What God hath made we should enjoy.

And I do. I have seen some of the most beautiful sunsets here. Watching that big yellow ball change colors as it descends behind the mountains is simply awesome. The blue in the sky is so dark and clear during the day, it is just a painting the sky. Of equal mention is the stars in the sky at night. They can actually be seen here. I took pics of one sunset which I am going to post here, but there will be more.

Snakes Alive!!!! - or not.

The trend in the desert mountains here in Arizona is killing the rattlesnakes before they bite you. One of the neighbors at my sons place of abode killed another rattler and he is saving the skin. He had it rolled in newspaper to dry it. Then he said it will be soaked in alcohol and glycerine. It was about four feet long. Very long for the area. My son has moved farther out. It is halfway up a mountain side and the view is just spectacular. One can look out about five miles away and see Wickenburg where I am staying temporarily. My plans are to move there and get some drawing and oil painting done. Speaking of snakes, I killed my first rattler two days ago. It was a diamond back rattler. They are very common here. Oh, did I mention I was driving my car at the time and ran over the rattler, killing it. No, I did not keep it for the skin.

HAVE YOU SEEN ANY BLACK CATS?

Halloween is nigh! All channels seem to have the scary movies on so I am such a scaredy cat that I won't watch them at night. At night I stick with the not so scary ones like the Vampire Diarys. Then if I don't have a choice such as watching a tv that belongs to someone else, I will watch the Night of the Living Dead or something really scary but I don' t have to like it. My idea of a scary movie is Witch Mountain by Disney, the Scooby Doo movie, or the old classic-E. T.

Wickenburg,AZ cooled....

It has been raining here off and on. With the rain last Wednesday came some cooler weather, so we no longer have 100 degrees here. We are in 60's at night and 70's in day. I hear a lot of people coughing now since the sudden change in the weather. Even though it rains here. It never rains all day. There is always a time during the day when the clouds part and that wonderful Arizona sun shines through. I can stand in my parking lot and look across to the Weaver mountains where my son lives and see the dark clouds hovering over them and the dark rain streaks running out of the cloud to the ground. You know for sure they are getting a rain shower there. There have been an unusually high number of tornadoes this year in the past month but they stayed away from where I am. Here in Wickenburg there is a river called the Hassayampa which means "upside down river". It is an Indian name and so named because you can walk on the water because the water runs under the sand and dirt. The exception to that is you don't want to be walking on the river when it rains in the mountains because that is when the water runs down into the river and the water runs on top of the river. In the mountains, the river is not upside down and the water is always on top, and there are some beautiful colored rocks in that river in the mountains. I guess most people would just look at it and think of it as just a stream in the mountains.

Wise Owl

FYI the Wise Owl is the Senior Center in Wickenburg, AZ. I have been going there for a well balanced meal since Thursday. The contribution is $3.oo for a really great meal. The cooks here are fantastic. They must be borderline gourmet chefs. I have never eaten a bad meal here. I ate lunch when I was here for the winter before. They also have other activities. Friday, I went there early for their Coffee Clutch, which is coffee and a pastry, muffin, doughnut-your choice, or you can have hot chocolate or tea-plain or flavored. M,W, and Fri. is exercise standing or sitting and it is quite vigorous. Then lunch then Eldervention which is a lot of information about aging and they will later be having a program to help people from falling or tripping. Then some of us stayed to play Wii. We played bowling. Then we played wii bowling with 100 pins to knock down. I faired well but the competition was rough and very talented. They had been practicing a little in the year I went to Florida. There is also a computer lab, a pool room, dart board, puzzle board, TV, Big screen on wall to play Wii and other games and movies. Tuesday after lunch it is still dominoes. They have an electric number board for Bingo. Other activities include music, word search, movies on Wed., scrapbooking, karaoke, blood pressure check, working on the cookbook, crafts, pool tournaments, and they have day trips for very little money-$5.00 for a trip to the State Fair. Unfortunetly, I came too late and it was full. Most of the people remember me from before.

