We have made it to "Sedona"!

Man did it rain today! Yikes... When we left Tucson this morning it was pouring and water was everywhere... we had to hook up the motorcycle trailer in a flood! Judy wore here duckies and was wading in water going "Quack Quack...." Finally we got hooked up and headed out. It is a two hour drive up to Phoenix, however I wanted to take the back roads which would have been three hours, but..... we decided not to, as it was raining so hard and I had been up the back roads on the motorcycle and there was a bunch of dips on the road. Dips fill with water and that is bad news in the desert. When a dip fills with water you cannot go into it as you have no idea how deep it actually is, so I did not want to get caught out in the boondocks and unable to reach Phoenix and leave Gerard and Debbie hi and dry....no pun intended....

We made it to Phoenix and camped out at Wallmart just 3 miles from the airport. Judy did a boat load of grocery shopping while I messed around trying to get the hockey game of course, but NODA... nothing..... Thanks to Kristina for texting me the updates... glad to hear Canada came through...

We left Phoenix and headed up to Sedona...2 hours... we came in from the South and the mountains are unbelievable.... you cannot tell someone about the beauty here at Sedona... I am going to wear out my camera here and you are going to get sick of looking at the pictures... wow...

Anyways, just a quick update tonight with no pics.... tomorrow maybe! Oh, and yes, it is a bit cooler here... we are up at the 4,000 foot level...

Till tomorrow....

What a bunch of Bull....

A nice day today in Tucson, as we got our RV ready to roll tomorrow up to Phoenix. We are all set to go tonight... bikes are tied down, BBQ put away, fired up the big engine to make sure all is well, we are set.

So, it was now Rodeo Time. Tucson puts on a big Rodeo each winter based on the Pro Rodeo Stars. We had great tickets thanks to Rincon RV Resort!

They had a bunch of concessions set up of course that sold things like saddles, Cowboy hats, you name it. We enjoyed a BBQ lunch compliments of the Tucson Lions Club. I love supporting service Clubs! Here is a guy trying out his chin ups to see if he qualifies to go to Afghanistan or not!


The first part of the Rodeo was the Jr. Rodeo and all these kids participated... some were only 4 years old...


Don't look at the next picture Kristina! Yes, the kids rode sheep.... one of Kristina's favorite animals... NO SHEEP WERE INJURED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG!


The cowgirls participated in barrel racing, and this 4 year old was on her horse, and it walked the course... the crowd went wild for her....

This was a father and son effort.... the father roped the steer, and then the son had to rope the back foot of the steer... harder than it looks....

Ya, even the Rodeo has a John Deer Zamboni!


A big crowd turned out for the Rodeo, which goes on for a week.

This women's precison team opened up the rodeo...they were good...

The Americans love their National Anthem and their Flag...

Ridem cowboy,

This looks like it must hurt when you land on that steer!...

The Tucson Police had to show up and make a bust...

They all ended up singing "YMCA"...

The Cowgirls came out and competed in barrel racing, and they were fast....

And then the bull started.....

I thought you were supposed to ride the bull, not have the bull ride you! That has to hurt! Actually, one of the bull riders broke his leg... ooopppss....not this one though...

They may look like clowns, but they saved the bacon of a couple of the bull riders...

There was another clown right inside the barrel and they let the bull push him around.... just having some cowboy fun...

We had a blast... never have been to the Rodeo before... it was good. Half of the cowboys in this Rodeo today were from Calgary, Alberta.... go figure... there is some big money for them to win.

We ended the day by going to conclusion of the photo contest. There were lots of real good pictures... I entered 3 of my best, but they were not good enough... oh well... next year! At least they had real good strawberry shortcake!

Gotta run tonight... lots to do yet before we leave...

Till tomorrow.....

"Diamonds" are a girls best friend!

Judy has been making sure that I get my fair share of "culture" lately....tonight we headed down to the main auditorium to watch this evenings stage show featuring the "Diamonds". They are from the 1950's for all you music fans, and actually started out in Toronto! They had two big hits in their time... Silhouette, and Little Darling...

They performed for 1 1/2 hours and were a pretty good show. They sang a lot of rock and roll stuff from the 50's, 60's and a couple from the 70's....

This is what you get when you press the "special effects button" on Judy's camera! Cool ehhh!

I don't believe any of these performers are original, but the guy o n the sax has been 35 years with the group! A good night of entertainment!

Today was a real nice day in Tucson, must have got up to 25 Deg. C. for all you Canuks in metric... We spent most of this morning replacing the windshield on Judy's Burgman. Took about 1 1/2 hours... they are not easy to change out, but we did it. Judy is a happy camper again! This afternoon was spent on house hold items... Judy did some clean up and laundry, while I was working outside getting our rig ready to pull out on Sunday Morning. Things like doing tire pressure, dumping tanks, cleaning windows, checking oils, all take time. Monthly I have to exercise our diesel generator. Ran it for an hour today to keep it in shape! Tomorrow morning we will do the final preparations and we will be ready to fly on Sunday morning!

