Our winter stay at Dad’s house was a quiet but extremely enjoyable time for us. We had the opportunity to spend quality time with dad prior to Christmas. Enjoying some of dads favorite music programs and creating candy for the holiday. Christmas Eve Larry and Patty came over and we had the snack line of food prior to the opening of gifts. For Christmas I was asked to smoke a brisket for dinner, which I did and everyone present for dinner said it was delicious. I got the opportunity to walk with Chloe around the fields to the North of dad’s house and the desert to the South of his place. One of Chloe’s favorite things is to wander around with me while I am out walking. With her nose to the ground a large majority of the time just checking out the local smells where we are at. Cindy and I traveled up to Chino Valley on the 30th of December to visit with Aaron and Haley then over to the Verde Valley to see Joe and Mel plus their family as well as Ben and Missy and their family. After spending New Years up North we headed back down to Dad’s place. We stopped in and visited with Cindy’s sister Linda and began our preparations for heading out on more travels. We headed out on January 6th, knowing we would get back to dad’s in April for more visiting. One other task that we undertook while at dad’s place was helping him with his book to get it ready for publication. It will take some more time but we will hopefully have it ready for printing this spring.

The Arizona sunsets and sunrises are always spectacular, and this year at dad’s were no slouches. The colors are always spectacular when there are clouds involved. I don’t always get lucky to have cloud cover morning and night, but this season has been exceptionally kind to me. Due to the opportunity for very colorful sunsets I was able to get a lot of shots throughout the time of our stay.

I was also blessed with lots of cloudy skies, giving me the opportunity to get some great shots of cloud formations, at least in my opinion. Because of the time of day that I was able to take some of the shots, the photos that I got have everything from the back lit white clouds to angry grey, storm clouds.

With some broken cloud masses in the evening, it was possible to get shots that had blue in amongst the clouds, giving a red, orange and blue mottled pattern. And yet even more skies with the broken up white clouds, making it impossible for me not to grab some shots of them.

Dad’s roses were in full bloom while we were there, lending themselves to some great photos of their resplendent colors, with vibrant red. While out for walks around the fields to the north of dad’s place I was able to capture a shot of flowers in the broken ditch, plus play around with shadows being cast by a liquid storage tank. With Alan being down while we were here we got a couple of photos of us three boys and dad, plus the family on christmas eve.

Jan 1st 2023:

• Linda’s birthday
• Spent morning with Joe Mel n kids
• Went to Elizabeth’s around 1pm
• played games, visited, ate supper

Jan 2nd 2023:

• spent morning at Elizabeth’s visiting left about 1 pm.
• Picked up chew, fueled truck, marveled at how high the washes and creek were running from all the rain
• Drove back down to Dad’s house dealing with the nuts on the road
• chatted with dad then off to bed

Jan 3rd 2023:

• breakfast of eggs n bacon at dads
• Cindy did laundry
• lunch of sausage sauerkraut n scalloped potatoes
• worked on putting together first few locations of our years travels
• will need to pack trailer wheel bearings on the desert or when get back to Larry’s in April
• relaxed talked and watched TV to finish the day

Jan 4th 2023:

• daily walk: steps- 5175 time- 52min
• dad didn’t get up until 7am
• breakfast of eggs bacon muffins
• Cindy n Dad worked on dad’s book
• dad took us out to biscuits for lunch
• went for walk after lunch while dad rested and Cindy worked on the book
• dads cleaning lady Deanne did the house cleaning
• started proof reading dad’s book

Jan 5th 2023:

• fried hamburgers for lunch
• wrapped up proof reading dads book
• went to ups and dropped off the returns
• went back to Walgreens and got stuff for Cindy to deal with her stuffy nose
• got truck loaded for travel
• added about 10 gallons of fresh water to trailer
• Cindy worked on prepping inside of trailer for travel

Jan 6 2023:

• daily walk- steps:6734 time:1hr 8min
• Cindy ordered and setup for Chloe’s food from pet smart in casa grande for tomorrow
• Cindy canceled Amazon order of Chloe’s dog food
• We got survey questionnaire for dads book filled out and sent in
• cleaned up dog poop
• pulled weeds in dads lawn
• dad took us out for lunch at Morenos Mexican restaurant
• Took Chloe for afternoon walk
• Cindy continues to battle her sinuses
• took morning sunrise pics
• called and verified that we can dump tanks at casa grande escapees rv park

For more details about our adventures click on the links at the top of the page.