Spring Break - Kartchner Caverns, Saguaro NP, etc.

It was wetter than we expected with rain pretty much the whole trip, but what a wonderful, looked forward to trip it was!  We left Monday morning without breakfast so we could stop in at Jacob Lake for it.  And it was so good as usual!  Paul got his favorite buttermilk pancakes and I got my favorite 6-grain hot cereal.  We bought a couple of cookies for the road.  Then we drove on to arrive in Benson Arizona for the night after we stopped for dinner along the way.  The motel was adequate, but not great - cheap though!

Tuesday morning after another great breakfast at the Denny's next door we were off to the caverns.  What a beautiful facility.  They had room for us in an earlier tour of the Rotunda Room, so we took it.  After that we had a lot of time to wait for our tour of the Big Room at 1:45, so we got to know that Visitor's Center from top to bottom and enjoyed lunch at their Bat Cave Cafe - again really good food.  The caverns were magnificent!!!  The ranger guides were terrific - full of great info and very funny to boot.  The only downside is that you cannot take pictures on the tours.  They have their reasons and I can agree with them, but it is still a bit disappointing.

 After we were done at there we decided to head over to Saguaro ("Sawaro") National Park.  We got there with just a few minutes to pick up info in the Visitor's Center before closing and then did the driving tour (which is open) after hours starting at about 5 pm.  It was a beautiful desert loop with such magnificent views and was even better because it was just raining a little bit and almost no one was there.  Perfect in fact!  And it was just enough to finish out a wonderful day of beautiful things to see and enjoy.  Then we found a really great Mexican restaurant on the way back and had a delicious dinner.  Denny's again in the morning, a walk around town to see the murals and then off to head home.  We took a different route and enjoyed that also.  We stopped in at Surprise AZ for lunch and also made a stop at  our first Trader Joe's!  And then it was on the road again until we got home.  We listened to a couple of really good books that we enjoyed also.

This one of the artist painting the artist is pretty funny!  

And then it was back to work for Paul and taxes and financial reports to SS for Bean along with house cleaning and laundry.  And it was good to get those things I'd been putting off out of the way at last!  

A little hike that we love - Brookside to Baker Lake

Saturday we did out work in the morning and then later in the day enjoyed the little hike that we love.  It was still quite muddy and even a bit snowy from the of late weather, but still very enjoyable.  Bean joined us.  The water is still high up there and things are just starting to green up.  The interesting thing was that Moss and family had been up that morning and the water wasn't running over then, but by the time we got there with the snow melt is was going over again like a few days before when we were there.  

Water in the desert...big time this year!

It's an El Nino year they are saying and we are certainly enjoying the effects in this area.  It has rained, rained and rained down here and snowed and snowed in the mountains around us.  Pine Valley has been covered and it is so beautiful to see it.  We enjoyed a quick after work/before dinner drive out to Gunlock and Baker Lake yesterday afternoon to see the water coming over the top of the dams from the lake being too full to hold it all...an not very often happening.  And so magnificent to see!

You can see a little bit of how snowy Pine Valley is as well at a cinder cone.  

Family Dinner and Ferf #41 fun!

It was a really fun week end and it was even more fun because Jay and Brynn and girls came down.  We had fun with them joining in all of our activities which included family dinner/Ferf's birthday.  The sun came out for a little while on Sunday afternoon, so we enjoyed a little time outside in the yard with the kids.  Just lots of really fun times visiting and celebrating #41 with Ferf.  She cooked the dinner as they were hosting the family dinner and it was delicious. Ferf is an amazing woman and we are so proud of her and all she does and is.  And we love her so much.  

There was a damper put on the week end as we found out that Derek and Colony have separated and plan to be done it sounds like.  I have written more of my feelings about this elsewhere.  Just so sorry they all are having to go through this after having been through so much already.  Praying they will pull through and work together as the move on with life. 

Tavin's a Sterling Scholar!

We didn't get to go to this event, but we are so proud of Tavin for all of his hard work in achieving this honor.  He's such a smart, nice, hardworking young man.  He's going to go on to Regional competition too.  It's like old times when our kids were working hard and doing things like this.  Way to go Tavin!  

