Sedona Itself

Sedona is a ritzy little tourist trap.  There are as many shysters strolling the streets trying to con you into timeshare housing as there are tourists.  The location is gorgeous, but the atmosphere is a carnival.

Granpa had found a restaurant that he wanted to take me to.  It was sequestered behind this brick wall and beautifully shaded by huge trees (whose leaves hadn't changed yet!)  Tlaquepaque.  What a name!  I could see a whole lot of dollar bills slipping out of our pockets here...

It turns out that the food was wonderful and the price tag not bad at all.  Afterward we strolled the courtyard that the restaurant was a part of.  Very upscale shops.  Sedona is a haven for artists, and this place had a lot of very expensive yard art.  This Native American capturing an eagle with his bare hands I thought was fantastic!

This shot of Granpa and a dinosaur skull I liked, too.  There are a lot of fossil shops around, and there's a high-class one upstairs here.  Check out the eye socket in that skull!  Check out the eyeglasses on Granpa!  He looks like a professor.  I love the way he looks with his glasses on.

We thought it was a really cool place - and there were no shysters anywhere!

Long-Eared Squirrel

I couldn't stand not knowing.  Curiosity kills the cat, and I'm on my 9th life.  It's known as Abert's squirrel (Sciurus aberti), having been named for Colonel J.J. Abert, who was a topographical engineer and naturalist with the U.S. military in the early 1800's.

I googled "long-eared squirrel" and found some information from the New Mexico wildlife Commission:

All Abert's have ear tufts or "tassels" - but during the winter they grow really long, hence the nickname "tassel-eared squirrels."  Their broad tails are used as "umbrellas" to shade the squirrel against overheating.

These squirrels apparently can be found in nearly all ponderosa pine forests and, thanks to human intervention, in some mixed coniferous forests.

Predators include automobiles (duh!), hawks, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, and domestic and feral dogs and cats.  House cats seem to be especially good at sneaking up on Aberts.

Hungry?  Aberts eats lots of ponderosa stuff:  seeds, buds, bark...  In the summer squirrels eat fungi. (Once Granpa and I saw a squirrel at Turquoise Lake in Colorado carrying a mushroom that was at least as big as it was.)  Aberts will also eat mistletoe, acorns, insects, shrubs, grasses and - surprise - carrion (dead animals).

Babies - my favorite thing in the whole world - can come twice a year in litters of two to five little critters.

And that's the story of squirrels with ears the size of jackrabbits!

First Trip, Sedona

We chose Sedona hoping that we haven't missed the turning of the leaves for the Fall.

Once we leave the Interstate things begin to get really pretty - but no turning of the leaves.  Joshua cactus are everywhere.

Even this odd looking squirrel came to see us!  Look at those ears!  As big as a jackrabbits!

Well, here's a bit of leaf color - but Granpa was certainly hoping for something better.

A nice young couple offered to take our picture.  This is just outside of Jerome, Arizona.  It's a tiny little town built on the steep edge of the mountain.  The streets are extremely narrow and all sharp hairpin turns. I predict that one day (sooner than later) it will be a big resort town!

Sedona is just up the road ...  For more on Sedona, go to our search feature and type in the name.  It will bring up last years posts about our trip to Sedona.

New Contract! We're Goin' Back to Kingman, Arizona! Hallelujah!

Woohoo!  We loved everything about the first time we were in Kingman, Arizona!  And now we're going back!  Hallelujah!!

The phone rang on Wednesday, we signed the contract on Friday, left town on Saturday, Granpa started work on Monday.

We were in a hotel for a week before I found a house to rent.  It's unfurnished except for a washer and dryer.  I do love my washer and dryer!  That's a selling point for me every time.  The garage with a garage door opener is icing on our cake - especially in sunny Arizona!  I hate leaving our ol' jalopy baking in the sun all day - and trust me, there are usually no trees for shade.  Yup, this place is a keeper.

We decided to rent furniture.  Bad idea.  The sofa was worn out already, the bed frame broke when one of us sat down on it, the dining room table rocked.  It was crazy.  So we literally went next door to the Rent-a-Center and bought ...








a big ol' fat double-recliner love seat for the same price we would have ultimately paid to rent furniture.

I bought a folding table for the dining room (which, by the way, is lit by skylights!), and Granpa ordered a queen size thermapedic-kinda mattress and a folding bedframe.  His plan is to rent a U-Haul to get these things home.  First time in four-going-on-five-years of medical traveling that we've had to rent or buy furniture.



This love seat will fit perfectly at the foot of our bed back home!  I prefer fabric over leather, but I thought the leather might "travel" better.

