Our 44th Wedding Anniversery!

     March 22 marked a special day for Jack and I. Forty four years ago we made promises to be with each other forever and today we celebrate that journey together. God has blessed us on this "trip" as we raised our two sons, added a daughter (in-love) and now two lovely grandchildren. We have developed a love of travel together and we have been privileged to have traveled safely around the world and across Canada and the USA. We have soooo many memories of places we have seen and people we have met - it will stay with us the rest of the days God has for us.

Our dear friends, Dan and Barb Bloem will celebrate their 44th anniversary in 2 weeks time, so we went out together to "Gertrude's" the new restaurant at the Desert Botanical Gardens for a special dinner together. We had a lovely evening outdoors under an almost full moon and a sky full of stars.

  Each couple shared a wonderful warm chocolate mousse cake for a yummy, decadent ending to a magical evening!

Bashas' Gallery of South Western Art

   In 1886, the Bashas family arrived in New York City from Lebanon. In 1910, they moved to Arizona and Najeeb started a dry goods store that has become over 165 grocery stores all over Arizona. It remains family owned and is now run by the grandson, Eddie Bashas Jr.
Eddie Sr had a real love of western art and became a great collector of original art - sculpture, oils, Hopi  kachina dolls, and a large collection of woven baskets by Native Americans. Next to the corporate headquarters in Chandler, is the art gallery that we visited on Thursday, March 23. With over 3000 items, it made for a fascinating visit as the sculptures and pictures told the story of the American West and the toll that migration took on the Natives - the Apache, Comanche, Hopi and Navajo.

Called "The Price of Passage" this painting by Joe Beeler, shows the Apaches herding the longhorns away for the wagon train that has traded them of safety as they travel across the plains.

Hiking the Hawes

 We are coming to the end of our hikes in the desert but there are a few left. Today we hiked the Hawes trail near the end of Power Road. As we neared the parking area, we had to stop as a group of 8 (and a baby) javelinas - or wild pigs - crossed the road right in front of us.

Why do javelinas cross the road? Probably to find food on the other side??

We had a great view of Red Mountain - part of the McDowells - as we began our hike. If you look closely, you can see a helicopter between the mountain and the saguaro cactus. That is an Apache helicopter - they are made right near here in Mesa and are tested across the desert and mountains around us.

                                                                   Isn't it beautiful?

This became a wildflower hike.
The desert has burst into bloom this week. Here we see the yellow Mexican poppies and the purle lupines.

The pink fairy dusters.

Tiny white daisies.

A baby fish hook cactus pokes it's head up between the rocks.

A chula rose - looks like a tube of red lipstick.

Jack inspects an old mine shaft - it goes back about 15 feet - probably someone looking for gold in these mountains many years ago.

We thought these cacti were "high fiving" each other!

   The last mile of the trail is over red rock and has some ups and downs. All together, we hiked 5.2 miles (or almost 8km) with no real net elevation gain but lots of hills of ups - and, of course, downs. Another great day with our hiking friends.

Our Trip to Green Valley - Arizona that is!

  Gerry and Lydia Vander Wel met, married and spent many years in Clarkson and we knew them at Clarkson Christian Reformed Church. They were transferred to Saudia Arabia many years ago and then spent several years in Seattle, Washington. For the past 8 years they have been in Atlanta, Georgia. Gerry works for AT&T. Last year, they bought a winter home in Green Valley, Arizona, about 20 minutes south of Tucson. They plan to spend more time there after Gerry retires in 2 years time. We learned that they would be at their home for 2 weeks in March and made plans to visit them. Their home has a lovely view of the nearby mountains and the backyard overlooks a ravine with several holes of the golf course.

They are finishing work on their backyard patio during this visit - it will include a fountain and a corner BBQ and fireplace.

After a tour of their home, we drove about 15 miles north to the ASARCO  Copper Mine to take a tour of the mining operation there.  The mine began in 1899 with a mine shaft like this but modern day methods now look like this -

  It is now a huge open pit mining operation. The concentration of copper is 0.5% ore and it is still worthwhile to mine and smelt the copper. Along with the copper ore comes small amounts of gold and that is sold and provides enough money to pay the electric bills for the company - hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
The pit is 1500' deep - where they have hit ground water. The earth is blown up by dynamite and the rock is loaded onto these trucks - they seen small from a distance but are massively huge!

