Dancing to Pomp & Circumstance.....

     With our grandchildren getting older, high school graduations will abound for the next few years, as we'll have six over three years.  After a short break, we'll start with college graduations. They are fun years though and it's great to see the grandkids recognized for their hard work and efforts.
     We started with Jentry's graduation from Herriman High School in Herriman, Utah.  It is a  new high school and his class was the second to graduate from there.   Jentry had many honors in wrestling, both in Alaska and this last year in Utah.  He was a regional champion but had the bad timing and misfortune of having appendicitis and going into surgery the day of the state tournament.  With 490 in his class, and at least 10 tickets each, they needed a really large place, so it was at the Maverick Center in Salt Lake City.  They made a neat entrance with the fellows in burgundy and the gals in navy blue, then walked down a red carpet to their seats.   It was an exciting night to be a part of!  Jentry's future plans include college in Salt Lake, & a mission for the LDS church.

         Because we were in Evanston we were able to attend choir concerts, awards banquets and the Awards assembly at the high school, the week before graduation.  Keegan received several honors including the top 10% of this class, with 4 years of a 4.0 GPA, a Marine Corps award for Scholastic excellence, department awards for outstanding college English, and Political Science, as well as honors for student council, National Honor Society, and Spanish Honor Society.   His sister Meghan (a Senior next year), received awards for 3 years of a 4.0 GPA, Highest PSAT score in the school, as well as highest ASVAB score, (military pretest).  Keegan had 172 in his class, so they were able to hold the ceremonies in the high school auditorium, with graduates getting 4-6 tickets each.   Keegan and his mom, Riki, kept a special surprise for all of us, until we saw the program at graduation. Keegan was a graduation speaker and spoke of taking advantage of every opportunity coming your way.  He did a great job!

     Riki had helped organize a post graduation party with 17 other Moms of Keegan's friends.  Most had gone to school together since kindergarten and wanted to go to each other's parties.  They rented the recently renovated Roundhouse in Evanston.  Each graduate had a table with pictures of them growing up and their awards displayed.  There was no limit to the number of family and friends that could attend and with 400 hamburgers, 200 hot dogs and side salads, cakes, and other desserts brought by all families, there was plenty of food for all. Best of all, the new graduates could celebrate with both their friends and family!

     Keegan's future plans include attending the University of Wyoming (Go Cowboys!!!) on a full academic scholarship;  Although he was accepted at several other colleges with scholarships, this was the only one offering a full ride.  The idea of graduating without student loans, was too appealing to turn down.  He'll be in the  honors program with special housing and registration status, majoring in engineering.  Besides all the graduation activities, we're staying busy with the seniors in town.  Gary's playing pool every morning and I'm in the water at the Rec Center for water aerobics and water yoga 5 days a week.  My back still twinges now and then , but is getting stronger and hurting less all the time.  Here's a shot of the beautiful pool in the Evanston Rec Center.  Seniors can get a pass for $39 for June, July, and August.  It's good seven days a week, includes all classes, and is only about a mile from us.

      The only downer we've had has been Spicy getting sick.  Spicy is the younger of our two Shih Tzu's, at nine years old.  We learned a year ago that he had a heart murmur and now a valve is not pumping effectively, leading to congestive heart failure.  We've been able to get the water off his lungs with medication and  stabilize the pumping, but he stopped eating.  After two weeks of force feeding special dog food with a syringe every 2-3 hours, we're still hopeful he'll regain hi appetite and start eating again.  I"m sure all our friends with pets understand how hard it is to watch one go downhill so fast.  Rusty at 14 continues to do well.  Here's Spicy in one of his favorite spots in our 5th wheel, over the heater vent.

     Gary and Riki joined the Evanston Fire Department team to play in the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation golf tournament in Utah.  These have become major fund raisers across the country.  Utah's is held at Thanksgiving Point, a beautiful course in Lehi, Ut.  We went down a couple days early and parked at the local Cabela's.  They have a huge parking lot, with dedicated RV parking, water, and a dump station.  We really enjoyed our time there and were able to find 19 geocaches in the area, to get to 2,401 total.

