Thursday, March 12th

A rainy day in the Apache Junction and area.  This has been one of the wettest winter seasons we have had in Arizona.  I can only hope that it is doing something to alleviate the 4 or 5 year long drought cycle they have had here.  I know from our trip to the Boulder dam that the water levels have a long way to recover in the Colorado river.
  We got up an active early to attend the regular weekly coffee klatch. The numbers of people were down a bit, probably for a couple of reasons:  weather, folks going home, the virus threat.  Who knows?  Donuts were free, so even though we had last pick at our table it was all good.  After coffee there was a full board [bored?] meeting that Marg stayed for so I walked home.
  Our group were up and about by the time I returned to our place.  Our plan was to go to the Superstition museum when Marg returned.

  I forgot to take the camera so we used Cassie's phone at the museum.  It save the day, but then I had to figure out how to use the pictures.  This techno-peasant is really punching above his weight on this one.





   It is always interesting to see the recognition of the amount of movie activity there was in the area around Apache Junction when we had never even heard of the place before.even though the kids probably had not heard of most of the actors.  They had a bit of fun with it and then we went on for a drive down to Queen Creek where I showed them the golf courses I played there.  Then on to the Olive Mill, eventually making our way back to the 202 and our place.  We got back a bit before supper and our guests all packed their luggage to be ready for an early morning departure.
 

  It was the kids last night in Arizona and we earlier had an arrangement to go out for dinner to Santan Flats, but with the weather we changed it and went to the China Buffet.  When I say we, there were 21 of us.  Usually a group of that size is a problem with being seated, but not that night.  We went right on in.  Another first, probably a sad testimonial to how people are spending less in this economy.

   The selection of food at this buffet is awesome.  It is mainly Chinese, but has a considerable western area, sushi bar and a sizable dessert area.  I think everyone had a good experience and enjoyed the dinner.  It was cute how the two young handicapped girls took a liking to our Cassie and she helped make their evening a little more fun.  The other thing that was new to the kids was what we do with our fortune cookies.  Everyone reads theirs aloud ending it with either "in bed" or "between the sheets".  Makes for some very humorous fortune telling. 
  After we got home we started thinking about the travel day on Friday for the kids return to Edmonton.  We decided to go out looking for face masks considering the air circulation on the place and number of potential people on it.  We had no luck even when checking for dust or painting masks.  Just after Home Depot Cassie suggested a hospital might be an idea to try.  As luck would have it Mountainview was right in that area, so we stopped at the emergency entrance.  Cassie & Sam ran in and sure enough she talked her way into 5 masks so they were set.  Just as we were driving out of the parking lot Cass got a text from Daniel suggesting we try a hospital.  Pretty funny that they were both on the same wave length.  All that running around really cut into the time so bedtime came quickly.