This is one of the teeth of that huge "digger" that loads the rock onto the trucks.

The rock is ground to small pebbles.

Inside these large drums (a ball mill), it is ground to ever smaller particles by steel balls - first a 6 inch ball and later a smaller balls grind it even smaller.

Then the powder is mixed with water and other chemicals (one is pine tar) to make a slurry that the copper adheres to and the other metals fall to the bottom.

The "tailings" of rock are returned to terraced hillsides and eventually desert plants are grown again.

Jack shows us how big those tires of the transporter trucks really are!

After a warm afternoon (the temperatures hit 93F - but it is dry and there was a breeze), we are ready to sit on the Vander Wel's shaded patio and share some wine and munchies.  We found that we had lots to talk about and shared a lovely dinner and stayed up til late talking about everything under the sun - including our grandchildren  :-)  We stayed overnight and had a great breakfast (Thanks, Gerry) and said our "Good byes" and "See you again next year"

  Instead of driving directly home - and following the same route that we had taken to Green Valley - as typical for the Jagts, we headed EAST  in I - 10 and exited at Willcox, then drove north on Route 191 to Safford. We passed these mountains that still had snow on their peaks despite temperatures in the nineties!

  While we were driving, we saw this hillside in the distance - at first we thought it was yellow rock but on closer inspection, it was a hill COVERED  with yellow poppies!! We have been waiting for the spring wildflowers to appear and this was a spectacular display!

Passing Roosevelt Lake, we saw this lovely red rock shoreline.


We arrived home in Mesa about 4pm after another day of exploring and a great visit with old friends.

Butcher Jones Trail Hike

Monday morning again and it is sunny with clear blue skies and a temperature of 52F when we meet at the flag pole to carpool to the trailhead on Saguaro Lake . We ride with our friends Kip and Paula from Calgary. They have been away to Ottawa to help her brother after heart surgery. They are glad to be back into the sunshine after 12 days of overcast and gloom with snowy roads and sidewalks.

Saguaro Lake was created by the Stewart Mountain Dam on the Salt River in 1928. Because it has blocked the river's course, the lake has many little coves as it follows the contours of the terrain. At the parking area, there is a lovely sand beach, much used by Phoenix residents in the hot, hot summers. There is also good fishing and we see several boats and fishermen this morning.

We hiked around this arm of the lake.

The group of 42 stretches out along the trail!

After 2.7 miles of hiking, we come to Burro Cove - and a wonderful view of Four Peaks.
We stop here for a snack break and a rest before we return along the same trail.

I am excited to see that the Mexican poppies are really starting to bloom - we saw several patches on hillsides that were facing the sun - as the shade evaporates, the sun coaxes them into opening fully so we can enjoy their beauty.








  Purple lupines are also mixed with the poppies.

  The cactus are starting to bloom - the desert is ready to burst with new growth and beauty!!

An Unexpected Connection with a Friend

    When we arrived in this park last November, we met our neighbors. They are work campers who are full time RVers. They stay here for the winter and perform so many hours a week doing jobs for the park and in exchange, they get a free site. Jim and Judie are from Lansing, Michigan and when they heard that we were from Toronto, we played the "do you know" game. They are best friends with Fran who is the sister of a  dear friend of ours, Lucy. Fran is visiting this weekend so we all went out for dinner last night to the San Tan Flat Saloon. We had a great time and practically talked ourselves hoarse.

Remember - this bar is in Arizona - the land of carry-concealed permits, no helmet laws for motorcyclists and other "stay out of my business, big government" types.

Eastern Canada Picnic

Our RV park of 2000 sites, is 65% Canadian! I am not sure if this says something about our Canadian winters or just that Canadians are adventuresome people. The majority are from western Canada and they have monthly coffees and potlucks for each province. But there are quite a few of us from Ontario and east. There is even a couple from Newfoundland!

On Wednesday, March 6, we had a potluck lunch by the west pool - the weather was wonderful - sunny and 80F and we had LOTS of food.
There were door prizes and I won a pair of tickets to one on the shows next week - a $30 value!

For dessert, we had Canadian cake!