Preparing for travel

We are heading out to London on Friday, July 17, so there are several things to prepare for our trip...

We are boarding Miss Kitty so had to load up all her stuff and take her to the lady who is going to keep her...

We got Miss Kitty settled in at Didi's apartment. Didi thinks Miss Kitty is very sweet. I hope she still has the same opinion after Miss Kitty demands to be fed at 4am!

Carl set the car up on the trickle charger so it would not have a dead battery when we return.

We are in "monsoon" season in the Phoenix/Mesa valley, so a storm moved through on Thursday evening (even though the monitor shows a different time and date!) -- raising the humidity quite a lot, 84% humidity outside!

Friday morning, checked luggage ready to go

Carry on luggage "ready" to close up and go!

We are off on a 5 week trip on July 17, flying nonstop from Phoenix to London, about a week sightseeing in London, followed by a 4 week Holland America cruise around northern Europe - leaving from Dover, England on July 24, and visiting The Netherlands, Norway, north coast of Iceland, Greenland, hopefully seeing the solar eclipse from the cruise ship off the west coast of Iceland on August 12, south coast of Iceland, then down the east coast of Scotland before returning to Dover on August 21. We will be flying back to Phoenix on August 22. We're excited, a wee bit anxious, but ready to go! So, prepare for travel info on following blog posts!

Brown grass or palm dust?

When we arrived back to our RV lot in Mesa, our "fake" grass looked like it was browning on the edges, like it hadn't been watered enough...

I took a picture to send to our neighbor, so this picture is actually of her yard -- doesn't it look like browning around the edges of a yard where maybe the sprinkler system isn't watering it adequately?

Looking directly at it, you can see it is just a lot of seed and debris from blooms, and it is from the palm trees.

We are hearing from folks who are here year-round that the palm trees have not created this kind of debris in past years -- they always create some, but this year seems to have a bumper crop of the blooms from the main type of palm tree that we have in our community.

Back to "the valley"

On Tuesday, we left Show Low on our way back to "the valley" (Phoenix area, specifically Mesa).

Since we purchased the Honda CR-V, we can't flat tow the car, so we have to drive separately. I was following Carl who was driving Gracie. We passed through some beautiful (and very diverse) scenery -- I'm not very comfortable taking pictures while I'm driving, so this is the only picture I got.

Back home in our RV space in Mesa

Another shot in our space -- there is a lot of palm tree debris around the park, and on our lot.

The park management has hired a tree company to trim the palm trees later this summer, and I guess they will be doing some general cleanup too (but maybe not on our lots, we are responsible for that). They don't really expect us to do any of that during the summer when we're not here, so I think we can just pretend that we're not here! It is 100F+ and although it is a "dry heat", it sure feels hot when you're out in it!

Carl also found, when taking his ham radio antenna with metal stand out of the car (metal and heavy) that things get very hot! We had to get hot pads to successfully get that lifted out of the car! 

New watches!

Both of us had Fitbit Versa 2 watches that we had gotten back in 2020. They had some issues -- Carl's had burned in the watchface so badly that it was hard to see anything else displayed on the screen, and mine had gotten to the point that it wouldn't hold charge for very long and took a long time to recharge. Carl's was almost unusable, so he researched and got a Pixel 4 watch a few months ago. I waited until he had had it for a few months before I ordered one for myself...

Carl's at the top, mine at the bottom - mine looks bigger in the picture, but they are the same size. We are trying to change our watch face each week so we don't end up burning the watch face into the display.

We like having watches that track our heart rate -- when Dwayne was having issues with his heart, he could show the doctor the graphs for his heart rate over the past few days (or weeks) so the doctor could know it was an ongoing problem. We also like the sleep tracking -- though right now we both have "Google Premium Health" so it gives us an analysis every morning which is sometimes more than I want to know!

 

A couple of nights ago, when it asked what woke me, I absently typed, "the cat", so now it always thinks the cat is to blame! It isn't *always* the cat that wakes me up! Sometimes it is just me waking up!