This afternoon we were invited to enjoy some goodies with our Rincon Friends. We met around 4:30 with lots of good food to be had. Judy had the camera ready and we warned everyone they would be on the world wide web tonight!

In this first picture you have on the extreme left Cindy, myself, Linda, Everitt and Mary and standing is John. Linda's Husband Dennis is sitting wearing his hat backwards... camera shy! So where is Judy you say? Taking the picture of course...

There, Judy sneaked around and got a picture of Dennis... we have had a bunch of fun with this group since coming to Tucson. It has been nice to get to know you all and thanks for including a couple of "Canadians" in on all the fun! At least you are all experts now on the fine art of "Curling".... and don't worry, after Judy and I leave you will soon stop saying "Ehhhh" all the time. Although we are leaving this Sunday we hope to meet up with you again maybe next year!

However the culture is not over yet! Last night Judy bought some tickets to see a performance at the "Gas Light Theatre". We thought this was a show put on in the Resort, however once we received the tickets we figured out it was on the other side of Tucson! About 10 miles away. Tucson is a BIG city when you get out and moving around.

The performance was the "Cisco Kid". It was well done and very funny... it is a smaller theatre and you feel like a sardine when you get seated, but it all adds to the experience.

It is a classic storey of Good vs. Evil and of course the good guys win in the end. Here is the Cisco Kid riding his horse with his sidekick, Pancho....Cisco is on the right...

That is Evil in the middle...boooo

It was a fun night, and thankfully it was warm out, as we rode the motorcycles to the theatre and came home around 9:30 at night. Judy commented it seemed weird riding her bike on Feb. 25 at night and not being cold.....

We talked to our lovely Daughter, Kristina today, and seems they were getting hammered by the winter storms that are not over.

Till tomorrow....

Kitt Peak

Sit back in you chair and get ready to go for a ride today! What a day it was, one of my favorites! We were up and out the door at 10:30 (ya, I know.... pretty early eehhh!) and we were headed for Kitt Peak. We had heard from several people this was a good ride and there is also an observatory at the top we were told... ya right.

It was a beautiful day as we headed due south on Hwy 86 about 80 kilometers to the Mountain. I did not have a clue what to expect. As we drove across the flat desert towards the mountain, I came to realize that this was a bit more than your standard mountain. As it turns out the mountain top is 7,000 feet up, however we are already at about 2, 000 feet in Tucson, so we had to climb 5,000 feet! As it turns out the road was fantastic and very safe... there are some that are not so safe as you go up. This one was great.... lets look at some pictures...

We are only up about a thousand feet here, but we just figured out this was going to be great!

Look at the top of that mountain and you can sort of see some buildings... that is where we are headed....

About a mile before the top they had a picnic area so we decided to stop and have our lunch we had brought with us. We sat at the table right in front of this dish. This dish is one of 10 across the USA that are all linked by computer to form one big dish and listen for whoever out there in outer space!

In the picnic area we came across this white stuff on the ground.... yuck.... yes, we were up about 6,000 feet at this point and it was a bit cooler, still nice enough for a picnic though...


We got to tour the largest telescope up on the mountain, and it has a 4 meter lens in it, and this is the exact size of the lens....yes, we actually had to drive over about a 14 foot section of road that had some snow on it... Judy said "not to worry, I am Canadian!"

This is the front office where the tour starts from and the gift shop is located.

This is inside the building where some displays are set up and this model of the top of the mountain. There are about 15 different telescopes up top and most are owned and operated by different Universities

Our tour group is headed for the big one in the centre, about 1/2 a mile walk for us all...

I took this picture as we walked over to the observatory to show you how high we are! That is part of the road on the left. It was a bit hazy today...

This is looking back at part of the road we had come up...

What a view from the top... you got a great view of the desert and other mountain ranges... We could see Tucson about 88 klms. away with no problem.

If you see the big satellite dish on the right, that is where we had lunch, at the base of it.

This is the final push to the top of the mountain...

Here is Judy right at the top... it is a long way up!

This is the view we got from the top of the top. We did now know there were this many observatories up here when we started out... it is like a city up here. This mountain was chosen for this work over 150 other locations in the USA.

Here is another view and you can see the road up...

This is what we climbed the mountain to see, a 4 meter telescope... one of the largest in the world. We actually got to see the thing spinning around as the scientist were getting ready for to use the scope tonight. It is big!

This panel is the one that opens up so the telescope can see out into the sky...

Another view of the scope. Our tour guide Joe, was real nice and had good knowledge of the whole set up. In the summer he heads up to Alaska as a back woods Ranger....

The observatory was built in 1973 and this was during the construction period...

This was taken from the observatory floor, and in the distant is Tucson, you can tell we are up there!

The next few pictures are actual pictures taken from the scope....

The last picture is of the Eagle, getting ready to fly back down....

Tonight we went out to a "Gas Light Theatre" but the blog is already way too long today, so you will catch a bit of that outing tomorrow... full day today, and I just finished watching Team Canada win Gold in the Women's Hockey.... great game!

Tomorrow I just want to drive back to Kitt Peak and climb it again just for something to do!!!!

Till tomorrow....