A big thank you to my readers!

I want to say thank you to my readers and especially those of you who commented on yesterday's post!  I find that when I speak from my heart, I get more comments!  I grew up not far from downtown Los Angeles, in one of the wealthier suburbs.  My mother drove to LA every day for 40 years, teaching in a very poor neighborhood school.  Every summer she brought home the class guinea pigs or hamsters and I got to play with them and feed them.  I just couldn't WAIT to fingerpaint with those big 2nd graders!  :-) (...wink...)  Well, finally, I passed second grade and my mother went on to become a reading specialist.  My aunt also taught in LA~in east LA.  She taught gifted & talented 5th & 6th graders and, in those days, she and her husband and her aide took several of them out on their boat in San Diego bay.  Um, can't do THAT anymore...sigh...

Do I miss Los Angeles?  Sometimes...Hubby used to take me with him to the flower and produce markets when he was in the grocery business.  I DO miss that.  I do miss going to the theaters near LA and the museums.  I do NOT miss LAX!  Ugh.  Now we take our daughter and son-in-law to the Palm Springs airport when they fly to Oregon or other parts and we can park our car and walk in with them without having to walk for miles or take a shuttle!    It's just park and walk.  How simple is that?

I CHOSE not to attend UCLA.  It was too close to home and frankly, it was TOO BIG for me.  Instead, I spent my first two college years at the University of Redlands, which was an hour's drive from home.  I LOVED the old, wooden interiors!  I loved my classes and my professors, one of whom urged me to go to the University of Chicago to finish my political science degree....Um...NO, thank you!  Instead, I met my husband at Redlands and we were married in 1970.  We both had two more years of college, so we transferred over to UC Riverside and moved to Riverside.  I stayed on another two years and got my Master's Degree in political science.  Then, we moved to the desert because hubby got his first REAL paying job, in a market, as the wine manager.  This was with the old Jurgensen's Market in Rancho Mirage.  His parents also lived in Rancho Mirage, and we found a house to rent 2 blocks away from my in-laws.   I remember when we first moved to the desert from Riverside.  I SNEEZED for two months nonstop!  Now, I'd been to the desert frequently as a kid (MANY, many times, in fact!), but living there 24/7 caused me to sneeze...all the dust, I guess?  By 1975, we bought our house here and we've been in this house ever since (in Palm Desert).

Now we are nearing that point in our lives where we are THINKING about retirement.  My goodness!  WHERE did the time go?  To stay or not to stay in the desert...Well, for now, both of our kids are here, in Indio.  We don't think that will last forever, but, as long as they are only 15 minutes away, we are happy.  The grandkids are here, too.  It is just that the summers and the heat and the humidity are very hard on us "old folks".  So, we try to get away for a week at a time, either to the Sierras or to Arizona...up in the cool forests.  We DEFINITELY will not be retiring to a big city.  It will either be Arizona, or Sonoma, or Idyllwild or someplace cooler with lots of trees!   :-)

Thursday afternoon rain

This is one of the views from the Toro Peak webcam station.  They have cameras that face north, east, south, and west.  I like to visit their website and look at what's going on in our mountains.  The top photo shows the view north of the webcam (see the rain...).  The bottom one is rain falling to the east of Toro Peak, which would be facing Deep Canyon.  Yup...rain is definitely forecast today.  I stepped outside to feed the dogs and the humidity must be 70%.  It makes my hair frizz!

Monsoon clouds

After Monday's horrific rains here in the desert (some areas STILL haven't dried out...), we have two more days of monsoonal moisture and the threat of thunderstorms.  Really, our desert won't take any more water.  It's like a sponge.  It can soak up so much water, then the water just runs off.  We are that wet here...Anyway, last weekend I got a few photos of the monsoon clouds up in our local mountains.

We got RAIN!!!

We got rain yesterday...a LOT of it!  Rancho Mirage got 1.23 inches of rain yesterday afternoon.  Since we live on the border of Palm Desert/Rancho Mirage, I grabbed my camera and off I went to see the results.  I could hear sirens all around, coming and going.  You have to understand the desert:  Once the sandy soil gets saturated with water, it either stands and floods or it moves and floods somewhere else.  I KNOW...I've lived here nearly 40 years and I've seen two major tropical storms flood the desert.  One of them flooded our home in 1979.  Honestly, I haven't seen as much rain and water since 1979 as I saw yesterday afternoon.  Our front yard was completely saturated with rain water.  Really, it had nowhere to go...I did begin to worry about flooding, but we were okay...phew!  There's a large street 2 blocks over (my in-laws used to live there) and it was flooding.  A major spillway from the mountains ran down into it and it was closed to traffic.  A lot of its neighbors were out with their cameras and a news cameraman hopped out of a car to take video. I drove out to the Rancho Mirage library to check on the wash and yup...it was full and running with water.  There were high winds and rolling thunder for about an hour.  We called our kids in Indio and they got hit about 30 minutes after we did.  We are all okay, but more rain is forecast for today (in fact, it's already sprinkling).  It will be an interesting first day of school if it rains today!   :-)  These are the pics I took yesterday afternoon.

More squirrel antics!

Really, I could have just sat and watched these little guys all day, every day!  They were hilarious!  And, I found their tiny footprints all over the wash in back of the cabin every morning.  But, I didn't see any raccoon footprints the whole week we were at the cabin and there was plenty of food out for them.  The squirrels and birds both enjoyed a critter mix that I put on the fence and fence posts every morning.  In fact, a couple mornings I was greeted at 5:30 by a squirrel demanding breakfast!

Daily dose of cuteness!