We got Google Health Premium for free for a few months after we got our new watches -- we will be cancelling it before we need to pay for it, which means we'll lose the analysis, but we can still see the graphs and data.

Packing up

After being in Show Low for almost two months, it is time to move on...

Carl had deployed a couple of antennas for his ham radio hobby, so we dismantled them and rolled up the wires.

There were a few more things we had gotten out - chairs, grill, etc. We got those all packed up on Sunday and Monday in preparation for our departure on Tuesday.

We are heading back to our RV lot at Venture Out in Mesa. We will be leaving the RV there while we head out to Europe for about 5 weeks -- most of that time we will be on a cruise in northern Europe. We'll be in the heat for a few days in Mesa, but then should reach cooler weather in England (we hope) and on the cruise ship.

Our last dance lessons in Show Low

We joined some of the new friends we've met at White Mountain Square Dance Hall on Wednesday and Friday for our last opportunity for dance lessons...

On Wednesday, we learned Foxtrot in the Ballroom class (link to video of what we learned: https://youtu.be/teXcIkUKNX4)...

... and on Friday, we continued with our instruction in the Progressive Two Step in the Country-Western class. (link to video of what we learned: https://youtu.be/fe08r1Js9yA)

Note that we don't look like the instructors when we dance -- no fault of theirs! 

We told our instructors and the president of the square dance club that their presence here in Show Low added so much to our enjoyment of being here this summer. We are sad that we are leaving and won't be able to participate any more...

Thai lunch with friends

We are down to our last few days in Show Low, so we arranged to get together for lunch with ham radio friends on Friday.

We had met up with them a few weeks ago with food from the Thai food truck in town. We suggested that we again get food from the food truck ...

... so we picked up lunch at the food truck...

Carl and I both got Pad Thai Chicken, mine with no spice, and Carl's had 2* spice. When we had gotten meals a few weeks ago at this food truck, Carl initially ordered 3* spice (they go up to 5*) but the proprietor talked him down to 2*, and Carl found that was fine for his taste.

Tom and Chere invited us all to come to their home and hosted our lunch in the pavilion within their community. We enjoyed our last get-together in Show Low with Tom and Chere, Nick and Jeanne. We know that we'll be getting together with them again when we all get back to Mesa in the fall. 

Flags in Show Low

For patriotic holidays, Show Low has a number of places around town where there are massive flag displays...

This is at one of the major corners that we go through frequently...

... flags on both sides of the roadway.

We had thought that we might go to the Fourth of July parade, but we ended up wimping out and did not see it. Evidently it is a classic small town parade and folks who went enjoyed it greatly!

Line Dancing at White Mountain Square Dance Hall

I have thoroughly enjoyed beginner line dance classes at White Mountain Square Dance Hall on Monday mornings during our stay this season in Show Low. This is the same dance hall where we've been taking ballroom and country/western dance lessons (on Wednesday and Friday nights respectively).

Ruth, the lady in black at the center front of the room, is the instructor. She is very methodical and precise, which I found to be just ideal for my learning style!

While there is line dance instruction at our park, and I have attended their sessions, the teaching styles were not what I prefer. They would more often show the dance (to remind the students of something they already knew) and anyone who didn't know it just needed to pick it up by watching. That is definitely not my preferred way of learning! Oh well, some of the dances that they taught here at the park were ones I already knew, so I could at least enjoy them.

Return to Show Low

On the last morning...

There were a couple of roadrunners in the parking lot of our hotel...

We didn't see any coyotes or boxes from Acme Explosives.

We stopped by the AirBnB house to see family one last time. Joan and family had a long drive (12+ hours) so had already left, and Scott and family had a 7+ hour drive to their overnight stop so we waved as they left at the same time we arrived. We helped clear out food from the pantry and refrigerator and bid goodbye to Steve and family, Kim and family, and Pamela (who had also come over to help with final clearing out).