      It looks like we'll be staying in this area for the rest of the summer.  We'll be spending some time in the forest, camping with family, as well as the usual festivals, golf tournaments, quilt classes, etc.  Once again, if any of you are in SW Wyoming or Salt Lake City, Utah area, give us a call.  We plan on being here through the beginning of September. 

Dancing on down the road in Evanston........................
Hugs, Katy and Gary, Rusty and Spicy too!

Dancing toward Wyoming 2012

      After the usual packing of the Motor Home and "summerizing" of the 5th wheel, we were ready to head North.  We left on May 5th and drove through Phoenix (getting the worst part of the drive over on the first morning has some advantages), toward Flagstaff.   There is an area where the Saguaros are really thick, just before we climb higher and out of their growing zone.  It's as if there's one last chance to bid them good-bye.

     From there we climbed to Flagstaff, and at 7,000+ feet it is a climb.  When we stopped the temperatures were cooler and we looked forward to sleeping with blankets once more.  We decided not to use our usual stop at the Page Elks, but to instead investigate a new place we'd read about called Lone Rock Beach.  It's on Hiway 89, just across the state line into Utah.  Camping is allowed on the beach for $10 a night, but with our Senior Access Pass, it's half price.  There are restrooms, water, and dump available.  You can see our rig parked on the beach.  This was the night of the "Super Moon,"

and was it ever
beautiful, shining
bright over Lake Powell.  For those not aware, the moon was closer to Earth than usual and
appeared much bigger and brighter than usual.  Along with the others, we enjoyed a campfire on our beach.  With many small fires up and down the beach, it was quite a sight.   While unhitching the car, Katy suffered some muscle spasms in her back as she bent over.  There was no traumatic injury, but the spasms in the unusual position apparently resulted in a few pulled muscles.  We decided to rest a second day, hoping that would be enough to cure it.  Two weeks later, we know it's going to take a little longer.  It is getting better slowly but surely.  The good news is with the painful back, I don't notice the bad ankle nearly as much.

     From there, we headed further North, driving through Red Canyon and past Bryce National Park, where we visited a couple years ago.  We followed Utah Hiway 12 from Hiway 89 all the way East to Torrey, Utah, over the next several days.  We've been told it is one of the prettiest drives in the Western US and we are believers.  The first night was spent at Kodachrome State Park, just outside the town of Escalante and completely inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

 There are many sand spires or chimneys throughout the park and campground.  One of the theories on their formation is that they were geysers that solidified and then the outside softer rock, wore away leaving the spouts frozen in time.  I don't know if that's the most accurate theory, but it's the one I liked best.


 Driving about 10 miles outside the park, but still inside the monument, we visited spectacular Grosvenor's Arch.  If you look closely at the picture taken from a distance, you can see Gary standing at the bottom, wearing a brown jacket.  that gives you some idea of the huge scale of the Arch.  It's really magnificent.  I also included a more close up shot of the double arch at the top.

      
    Driving out of Escalante the next day, we came across this old pump, with an appropriate sign.  While it was red in color, surrounded by petrified wood logs, I couldn't resist playing with my camera phone to produce an appropriate toned picture for the time.

       The next day we headed for the Burr Trail.  One of the most intriguing areas is the drive over  "Hog's Back."  This 1/4 mile two lane stretch of road falls away on BOTH sides to spectacular drops offs .  Wouldn't you know it, someone in their infinite wisdom had placed a geocache there.  Gary was a lot more sure than I was, that there was room to pull over and park, just before we started over.  The stop gave us a chance to look at it closer, (not sure that was a good idea).   It was hard to take a picture of it, as I could only get one side or the other.  One of those things you just have to see in person.  Trust me, it was beautiful, although a little nerve-wracking.  Here's a shot of one side to give you an idea.

       We spent the next night at Duffrey's Mesa, a dispersed camping area on the Burr Trail.  We spent one afternoon exploring that area, although it would take much longer to really see it.  The next morning we visited the Anasazi State Museum in Boulder. After that we headed along the side of Boulder Mountain up to 9,600 feet and then down into Capital Reef National Park.  Of course there were some more geocaches along the way.  One particularly interesting one was placed by a photographer at a spot where there was an especially good photographic opportunity.  The container was an old Polaroid camera. 

