Saturday, March 4, 2017

The desert is starting to bloom HA CHOO!

Before we started spending time in Arizona a few years ago, I never understood why anyone would want to live in such a place.  Now we find ourselves repeatedly drawn for different reasons. The main draw for us is the hiking and mountain biking in such a different environment of flora and fauna.

This year we ended up staying longer than in previous years. But now we have the go ahead. On our anniversary, Mike had a follow up appointment to find out the status of some biopsies. What a great gift, everything was good.


This winter has brought much more rain and the cactus are starting to bloom.




Over time, we have continued  the process of shedding our things. Our Jeep Liberty was an like an old friend that I liked to drive, a great vehicle for outings in the mountains and getting in tight places. Last year we brought it to Mesa and stored it for our return this winter. The hot summers are pretty hard on vehicles and we knew it was time for it to find a new home. I felt sad when we signed over the papers to the new owner but knew it was the right thing to do. It also feels good to let one more thing go.


 We started geocaching last year. Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. There are also trackables,  a sort of physical geocaching "game piece.  They are moved from cache to cache by the geocachers depending on what the goal might be.
 1,400 CATCH-M trackables were released to geocachers in the USA to place inside geocaches. We received one and have released it in a nearby cache. It will be interesting to see where it will travel.

With the all clear from the doctor, it was time to make some plans. We were fortunate to get reservations for Catalina State Park due to cancellations and will stay here a few more days before starting our cross country journey. Got the "Hitch Itch" and sneeze (all of that pollen).


6 comments:

  1. Great news Mike. Congratulations!
    We had big plans to do geocaching when we first started full timing, but so many other activities caught our attention and time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! We are so excited now. You are right about too many activities. We have narrowed ours quite a bit and given up the kayak.

      Delete
  2. Congrats on the good news. We find ourselves lightening our load the longer we travel and as much as there are times I would love a kayak, I know we wouldn't use enough to make it worth hauling around. Safe travels to your next destination.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We found the same with our kayak. There is only so much time each day to do everything we would like.

      Delete
  3. So glad to know that all is well! Enjoy those beautiful trails at Catalina! Romero Pools is our favorite there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They should be good this year with all of the rain we have gotten.

      Delete

Cuenca, Ecuador

An Expat Destination The morning after returning to Quito we boarded an hour-long flight to Cuenca. Driving up the winding roads would have ...