There’s very little to share today other than the failure of the A/C in the tow car. Seems kind of silly to be concerned about that when the morning temps are in the low 40’s, right? Although the days start like that, they heat up quickly when the sun comes up. Yessir. When Max takes me on his first walk in the morning, with a stocking hat on my head, I truly shiver me timbers.

Today I visited the base garage to have the A/C fixed. They had the car most of the day so I walked back to the RV. It was only about 3 miles. I arrived just as Diane was walking back from the laundromat, so we had some lunch. I don’t remember what we ate, but it was good. Around five thirty-Ish, one of our new friends, Linda, drove me back to the garage to get the car.

Diane has been working tirelessly to plot our course. I’m useful when phone calls need to be made but useless in every other aspect of this endeavor. The end result of her planning is that all she has to do is point me in the right direction and keep me between the lines. She’s really good at all of that. She uses code words to keep me straight; when I get too far to the right, she just says “Jerrie” and I immediately correct our course. When I drift left, she says “You’re over the line!”. I correct that quickly and gently drift to the right until she, once again, says “Jerrie.” We go on this way, mile after mile, zig zagging down the road, bouncing off the lane boundaries. It gets more complicated when there are more than two lanes and I’m not in the slowest one. It gets pretty exciting some times.

One of the places Diane wanted to stay asked us to send photos of the RV so they could see if it’s something they’d allow into their park. I sent them these:

We’ve been watching “White Collar” on NETFLIX a lot. We’re on Season 4 Episode 1 (S4E). Sadly, the show was cancelled after season 6. We don’t know why. Anyway, that’s what we watched today – 2 or 3 episodes.

Time to stop and reflect on today’s progress.

Then to bed,

Today we took a 8 mile trip up Craycroft Road to Sunrise Drive, took a left turn and went another 4 miles, or so, then found a parking spot near the front door of the Firebirds Woodfire Grill. We had a date with Patty and Gene for lunch and had to be there by 1230. We got there about 1210 which was good because Diane wanted to put another coat of color on her fingernails. We were there early enough for her fingers to dry before she had to use the restroom.

The folks at Firebirds are very nice and can take a joke. Our waitress was top notch, too. When she brought the bill she asked if there was anything else we needed, and I asked her what was free. She said cheese cake bites, then she brought us a plate of them. Both Diane an Gene’s birthdays were recent and that worked for the free snack.

I had really good intentions of having our waitress take a photo of the four of us, but we got busy talking and that desire pushed aside, so I don’t have one. I do, however, have aold photo of Diane and Patty so that will have to do. Perhaps Patty will forward a photo of her and Gene for me to share. Then again, maybe she won’t. Here’s what I have.

It’s still early in the day, 1632, but there is nothing more scheduled so I’m closing this. We are both looking forward to the next move to Luke AFB in Phoenix. I called Brian, Big Brother Jack’s Grandson, and got permission for Jennifer to send our mail to his home. After a short delay, he said, “Sure.” Actually, there was no delay at all. Brian’s the best. That’s because he has Annie and Kelly. They are all related. I think Brian is our Grand Nephew, but I’m not sure how that works.

We hope all is well with you. Perhaps we’ll wind up in your neighborhood one of these days. Keep an eye out for us.

The only thing I remember doing this day was taking Max for 3 walks, vacuumed the exhaust fan screen in the bathroom, emptied the tanks, vacuumed the floor, read my book, ate breakfast, nibbled, fed Max, sketched a little, etc.

Diane went shopping.

I’m willing to bet she was busier than me. What I did was busy work, just to pass time until Diane got back. Max is the same way. We’re happy that she enjoys her alone time, but we miss her when she’s gone. Even for just a little while. Then we’re really happy when she comes back. There’s always the chance she won’t or can’t.

Today she returned from one of her favorite thrift stores with a large “mystery” box that she paid $3.50 for. It was for me, she said, because it was labeled electronics. When things calmed down from her celebratory return, we sat down to open it and see what we got.

Let’s see how much I can remember.

There are 3 digital headphones, 1 Kodak digital photo frame, 4 charging cords, 1 working heat gun, 1 working flashlight, 3 boxes of LED light bulbs, 1 Gold PS2 mouse, 1 working digital alarm clock, 1 HDMI cable, 1 set of computer speakers, 1 really heavy speaker, 1 not so heavy speaker, 1 Old Maid card game (with all the cards), 1 RC car, and 1 Radio Shack appliance timer.

If, for some reason, we are invited to a White Elephant party, we have lots of gifts for the masses. I’ve been saving a couple of brand-new boxes of 3.5″ and 5″ floppy disks for that reason, too.

Diane also got a beautiful brand-new quilt and a coloring book.

The coloring book goes with the new box of crayons I found on the giveaway table by the laundry. She had a really good time, but we were glad to get her back.

That’s it for today.