     Capital Reef is a National Park we had been all around, but not visited.  It is beautiful red rock country with lots of vistas and a nice campground that is full most of the time.  We lucked out the day we arrived and got one of the last spots.  If you visit make sure you try some of the homemade pies for sale at a restored farmhouse in the park.  Later that night, several deer visited us.

     Finally it was time to head for Goblin Valley, where we were to meet Gary's sister Pam, and her husband Jim.  They had made reservations there several months ago.  It's a very popular park and difficult to get into without reservations. There is a lot of dispersed camping available about 10 miles from the park. 

    The next day we visited the Goblins, a valley full of spherically shaped rocks, many resembling mushrooms or ET.  Your imagination can run wild here, and create all sorts of meanings to the shapes.  Yup, there are geocaches here too.  This picture is of Gary, Pam and Jim returning from a hike through the Goblins to claim a geocache on the other side of the valley.

     While we were there, Jim and Pam wanted to show us an old cabin they had discovered.  Although we were assured there was a "good" dirt road, we took a more scenic route (at least I'm assuming that's why we followed the cow path for several miles), coming out on the correct road just a 1/4 mile from the cabin.

     After four days with Pam, Jim, and the Goblins, it was time to head further North to Price, Utah.  Gary had wanted to play the golf course there last year, but it was too hot at the end of June.  The last time he played there (1957), it was a nine hole course.  55 years later it is now an 18 hole Country Club.  He had a fun afternoon and shooting a 72 didn't hurt.
     One more night, and we headed for Evanston, WY.  Most of you know this is where we lived for many years and started our fulltiming adventure from in 2000.  Our daughter and son's families are still there, along with six grandchildren.  Our other four children, along with 12 more grandchildren live in the Salt Lake City area, only 75 miles away.  Gary has several great-grand children there as well. We are looking forward to two high school graduations in a couple weeks, as well as end of the year concerts and banquets.
     Gary has started playing pool with his buddies at the Senior Center and I've visited with quilting friends and signed up for a class next month.  I'm also looking forward to joining the senior water aerobics and water yoga classes as soon as my back feels better.
     If you are in the area, either Wyoming or Utah, give us a call.  It's easy for us to drive to Salt Lake and we'd love to see you. 
     Dancing in Wyoming for the summer................................
     Hugs, Katy, Gary, Rusty and Spicy

Dancing Back to Work!?!?

     We returned from Quartzsite to the Roost in time for our February Follies, a fun-filled week of activities, games, skits, meals, and our general meeting.  It's basically a fund raiser for the park.  This year was no exception and a great time was had by all.  I made my While Chile, which fetched a good price at our food auction and Gary bought Mary Stuart's spaghetti sauce (as usual) for a good price.  Gary coordinated the billiard tournament and then took first place in it, although dead-eye Dennis gave him a run for it.  He also won the golf tournament.

 This photo is all the chairpeople for the many, many activities of February Follies

  The highlight of the week was  Victor's Fashion show, when  men of the Co-Op strutted the runway.  All dollar bills went to the funds raised as well.  We do have fun, as you can see by Chuck, the Bachelor (note the rose), and yours truly with her dollar.  


 The next week was the health fair and blood draw.  You can see me cooperating with this task.

      Once again our winter season here had a surprise ending.  The Park Managers resigned earlier than expected and we were asked to fill in temporarily, until the park could go on summer hours.  I started training March 4th and Gary the following week.  As of March 18th, we were on our own, although the assistant managers, Nancy and Bob were always available for our questions and to help in any way they could.  We worked four days a week from Sun-Wed.  After the training, it turned out to be a fun seven weeks.  I enjoyed learning the computerized program for the front office, from site assignment to billing, for propane, electric, and rent.  Gary handled outside chores of maintenance, parking and cleaning.  I also got to learn some of the back office with quick books, thanks to Ken's patience.  Of course the fact we were working with Escapees meant most of our customers were among the friendliest people you could find.  We finish our TEMPORARY job May 2nd.  New managers have already been hired for next Fall.

      One of the expenditures of the park this year was to buy two pool tables.  While not new, they were of much better quality than the previous ones.  Gary and a couple other pool players did the searching and arranged delivery.  It was fun watching them being set up, as they come in sections and were glued together.  The pool players all liked the new tables and are looking forward to playing on them next season.
     Working has severely impacted my time to quilt, but I have beaded a lttle more.  A few of us gals made a beading sojurn out to shop for beads and of course have lunch. Here you see Bonnie, Gwen and myself checking out the beads.  Thanks to Carol for taking the picture.

