A few of my favorites….

These are a few of my favorite shots from the trip Tracy and I took to Lynx Lake.

 

 

  

                                                        Rescue me…

 

                                                                        ……and drop me off here.

 

 

It was truly a beautiful day and I had a wonderful time. 

Bird dog….

 

Not sure if any birds will come to the feeder while she’s sitting here waiting for me to come out and give her her morning brushing.

Hula hooping ahead????

 

Tuesday when Tracy and I headed up to Prescott, we went to both Lynx Lake and Granite Basin Lake.  Not sure which lake we were at when we saw this sign.   It kinda had us a little confused, but then we decided there must be some Hula Hooping group meeting up ahead.

 

Not sure I could hula hoop at 15 mph anymore. :)

Ahhhh…..

What’s not to fall in love with here? 

 

This is Sadie…Tracy and Bill’s new family member.  She is such a sweet little girl.  This is one of her favorite toys….her Funky Monkey.  We were inside and I had to use my flash.  Please forgive the flash back in her eyes.  She’s not possessed or anything. 

 

She has the most adorable eyes.  She must have been the model for Lady in “Lady and the Tramp”  Don’t you just want to take her home? 

Making new friends….

Sunday Greg and I took Star to the Goodyear Dog Park for her first visit.  In retrospect, we should have chosen another day when there weren’t so many dogs at the park.  It wasn’t an entirely satisfactory outing, but we hope next trip with work better.

Star was very well behaved and started out doing really well.  There was a very aggressive male there named Bo who just couldn’t play nice.  The encounter set her back and she didn’t get comfortable again until after Bo left and this really nice Airedale named Chief showed her how a gentleman should treat a lady.

I think all in all the dogs were better behaved than some of the “owners” who obviously didn’t go there to monitor or interact with their dogs.  But we’re not ready to give up on the dog park yet.  We’re going to take her back some evening when there won’t be so many dogs there.

 

Public Service Announcement:  Please pick up after your dog while in a dog park.  Others don’t appreciate the little (and sometimes not-so-little) presents your pet leaves behind.

Be sure you brush!!

We don’t have children come to our house to Trick or Treat.  Sometimes I miss that….sometimes, I’m thankful. 

Last night Greg and I went to Bill and Tracy’s for a “date” night.  We were hoping to see some little Trick or Treaters, but alas, no such luck.  They will probably be there tonight.

Bill and Tracy will have lots of good candy to give the little goblins…not quite as much as they had last night though.

 

We had to have something to munch on while we watched “The Lobster Man from Mars”.  That is an hysterical movie!! I had never heard of it before.  It’s very tongue-in-cheek and had some great lines.

Think Sam Spade speaking…

“Sometimes you get a hunch – not an idea – not even a feeling.  More like a rabbit punch to the base of the brain.”

I think this character’s name was Tom Sledge….funny!

Thank you, Bill and Tracy,  for another wonderful evening.  Your hospitality is always spot on.  :) 

Thoughts I’ve been a pondering….

As I sit here at my computer drinking my cup of hot chocolate because I don’t drink coffee and sometimes need to feel adult and holding a cup seems to be required….I find myself thinking thoughts again that have been going through my mind of late. 

I want always to be nice.  I want that to be who I AM and I think most of the time it is.  But there are times when I have to work at being nice…and it worries me…does that still count as “being” nice?  Bear with me because these thoughts are muddled and the hot chocolate is decaffeinated.  (Maybe a couple of caffeinated Oreos will help.)  

I don’t want to make light of these thoughts because they are important to me.  If my first response to someone or a certain situation isn’t nice and I have to walk myself through it, am I still nice?  I still find myself sometimes battling the demons of jealousy or envy or intolerance.  But if I come out the winner and manage to do or say the nice thing, is that niceness tainted or less somehow?  Or is it better and stronger because I had to fight for it? 

Such simple thoughts…not at all earth-shattering or of importance to anyone else, but they have been bouncing around my head these last few days and I needed to air them out.

Spelunking….

Okay, maybe we were just checking out the Tonto Natural Bridge, but every so often it felt like we were in a cave.

 

 

If you get a chance, you really should go.  It is well worth the trip up and down the trail.  But you do need to be in pretty good shape – no bad knees or backs here. 

The things you see…

on the way to school.

I’ve heard of putting a boat into dry dock, but I think this is taking things to the extreme.  This boat is sitting out in the dry river bed that we cross on the way to Nicole’s school.  It’s been there since last spring when there was actually water in the river.  It obviously has a hole in it as it settled down and never floated away.  Anything of value that was left on it is long gone now.  It’s been stripped like the proverbial….what?  Can’t think of anything to finish that line.  Maybe you can help.

Flora or fauna??

 

Which do you prefer?

   

I’m kinda partial to both.

Just a couple of guys….

 

hanging out at the local barbeque grill.

“Hey, did you hear the one about the Gila Woodpecker that goes into a bar?”

Makes me think of….

 

 

Oreos….wonder why. 

 

While waiting for Nicole’s band to play Friday morning, I took a quick walk down by the lake.  As I said, it was quite early in the morning.

The street lights were still on….

What a lovely place to start my day…..sitting on the dock of the….lake.

Thought you had lost me, huh???

