Friends arrive and we go to Tortilla Flat.

We had our friends from Des Moines here today...  Different friends than the ones we had back in January...

Rich and Sally have not come to visit where we winter before, so we were glad that they could come and stop by...  Rich is a ham and one of the fellows that I go to Dayton, Ohio with in May....

We ended up driving out to Tortilla Flat...  The restaurant there is an old bar and grill with thousands of dollar bills stapled to the walls inside....  In fact, I wasn't able to find any surface that didn't have these dollars fastened to it....  They are signed and dated... and usually defaced with some kind of art drawing...  But, of course if taken off of the wall, they are still very much legal tender...

Also the bar stools are old saddles mounted on poles in the concrete...  They aren't the most comfortable, but for the effect of it they look unique..  With some gift shop time and an ice cream cone thrown in, it was a fun afternoon...

We drove thru Tortilla Creek that spills over the roadway a little East of town..  It was about 2 inches deep and spilling over the West side of the road, thru the rocks and boulders in the creek bed...  Folks were wading in the creek carrying their shoes, but I would have bet the water would have been rather cold..

Coming back in the early evening was like driving thru a painted green desert...  The sun was golden as it reflected from the rocks and spires...  Shadows from the saguaro cactus were long and gave things a weird feeling as the sun descended over the far mountains...

Alas I didn't have my camera, and I'm not sure it could have done much in the dwindling light...  Only the bright sun in the far West would have shown up...  Hopefully my description will paint a picture for you...

We topped out at a nice 84 this afternoon as we were sitting on our patio, and it was about 75 while we were driving back from the Flat...

These days are rather hard to beat....

Retired Rod

Happy Saint Patrick's Day