     The weather has been great this winter, with many, many days in the 70's. and nights in the 40's.  Those coincidentally are my favorite temps.  We did have a couple cold spells and once again awoke to snow on Table Top, a 4,000+ foot mountain about 25 miles from here.  Now we're helping break records for the earliest high temps, as it was 100+ yesterday.  It is supposed to go back down later this week, thank goodness.

      The Saguaros are blooimg and although they're beautiful, it's also a sign it is time for us to head north.

     As friends started to leave for the season, get-togethers were the norm of the day.  We were fortunate to have friends Doug, Toni, Joan, and Ken over one evening with Ken playing guitar and all of us singing along.  Unfortunately wind, prevented a campfire that evening, but we had many fires on our patio throughout the winter.
      We attended a local geocaching event last week and picked up some new caches as well as meeting some of the local cachers and getting a chance to put faces to the names we see in the logs.  Leap day found 10 of us from our park caching out at North Mountain Park.  What better to do with an extra day of the year than geocache?

     Now our focus is on packing and getting ready to head North.  Please do not mail anything else to our Casa Grande address.  We plan on leaving here May 5th, heading north.   You can either use our SD address or Riki's address, 401 Twin Ridge, Evanston, Wy 82930.  We're going to boondock our way though Flagstaff, Lake Powell, Bryce, the Burr Trail, and Capital Reef on our way to meet Gary's sister Pam, and her husband Jim at Goblin Valley State Park in Utah.  They're our favorite camping buddies and we look forward to spending several days with them.   
     Graduations will the the start of our summer, as Gary's grandson Jentry graduates from Herriman High School in Salt Lake City on May 31, and my grandson Keegan graduates from Evanston High School June 2nd.  To our many Elk's friends, we say thank you, as Keegan was awarded a Legacy Merit scholarship from the Elks.  We don't have any set plans for summer, but are looking forward to visiting old friends and family.  If any of you get close to Evanston, Wyoiming, or Salt Lake City, Utah, please give us a call at 307-679-8818, or send an email and we'll meet for coffee.  We always enjoy showing our area of the country off, if you can stay a few days.
    

  This time of the year is always difficult.  Thanks to our many friends who remember us and send little notes.  Today would have been Robert's 46th birthday.  It's hard to believe we buried him 7 years ago today.   This picture is one I love, of the National Fallen Firefighter's Memorial at night.  It's such a peaceful scene.  You can see more of the Memorial at their website, www.firehero.org.

Dancing toward Summer, 2012,................,  Hugs, Katy, Gary, Rusty, and Spicy

Part II of Dancing to a Quartzsite Adventure

         One of the best parts of Quartzsite are the beautiful nightly sunsets.  They seem to get better and brighter each day.

         Part II of our Quartzsite Adventure started bright and early on Saturday, 28Jan, when we picked up new friend, Kathy,  AKA Cakelady to fellow geocachers.  We headed east about 50 miles to the start of the Eagle Eye Power Run, a series of 251 geocaches in a 25+ mile stretch of road.  It was a great, paved road, with little traffic.  We had been instructed to do the series heading north, so that all the caches would be on the right side of the road.   (All four tires must be to the right of the white line when stopped.)

Eagle Eye Formation

         It was a fun day, with Katy doing the majority of the driving and Gary and Kathy taking turns jumping out of the car to find the cache, log the find, and get back in.  While it wasn't a race, we wanted to keep moving quickly in order to complete the series.  We started with the first cache at 9am and finished the series at about 3:05pm.  That included a half-hour lunch break, and a couple of other short stops to walk the dogs.  Rusty and Spicy loved having Kathy in the back seat with them and were quite put out when it was her turn to jump out and back in the car.  That made no sense to them, but they put up with it until she stayed put for a while and Rusty could snuggle back up to her.  We even found two other caches on our way back to Quartzsite.

