Almost Ready to Go...

For the month of July we were busy getting ready for our extended trip. Our trailer is packed and we are almost ready to hit the highway. We are getting very excited and feel so grateful that we have this opportunity to pursue this dream. We feel blessed!

High River Air Show

  On July 24 before our journey east begins we attended the High River air show. These are pictures of the Canadian Snow Bird Flying team. They are spectacular to watch as they do all kinds of dangerous flying maneuvers and we were pretty well right underneath them. It is kind of fitting that they call their flying team Snowbirds as that is what we do in the winters, head south and become snow birds. To bad we don't know how to fly like them. Keep abreast as our journey draws closer to becoming a reality.

Our Adventures begin again...

Its been almost 2 years since we have posted anything on this blog site. Sorry for that. The reason is because we have not traveled for the last 2 years. Our daughter has been living with us for the last couple of years and we have been helping her get started in her life's journeys.
One of our bucket list trips, and long desired dream was to take an extended trip and travel across beautiful Canada to tour the east coast; the Maritime Provinces. After touring the Maritime Provinces we travel down the US eastern coast line and head south to Florida for the winter. After touring Florida, we travel the magnificent Gulf of Mexico, then head to the Pacific coast and then home. Basically, we want to travel around North America's coast line from the east, south and west. We are very excited and happy that this dream is now becoming a reality. This journey that we are about to embark on is going to be approximately 9 months in duration. We are leaving on August 1, 2014 and plan on returning on April 1st, 2015. We plan on taking lots of pictures and gathering lots of data from the areas that we plan on visiting and will be adding this to our blog site. Our adventure is about to begin very soon, so for those of you that are following our adventures we hope you will be in awe as much as we plan on being.

Cheers!

Our Best Friend

                                                                                                                                                  Monday, Sept 10, 2012

Today was a sad day for our family as we lost a very special pet and friend. These are a few pictures of our dog Ripley who has enriched our lives in the 10 years that we had him. For those of you that have ever met our dog, knew how special he was to us. We got him when he was only a few months old so he never knew another family but ours. He was always there for us and showed nothing but unconditional love to all our family. He was especially very protective of Susie, he was mommies little shadow and where ever Susie was Ripley was right there. Ripley was a great traveling companion and had never missed a vacation with us and since retirement has always been by our side. You only had to mention the word camping or vacation and he would get very excited. He, especially loved going to the ocean and running up and down the beaches smelling fish and going on hikes or any new adventure, these were some of his geatest joys. We remember Ripley with great happiness and love as he was such an important part of our family. May he rest in peace.

November 2011, SanTan Valley & Peralta Trail Head





To the left is a cotton field in the SanTan valley that had not been picked yet. This is one of the few fields that had not been harvested. Usually at this time of year they have all been picked by this time in November. To the right is a little tarantula that we encountered on a hike going up the Peralta trail head. This trail goes up to Weavers needle(below right) and is one of the more interesting hikes in the Arizona area. The trail head begins at an elevation of approximately 2300 feet goes up 1300 more feet to an elevation of between 36 and 37 hundred feet. It is all uphill and ascends 1300 ft in less than 2 1/4 miles but once to the top the view is spectacular. Below left is a view of the valley below that we started the climb from, also there is a little balancing act going on on one of the rock formations.















October 13th, D-Arcy Ranch golf course, Okotoks, AB, Canada

 As we prepare to go South for the winter we had a chance to get our final rounds of golf in before the snow flies. It was a beautiful day with deer roaming around on the course and a breathtaking view of the mountains from the Club house. This is one of the two courses that we worked at and both are situated in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where the golfing is grand and the landscapes around are very picturesque. We are heading south from here to Arizona to take in some desert golf and mellow out for the winter but we will be back to this in the spring to do it all again.

September 3rd, 2011 Okotoks, AB, Canada

 

Ah! Fall in September, we had a slight dusting of snow in the mountains but it was still green around the town of Okotoks. To the right is a picture of a a huge rock that stands alone in the middle of a wheat field. This rock was left after the ice age and can be observed from the highway that leads to one of the golf courses that we work at.