John will have the same three-day, 12-hour work week as he had the last time he was here.  That frees us up to have six days of sight-seeing!  There is so much to see and do that we don't even know where to start!

Summer Storms in East Texas

The reason East Texas is so beautiful is because it gets a good amount of rain.  The pine trees love it, the oak trees love it, the pecan trees love it...  I love the storms that come with the rain: cooling wind, cooling rain, an excitement in the air.  I always pray that no one and nothing gets damaged by the storms though.

We have an oak tree just to the west of the house that is about 100 years old.  It's the tallest thing on the land at one of the highest spots on the land.  That's good news/bad news.  The bad news is that it occasionally gets hit by lighting.

See that light strip of color on the trunk?  Yup, that lighting strike nearly made me jump five feet in the air! The next morning our son pointed out why the "crack" of lightening was so loud.  That missing bark is laying on the ground.  (The place is a mess after the storm!)

Well, as long as the bark missing is up and down, not girdling the tree, this ol' boy should be okay for another hundred years - and probably another hundred storms.  (And yes, that's an oil well in the background.  Black gold, Texas tease.)

Baby Animals and the Farrier

We have critters of all kinds on our land:  goats, rabbits, turkeys, chickens, ducks, horses, and of course, Mordacai.  Seems every spring they have babies, (duh!)

And I truly have a wonderful time watching our farrier work on Mordacai's hooves!  It's a show to behold!  He is good man, really, really great at working with these critters!

This being Texas and all, we even have a Texas size mosquito!

He's made from a plant we call the Devil's claw. Wire three of them together and put a scrap of felt on the lil' feller.  He's dressed and ready to go!

The Best Part of Comin' Home!

This is some of our grandchildren on the swing set our oldest son built for Eliana.  She's the one who's face is blocked!  The others belong to our middle son.  I think it's marvelous that they all love each other so very much!  Look at those smiles!!

Riding around the land in daddy's pickup truck with their Great Dane tromping alongside is one of their joys.  That and tractor riding.







There are a passel more of those grandkids scatter hither, tither and yon.  It's next to impossible to round them all up, but we love them equally and greatly!

Unload The Van and Love on the Horses!

Everything must go!  And once in the house, everything must be put where it belongs.  Only takes a few minutes and we are HOME!!

Now it's time to love on the livestock - even if it is a foggy, soggy morning!

Mister July

Funny Mordacai

Brother's Camille

One of our sons found July and Mordacai. Someone north of Dallas was giving them away for free. Our only problem was transporting them from Dallas to Tyler. Camille came from my brother.  He's sort of boarding it with us.

July is a Thoroughbred, Mardacai is known as a "Crucifix" donkey because of the stripe down his back and across his shoulders makes a cross, and Camille was a barrel-racer.

Home

When we got home we discovered that the goats had feasted on our front flowerbeds - everything but the Cannas were gone.  The solution was obvious!  Plant more cannas.  And so we did, and they seem to be doing pretty good.

They will multiply and, if you let the flowers go to seed, they will multiply greatly. 

 

 So, if the goats will leave these alone I suppose it's flowers and not bushes we will have.

See the "bulb" at the base of the stem?  Those will turn brown, drop off, and up pops another plant!  Canna's are wonderfully hardy, tolerate the scorching Texas sun, survive with inconsistent watering, drop out of sight in the winter and pop up in the spring raring to go! 

I also decided to take a couple of the cactus from out of the pasture and put them in the flowerbeds. I think that the goats don't eat them, and they stay green all winter.  Now, if the goats will just stay away...

The Cheerleading Granddaughters!

Rylee and Eliana - Cheerleaders for our family!!

Just to be sure I cover all of the bases... These are two of our granddaughters and they have been or are cheerleaders.

One of them has grown up and passed on more cheering.  She now spends more time dating and hanging out with her little brother and sisters!

The Football Playing Grandsons!

Well.  This happens when one travels as much as we do.  I saved our photos from the trip home from North Carolina onto thumb drives.  I seem to have left those back in Texas!  So, I will have to revisit our stops at Shiloh and Chickamauga Civil War battlefields when I find those pictures.

In reviewing the photos for our short contract in Benton, Arkansas I realize that we didn't do any sightseeing while we were there.  Praise the Lord, we were close enough to home that we were able to go to our grandson's football games every Friday night!  We have LOTS of photos of them!

There.  Now they are permanently ensconced in our blog and will be published in our books!

But let's not forget our OTHER grandson who played in Plano, Texas and, I'm sad to say, we were never able to get to his games.