Kathy (Cakelady) & Katy

       The next day we moved our rig to the next rally site off of Plomosa Road, about 5 miles north of Quartzsite.  We registered for the Geocaching Bof Rally and enjoyed visiting with old friends and making some new ones.  Kathy was parked next to us, so Rusty and Spicy could keep an eye on their new friend.
        The Rally started with a "Z-circle."  This was a way to meet each other in smaller groups.  About 7 folks volunteered their rigs to be hosts and the others signed up to visit.  Our able coordinator, Sue,  assigned everyone a route to take and visit three rigs.  As no two people had the same assignment, we met new people in each rig and in small groups of  8-9 people, it was easy to learn about each other.  We brought refreshments to the first rig and left those there for the others coming later to enjoy, as we moved on to other rigs every 30 minutes.  When rally activities started the next day, we all felt among friends.

Gary logging a geocahe find.

          Several seminars were held the first day.  My favorite was "Caching with your Smartphone."  I learned so much about c:geo, a free app on my phone, that I can now use it with ease.  I had previously tried it, but been mystified about how it worked.  That afternoon Gary and I set off to complete the Sunkist trail, a series of 14 caches along the old dirt road to Bouse.  We capped the evening off with a potluck dinner and a program at the Pace Theatre.  This is a rig with a large white space where movies and/or slides could be shown through a computer.  We saw unique geocaches and learned a lot about geocaching.com.  
     Tuesday had been advertised as an official geocaching "event."  That meant other cachers in the area, besides Escapees could attend and take credit for the event.  We had about 40 other cachers join us for the day.  While most of these folks were also RVers, they were camped in other Quartzsite areas.  We played several games, including identifying geocaching acronyms, a poker run, and a great bingo game that had us all laughing as we searched for someone who had geocached in their pj's, had over 1,000 caches, solved 50 puzzle caches, drew blood while caching (I think all of us caching in AZ had done that), been stopped by the police while caching, and assorted other antics familiar to many of us.
         That afternoon the dogs were delighted to be invited on another cache run with Kathy to find the 12 SKP caches placed out in the desert a few miles from the rally site.  This was a real 4 wheel drive with many dips through washes, soft sand, and some mild boulder driving.  Our Honda did great and we found all the caches!  The public event ended with a dessert potluck and cake.  It was a big hit with all and several cachers expressed interest in  joining the whole rally next year.

Rally attendees enjoy a seminar in the sun.

       Wednesday we had more seminars and went for another cache run along the old road to Yuma.  Although this dirt road was more passable, we still wound up with a flat tire.  24 caches and one tire repair later, we headed back to the rally site.  We finished that day with another pot luck dinner, a great slide show, and a wonderful campfire.
      The next morning was full of hugs, as we all bid good-bye, until we meet down the road.   Gary and I left, heading back to the Roost at Casa Grande.  All in all, we had found 34 caches in Yuma, 253 on our power run, and 62 caches in Quartzsite, for a total of 349.  That didn't seem quite right, so I convinced Gary to stop for one more on the way home to get an even 350.  Our total now is 2,306.  If that sounds like a lot, our friend Kathy was rapidly approaching 5,000 caches and hoped to hit that before she left AZ.  Others at the rally had over 10,000 caches.
      Besides all the rally activities, Gary managed to get in three pool tournaments in Quartzsite, finishing 2nd in two of them.  Our new generator ran great and the weather was definitely the best we've ever had in Quartzsite with 1 bad day and the rest beautiful.
       We arrived back at the Roost in time for our a great Super Bowl party.  This was quickly followed by February Follies.  These are five fun-filled days of games, skits, casino night, raffles annual meeting, food auction, many meals, and more laughter than I can possibly relate.  I was one of three deputies, who along with our sheriff leveled fines on those not wearing RoVer's Roost shirts, nametags, or complaining in any way.

Katy contributes $1  .

       The goal of the Follies, besides all the fun, is to raise funds for our park.  This was easily done with approximately $6,000 being raised.  Gary wound up on the first place teams in the golf scramble and beanbag baseball.  He also organized and held billiard tournaments for the ladies and men, placing first in the men.   There was entertainment in the form of  skits, a beauty pageant you had to see to believe, and a kangaroo court.

RoVer's Roost  Clubhouse During Follies

        You can see we're not bored while wintering here.  We've had a great year so far and look forward to another 2-3 months before heading north again.  We'll be going North after meeting Gary's sister, Pam and her husband Jim at Goblin Valley State Park in Utah. With two grandsons graduating high school, one in Salt Lake and one in Evanston, we plan on being back there around the last week of May.
        Dancing through the end of Winter............................  Hugs to all, Gary, Katy, Rusty, and Spicy

Dancing toward Quartzsite Part I………..

