Hot Day

What a nice summer day, oops, almost forgot it's winter. Temp got up to 87F and there we were working our tails off to get ready to leave. Didn't even golf today, but by noon we were in pretty good shape, so I played pool & Marg swam in the pool. Settled up the electric account and got assurance that this space is ours for next year. Spent lots of time saying farewells to all of the nice people in the park. Lots of people leaving tomorrow & Friday as well as next week. All of the activities pretty much cease this week. It's funny, the year round people complain about the impact of the snowbirds, but they sure miss us when we all leave and the place is like a ghost town. This change is the same in every park. Went for dinner to Los Gringos Loco with Betty, Ron & Sue. Food was good as usual & Marg got a take-away container of their salsa, that she loves. I played my last poker game tonight & my streak is broken. They had me on the ropes, I don't think I had a winning hand for the first hour, but I bounced back and ended up losing 45 cents. In the morning it will be disconnect the water & cable and hit the road. Not sure what our internet access will be as we are planning to stay in Mesquite for 2 or 3 nights. There is no internet connection in that park, so we will need to go to MacDonalds for wifi. If you don't hear from us stay tuned, we will eventually find a connection. The weather in Montana around Butte is bad on the weekend & that is where the passses are, so we will hold up until it clears. We will likely go north into Utah & clear Salt Lake City on Saturday or Sunday which will put us in reach of the border for Monday. I heard from Dave Trout today and they are leaving tomorrow and plan on being in St George, so about an hour apart. We will likely try to get together. Oh yeh, almost forgot, the owls have had their young and today for the first time, some people here saw them, there are 3 babies. We saw one this evening, they are all fuzzy yet, but growing very fast.

March 28

What a hot day, I think it was 89F/31C today. We got on the road early and drove in to Arizona Mills. Now there is an outlet mall, people go there just to mall-walk because it's a mile around the inside. Some pretty high end as well as bargain stuff. There was a Saxs & a Nieman Marcus as well as Eddie Bauer, etc. Too many to mention. It's quite a hike from here, almost all the way to the office in Phoenix I go to for meetings. On the way back we stopped in at Costco and bought some whiskey - Crown Royal and had lunch. Get this, a foot long beef hot dog and a soda for $1.50. The place was full of geezers having lunch, LOL. These stores are all the same, but this one had the largest food area I have ever seen. I bet there were tables and seating for over 100. Had to stop for windshield wipers for the car as they are badly past their useful life and got one for $2 at Walmart. By the time we got back to the park it was too hot to do much, so I played pool and Marg went for a pedicure/manicure & a stop at the post office. Not sure what it cost but her toes are red & nails are pinky. Played well, but still got beat a bit. Will miss these guys when I go home as they are a lot of laughs. After pool I started packing some things up as our time here is short. We bbq'd for dinner and then Carol stopped by to go to bingo with Marg. Being bored, I went to bingo too, but I sat with Ron while Marg sat with her hen party. She & Carol won, but had to split it. Me on the other hand also won, but got to keep it all - $25 big ones. It was my first time at bingo & got lots of verbal abuse after, but a couple did say being as we are leaving this week I probably needed the money for gas. LOL

Off road demo

They had an area laid out that had hills and huge boulders. This is the kind rugged terrain the off-roaders here deal with and they had a bunch of drivers working their way over the obstacles, pretty interesting stuff.

Ridin' & ropin'

At the event today there were competitions for riding & shooting. The contestants were in western attire, some in old style cavalry uniforms. They would ride into the arena & from horseback they would try to burst 5 balloons with a handgun & 5 with a rifle. It was a timed event and the best time we saw was 14 seconds & he shot out all 10 ballloons. There was also a trick rider/roper who could spin a lariat and jump through it while standing on a horse. The guy had a bunch of tricks he and the horse performed, it was pretty amazing.

Shooters

There were guys & gals trying out sidearms from half a dozen manufacturers. One of the coolest booths was the Gatling gun one where they had an old antique hand crank model and they had new versions, one mounted on a tripod, the other on the roof of an SUV. They also had a bunch of other fully auto stuff & you could fire any of it for a buck a bullet. We saw a girl fire the old hand crank one, way cool.

Outdoor day

Fun day, we went to the Az fish & game event north of the city. It was a huge outdoor expo with booths of vendors and activities. It was so large they had buses & stops throughout the various parts of the event. There were horses, cowboys, hunting & fishing stuff, boats, ATV's. Can't even think of all the neat stuff we saw. What was unique was this site is a firing range and they had all kinds of live firing opportunities. Most firearm manufacturers had booths and you could test fire many of their handguns or long guns. There were archery ranges where you could shoot at decoy type targets. There was a huge tank, where about 50 kids at a time could catch fish. This was one of the great aspects of the event, it was really family oriented. All day long you could hear the constant pop pop pop of firearms discharging either at the demo areas or at shooting events. Texas has nothing on Arizona, you could see people in the crowd wearing holsters with sidearms in them. Lots of booths to get food and drinks. We had curly fries and catfish/shrimp for lunch. For $6 you got more curly fries than one person could eat. There was this cute little boy playing in a mud puddle, I can only imagine what his mother thought when she saw him - LOL! Finished the day off back at the park with cocktail hour with the neighbours, they are pulling out tomorrow.

TGIF

Tough week, NOT, that's too much like a work type comment for Az - LOL! It was nice and sunny although not as hot as it could be. Went to the Mesa market to exchange pocket books. I had one she didn't want to buy from me this week, too many by that author on the shelf. That happens from time to time and I just bring them back and put them in the library here in the park. Got back in time for pool, but it was small group, there were only 4 today, but that was enough. Funny thing Char called from England while I was playing, so I had to put the phone down to take my turns. I had to rush my shots as we pay the phone by the minute, so missed a couple of easy shots - had to blame it on something, LOL. Barely got done in time to put the swiss steak on the bbq, just on the top shelf so it would sort of stew. The reason for the rush was we had to be at the neighbours for cocktails at 4. They are leaving on Sunday, so wanted to drink up some of their wine. They are good folks [from Kansas] and we will miss them when we all return home. They had finger food as well, which included the small cocktail sausages. I was eating mine plain which caused Doris to question why I wasn't putting any sauce on my little weiner. Took a while for the laughter to die down. Some of these oldies have good hearing when it counts. If the picture looks odd, they have a kind of add-a-room they attach to their awning. Took Kenny & Doris to the Village Inn for pie, it's a popular item among the grey panthers here. Marg had coconut cream, strawberry & rhubarb for me. I told Kenny I would drive so we don't get in a car wreck. Oh; you don't know the history behind that. The other day he backed up in Walmart & touched a womans bumper. After getting out to see the damage, the agreed to let it go - her bumper was already a mess. As he told it, they both parked & he missed park & put his in reverse, so it backed up and hit her again. She jumped out of her car screaming get the police, he's drunk, he's drunk. He's hit me twice already and is going to kill someone. With his southern drawl Kenny had us all rolling on the ground while he was telling the story. With all the people leaving in the next few days, we are going to have to hold our own clean up party soon so we can get to a manageable level for crossing the border.