Hell Hole Canyon at sunset

That's such an inappropriate name for this canyon to me.  There's one with the same name in Ivins, but this one is out in Washington - at first meeting it was called Dog Town Wash - but now it's labeled Hell Hole Canyon Trail at Sienna Hills.  To me it is one of the most peaceful, beautiful, rugged, awesome places.  I love to walk up it with Paul.  I like to ride up it on a bike, but it is SUCH and uphill pull, that walking is just much easier if you are looking for relaxation instead of hardy exercise.  I especially love it at sunset.  Tonight we just needed some 'us time'.  We went out before going to dinner and walked up it while there was still quite a bit of light.  The recent rains made it even better than usual with pools of water reflecting the cliffs and making small trickling sounds as it moved from pool to pool; it was still running across the trail in a few places.   And the amazing variety of rocks that are there is one of the biggest features that make this place awesome.  The tall walls of the canyon have many layers of different rocks that are just joyful to me!  

I especially love the Shinarump sandstone, or picture rock, that is found in the wash.  There's actually an old quarry there they got and maybe still get some stone out of.  The colored swirls make beautiful, natural pictures in the rock.  I nearly always find a little piece just big enough to carry out to bring home with me.  I always want one that is too big to carry and then have to downsize.  

Like I said, tonight was a great night because of the leftover water from the recent rains and also because of the warming weather.  The frogs were croaking a symphony tonight - like they were glad to finally have warm enough weather to come out and voice their celebration that Spring is coming! Probably not that at all, but that's what it sounded like to me.  Probably more of a mating game for them!  And the small sounds of the water trickling in the stream and also the splashing of waterfalls down through the rocks near the top was musical.

And then there are the owls! I was hoping we'd hear one tonight and I wasn't disappointed.  We heard one on the way up when it was still just a little light and then on the way back down we heard it again, and then it flew over the top of us from one canyon wall to the other and then back a few minutes later checking us out!  We could see it silhouetted in the twilight.  So cool and a little eerie feeling watched in the darkness!  

And so, the canyon provided us with another really lovely evening walk...a date night we needed after a week of doing and doing.  We just needed the peace of an evening walk with perfect lighting, beautiful sights, and sounds...and no sounds at all sometimes...just the serenity of nature doing it's magic on us.

Found a 'cowboy' petroglyph - made by recent hands instead of hands from the past.  Good try, but not good enough!  

I call these piano key rocks!  

Cool reflections!  

Us trying to look majestic among the rocks!

Drill hole from quarry work.

At the end of the trail you could see the powerful effect of the recent rains in this canyon where it washed away the covering from these pipes put in to funnel the water under the road.  The water was now running under the pipes.   

  

Happy #87 Anna Lou!

I hope it was a happy day for her!  We actually celebrated with her a day early because she wanted to stay at home the day of to field phone calls and to watch a Jazz playoff game.  So the day before we took her out to lunch (Paul, Bean and me) to Angelica's Mexican Restaurant.  It was new to all of us and very good!  It was warm enough that we could eat outside on a stone table in the sun.  It was also quieter out there.  After lunch we went back to her house to eat a mini lemon cake complete with candles to blow out and to open and set up her present.  It was a very nice little party that we all enjoyed...all expect for Bandit (the dog) who seemed sad not to find any cake crumbs dropped under the table.  Lou Anne and kids had visited earlier in the day to bring her cards the kids had made which I'm sure helped make her day brighter too.  I have my mother-in-law struggles, but all in all life is good between us and I'm happy that we could bring some sunshine to her day.  Being 87 and alone cannot be fun and she does amazingly well for not seeing or hearing any better than she does.  She's a great example of endurance and has lived an exemplary life of church service/missionary work/teaching/leadership roles.  She has done her best in every way she can and lived through some very difficult time losing two husbands - one very early as well has having being run over as a child and dealing with the problems that left him for life.  If I do as well as she has, I will think I've done well.  

After lunch Paul and Bean went back to work and I dropped her off at the Mall - at her request - so she could treat herself to some birthday shopping.  It's hard for her to always have to have someone going along to give her a ride and feeling like they are waiting on her to shop.  I was worried about her walking back home on her own, but she made it OK and that's a relief.  She told me thank you for all I do for her and that's not a bad thing to hear once in a while.  I don't know how much longer she will be with us, but I hope I can do my best to honor her as I should. Ferf is the one who takes really good care of her since Weed left that to her.  Probably the most important thing I could learn from Weed is to give everyone love...even more than they deserve, because that's what Heavenly Father and Jesus do for everyone of us.  That's what Weed did for everyone she knew.  

