a very unusual plant, one that we've never seen in Tucson

One of my favorite desert plants because the stalk and blooms look so much like a plant from a Dr. Seuss book!

The man, himself.

Desert Color

The blooming plants are going crazy.  Since we are staying an extra ten days this year we are hoping to see even more things in bloom before we head home.  Here are a few samples of what's happening now.

I love this cluster.  It's a Hedgehog cactus.

Hot pink flower on a Prickly Pear.

Not sure what this is, but I don't think it's Brittle Bush.

Another Hedgehog.  I think this may be the Strawberry variety.

Juice haul

Here is the basic set up for mass producing juice from free Saddlebrooke oranges.  I slice, Dave juices with the electric juicer, and when his container is full he pours the juice into the strainer.  Keeps out the wayward seeds.

Then I funnel juice into our recycled milk jugs.  Since we can't drink all this juice at once, we freeze some of the jugs.

We started out with four bags of oranges that looked like this.  We juiced three bags to get the 2 1/4 gallons or so of juice.  There are no photos of making contacts with neighbors who don't want their oranges, or the small amount of labor involved with picking hundreds of oranges.  The juicing is the fun part.  Finding the source for getting the fruit is more tricky.  But just driving around here you see so much fruit not being eaten, it's hard to see.

The good news is our baby orange tree that we planted last year has about 60 blossoms.  Hopefully upon our return next year we'll have some of our own oranges!

Best Coyote Yet!

Another splendid video of animals in our backyard.  This one was filmed around 5:30 in the evening which is why it's in color.  Plus it was a hot day.

Company

Our "homeless" housesitting friends visited us for the weekend.  The weather is still over 90 (nine days in a row now) but we got out and did some activities.

Spring wildflowers are the big deal and everyone is racing to hike and see the sights.  Sunday morning we got to Catalina State Park at 6:30 am to beat the heat.  The hike was about 6 miles and took four hours.

This is our friend Jeff, taking a photo of a brave hiker taking a cold dip.  This waterfall and pond was at the summit of the hike.  It would have been better if it was at the end of the four hour trek as we were really hot.

Onto Willcox

The town of Willcox, AZ is only about 20 or 30 minutes from our Wild West movie set attraction.  Willcox relies heavily on the old singing cowboy, Rex Allen, as a tourist attraction.  He died many years ago but they have a nice memorial, museum and street named after him.

Even his horse is buried a few feet from his statue.

Nice murals in the old historic part of town.

We also liked the rest stop off of i-10.  The rock formations are really interesting and similar to the Chiricahua National Park which is nearby.  These are some old mining cars as there was so much mining in Arizona a hundred years ago.  Most of these "ghost towns" were all here for miners back in the day.  Copper, silver and gold mines.

We crossed over into New Mexico and stayed the night in Lordsburg.  Honestly, this was the most unattractive, unappealing town I have seen.  There are a lot of run down towns in Oregon and Arizona due to logging or mining businesses that dried up.  But this one had nothing charming about it.  But our Comfort Inn was actually nice.  This is a deserted restaurant across the street from our motel.  No Mexican food was to be had at this joint.

Day One of Mini Road Trip

We decided to get out of town since it's 90 degrees.  However, going to the southeast corner of AZ is no cooler.  We started out by visiting a quirky little place called Gammon's Gulch, north of the town of Benson.

This is an old western town, created by Jay Gammon, starting in the 1970s.  Many movies and music videos have been filmed here.  Jay is playing the banjo for us in the above photo.  He also played the old hundred year old piano.  

His "tour" was peppered with jokes, gossip about the Hollywood people he has worked with, and political commentary.  We could have done without the rah rah Trump stuff.

Looking out at the main street.

Dave, in front of the prosperous law office.

Arts and Crafts Sale Day

Here is a photo of my "booth" set up before the customers came.  Kind of difficult to separate my stuff in this photo since you can see the vendors behind me.  The sale went for six hours and I sold about half my things for a total of a bit over $400.  So a lot better than last year.  Saw a lot of people I knew and it was pretty fun.

The most fun was that I filled a box and labeled it "Bargain Bin - Everything is $1".  These were pieces I've had laying around that I could care less about and pieces I wasn't proud of.  15 of the 16 items sold within the first ten minutes.  I will always do that in the future to "unload".

Before and After

We finally changed out the 20 year old plastic vertical blinds in half the house.  What a difference!

Before, laundry room.

After. laundry room.

Before, breakfast nook.

Now we can actually see the mountain.  We do have views!  Next up is the guest room, then next year we'll tackle the larger patio door windows.

The American Flag Trail

The weather is really heating up this week!  We are hitting high 80s, which is about 10 degrees above normal.  I think the weather is making up for the cool February we had.  So we left for this 6.7 mile hike at 8am.  Since it's getting warm early we really could have started at 7am, but I'm not the leader so, oh well!

I liked this entrance to the trail.  We were 200 miles from Mexico and 600 miles from Utah.

The Arizona Trail is an 800 mile hike which goes from the bottom of AZ to the top.

More Coyote Activity

Now the weather is cooperating and we are hitting 80 degrees.  We may even get to high 80s tomorrow.  With the warm weather the wild animals are out a bit more.

Last night we went to the movie The Light Between Oceans and while we were gone, little did we know that a coyote would go through our yard at 8:30 pm.  But first are a few still images of him.

Looks just like a dog.

The Citrus Business

We've been having a bit of a scarcity of citrus this year.  The homeowner who would kindly fill a wagon full of grapefruit every Tuesday and leave them out front for anyone who wanted them has stopped this.  Maybe he moved.  We don't know why.  I have found sources for lemons.  But you don't eat lemons every day.  Finally, I found a friend who has both an orange tree and a really delicious grapefruit producing tree.  She has more than she can ever eat, so we've been grateful to help her out.

This is the second batch of orange juice I am juicing.  It ends up being quite pulpy, but so sweet, and so fresh tasting!  Great for screwdrivers!

Today we took the new bike out for an 18 mile ride on the CDO.  This time there were no incidents and the bike went really fast (fast for me, anyway).  Dave spotted a bobcat in the road and he turned to tell me about it, which caused him to fall off his bike, scrape his knee, and scare the bobcat into the bushes.  Here is a photo of the bobcat.  If you look right above the dark green leaves in the center of the photo you can see his face.  He stayed in there a long time and I didn't want to get any closer.

A New Bike!

Actually new from the bike store!  I can't believe what a difference a new, light weight bike makes in my ability to ride.  So worth it!  Now Dave wants to get a decent bike too!  The weather has turned and it's going to be hitting close to 80 every day, at least for the next week or so.  Great weather to be riding in.

I bought a bright green to help with my visibility.  A lot of 80 year old drivers around here.

This Texas Mountain Laurel is finally producing its beautiful purple blooms.  It grows right outside the kitchen window so it is nice to admire it while eating.  The next few weekends are going to be busy with excursions, visitors, and events.  It's sad to think we only have 5 1/2 weeks left here.