     We left Casa Grande on January 18th, a little late for us, but Gary didn’t want to miss too many pool nights.  We headed toward Yuma, but HAD to make our first stop at Dateland for shakes and ice cream.  I had one, but Gary had to have two (one for the freezer) with a quart of their wonderful Date ice cream.   With our freezer properly fortified, we  headed on to Yuma.

     We arrived by noon and were lucky to get our favorite boondocking spot.  We went over for dinner with Wyoming friends, Dianne and Ray, who were staying at a local RV park and had delayed their trip back north to see us.  We had a great catch-up visit while Dianne fed us another of Gary’s favorites, rolled tacos from La Fonda’s in Yuma.  We capped off the day with a wonderful swim in KOFA’s pool and of course, the hot tub.

     Nights were cool, but daytime temps with wonderfully warm.  We spent the next day at their flea markets.  Friday was a wonderful day for both of us.  Gary played 18 holes of golf and I went to a great quilt show, put on by the Yuma quilting guild.  It’s hard to beat that for meeting both our needs and favorite activities, but we almost did it the next day with geocaching.  We found 34 caches, as we crept closer to 2000.  The dessert wildflowers were beautiful.  One of the last ones was called Yuma’s microcache.  Here is Gary checking the contents.  As will all our days in Yuma, we ended it in the pool and hot tub.

      That Saturday, our generator once again started giving us fits.  We’d had enough and decided with all the boondocking we do, we needed to get a reliable generator.  Sunday, we packed up and headed for Quartzsite and Boomerville.  After getting set up, we headed for the big tent, shopped, and brought a brand new generator back to our rig.  It sure has been nice having a reliable way to charge our batteries.

     We joined the Boomer’s Bof last Spring after attending one of their rallies at Lost Dutchman State Park.  It is a really fun group of Escapees, who stay active and share a lot of our activities.  This was our first time staying at Boomerville in Quartzsite.  There were a total of over 130 rigs that came and went during the two weeks Boomerville was set up.  Below is an aerial view taken from an  ultra light flying above our group.  These were taken each day and posted online.

     If you look at the bottom row of RV’s, there is a very small one just a little left of center.  We are just to the right and up a little from that one.  You can see our red Honda parked just in front of the class C.  The fire pit if above us, in the center of the RV’s.  You can see there is still lots of desert around us.  We are about 4 miles east of Quartzsite and a few miles in from the main road.  While it sounds like a long way, it only takes us about 15 minutes to get to the center of town. 

      Besides the shopping, Gary and couple other fellows went into town to play in pool tournaments.  Gary placed second in one of these.  We also set out to finally get our 2,000th geocache!  You can see Katy gleefully reaching up for it.  Of course, there were also pot luck dinners for all.  One night we watched an entertaining slide show about the Burning Man event in Nevada that a couple of Boomers had attended.  Their gathering of 50,000+ was something to see.  They all meet on a dry lake bed outside Reno for a week.  At a cost of $300 each, it had become so popular, that they have gone to a lottery system for tickets.  

      As I write this, Gary is playing golf in Blythe, CA with a group of Boomers.  We are getting ready to do a power cache run tomorrow.  It is located about 50 miles from here and is a run of 251 caches in a 25 mile stretch of road.  On Sunday, we’ll move to the Geocaching Bof Rally location, about 5 miles north of Quartzsite.  I’m playing with a new tool to write blogs, called Live Writer.  It will let me wrap text around, as above and hopefully get a little more creative with the editing.  We’ll see.

Dancing toward Part II of our 2012 Quartzsite Adventure……………

     Hugs, Katy, Gary, Rusty, and Spicy

Dancing a Merry 2011 Christmas to All

     Fall started off with  a Verizon class on our new Thunderbolt smartphone.  It helped some, as did the printed manual I finally secured after many phone calls and a lot of begging.  Even though they say there are no such things anymore, we finally got a printed instruction manual!

