Wednesday at the horse show

We had been noticing that our "RV Park" has become more of a horse trailer park:

... quite a few horse trailers with camping facilities in them...

We decided to ride our bikes over to see what we could see on the event grounds...

As I mentioned in yesterday's post (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/12/out-and-about-in-scottsdale.html), there is a Paint horse show going on... "Paint-O-Rama" - but it did not appear limited to Paint horses...

... it was, however, a very high class horse show. All of the horses had bejeweled bridles on.. the tails on these horses appear to have never seen a pasture or actually flicked off flies, they must be kept wrapped and treated with high quality shampoos and conditioners!

These were coming from the show ring - can't let the horses get cold, want to keep their coats pretty! Carl liked the purple cover!

This was an interesting color - a roan body but with more solid head and front legs.

There's one I would classify as a Paint...

... and there's another Paint in the washing station - it almost looks like it has a heart shape on its neck!

We made our way into the arena - the horses in the area close to us were preparing to go... the judging was going on at the other end.

We got there just in time to see the "Master Showmanship" class -- they had a specific set of tasks they were to do, each did it one at a time.

Not only were the coat and mane and tail of the horses gorgeous, but the exhibitors all had these beautiful sparkly blazers on... it looked like they were ready to go to a New Years Eve party!

We only got to watch the one class as they took lunch break after it and we were heading over to the house where the family was staying, but it was interesting to watch and to see some of the horses and their exhibitors!

Out and about in Scottsdale

The "campground" where we are parked is on the property of "WestWorld", which is an event center for the city. It seems to be well suited for horse events -- a Paint Horse Show started on 12/29 for 3 days and then another will start on 1/1 for 3 days:

Copper Country Paint-O-Rama

Paint horses are primarily the ones with large patches of black or brown on white.

Later in January will be the Barrett Jackson Car Auction, for which they are already doing setup:

Picture is a little fuzzy...

When we made reservations to stay here, we were told that we could not stay past 12/31 because "Barrett Jackson would be moving in." We had never heard of Barrett Jackson, but evidently his car shows and auctions are well known. According to the event schedule on WestWorld's site, the event is to be 1/22-1/31 -- but I guess they need time to get everything set up.

When we were out and about we saw this car in a parking lot with appropriate decorations on its sides -- I don't know if they are magnets or vinyl cling - cute!

Some Papa Pictures

Carl (Papa) is enjoying being with his children and grandchildren...

Papa taking pictures of the grands opening gifts...

Papa getting his own box of chocolate covered cherries...

Swimming with grands...

... and more swimming with grands.

So glad that Carl has this time with his family!

A Quick Update

We are spending time with Carl's kids and grandkids who have gathered in Scottsdale for the week... just one picture from Monday...

...the AirBnB where they are all are staying provided a Christmas tree -- rather looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but it does the job!

A Blessed Christmas

We had a blessed Christmas...

Carl got up early to get the turkey on the grill... the Traeger is supposed to act as an oven in addition to being a smoker and a grill.

It is looking good!

Niece Ginny set up a Christmas Zoom meeting for our family...

It was great to see everyone! (Miss Kitty wanted participated too!)

Carl's youngest son, Steve, and his fiance, Shay, flew in on Christmas Day in preparation for the family get-together that officially starts on 12/26 -- so we invited them to come over to join us for Christmas dinner!

We so enjoyed having them with us!

Most of all, we are blessed to have a relationship with our Father God through His Son Jesus, whose coming we celebrate on Christmas!

We hope all of you had a blessed Christmas too!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!

We had a very rainy Christmas Eve here in Scottsdale - thankful that we had already gotten all the things that we wanted to get and had no need to go out.

We're planning to cook a turkey and have a Christmas dinner later today. Carl plans to cook the turkey on his Traeger grill. Carl's youngest son, Steve, and Shay are flying in today, and plan to join us for dinner. 

If you'd like to read our 2021 Christmas letter, it can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/312m4oxzn5oxp0a/2021%20Christmas%20Letter.pdf?dl=0

Merry Christmas!

Some funnies

I captured these from friends' Facebook posts recently...

It's a slow news day in Scottsdale... it is pouring rain and we're staying hunkered down.

Interesting trailer on the road...