On our way back, the GPS gave an option of different routes, so we decided to get off the interstate for much of the drive. We took I-40 almost to Grants, NM, and then headed south. 

This route took us through El Malpais National Monument -- a beautiful drive! Unfortunately, we didn't think to take any pictures! The road went between mountains on one side (right side of the route in the picture), and lava fields on the other (dark patches on the left side of the route). (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Albuquerque,+New+Mexico/Quemado,+New+Mexico+87829/Show+Low,+Arizona/@34.9023283,-108.121473,93055m/)

We tried to get a picture of the "Welcome to Arizona" sign on US60 as we were driving, but it came up too quickly and was too small -- so instead we got a picture on the GPS screen!

We got back to the rig safe and sound and enjoyed relaxing and recovering from a great trip!

Visit to Petroglyph National Monument

Petroglyph National Monument was not far away from the house in Albuquerque where the family was staying, so on the last day, while many of the guys went out to Top Golf and many of the ladies went shopping, Carl and I decided to visit...

We drove to the visitor center...

The signboard there told us that there was nothing to see at the visitor center, but there was a container with maps...

aka: "If you came here to see something, there is nothing to see!"

We decided that Boca Negra Canyon had trails that we might be interested in viewing and we picked up an info flyer with a map.

We drove a couple of miles to Boca Negra Canyon ...

Carl had determined that the Macaw Trail would be good to try -- it was quite short.

I guess that's a Macaw!

A paddle?

There was another slightly longer trail near the Macaw Trail so we decided to do it too.

We read in another place that it was not appropriate to ask what the meanings of the petroglyphs were... but since the information sign said that they might be "marking trade routes... or communicating to others using imagery", we decided to make up our own meanings...

"Lots of bugs here"

"A guy with a plume on his hat and another one with an interesting nose are following a star"

"Target store, this exit!"

"A place to sit" ?a restroom here? feel free to recline?

"Baker ahead" (looks like a baker's hat to me)

"M&M man!" 

It was quite warm (we should have visited early in the morning, instead it was around 11am) but we appreciated that there were a couple of short paths we could explore. 

Day 4 Albuquerque Family Reunion

Last full day of Williams Family Reunion, 2026 edition.

The "Cousin Crew" teeshirts had been handed out and the cousins posed for pictures.

Lining up in age order, or by height, were both attempted, but without success. They did end up with siblings next to each other.

Youngest grand Addi had been jealously watching her older cousins playing pool, so when they were out for a while, she took advantage of using the pool table...

... she had her own unique style of getting the balls into the pockets -- consisting of dragging the cue along the table and moving the balls around.

Considering that she couldn't really even see the top of the table, she did a credible job!

Day 3 Albuquerque Family Reunion

Day 3 had Patti visiting a friend and Carl spending time at the airBnB with family.

Carl sent me pictures of the lunch dishes some of his kids made... 

Joan created a beautiful charcuterie tray to share...

Kim fixed a healthy veggie tray for herself...

Scott made a lunch of champions for himself -- brat with mustard and Cheetos!

I drove up to Santa Fe to see my friend and former co-worker, Holly -- we had a great visit!

On my way back, I stopped off to get some cat food at PetsMart -- we have to change the canned food we are giving Miss Kitty frequently, and one of the foods that is in "rotation" I have only found at PetsMart. Unfortunately, there are no PetsMarts in Show Low, and I wanted to get some in our supply.

While there, I saw the adoption area and this tuxedo boy was up on the top of all the cages! When I first saw him, he was sitting bolt-upright like a statue of an Egyptian cat and I wasn't sure if he was a real or not! By time I got my phone out, he was crouched back down...

This picture shows how high up he was! There is a cat tree over to the left (outside of picture range) that he used to get up there (I had wondered if he had jumped that high, but the adoption agency person there said that he uses the cat tree).

Carl had a good time with his kids and grandkids and I enjoyed visiting Holly and getting some needed shopping done.