What a bummer! #1 Oregon didn’t show up for the game and got whacked big time by a team they beat to win the Big 10 Championship. I know that happened because I have the t-shirt to prove it.

Ya gotta wonder what happened. But, I’m not going to dwell on it. It’s done, let’s move on.

The rest of the day was very nice. Then it got dark, we watched a few episodes of NCIS and finished off the day with a movie (“The Adam Project”).

Then we went to bed.

We had plans to visit Chiracahua National Monument to the east of us, in Cochise County, but we learned that rabies is an issue that direction. So, we decided to err on the side of caution and keep Max away from that area. Probably not a good idea to potentially expose ourselves to rabies, either.

What we should be doing is repacking the RV for the trip north. I’ve probably mentioned that previously but I’m old, and reserve the right to repeat myself often.

There are a few other things Diane put on our calendar that we should do, and we need to get busy with those. We leave here next week. We’re getting excited about moving on. It seems that not joining the snowbird crowd sooner wasn’t really a bad thing.

I’m rambling, I know, so I”m going to quit. I think I hear Max stirring so it’s time to take him out.

Today we took a ride across the dessert toward Ajo. To get there, oddly enough, we had to take the Ajo Highway. It’s also Highway 86. We had no plans to go all the way to Ajo because it was further than we wanted to go, and Diane wanted to get home before dark. There’re coyotes out there, too.

On the way she saw a sign for Kitt Peak National Observatory, so we voted 2-1 to take that side trip and we were glad we did. It was a 12-mile trip on Highway 286 to this complex facility, but it was perfect for getting a look at the valley floor we crossed. We also saw got to see most of the structures scattered around on top of the mountain, but we could only go in the gift shop. Those are always open to the public.

Our destination.

We got to look through a telescope made specifically to view the sun. That was very interesting, as was the gentleman providing information about it.

It’s not often one gets an opportunity to view the sun directly. We could see the flares flying off the edges that were a million miles long. There was another eye piece that allowed us to see the sunspots as well as the true color of the sun.

He held on to Max while we looked.

I didn’t get his name, but he was stationed on the USS Midway CV-41 while in the Navy so I trusted him with Max. Also, Max thought he was OK, too.

One of the most interesting things up there was the hot air balloon they use to get you high enough to see the entire town they built on the mountain. The balloon was tethered to a winch so it wouldn’t fly away. Thankfully, it was very calm, so I was a snap to get a clear photo without having to hang on to the basket. The only building not in view was the Safeway that’s located to the left, just out of range. Pretty amazing stuff. If it had been open today, I’d’a bought a sandwich.

In the welcome center, the bldg to the left in the above photo, is a portion of the visitor’s log with some pretty important people listed.

I wanted to add our names to the list of visitors, but they couldn’t find it so we couldn’t. I left them our names just in case it turns up.

In the parking lot was this government Equinox that has a dent on the back kinda like ours. For a second I thought they had been to our house and backed into our garbage cans.

On the way back to the valley floor Diane let me take photos of the scenery.

Once we made it to the valley floor, we stopped at a McDonald’s for a sandwich then we went home and ended the day. I took Max for his customary walk, but we got to the end of our row and he heard a man talking which must have triggered a bad memory because he immediately ended the walk and made it clear that we were going home. All the while he was looking over his shoulder as we walked away from his voice.

Blessings to you all.

There wasn’t much going on this day. I like NCAA football but no one was playing that interested me. The game I’m waiting for is the Rose Bowl on New Years’ Day between Ohio State and Oregon Ducks. The talking heads on sports don’t give Oregon a chance to win any more games because all the other lower ranked teams are better in their eyes. It’s kind of interesting that unbeaten Oregon didn’t rate even one player to be worthy of selection for First Team All American. Nope. But they had a couple selected for Third Team. So, obviously I’m very curious to see how things go.

Not watching games meant we could go do something meaningful, like shopping for Mexican pottery. The first place we went in downtown Tucson was a boutique kind of store that had really nice things from southern Mexico, and they were pretty spendy. Not what Diane was looking for, but fun to look at. The second place was like hitting the jackpot. There were thousands of pots of all shapes and sizes in addition to the greeters at the entry.

Here are a few of the many tables scattered throughout the venu.

If you were looking for a special pot you could surely find it here, and she did. But, there is no photo of it because she chose a square one. I’d go take a photo of it now, but it’s in the car. And it’s dark outside. And, I think I heard a coyote. Maybe tomorrow.

On the way back to the bus, Diane pulled over so I could take photos of the aircraft on display around a huge parade ground on the base. I wanted a photo of one specifically for Les because in his stint with the Air Force he used to work on them when he was stationed in a foreign country.

So tell me, Les, is this the right model?

There were a few other planes there, but this is the one I was after. Now I must wait for Les to see this so he can let me know if I did good. Might take a while because I don’t know that he even reads these things.

That’s about it for this day.