On Wednesday, we drove from Marana to Scottsdale, Arizona.  

Along I-10, we got into slow traffic (there had been a fender bender a little ways ahead of us), and this interesting trailer pulled in front of us...

It says "Zenith" on the back -- I was looking for it online and I found some information about a new retro DIY trailer build kit -- but I think this one is genuinely old.

After we got to Scottsdale and got into our parking spot, we went out shopping and picked up a pizza at Oregano's - yum!

Visiting family

The best thing about visiting Marana is visiting family!

Evan showing us his helicopter/teeter-totter

Harvesting oranges in the back yard

Family picture

Love being with family

Outdoor lights

Is that the Millennium Falcon? Yes, I think it is!

So good to visit family!

Continuing on to Arizona

On Monday, we continued west toward Arizona.

We had seen signs indicating that the area of I-10 that we were traveling in New Mexico was a "Safety Corridor".

We discussed that we had looked this up before, but couldn't remember what we had learned, so I looked it up again and found:

Safety corridors are put in place in specific sections of highways, in New Mexico and many other states, based on crashes reported in those areas. These corridors have been analyzed by state transportation departments and found to have the highest crash and fatality incidences.

Well... that was interesting... but in another place I found:

Because of the designation as safety corridors, these areas may have increased police protection, and speeding fines are doubled within these zones...

That makes more sense!

Soon after the Safety Corridor ended, we crossed the Continental Divide with no excessive (or any) climbing required! (I always think of the Continental Divide running down through the Rockies and being at high elevation.)

In Arizona, we stopped at the Texas Canyon Rest Area on I-10 (Gracie and the Jee-rage in the rest area). Carl said that he wanted to climb the rock hill behind the rest area, and I agreed to wait, but then he noticed that there was a fence and decided he'd better not! I'm sure if there had not been a fence that he would have been scrambling right up there!

We made it safely through Tucson and stopped for the night at one of the more "interesting" campgrounds that we've stayed at, this one in Marana, Arizona. It is "interesting" because the lady who works in the office is the very opposite of friendly or nice. The campground is a Passport America park which means that our site is at 1/2 price ($12.63/night for full hookups), which is the only reason we come back! The same lady has been here since Dwayne and I first came back in January, 2015. I guess there's something to be said for consistency!

White Sands National Monument

On Sunday, we decided to visit White Sands National Monument.

There were so many cars stopped at the visitor center (many parked in the long spaces reserved for RVs) that we decided to skip the visitor center and just drive into the park. Here we are waiting in line to get to the entry gate to show Carl's Golden Age Passport.

Dwayne and I had visited back in 2015 (https://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2015/12/we-were-hoping-to-avoid-snow.html) and I remembered how much it looked like we were entering an area with snow...

People enjoying the white snow, errhh, sand!

A couple of miles in, the road is no longer asphalt but hard packed sand.

We stopped at a picnic area...

We had looked carefully from the main loop road and thought it would be big enough for us to turn around...

And it was... but doesn't it look like Gracie is in an area with packed snow?

Miss Kitty in the front window (very dirty window) enjoying the sunshine!

Obligatory selfie with Gracie in the background!

Another view of Gracie in the picnic area.

Looking across the sand dunes / hills.

We weren't getting as much power from our solar panels as we had hoped, so went up to see if they were dirty -- they were...

So we took some water and a squeegie up and cleaned them... unfortunately, it didn't make much difference in the solar collection - we think we were getting shading on the panels from the A/C units and the sun is so low in the sky at this time of the year (almost the lowest of the year) that it is hard to get good charging unless we stopped and raised the panels.

A view of the ripples in the sand...

Another sand ripple picture.

We walked over to another area of the picnic area and talked to some folks about whether they were having success sand-disc sledding (they were not) - a selfie there...

And.. .another selfie with Gracie in the far background (above Carl's head to the left) -- the sand looks more tan in this shot, but the sun was almost directly behind us.

A shot of the lower part of the picnic area -- I don't remember this area being in the National Monument when we visited in 2015.

A family playing on a sand dune - the little girl made a "sand angel" and then her grandpa covered her with sand, while some others were successfully sledding.

Carl had never been to White Sands, so he enjoyed being introduced to it, and I enjoyed visiting it again!