Passing Time

 

Hard to believe another couple of weeks have passed here at McDowell Mountain Park. Been keeping busy with biking and Fearless Kitty. We helped set up for the annual Holiday Pet Festival in Scottsdale on the 3rd, spent a day taking down shelves in the old building and rearranging things in the new building in preparation for the tile being installed this week. That along with our usual days of caring for the cats. Here are just a few of the cuties awaiting a new home. And no, that new home won’t be ours!

It was time to move sites again last week. Our last site had a great view of sunset over the McDowell Mountains.

Our current site gives us a view of sunrise over Arizona’s Four Peaks and the Mazatzal Mountain Range.

And our very own coyote.

I put up two hummingbird feeders and they are getting lots of use. I’ve been trying to get some good photos of their color, but maybe one in fifty turns out halfway decent. This beautiful Anna’s hummingbird was sitting in the tree where one of the feeders is hanging. He just sat there on a branch and let me take as many shots as I wanted. They are gorgeous when the sunlight catches them just right.

Couldn’t leave out the finches.

Friends Alex and Ellen left the park but moved nearby to Eagle View RV Park for a couple months to work on some RV projects with their friend Scott. They are close enough that we’ve been by their place for happy hour, and they’ve come and ridden bikes with us a couple times.

We should know better than to hang around people like them who have big class As, since that got us looking at RVs again. Took a drive to Surprise to check out a 32’ Tiffin, which we both really liked. The owners were very nice and let us drive it. I only went round and round the huge (4,000 unit!) storage lot, but Jim drove down Bell Road and on the 101 for several miles. There is way too much traffic in that part of town so he was not very comfortable, although it is only two feet longer (and taller) and one inch wider than our Lazy Daze. Sitting up so high with that giant windshield was a bit intimidating for the first time. As usual, we will probably do nothing, but it’s something we would enjoy having as we sit for awhile in one place, and I imagine we could get used to driving it eventually.

We would really miss our big windows, though, especially since we got them de-fogged.

One day we were eating lunch and noticed a car with bicycles on the back slowly going by our site. They stopped and Jim walked out to see if it was someone we knew. Turned out to be Mike and Deb, from Trekking With The Bs. They are staying at an RV park in Mesa, as she is still working part time, but they’ll be here at McDowell for a few days in January before we leave. Look forward to visiting more with them then.

Last Thursday we took a drive to Mesa to do laundry, and then met Debbie for lunch at San Tan Brewery in Chandler, which is halfway between McDowell and Casa Grande, where she is staying. Always fun to catch up, and we even took a couple photos for her mom!

Jim went back to the Mayo Clinic for blood tests, which were all normal. He and Alex are the same age, and they were complaining about lack of stamina and being tired. Their standing joke now is “Remember, you’re not 66 any more”. Ellen and I, who are both soon to be 62, joked that we should have married younger men.

If I don’t get around to posting again before Christmas. hope everyone enjoys the holiday season, no matter how you celebrate it!