Hemmin', Hawwin' and Hiking

Sunset in the Old Pueblo

So, we left off with my tease about the Friday night dance at the Voyager. “Two’s Company” a husband and wife musical duet provided the music gave us a very fun evening. They play and sing a variety of songs, including a Blues Brothers song complete with costumes. The husband part of the group plays keyboard and trumpet and does a really good job at both.

We met up with several couples that we have become friends with over previous years and spent some time catching up. Marcia and Jerry were one of the couples we reconnected with and they both look great. They are from western Michigan were both public educators so there is that natural connection as well.

Marcia and Joan, despite my and Jerry’s best efforts to stop them, are organizing the “Michigan Party” for the Voyager. The last Michigan party at the resort was in 2012 and since then no one has stepped up to take over the organizing. Jim and Faye, who we met three years ago, and Elaine, who we just met were the former organizers and have graciously turned over the keys to the event to Joan and Marcia.

Sunset and clouds

By turning over keys I mean they gave us a box of decorations and some computer files of fliers and spread sheets to make the organizing easier. They also graciously handed over a bank account for the Michigan Party that includes a balance of $186 to get us started for this year. The process of changing the signatures on that account ended up taking more than two hours at the credit union.

The party is scheduled for Monday, February 29, which is the leap year day, so I’m hoping that we keep that date into perpetuity so we only have to do this party every four years. Marcia and Joan decided to keep it simple by doing a little cocktail reception in the resort courtyard (praying for good weather that day) with everyone bringing a hearty cocktail snack to share. If this year’s party is successful we’ll take suggestions for next year’s party at this year’s party.

My job is to come up with a new Michigan map so people can stick pins into it when they arrive so we can see where everyone is from. We’re planning a mixer to get people to meet folks they don’t already know. I also volunteered to set up a table at the Saturday morning coffee through February to sign up folks for the event.

View from Maiden Pools

On Saturday morning we picked up Mahlon and Colleen, our friends from Riverside Tabernacle, at their rental home in Tucson and headed out to Sabino Canyon for our adventure there. We grabbed a shuttle there and did the tour up the canyon and got off the shuttle and began the hike back.

On the way up, we couldn’t help but notice that more than half the bridges over Sabino Creek were halfway underwater, which we knew would make getting back a little more challenging that in the past. No one was eager to wade through the ankle-high rushing snow melt on the hike so it turned into a game of leap frog by waiting for a shuttle at each stop and then jumping off at the next to avoid the rushing ice water.

Finally, we abandoned the leap frog plan and took the shuttle back to Shuttle Stop 1 and walked the mile back from there. Mahlon and Colleen track their daily steps on Bit Fits or whatever they are called and so they were still short the 10,000 steps they like to do each day so we headed out on some other trails from the visitor center until we had accomplished that.

It was a fun day with friends and as I have previously mentioned we love it when people come to visit so we can show off our second home, Tucson. After arriving home we got cleaned up, had a sandwich dinner and spent a quiet evening in our trailer.

Mahlon at Maiden Pools

Sunday, as it usually does, began with a workout for me followed by church, which is bulging at the seams with the arrival of so many new snowbirds this week. After church we headed to Walmart for shopping and because my old flip phone was barely holding a charge anymore I joined the 21^st century and purchased a smart phone. Not an iPhone, but an Android, which will primarily be used for phone calls and now texting (I never had text before) but we are not purchasing a data plan so I can only use it as a smart phone when I find free wifi.

I spent the afternoon playing with my phone and learning how to use it. More on that later.

On Sunday night we had been invited to our friends Darcel and Barry’s house in the Cove. This is the nice section of the park where people live in actual stick built homes. We had been to Darcel and Barry’s last year for dinner after our second wine tasting adventure with them. They are great folks who live in Idaho and were former professors at a Washington university.

Also at the party were Jim, and another couple Myra and Butch, who I know from the Tuesday hiking club. Darcel is also a frequent Tuesday hiker. We had a fun evening with them and walked home about 9:30 p.m.

A live skunk at the museum

Monday began with a workout in the fitness center, Joan went to her aquacise and then a trip to the AT&T store so Joan could replace her flip phone with a phone like mine. I also needed a few lessons on how to access my phone as I hadn’t been able to find my voicemail, etc. We met in the afternoon with Marcia, Jerry and Pam (an employee at the activity center) about the Michigan Party and found out all the details we needed to do to pull off the party. All that led to the later meetings with Elaine and Jim along with the marathon credit union session.

Part of the credit union session was holding a brief meeting, keeping minutes to officially transfer control of the funds from Elaine and Jim to Marcia and Joan.