There were about 6 of these squirrels around the cabin.  There was at least one female because, well, uh, er...we saw them "playing" one morning, only they weren't playing.  Is it that time of year already?  But, I couldn't resist their cuteness.  One male actually was quite tame (and he had obviously charmed quite a few cabin-dwellers!) and he would come right up on the porch and beg for a peanut.  Of course, he always got one!

Well, I'm heading up to the horses today.  It should be interesting because a huge storm system is heading our way.  I'm going up there this morning, hopefully before the storm hits!  :-)

Red clouds on the rim~SkyWatch Friday~082313

There were beautiful sunsets almost every afternoon that we were in Arizona.  This one was taken out on Highway 260, which is the main rim road.  It goes from Payson to Show Low to points east.  It travels the length of the rim.  SkyWatch Friday for August 23, 2013.   To visit SWF, please go to:  http://skyley.blogspot.com/

First thunderstorm on the rim

We got to the cabin about 2 p.m. our first afternoon and by 4:00 a thunderstorm rolled in.  Thunderstorms happen almost every afternoon in August along the top of the rim and they could be anywhere.  They come and go on a daily basis as the desert's hot air rises along the rim.  We enjoy experiencing them and just sat back and watched.

First views of the Rim

It had been two summers since hubby and I had last been up on the Rim.  And, you know, we both missed it.  There's something about that high, lonely place that calls to us.  Maybe it is the fact that there aren't many people up there?  I mean, both Heber and Overgaard are small towns.  Hubby is from a small town in Pennsylvania (Meadville, in western PA) and I was raised in a relatively small suburb of Los Angeles (Arcadia).  We just like getting up there and settling into a cabin and, well, enjoying the peace and quiet.  I enjoy watching the squirrels and the local wildlife and hubby enjoys just doing nothing!  :-)

Anyway, these are some of the first views of the Rim and its treasures that we saw last week.  It's a world very different from our desert one.

Some reflections about our vacation

So, we spent 5 nights up on the Mogollon Rim this past week.  It had been two years since we last visited the Rim and during that trip, we spent a week in another cabin, across the highway.  I could hear every car and truck that passed by.  It was nice because a family of Cooper hawks (mom and two youngsters) claimed that area as their territory and I was able to watch and learn from them.  And, there were squirrels there, although the squirrels had to dodge the hawks!  NO elk or deer, however.  This summer we rented a cabin on the other side of the highway, way back away from it and its noise.  This cabin had a large corner lot, but was very quiet and further down the road was a huge expanse of national forest.  There were wild sunflowers growing all along the fences here, and cows wandered around the forest.  We heard them several evenings and mornings, calling to one another.  Our last night, we also heard the howls of a coyote.  There were squirrels, but I didn't see any hawks at all.  We saw robins, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and a variety of finches and sparrows.  I really enjoyed the quietness of this cabin.  When we left yesterday morning, our plan was to drive to Phoenix and spend the night, and then drive home.  But, when hubby asked, "Would you rather drive to Flagstaff, spend the night there, and then drive home?" , I immediately screamed, "YES!"  Another night out of the desert heat.  Our daughter said it was 108 at home...sigh...

I'm finding that I cope better in the forest.  My COPD seems worse in the heat and I enjoy the cool air of the mountains.  I sleep better.  I feel better.  My body just seems to function better in the mountains than the desert.  As hubby and I get older, we can tolerate the heat less and less.  Maybe that's why we have to get away during the summers as much as we can?  Maybe that's why we so enjoy driving up to Idyllwild?  We both realize that we need our "mountain time"!

A Slight Detour to Flagstaff

So, yesterday hubby asked me, "Would you rather spend the night in Phoenix or Flagstaff?"  Well, DUH!  Flagstaff, especially since there were rain storms and thunderstorms all around that area yesterday.  So, off we went.  Yes, we ARE like that!  While I'm glad we drove to Flagstaff and had a late lunch at Brandy's, it will be a LONG drive home today.  We also drove out to Williams to our favorite store and bought a couple of items for our daughter and granddaughter.  Then, we took the Flagstaff Scenic Drive home, up through the aspen.  I spotted a herd of elk by the side of the road, in the same exact spot we found them a couple of years ago during another trip to Flagstaff.  Must be good eatings there!  This road goes up through the aspen to the Nordic Training Center of Flagstaff.  It was COLD up there yesterday and both hubby and I were wearing SHORTS!  ACK!  Not the proper attire for alpine environments!  But, I'm glad we made this detour as we both love Flagstaff and its surrounding areas.  Home today.

Homeward bound

We are leaving our Rim cabin today and driving home.  I hate to leave.  We had another rain storm yesterday afternoon.  The wind came up and the rain came onto the porch sideways!  It lasted for about an hour and then I could see blue sky peaking through, so about 4 p.m. hubby and I went for a drive.  This time we went toward Forest Lakes, to Woods Lake and then Canyon Lake and the General Crook Trail.  The trail is interesting because from there, you can look out all over the southeast portion of the rim, toward Payson.  And, yes, General Crook used this trail during his pursuit of Geronimo.  It's at a higher elevation than the lands below and offers a huge, expansive view of the rim country below.  It just seems to go on forever and forever...

Sunflowers and cows

We drove past Show Low toward Springerville yesterday.  It was a LONG day and I had low blood sugar because we didn't stop for lunch, so hubby had to drive back to the cabin.  I should know better...Anyway, there were wild sunflowers (if that is what they are) all along the roadways.  And, up by one of the lakes, cattle were crossing the road!  It was pouring near Big Lake and hubby looked out the passenger window at one point and saw a coyote.  It was 5:00 p.m. by the time we returned to the cabin and the comforts of home.