Giggling and gliding with Grand Girls!

The snow this year is amazing and not to be wasted!  Tasia and Kennis were available and the their feet are the right size for the boots, so we made a quick trip to Pine Valley so they could try out CC skiing.  And it looked so fun!  (Somehow one pair of boots and skis did not make it into the car, so I  enjoyed the snow in my slippers and wool socks as the close to the car photographer.  I did get out for a walk some too.)  Paul and the girls spent a little over an hour out enjoying the snow and the girls got really good at getting up when they fell down, giggling and giggling some more. It was so fun to see them having so much fun!  Cousins are great! We came, had fun and then headed home to get ready for the going out to dinner to celebrate for Weed.  I would have rather skiied, of course, but I still had fun and enjoyed the time we had together!  

Celebrating Weed #39

There are always those little pangs of missing, sometimes those gut punches...whatever form they take, I miss her.  And so again as her birthday comes around, it's there.  And how can I make it better, the not having her here to celebrate with and wish her a happy day?  So I try to think of what I could do and wonder how her kids and Derek are doing with this, and how our other kids are handling it.  There's no perfect way to 'fix' it.  Thank goodness for our eternal perspective or it would be unbearable.  I don't want to bring it up because I don't want to make it hurt, but I want to do something.  So I put it off...and then it's here and it's time.  This year, as usual, I didn't want to bring it up, and decided to go to the temple to honor the service Weed was always doing for others by doing some service there.  And it was good.  We had one daughter that needed to be sealed to her parents.  How appropriate...to seal one daughter to her parents as we remember that this daughter is sealed to us.  And it was also interesting that this daughter we sealed was just known as Miss Crane.  No first name, but even though she is somewhat unknown any more personally than that, she is known very personally to Heavenly Father.  Just as we are each known to and loved by Him.  So, that was a good way to honor Weed for me and I hope so for Paul.  I felt like crying as I was the was proxy for the daughter and had a hard time holding the tears back, but after it was done I felt much better and happy!

But then I wanted to do something with the kids.  We came up with the idea to have them over the evening before and eat dinner and play games or whatever.  It evolved into a really fun evening.  Paul picked them up and we met at the DSU Sear's Art Show (something we used to go to with Weed and kids on President's day usually) and did the I Spy activity and enjoyed the beautiful art.  The docent was a rather crabby lady who wanted us to know that she didn't want to stay late and in fact wanted to leave 15 minutes early, but we still had a good time and finished up on time to keep her happy!  Then we came home and ate a meal, not as good as I wanted it to be, but we had fun eating/talking together.  Afterwards we mixed up our family recipe of chocolate chip cookies...the ones Weed always used to make and share with others.  Juge told us about their family tradition of making the eggs slide into the batter and we included that!  We baked some of the batter in little bowls and then topped them with ice cream...so we had an appropriate birthday cake for Weed!  And we told jokes and laughed and were silly while we did it.  She would have enjoyed that too.  And we looked at the kid pics in the hall to see how cute Weed, and the other kids were as they grew up into the beautiful people they are.  And as we looked at pics on the way out the door we got sidetracked and it was perfect because we looked through the picture book we made of Weed and enjoyed family memories shown there.  Then it was late and time to take everyone home to get to bed.  It was an evening well spent and was good for the heart.  Tomorrow is the actual day and we will go out to a dinner with our kids and Derek and the kids.  And that will be good too.  Happy Birthday Dear Weed (Lenae).  We love you, we miss you and we will see you again!

We took quick pics of people with favorites.  I love this beautiful fused glass "Through the Forest"  by Mercedes Skegro.  Good thing it's already sold.  If I had money for it, I would want it.  The artist had some great quotes on her site:

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."  Pablo Picasso

She's a refugee from Croatia and also had the quote, "Give me liberty, or give me death."  Patrick Henry  

As we were looking through the photo book we saw some funny pics of Weed in goggles.  Kaebri sent me this funny goggle collage of ones I didn't have.  Weed always had on her 'happy goggles' even when life was hard.  She smiled her way through hard things and worked hard to keep others smiling too.  

 Dinner with a fun remembering what we did with Weed game, a visit the the grave and cake at the
house.  It was perfect!  We missed Jay and Supe, but life happens.

Note:  See journal entry for 2-28-19 for more thoughts on Weed at this time.