Golf!

Nothing like a little golf to make a great day! There is a 9 hole city course here in Willcox, so of course we had to play!

We actually went out on Tuesday to play, but they were closed for overseeding. To make up for it, they gave us a half price voucher for the next day. Nice!

So we went back Wednesday morning and played 9 holes. Played pretty well actually. Well, at least Max did. He shot one over par. But, we were playing to temporary greens so there wasn't any putting. Seemed weird to leave the putter in the bag!

Here is a pic of Dos Cabezos from the course. Beautiful views.

And here are Ron and Max on the tee at number seven. Not sure what mountain range is in the background here.

Today is moving day. Another 6 hour drive. Ugh.

Cheers,

Dr J

The Border

We realize how close we are to the border here in Willcox because of a couple of things. First, the mountains. When I asked Ron O about the border the other day, he pointed to a mountain range off in the distance and told me that they were well across the border in Mexico. Looked like it was just next door.

The second thing is the border patrol. On the way to the golf course here, we drive past a huge border patrol station.... with tons of razor wire atop the fence. It was a holiday so most of the vehicles were parked inside. There had to have been about 50 of them -- from SUVs to vans to offroad trucks.

And on the way to Tucson to other day, on the other side of the highway we passed a temporary checkpoint setup by the boarder patrol. This was on I-10 and they were stopping everyone.

Kinda hard for this Midwesterner to wrap her mind around all that!

Cheers,

Dr J

Apple Annie's, Mountains, and Wine

We spent the last two days touring around the Willcox area. Even though this is considered high desert, agriculture is still a big business around here. One example is Apple Annie's. The site we went to has a huge orchard with pears, peaches, and of course, apples. It is a "pick your own place" but we didn't want to get that sweaty. Grin. So instead we settled for buying some apple butter, apple bread, and Max even found some yummy apple cider donuts!

They have quite the setup, as you can hopefully see below. We probably should have done some picking, but Ron O has kept us in yummy pears from his trees at home.

My Dad used to live and work out in this area. Before our trip, he was telling me to be on the lookout for Dos Cabezos, which literally means two heads. And yep, sure enough, it does look like two heads up there!

No, we did not hike to the top. Do I look like an outdoorsman?!? Grin. Instead we went to the town of Dos Cabezos, at the foot of the mountain. The intent, beyond seeing the mountain, was to take me to a rock shop over there. All of a sudden, I've been thinking I ought to have a couple of their beautiful local rocks for my garden at home. (Guess Mom and Judy O are finally rubbing off on me!) Anyway, unfortunately the shop was closed today. However, on the way out to Judy's sis-in-law's mom's farm (whew!), Ron was pointing out some green granite and quartz rocks along the road. Well, let's just say that I ended up with 4 or 5 rocks! Grin.

The other form of agriculture that we visited today was a winery. Really. Napa Valley of the Southwest. Despite the arid conditions, this is apparently a pretty good place to grow grapes. There are several vineyards and wineries around and we chose to check out the Coronado Winery.

After some wine tasting (they let you try up to 6 wines), we came away with several bottles of wine, some beautiful stemless wine glasses that are etched with the winery logo, and..... oh, we also came away slightly tipsy. Our friends, Ron and Judy, after the wine tasting.

To round out today, we had dinner at a BBQ place that is located in a converted rail car. Sheesh, that was some really good food!! And the rail car is actually located on the site of the hotel that Judy's mom and dad bought and ran when they first came to Willcox. Judy can remember watching her very first Rex Allen Day parade from her bedroom window on the second floor of the hotel. Cool, huh?

Tomorrow, more sightseeing.....

Cheers,

Dr J

Small town festival

As I mentioned yesterday, we are now in Willcox AZ (pop. 3769). The town was established in 1880. So they have more than a few traditions.

One such tradition is their annual Rex Allen Days festival. Rex Allen, The Arizona Cowboy, claimed Willcox as his hometown. So we started off the day with the Rex Allen Days annual parade. There is nothing, in my opinion, better than a small town parade. And of course, what is a parade without a rodeo queen? And no, we haven't been to the rodeo yet. Hopefully tomorrow.

And every parade needs a tractor or two...... This one actually had about 20 or 25 in it! There is also a tractor pull, so they were showing off their entries.

And no parade is complete unless the Shriners show up!

I definitely have never seen a Shriner mini car made up as a van! And if you'll notice, they even have their own mini tow truck too. Grin. There were actually about 5 different Shriner mini car groups -- from the vans to mini corvettes!

It was a long parade as well.... over two hours. Lots to see.

We went to the community fair for part of the afternoon. Lots of booths and great food. We settled on Indian Tacos, which are basically tacos that are served on fry bread. Yummy.

This evening we went to a BBQ at the house of Judy's sister's husband's family. Whew! Where but in a small town do they welcome perfect strangers into their backyard for a cookout?! Good food and good company. A perfect end to a great day!

Cheers,

Dr J

Moving Day

We had a leisurely moving day. We started early, as always. Guess we are all getting used to Gabi getting up at 0-dark-early. At least we are all able to go back to bed for a while!

After fixing breakfast, we decided to get in a bit of pool time. When we arrived, the regular pool was occupied with an aquacize class. I think Max's comment was something to the effect.... the only bad thing about these retirement resorts is all the old people. Grin. I know, I know.... we qualify for that as well!

The lap pool was open so I was able to get in some laps. Been a long time since I've done any real swimming. And while it IS like riding a bike (i.e. you always remember how), I certainly didn't remember it EVER being that hard! It turns out that swimming is a good way to get exercise, I guess.

After that, we started packing up for the move. I had arranged to get us a late checkout today.... 2pm instead of 11am. Glad that I did. We pulled out of the park at 1:59pm. A whole minute to spare! :) I've discovered that since we've become rvers (or perhaps it is because we are retired), we don't have "much hurry" in us.

