What we do out here in the desert.....

Things were rather busy around here, and I am just sitting here thinking about all that happened while my friend Roger was here....  He arrived late Saturday night after driving all day thru New Mexico... We kind of chilled out that night but managed to go to Paradise Deli...  For a quick sandwich...  I guess they call it a bakery and cafe.....  Its a regional thing and we happen to have them here in Arizona...

Sunday we went to church and then I learned that Roger wanted to go riding on the Can Am....  He wasn't much interested in the Gold Wing last year, but perhaps the fact that the tricycle won't fall over......  Or he didn't have to rely on my balance skills.....  Or... Well anyway we went to Uncle Bears for the football games...  and a sandwich too....  It was almost dark when we got back..

Monday it was the Iowa Cafe on Higley and Brown...  This cafe is formatted like an Iowa small town restaurant...  Their menu is country breakfast, with all the omelets and sausage.... Bacon is offered on every meal.... LOL.    It was raining that day, so we stayed in town that day..

Tuesday it was still raining and we did the Ray Mine tour that I took pictures of on the previous blog..

Wednesday it was finally sunny, and we took the Can Am out to Tortilla Flat, North of Apache Junction...  We hung around in the outdoor bar listening to the cowboy band, and finally got a seat inside for a bowl of chili...  That place is rustic with saddles for bar stools, and dollar bills on the walls so thick that no  bare walls are visible....  We wound around on the Apache Trail in the sunshine... Stopping at the tourist reader boards... It was about 74 that afternoon...

Then on Thursday we joined the Goldwing Road Riders for their weekly big ride... It was supposed to be to Wickenburg, but like usual we didn't go directly there....

We ended up in Wickenburg after riding out the I 10 into a traffic slowdown.... While the Az Dot was sealing the road way with tar...  We got off and went to Salome thru the open range... Watching for cows on the road of course...

After all of that we ended up back in Wickenburg for the Country Kitchen giant hamburger....  The rest of the ride wasn't any shorter, as we went over to Carefree, Rio Verde and Fountain Hills....  Roger was feeling the distance as the sun began to sink as we passed Saguaro Lake...  Once home we learned that we had done over 300 miles...   I apologized for the distance, but Roger was still positive, but done with the motorcycle for the day... the GWRRA folks are brutal on the rides here in Arizona..

And not to be killed off for the day, we ended up in the Mexican restaurant Tia Rosa which blogger friend ShadowMoss had introduced me to a couple of weeks ago..  Their meals are scrumptious, and they didn't disappoint..

I think Roger was happy to only have to drive back to Iowa at his own pace in a nice car, as a breather after spending the week with me here in Mesa.....   :>)

Retired Rod

Ray Mine

A friend of mine came to visit from Des Moines this past week, and we were going to all the restaurants that we knew of every day....  It was fun, but rainy for the start of the week...

On Tuesday, we went off on the Winkleman loop, like we did on the motorcycles several weeks ago.. But because it was raining, that forced us to the Jeep...

North of Winkleman, we stopped at the Ray open pit copper mine...  I had the DSLR camera with me so we drove down into the mine observation platform..  It was muddy and wet, but hey we had the Jeep....

Even with the bigger camera and the zoom lenses, it is hard to capture the enormity of this place...  The depth  of the hole in the ground is beyond comprehension...

These trucks are enormous, and carry 400 tons of ore...  But even with the lens in its longest zoom, I was only able to capture them as a small dot...  The bucket drag line is behind the truck...

The clouds began to part and the sun peeked thru in spots....

We stopped and ate at Maria's, the small restaurant we had patronized with the motorcycle group...  It was fun knowing where to go in the small town...

Retired Rod

Back in the Mesa groove!!

I had never heard of the Marana Regional Airport or its cafe which is located right at the main entrance from the road...  Its called the Sky Rider Cafe..    And a little research informed me that the airport is listed as the Avra Valley Airport, but was purchased by Marana in 1999..  Well anyway this is a reliever general aviation airport about 15 miles north of the Tucson airport...