     My Fall quilt class started up with interesting projects, including a twister pattern.  I was able to make a small wreath wall hanging just perfect for the 5th wheel.  I also finished some UFO's.  & started some new projects as well.
     Quilting took a back seat (I know, it's hard to believe), when See's Candy called and asked me to return to work for them during the Fall Holiday season.  Although I had only wanted to work about 3 days a week, it wound up being 4 days most weeks and a couple of 5 week days.  Fortunately, most of the shifts were only 4 hours.  The other good part for me (& bad for See's), was that they kept our well hidden location at the Casa Grande Mall the same, and because we're hard to find, we were very, very slow most of the season.  That meant I got to sit a lot, which was easier on my ankle, but hard on See's bottom line.   Things really didn't pick up until the last couple weeks & even then, we were much slower than the rest of the mall traffic. 
     Gary's pool team wound up taking fourth in their league.  There have been a few tournaments since then, and Gary continues to play at the Senior Center several mornings each week. 
     Our park, RoVer's Roost, celebrated it's 30th birthday on November 30, 2011.  A catered dinner was held with entertainment by the Bost Family afterward.  We are fortunate to still have a few of the original leaseholders here, so it's always fun to share in their memories of the beginnings.  As most of you know our park is the first Escapee's Co-Op park created.   There are now 11 Co-Ops around the country and Escapee's has since adopted a new method of long term leases, so no new Co-Ops are planned.  We're very grateful to all those who came before us when this park was created, as it's given us a great place for our winter home at an affordable rate, and most of all with awesome SKP friends who share our lifestyle.
     Being a Co-Op, we all contribute to keeping the park running smoothly.  This year Gary has chaired the appraisal committee, and as lots have turned over, he's learned a lot behind the scenes of this facet of the park.  I've been helping with the Election and Mailing Committee, and we've both been running the Friday Sales table, where we sell the RoVer's Roost tshirts, sweatshirts, etc.
      We also attended a couple geocaching events in Chandler, AZ/  One was on 11/11/11 and held to celebrate that occasion.  The other was a Hot Chocolate held by a couple who go all out with their decorating, using about 150,000 lights, all synchronized to music.  Of course they also had a geocache hidden there. 
     Unfortunately it is getting harder for me to dance, but Gary gamely supports me holding on to him.  I'm getting better at  maintaining rhythm while weight bearing on mostly one foot, but it's still a challenge.  coincidentally, renters on our neighboring lot came here especially for him to have an ankle replacement in Phoenix.  It's been just over a month and he is doing fantastic.  I'm keeping a close eye and learning all I can about the "inbone" appliance they used.  We're down to about 10 months til Medicare kicks in and hopefully that will me me next year at this time.
     A local church put on a Bethlehem walk, where everything was done in period costume and settings. It was a walk through the market in Bethlehem and a living nativity scene at the end.  It was beautiful and very well done.
     Sad news touched us this Fall as well, when we received word that Gary's second daughter Tori had passed away at her home in Portland, Oregon.  As of this writing we don't know the details or have the final reports.  There will be a celebration of her life on her birthday next summer.

     Here's a Christmas picture of Gary with 13 year old Rusty and Katy with 8 year old Spicy. We tried for one of the four of us, but getting the two dogs to smile at the same time proved impossible.  

   A Very Merry Christmas and Happy and Healthy New Year to all our friends and family.  We are beyond grateful for your friendship and caring support throughout this year and every year.  May you all receive many blessings in 2012.  We hope to see many of you this  next year.
With Hugs, Love, and still dancing........................
Katy, Gary, Rusty, and Spicy

Dancing in Southeast Arizona

     We've been back at the Roost for almost a month.  Once we vacuumed all the dust and dirt from the haboobs (huge dust storms), this past summer, we were able to settle in and enjoy being back to our winter home.  Gary's back to playing in his pool league and my quilt class started up again last week.  It looks like we'll have some fun projects to work on and it looks like we have good speakers lined up for our guild meetings.
     We decided to take our Class C and go on a mini-trip to explore a few places we haven't seen in southeastern Arizona.   Benson, AZ was our first stop for two nights.  We toured the Throne Room in Kartchner Caverns.  This is a "living cave" that was just discovered in 1974 and opened to the public on a very limited basis in the 1990's.  To enter you go through 2 sets of metal doors to minimize air flow into the cave and a misting process to limit the dust and lint brought in.  The cavern  maintains a 70 degree temperature and has extremely high humidity.