We moved on to Willcox, AZ. It was only about a 1 1/2 hour drive, so it seemed like an easy day! Why Willcox? Well, to go to the Rex Allen Days celebration, of course! Who??? You mean that you don't know who Rex Allen was? Wry grin. Well, neither did I, so don't feel bad. Apparently Rex Allen was one of the cowboy crooners, ala Roy Rogers or Gene Autry. And Willcox was his hometown. So every year they have a weekend celebration to honor him. Really. You can read about the celebration at this web site.

Actually, the main reason we came here is to meet up with our friends, Ron and Judy O. Judy is originally from Willcox so she is in town to see her family. We are really just along for the ride.

More about the fun in Willcox later.

Cheeers,

Dr J

Busy, busy, busy!

All this RV living is certainly exhausting.... at least for the girls. I looked down after breakfast this morning and saw this. Nap time! :)

We started the day off early again today.... thanks to Miss Gabi. I figure that her body clock will adjust about the time we get home. Ah well. It gave us a chance to get out to the golf course before it hit the 90 degree range again. There were actually quite a few folks out on the course this morning. But even so, we played the entire 9 holes in about an hour. Max had a much better day on the links. Me, not so much. There's always the next round tho'.

On the way back from the golf course, I decided to snap a pic of the part of the park where we are staying. This is from one of the corners, looking towards our trailer. As you can see, there are a ton of open spaces. Although they've had probably a half dozen folks pull in just today. Apparently by the first part of November, this place is nearly full.

Then we decided to go see the Sonoran Desert Museum. Someone had told us that it is a "must see" out here in Tucson. We have to agree, even though we only made it through about a fourth of the whole thing. It is all outside, more of a combination zoo and botanical garden rather than a museum. And of course, our timing put us there at the hottest part of the day. It was VERY hot here again today. The thing we loved the most was the hummingbird "house". Oh my God, it was awesome.

They actually had a very large screened in area, with trees, habitat, etc for the hummingbirds. They have about 6 to 8 different species of hummingbirds in there. And let me tell you, you can get up very close to them! I was able to catch this little guy as he fed. They are fast and they are beautiful!

After the museum, it was time to run a few errands.... the main one being the grocery store. I happened to see on the map that they gave us at check-in that there is a Trader Joe's in the neighborhood. I have a couple of friends in California that just rave about how great Trader Joe's is.... that they wouldn't shop anywhere else. So of course, I just had to try it out.

Honestly, I wasn't that impressed. Our Fresh Market back home is a much better place to shop for the interesting, delicious, and exotic. Trader Joe's pales in comparison. So we picked up a few things and then went and found a Safeway to get what Max called "real groceries". Grin. I kinda have to agree with him.

Tomorrow we wrap up things here in Tucson. I really wish that we had a few more days since I haven't seen nearly all I wanted to. Ah well, there's always next time!

Cheers,

Dr J

A day at the resort.....

They don't "do" daylight savings time here in Tucson. So at about 3:30 this morning, Gabi decided it was time to get up. Fortunately, Max was able to convince her that it was still the middle of the night. She trundled back to bed (with us, of course!) until about 6am. The poor puppy was convinced that we were VERY late with her breakfast this morning. -grin-

While out with the girls this morning, I noticed a slight drip in the water line so while I fixed breakfast, Max got to fix our problem. I noticed during cleanup that our water pressure was nearly non-existent. So after several attempts at fixing our water, we thought to check the next lot over since it is empty.... same problem. I finally called the front desk and was told that the water was turned off about 20 minutes earlier and would be off the rest of the day. sigh. At least the problem wasn't us! Fortunately we still had fresh water in the tank from our trip out here so we could at least do the basics.

After starting our day in a bit of disarray, it DID get better. They held their first farmer's market of the season this morning at the resort. That really sounds weird to this midwesterner as our farmer's markets are actually winding down this time of year.

As you can see, it was a pretty small market but I did manage to find a lovely silver ring that my hubby didn't mind buying for me. I'm a lucky girl.

Then we decided that it was time to try out the golf course.

It says, Voyager Country Club.... but that is perhaps a bit grand for the actual course. To begin with, the pro shop doesn't actually open until November thru April. So the whole thing is on the honor system. Seriously. It is a very short, nine hole course where all of the holes are par 3s. Once we looked at the scorecard, Max took about half of his clubs out of his bag and I took about a fourth of my clubs out of the bag. Why? Well first of all, we didn't need the longer clubs. But mostly because this is such a small course that motorized carts aren't allowed. So we had to (gasp) actually walk the course! Max opted to carry his bag but I wussed out and rented a pull cart. And boy am I glad that I did! It was HOT today.

Anyway, the course is is pretty rough shape. In fact they told us that they will be closing the course on the 7th for overseeding and it will be closed until November. So at least we timed our trip correctly! And did I mention that it is a very small course? It is so small that you can stand on the first tee box and see the entire course. No kidding. But it was fun enough that we will go back again for another 9 holes tomorrow. Although we will go out earlier. Even though it only took us about 1 1/2 hours to play today, we didn't finish until noon. And it was HOT!

So of course, I had to do the obligatory photos of each of us on the course. We are posing on the 7th tee box, so we were both pretty wilted by then.

We rounded out the day with more of the resort's amenities. Max opted for the gym. They have a REALLY nice one here. I opted for the swimming pool. They actually have 3 swimming pools here, along with a huge whirlpool. Quite the view, eh??

We are a tired troop this evening, so it was okay with all of us to spend the evening in. It isn't too bad sitting outside this evening watching the moon rise. I could get used to this.

Cheers,

Dr J