A welcome back hot dog dinner and dance!

In addition to Pizza Hut and Einstein Bros. Bagels on Carl's birthday, our resort, Encore Venture In, had a "Welcome back!" hot dog dinner and dance with live music scheduled!

The Rec Hall was pretty packed -- it took a while for everyone to get through the line.

The live band was playing during the time we were eating, which made it pretty loud and hard to chat with other folks at the table.

We heard from other residents in the park that this was the first time the management had done anything like this - we think that the plan had been to have the eating outside, but it was too warm for that. So, tables were set up for eating where dancing would normally happen...

... but once everyone was done with eating, tables were moved out to the side and we were able to do some line dancing and some Arizona two-stepping.

Carl said that it was awfully nice that the park provided him a hot dog dinner and dance on his birthday!

Birthday benefits

We had heard that there are a number of restaurants that give you something free on your birthday (https://thehalalguys.com/123-restaurants-that-give-you-free-food-on-your-birthday/)... for some of them, it doesn't have to be redeemed specifically *on* your birthday (Carl had redeemed a free breakfast slam at Denny's a few days before his birthday), but for most of them, you need to be signed up with their frequent diners club or smartphone app.

We didn't start looking into this until the day before Carl's birthday, and some require that you be a member of their club or app for a little while before they send you a birthday "gift", so I signed up for some so I would have it before my birthday (in July). 

One of the places that is in Show Low that has a birthday benefit is Einstein Bros. Bagels. Not only do they have a free egg sandwich on your birthday, but you get a free bagel with a "shmear" (cream cheese) for joining up on their app... 

... so after Pizza Hut, we went by Einstein Bros. Bagels so I could get my free bagel. I think you had to make a purchase to get your free bagel... at any rate, we ordered a half dozen...

There were a lot of choices of bagels -- we did the order in the app, and the lady behind the counter confirmed that she got it. 

Although we ordered a half dozen bagels with a container of cream cheese through the app, when we got the bag of bagels (we didn't check it until we got home), and we had gotten 8 bagels (instead of 6) and no cream cheese (plus we got my free plain bagel with the shmear on it). We had cream cheese at home, so we froze a few of the bagels so they wouldn't get so dried out and enjoyed them for breakfast over the next few days.

Pizza Hut buffet!

When we were out and about the other day, we noticed that the local Show Low Pizza Hut has a lunchtime buffet, so, a couple days later, we went to check it out...

The building doesn't look like an old Pizza Hut...

But the lunch buffet is back!

When we went inside (shortly after 11am), there were no pizzas on the buffet, so we asked at the front. They said that they wait until people order the buffet to stock it, and asked us what kind of pizza we wanted. Carl asked for Italian sausage, so they said they would make one for us to get from the buffet.

I guess they had some others that were being prepared for the buffet, because the first one was half ham/pineapple and half ham/jalapeno.

But the Italian sausage one came soon after!

The Pizza Hut also had a jukebox that could access the internet for the music to play - no turning records inside! This one can be controlled from an AMI Play app on a smartphone. I don't think anyone was playing music on it while we were there, but every few minutes a song would start up -- maybe folks who work there were using it (there weren't many customers there).

While we were there, Carl reminisced about the Book It! program (https://www.bookitprogram.com/) that his kids participated in when they were young. As they were homeschooling, Sue set reading goals for each child, and when they met their goal in a month, they earned a free personal pan pizza with one topping. Of course, Carl and Sue went too and enjoyed the buffet as their kids enjoyed their personal pan pizza. At that time, the buffet included a salad bar too (we got a side salad with our meal). Previously, they had a dessert pizza on the buffet (apple and glaze and sugar), but we had bread sticks -- one type with herbs, the other type had cinnamon and sugar. Both buffets (then and now) had pizza and pasta with sauce.

As this blog is a few days behind "real time" -- we went to Pizza Hut on Carl's birthday, so used the buffet to celebrate his birthday too!

A drive to Alpine

Our friends from Venture Out, Don and Linda, had told us that they previously stayed in a campground in Alpine during the summers -- they had talked about how pretty it was around there, so we decided to take a drive there from Show Low.

Don suggested that we take the route from Show Low through Pinetop-Lakeside -- the drive took us to higher elevations... 

Pine forests with very clear understories

It appears that there have been fires through this area in not too distant past.

There were also broad meadows. I think that this is still considered to be high desert, but there were shallow lakes and cautions about flash flooding in places.

We ate at the Bear Wallow Cafe and enjoyed our lunch!

Looking down the main drag in Alpine

On the way back, we took a less scenic part of the loop, heading north out of Alpine -- the land looked much more like desert...

This is along US-60 heading west back toward Show Low -- we were almost to the New Mexico border when we started heading back west. In this area, very low grasses and shrubs...

As we continued west, larger shrubby-type trees.

We enjoyed the drive -- it was about 3 hours of driving with a few stops along the way.

Sights in the sky

We're always looking for interesting things to see in the sky... recently, two planets, Jupiter and Venus, appeared to be close to each other in the sky...

We didn't get the tripod out, but the picture still came out pretty good.

I think the information I read indicated that the two planets were 1.2 degrees away from each other -- appearing to be separated by about the width of your index finger when held at arm's length away from your eye. They were closest together on 6/9, I think, but will probably still be close over the next few nights.

Meeting up with friends

We met up with friends from the Venture Out Amateur Radio Club who are also in Show Low for the summer. The local Ham Radio Club had its meeting on Tuesday evening,

... so we met at Cattleman's Steakhouse for supper before the meeting.

We got steaks and prime rib and good side dishes, and enjoyed the company!

Games night

On a recent Sunday night, we participated in "Games night", hosted by the Venture In Chapel. There were various games available - bocce ball, cornhole, ladder golf, ping pong... we elected to try Wii Bowling...

We played with two other ladies -- it seemed that setting up the names of players could take a while, but we decided to just use player names that were already set up!

Look at that follow-through!

It is interesting to do bowling on the Wii -- you position where you want to be on the approach to the lane by moving pointers around, and then deliver the ball. Once you find the correct approach position for your delivery, I found it pretty easy to be consistent. And, you're not lugging around a 10+ pound ball, rather just swinging your arm with this controller in it -- you release the button when you want to release the ball -- both Carl and I lofted the ball a number of times -- in a real bowling alley, we would have gotten angry looks from the management! Thankfully, on the TV screen, the alley did not seem to get any damage!