     One of the sights we saw was the tallest, most massive column in an AZ cave, Kubla Khan, at over 58 feet tall.  Soda straws are plentiful with the longest being over 20 feet.  Since these grow at a rate approximating 1/100th of an inch a year, it's really an impressive sight.  Gary and I both were lucky enough to have drops of water fall on us while we were in the cave.   These are called "cave kisses."
     No photographs are permitted in the cave.  This picture of a postcard is the best I could do, but it's really accurate.  They are really working to keep the cave protected and limit the impact.  Because it's been protected from the start, the formations are intact without the damage you see in other caves.  We hope to go back again to tour the other section of the cave.  The Big Room is closed to tours in the spring and summer, when the cave bats come in to roost, give birth to their young, and raise them til they're old enough to migrate further south for the winter.   They estimate as many as 1,000 bats return each year and the young range from 400 this year to as many as 1,400.

     The next day we drove to Bisbee, AZ, about 90 miles southeast of Tucson.  This is an old mining town, founded in 1880 and in the early 1900's was the largest city between St. Louis and San Francisco.   We took the Queen Mine tour, which we highly recommend if you're in the area.  We donned hard hats, coats, slickers, lanterns, and rode the same rail cars 1500 feet into the mine as the miners.  It was a cool 47 degrees where the miners worked.  We learned where and how they ate, most of the time skipping meals, as this was an opportunity to earn extra money by producing more product.  We even saw the sanitary car, pictured below.  This was introduced in 1916 and used until the mine closed in 1975.  This particular tunnel was also used for mine rescue training before being leased to the City of Bisbee for tours.  Following that we drove around the town, walked through some of the shops, and had lunch in the city park located in Brewery Gulch. 

          We drove through Tombstone on our way to and from Bisbee.  We had visited Tombstone in 2002, but there's always more to see and this time we were able to tour the local newspaper museum.  The paper is called the Epitaph, because, "No Tombstone is complete without its Epitaph."  There you can read original news from the 1880's, including reports of the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone burning, and Geronimo's surrender.  We also went through the very small Wyatt Earp  home.  It consisted of only two small rooms and didn't include a kitchen nor a bathroom.  Historians believe they ate at brother Virgil's house and of course would have had the traditional outhouse.  The house has been restored and is an art gallery today.

      We drove on to the town of Wilcox, AZ. where we stayed at their very nice 28 site Elks Lodge campground.  While there we enjoyed touring the Marty Robbins and Rex Allen museums.  Of course while walking through those museums, their songs were playing in the background, making it hard to leave.  One of the fun exhibits was these pair of golfing boots worn by Rex Allen.
      While Gary doesn't plan on ordering a pair, he did find time to play the Wilcox golf course and was pleased to shoot a 74 on their par 72 course.  (note his score was one UNDER his age!)


     The last place we planned on visiting was Chiricahua National Monument.  Unfortunately the third largest fire in Arizona history burned much of this area last summer.  The visitor center and campground were open and the road up to the campground.  Closed was the eight mile scenic drive beyond that.  The guardrails had melted and the wooden posts burned in the fire.  They were working on replacing them, but the narrow roads didn't allow for traffic along with the heavy equipment needed to do the work.  This gives us a good reason to return to see this "Wonderland of Rocks" up close.

        As usual, we were looking for geocaches as we went and found 27 on this trip to bring our total to 1,952.  The last few caches took us to the town of Cochise, AZ.  The Cochise Hotel was built in 1882 and on the Overland Stage route.  If not for the caches, we would not have detoured to find this gem.


      After five fun filled days, we headed back to the Roost.  It was a great diversion and leaves no doubt there is much more out there for us to discover and learn about.
     

      We expect to remain in Arizona until next Spring, including our annual trip to Quartzsite and the fun-filled SKP rallies we enjoy attending there.  Our address for the next several months will be the same as the past:  3241 S.  Montgomery Road,  Casa Grande, AZ 82193.  If you find yourself traveling to Phoenix or Tucson, please give us a call.  We're centrally located and can meet you in either location. 
    
     Hugs, Katy, Gary, Rusty and Spicy  all Dancing on Down the Road..............................