 

Well, me too.  I have been so busy and so tired!!  Don’t know if it’s the change in seasons, walking pneumonia or just simple total exhaustion.  I would promise to try and do better, but we’ve all heard that before. :)

Yesterday I had to have Nicole at school at 6:30 AM.  The Pep Band was playing at the opening of a local grocery store. I know that doesn’t seem like a big thing…opening a grocery store, but this is in the community where her school is and for the last 10 or 12 years (depending on who you listen to) the closest grocery store was 12 miles away.  So everyone is quite excited and happy to see the store opening.

Warming up…

With this generation, thank goodness there was a Starbucks close by….

Apparently, to be a drummer one must have ridiculous hair….I mean a personality. :)

Yes, let’s…..  

“Eye of newt and toe of frog…”

While in Strawberry, we saw what at first we thought was a snake, but turned out to be a skink. 

Here’s a little information about skinks….

“Typically, skinks have smooth, shiny, overlapping scales and elongate, cylindrical bodies. Their heads are cone shaped. Femoral pores are absent. The pupil is round, and many species have a large, transparent scale on the lower eyelid that enables them to see even when the lid is closed. In most species the tapering tail is easily broken but can be regenerated. Skinks are generally alert and active diurnal lizards but tend to be secretive, spending much time foraging under leaf litter.

Most skinks are small, usually not exceeding 200 mm (8 in) in total length, but a few species are larger, and the Solomon Islands giant skink, Corucia zebrata, may exceed 600 mm (24 in). This species is unusual in that it is arboreal and has a prehensile tail. Skinks are most frequently striped but may be banded, spotted, or uniformly colored. Males of many species develop broad heads, presumably used in fighting during the breeding season.”

It was cool enough up there that this fellow wasn’t moving very fast, but he moves just like a snake…almost not using his legs at all.  It was creepy to watch him crawl under the rocks.

QUOTES:

“You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.”  Ken Kesey

"Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's
rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the
way of the best happiness."  Friedrich Nietzsche

Northern treasures…

Nicole and I spent three days up in Strawberry with my friend Annie this past week.  We squeezed as much into Nicole’s week off as we could.

 

We had lovely, cool weather.  We built a fire in the fireplace every morning and evening.  We cooked smores and sipped hot chocolate….watched scary movies and made jewelry.

 

 

We fed the birds, squirrels and javelina peanuts. We read and relaxed.

 

  

There were these two little babies.  It seems kinda late in the year for guys this little.  They were so cute, but smelled  just as bad as the big ones.  They’re so young, they were still nursing.

 

This is a horrible shot.  I had to do lots of messing around to be able to see it, but I wanted you to understand why these guys can be so dangerous. I was shooting from way up on the porch where it was safe.  Every so often they would get in a fight over a peanut…nasty, mean sounding critters.

 

Only a few of the trees were starting to change.

It rained the last day and a half we were there.  Just gentle, easy rain. Didn’t see the lightning, but heard the thunder!  It was awesome.  I was really getting homesick by this time what with having been at the lake then right out again to Strawberry.  But it was so gorgeous up there, I hated to pack up and leave. 

 

We were sad to leave, but look forward to getting to visit there again soon….maybe I can talk Annie into one more time before the snow gets too deep.

Gone Fishing….

I should have left a post BEFORE I went fishing to let you know I wasn’t abandoning you.  I have been gone since last Sunday to Bartlett Lake fishing with my family.  The couple of days before that were rather busy getting ready and all packed.  I apologize for not letting everyone know ahead of time.

We had a wonderful time, except we did expect the weather to be cooler up there.  Not so much.  But as long as we stayed sitting in the shade in the heat of the day and if there was a breeze, it was bearable. 

As a matter of fact one afternoon while we were doing just that, across the lake we watched some young people having a little fun.

These three young men were just at the lake for the day with their young lady friend (the smart one down by the raft in the water).  They borrowed the raft from some  campers, swam and paddled across the lake to the yellow cliffs.  The climb up took quite awhile and we were wondering if the third guy was even going to make it up.  One of them was ambitious enough to take a beer up in his back pocket which was shared around the group while a great deal of debate went on as to where the best place to jump from was. 

We could hear them quite plainly across the lake, but they couldn’t hear us - which was probably a good thing.  There was one attempt where the young man stopped before actually jumping.  At that point another one pointed out since climbing back down wasn’t feasible, they just “needed to commit”….so they did….

After his head popped up above water, the next guy went….

The the third guy jumped after the second one popped up.  Unfortunately, I was looking at a boat that was going by to see if it was the ranger and I didn’t get his picture. Then they all had to swim back across the lake….not a short distance by any means.  As we headed out for the afternoon fishing, my brother and sister-in-law went by them and let them know if they went to the camp with the flag, he had some pictures he took to show them.   They showed up later and wrote their little tale in the journal my oldest brother keeps of all the fishing trips and had their picture taken.

Turns out they’re all from Michigan originally.  The two on the left live in Arizona now, the other two are driving through from California headed back to Michigan.  We’re glad they lived to tell the tale and continue on their journey.

Notice how young they all are….explains some things doesn’t it.

They did recommend jumping with shoes next time.  Guess it really burns the bottom of your feet when you hit that water….

You really do meet some interesting people at the lake….