Following that meeting, we returned home and got ready for Meet Me At Maynard’s, which was also held during the jazz fest here on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So downtown was packed and finding a place to park was challenging as my usually garage parking space was blocked by a stage for the jazz festival.

We checked in at Meet Me At Maynard’s and for the first time ever Joan was able to make the full two miles without the pain she experienced last year. She was as excited as can be. We waited for the raffle drawing, which we did not win, and then headed to “Fired Pie” for dinner.

“Fired Pie” is a little medium speed food place that specializes in making individual thin-crust pizzas and salads. I love thin crust (for my friends back in Flint think Luigi’s) and you can have all the toppings you want for a total of $8 for an 11-inch pie. Joan and I split a Caesar Salad and with our 20 percent Meet Me At Maynard’s discount the cost was only $21.

Joan and her favorite species of bird

We returned home late from an eventful and busy day.

During the week I said many, many funny pithy things, but can’t remember any of them now. I’m going to start carrying a small notebook so I can remember all my wonderful sayings so I can use them in the blog.

Because Mahlon wanted to go a more difficult hike than the one we did with the wives on Saturday he and I headed out this morning for a hike up Ventana Canyon. This is a challenging hike with six creek crossings and a 1,200-foot elevation to Maiden Pools. I have made this hike twice before in previous years, but I’ve never seen this much water in the creek before.

I skipped the regular Tuesday resort hike which was pretty easy this week but I’ll do the Prison Camp hike on my own later. The Prison Camp Hike is up in the Catalina Mountains on the road to Mt. Lemmon.

Mahlon, is a marathon runner, and did much better up the big switchback climbing than I did. So as not to hold him up I let him go ahead and caught up with him at the top of the hill about 15 minutes later. It takes me a few weeks to get acclimated to the altitude and in case you didn’t know, I’m NOT a marathon runner.

When I got home from the 5-hour hike I got cleaned up and we headed to the Tuesday potluck. With more people in the park, there are more people at the potluck and Joan brought one of my favorites, a crockpot lasagna. Much more variety this week including a couple plates of deviled eggs, which is one of my favorites.

We left more than full.

Sometime on Monday, I tried locking one of the basement doors on the trailer. “Basement” is what I call the storage areas under our bedroom on the outside of the trailer. I put in the key, turned the lock and it promptly snapped off. I guess 8 years is the limit on a small metal key for a difficult to lock door. Unfortunately, it turned far enough to actually lock the door. Behind that door is the Diet Coke that keeps Joan happy and content, so I started to panic.

Also one of the spring clips that holds open the basement doors when they are open, gave up the ghost. So on Wednesday I headed out to my favorite key maker at Ace Hardware on Irvington Road to see if I could get a new key made for the basement and also make a brief stop at Camping World to pick up a new spring clip.

With only a broken key as a form, the very skilled key maker at Ace was able to make me a new key from just the broken section of the key that I had coaxed back out of the lock by tapping lightly on it and grabbing with a pair of needle nose pliers. That $1.10 key saved me a $45 locksmith call.

When I returned home from the Ace Hardware trip I installed the new spring clip and re-opened the locked basement door with my new key. Two fixes in one day, that’s a record for me.

We had leftover crockpot lasagna for dinner and then headed to the Wednesday night concert  - “Hemmin’ and Hawwin’” which was a tribute show to the old “Hee Haw” show and yes, it was just that corny. The music was good. It should be noted that Joan does not like country and western music and I told her we could skip this one, but she insisted on getting the tickets anyway.

I couple folks were complaining on Thursday morning that it was “too corny.”  I pointed out that the show was named “Hemmin’ and Hawwin’” so what could you expect.

Thursday dawned with me leading the Men’s Bible Study at the resort. We are studying the Book of James. After the class Joan and I headed over to pick up Mahlon and Colleen for a trip to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.

We love taking first time visitors there as ASDM is much more than a museum. With the live animal displays and the Free Flight Raptor Show it is an amazing place that always surprises. Joan and I renewed our annual membership so we can go there anytime we want and trust me we will get more than our money out of it.

We dropped off Mahlon and Colleen, wished them a safe journey home to Michigan and then headed back to Voyager. We bought some beautiful T-bone steaks last week and Joan had them thawing while we were gone.

I set up the grill quickly and cooked our steaks and we added some mashed potatoes and salad and devoured dinner in about 10 minutes.

Thursday night I attended the “Experiencing God” program at the resort and then returned home to find Joan falling asleep in her chair. Lots of walking and fresh air will do that to you.