Friday I took a walk around the RV park. There are some nice trails here and it felt good to get some muscles moving. This is the office building/entrance to the park. It really is a nice park, where all of the lots are owned by individuals and are not all crammed together. We are renting quite a small lot, but most of them are large enough for a park model and a spacious patio.
There are all kinds of fun things to look at and enjoy along the trails. This was a labrynth thingy? I didn’t walk it, but they’re kinda neat because you actually don’t hit a dead end until you get to the center.
This old desert rake guy was pretty funny.
I haven’t seen one of these in bloom anywhere before. Pretty, prickly and pokey!
Around 5:00, we loaded up with a sandwich dinner, and set out on the trail for a sunset cruise. Isn’t my driver a cutie?? 😍
Most of our trails were easy, but we did have a few challenging hills to climb and some ruts to straddle here and there.
Our first stop was at a big quartz pile. The photo doesn’t pick up the beautiful iridescent white, but the rocks were really pretty if you were there to see them live and in person.
This was another spot. Great place to collect big quartz rocks for the garden!
We didn’t stay long because the sunset waits for nobody!
Rick had a hilltop destination picked out to stop to eat dinner and watch the sunset. However, the sun was already setting, and we weren’t there yet. Kenny and I had no idea where we were going, and the sun was going to bed, and Rick just kept driving. I snapped a few pictures along the way so that we didn’t miss it completely.
There it goes!
Again I say, deserts make beautiful sunsets!
Ah ha! We made it to the top of the hill! The sun was down, but it was still a beautiful view looking across the Casa Grande valley. We watched the sky get darker and watched as the stars started popping out.
It was really a pretty evening, and started cooling down as soon as the sun went down. So we ate dinner, put on our jackets, and then headed back down the trail.
We’ve never been out in the dark, so I was really relieved to see how well our headlights worked! We could see the trail really well, even when coming up on a corner. It also helped to have Rick out in front of us, and he had a light bar above his windshield, so he really lit up the trail!
I took a video of us going down this hill, and I just loved how Rick’s lights lit up the big saguaro cactus below us. This is just a still shot taken out of the video.
It was really a fun ride and new experience for us. We would do another sunset one, for sure. Maybe I should tell Kenny he should buy a light bar. 🙃
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Saturday we made a journey up to the town of Mesa, to the Mesa Market. It is a huge tented shopping center like a huge swap meet, except it’s more permanent than that, and the prices are set. However, it was a great alternative to driving down to Mexico to stock up on some Vanilla extract. 😉 I had purchased little bottles of Mexican vanilla last year which I gave to our four girls for Christmas. Our daughter Shannon, with the triplets, texted me and asked for a refill. She bakes a lot, and makes lots of french toast with vanilla at her house. So, we had a mission to accomplish. The market was very fun and interesting, with lots and lots of stuff!
AH HA! We found some vanilla. This jug was actually 133 oz…. just over a gallon – for $25 ? 😳 BARGAIN! Jeeze! The Madagascar vanilla at Costco is over $30 for like a 12 oz bottle! I didn’t get this giant one for her, but I did get a one litre (~34 oz) bottle for $10. Four year olds cannot tell the difference between Mexican and Madagascar vanilla, right?
We shopped through all kinds of gadgets and stuff. There was an Avon products shop, so I picked up some Skin-so-soft, as a nice skeeter repellant. We stopped midway through the market and had a refreshing beverage, then continued on.
Rick bought a new hat, and Kenny tried it on. I thought it looked really good, and would protect his ears better than a ball cap. I told him if he’d wear it, I’d buy him one. HA! That made him laugh, because we’ve never in our 42 years of marriage had “my money” and “your money”. It’s all been always OUR money. But he did say he’d wear it and that he liked it, so we went and I gave the gal the credit card to pay for it… so I bought it, right? 🤭. We’re those silly old people that you see laughing and holding hands.
I think he is quite handsome in the hat. He looks a lot like his dad, who is very handsome as well. We bought a few other things including a new leather belt, then moved on to the next shopping destination….
Which was the Kawasaki dealer. Kenny got a couple new spark plugs for Kawi, and Rick got some oil change stuff for his “Horse with no name”. Kenny drooled over the new four-seaters for a minute, because they had these three and another one inside. It’s nice to see that the dealers actually have some in stock now! However – we don’t need one, OK?
Next stop was one of R&R’s watering holes, called the Handlebar Pub & Grill. It was a neat place, and their menu had NOTHING deep fried! NICE! They had Belching Beaver Peanut Butter Stout (from Oregon) that I ordered. It was yummy. We all had lunch and a couple of beers and relaxed for a bit. Then it was back home to hit the pool and hot tub. It was a busy and fun day.
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Easter Sunday, we’d all been invited to a friends house. Cyndy and Gary used to live near Edmonds Washington (I think), and just moved permanently to Florence last year. R&R know them well from the Walk to Emmaus Community in the Puget Sound area, which we are part of as well. So it was an easy fit to join the fun at their home for Easter dinner. But first, I really wanted to attend church in person somewhere. I had picked out a church that sounded great, but it was in North Florence. We are in South Florence, and our hosts were in North Florence. But since Rocky had made an ice cream pie to take to dinner, we needed to come back home after church before going to dinner, so it would be better planning to find something south. They often attend “Cowboy Church” remotely here at the clubhouse. The physical building where it is televised from is in Casa Grande, so we decided to go there in person.
It is not a large facility, but they had about 250 people at this service (9:30), about the same at the 8:00, and then another service at 11:00.
“Pinal County Cowboy Church – Not Just for Cowboys!”
Their worship team had a definite western feel, and the gal on the fiddle was very talented! It was a good service, and the pastor was great with a really good message. They had technical difficulties with projecting the words for songs, so it was hard to really worship “all out” with the music like I like to do. But the people were so genuinely friendly, it was good.
Dinner wasn’t until 3:00. so we came home and just relaxed for a few hours. I sat outside working on the blog and watching the little ground squirrels or whatever they are. Like miniature meercats. This little guy was reaching way up to try to get flowers or something off of this plant.
And then I had three of them jumping, chasing and frolicking around right in front of me. They were hillarious.
We had a delightful afternoon and evening with Cyndy, Greg, and Greg’s mom Jeannie. The food and friends, stories and laughs were great! Come to find out, they attend the very same church that I had picked out! OH well…. maybe next year.
My phone was in my purse and I didn’t take a single picture because we were having so much fun. Jeannie had so many stories about traveling abroad and some of the situations that she naively got herself into that turned out to be so memorable… but could have gone south real easy. Like joining into a party at a drug cartel lord’s house in Mexico without realizing it. 🤷♀️. She was a hoot and so sweet. (update: – I did get a couple of pictures from Rocky that Cyndy took.)
Jeannie used to work for Rick Steve’s Travel organization in Edmonds before retiring, so she has traveled a lot! I really hadn’t thought about using their resource until talking with her, and now I am absorbed into their website to learn about traveling in Europe. Woo-Hoo! Watch out Kenny….. I feel a bucket list check-mark coming on!
The next few days are going to test our air conditioners. Too hot for riding, so I think it will be sunscreen and pool time in the desert!