Have Suitcase will Travel

Thursday I packed my suitcase and little red car and headed for Wickenburg, AZ where I now temporarily reside. I am living in a motel here which has a microwave and refrigerator. All utilities paid including internet so I can use my computer and cable TV all for one price. Air conditioning feels mighty good. The price is about the same price of my apartment in Hannibal in which I had to pay my own water, sewage, and electric, also paid cable for TV and internet. So considering all that and the fact that I get my sheets changed, clean towels, and clean room. This means I may have time to do some painting and drawing. I just have to unload my car now. Hopefully I will lose a little each time I unload and repack. Eventually, everything may fit in the suitcase and I will have no problem closing it. The lady who takes care of the motel rented it to me by the month. She is a very nice lady from India. She gives me newspapers and magazines when she is done reading them. I have taken pics of the room. Maybe you can find them over among the pictures.

Snakes Alive!!!!

My son killed a rattlesnake, a diamond back, it did not rattle, but he seen it at dusk about 100 ft away from where we were sitting. The rest of us saw nothing. We were having our evening coffee and chat with one of the neighbors and the sun was working its way down so it was a little hard to see. Snakes never crossed my mind. Suddenly my son jumped out of his chair, ran to the front of the RV, grabbed a shovel and ran across the street with it. We watched him in wonder when he started hitting the point of the shovel on the ground. We walked over to see what was going on and what he had done, there was a diamond back rattle snake with its head chopped off. He told me most of the snakes do not rattle anymore because they have bred with the mojave snakes and other poisonous snakes. Also the local hospitals are having trouble with the effectiveness of the serum for the snake bites for this same reason. Since the snakes are interbreeding, they will contain more than one type of poison in them. What really amazes me is that he was sitting with the rest of us with his back to the direction of the snake and yet he was able to observe the area and scan for snakes. When I ask him how he knew it was there, he said when you live here, you learn to keep your eyes open and watch for what may be there.

Arizona I am here!

Definitely here, temperatures are in the upper 90's this week and 80's at night. All week these temperatures will stay with us; and then we will be having a cool front come in and the temps will drop to an amazing 89 degrees. There is always a nice breeze here. The place I am staying is in the foothills of the Weaver mountains. You can see the pics. This area is surrounded on the West, North and East by mountains. From the South comes the sunshine, always. Phoenix is down there but it can't be seen from here, however, one can see the town of Wickenburg from here. It is very close, possibly as little as five miles as the crow flies; but a road trip would be around 25miles one way. Water is hauled here and generators are used for electric backup. We have solar panels to charge the batteries during the day. There is also a windmill taking advantage of the continuous winds here in this small valley. Everyone in this little valley has definitely gone green, more out of necessity to live in such a remote area.

Traveling the States

Hello from Tucamcari, New Mexico this morning. Anyone who has been in other states of the US knows that each state has some very unique identies. Thus when you travel from state to state the scenery changes and the state becomes its own. Tulsa, OK was just WOW I'm out of Missouri. But let me tell you about Missouri first where I started. Springfield, Missouri has a McDonald's ice cream cone which costs 46 cents and 53 cents after taxes as compared to Hannibal which are $1.00 plus 9 cents tax. That is another WoW. In Joplin, MO gasoline was $2.469 per gallon. So, moving along, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which during daytime the oil derecks can be seen as well as the oil wells pumping. Oklahoma also has that unique red soil and lots of cattle. The stockyards which you pass have there own odor going on as well and it is very definitely identifiable. In Oklahoma, senior coffee is only 38cents a cup at McDonalds, but, gasoline is back up to $2.799per gallon. That price was stable for the rest of the trip. Now Texas has some wide open spaces and lots of them old cotton fields down home. Also there was an abundance of the plane propeller type wind mills. The trees that you can see along the highways in Texas look very windblown. They all seem to lean to the north. New Mexico has a lot of small trees, I call them large shrubs. When you scan the land it looks dotted with the trees across the scene.The trees are a dark green and the ground is now more yellow and you see a lot off cliffs.