The Sky Rider cafe has become popular as a flight breakfast and lunch destination for the flying community, and then the motorcycle folks heard about it...  And there went the neighborhood as us dirty ole motorcycle guys like it too....

We met at the Denny's on Chandler Boulevard and the I-10 at 10 AM and went from there straight down the interstate to Marana... It began to spit rain once we passed the Picacho Peak State Park..  And it was several miles out into the country past the little town of Marana...  But I was amazed that there were numerous lunch patrons when we arrived..  Airplane traffic was quite light as the overcast was right down against the ground...

Since it was quite cool, chili was a very popular option for the lunch order, while a group of the guys were still outside disassembling one of the trikes which had no tail lights...  Our leader is a retired motorcycle mechanic, which has come in handy on many days...  And it was only a few minutes until he found the offending blown fuse...

I often wonder if any of us are listening during these lunches, as it seems that we are all talking at the same time....  We returned on a little different road taking 87 up thru Coolidge, Az where the actual Casa Grande ruins are located...  and finally into the South end of Chandler, where we all went our separate ways...

Wednesday evening, I was the guest of a fellow blogger, Shadowmoss, who also lives in the Mesa area..  She and a neighbor were headed to the Streets of New York restaurant which is right North of my home here in the East end of Mesa..  They were after the restaurants's spaghetti diner, which they had eaten before and remembered as quite good...  Predictably, I had a gourmet hamburger but included steamed broccoli rather than french fries....  Way too healthy to catch on I'm certain..

ShadowMoss also has a blog which we have exchanged comments on for about the last year...  We finally met several weeks ago, and have become friends...  So a big thank you goes out for a fun night out at the Streets of New York.....

Retired Rod

I'm still here

Well....... here on the web anyway...  But physically I am sitting in my recliner in Arizona...  And as usual, I was watching the weather up in KC when I determined that the storms were too close together to not be effected by one of them....

And, the cold weather was due to arrive on Saturday...  That meant I was leaving on Friday..  I packed up the car Thursday night after bidding the family so long...   I had gone to breakfast with my motorcycle buddies, that morning...  And perhaps I was a bit vague, but we did take Al's big Buick out there and enjoyed toasty inside conditions all the way...

I left the house at 10 AM and drove right along making the 570 mile trip to Tucumcari by about 8:30 PM...  But now being in Mountain Time zone, it was really only 7:30...  Kansas is long and tedious.. Especially in the winter...

The desk clerk, asked if I knew there was a forecast for snow....  And yes I did, know that, realizing that I had to cross the line of weather somewhere...  May as well be while I was sleeping....  Uh, in retrospect I should have kept on driving....

When it became light in the morning, I peeked out of the motel window, and was surprised to find about 10 inches of snow on the top roof of the Jeep.....  Which I had to remove with my gloved hand, since I no longer own a snow brush....  I packed rather quickly and headed out since with the snow, going would be a tad bit slow...

No one had left the motel when I forged the new path thru the un shovelled driveway in four wheel drive..  The roads weren't much better, as I met another Jeep who was spinning all four wheels as he made his way thru the un plowed city streets.... Then it dawned on me that I was also spinning all four wheels while following him....  And that there weren't any other cars on the road.......

Once on the interstate, which was somewhat plowed, but the road was hard packed and traffic was moving about 45 miles an hour...  It slowly improved as I worked my way along to Albuquerque.. Clines Corners, wasn't any trouble as the road was mostly slush by that time even though you are at 7800 feet in elevation there..   I was worried that I would have trouble during that stretch...

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful...  The snow was gone on the west side of Albuquerque, but by then my Jeep wasn't white anymore..  There was snow on the sides of the road from the continental divide all the way to Payson, Arizona..  It wasn't until I descended below 3500 feet south of Payson that the snow disappeared...  Still it was barely 50 when I arrived here at the house..

So after 1150 miles in two days, I am back to the valley of the sun...  Where my sensitive Arizona bushes are all dead and shriveled in the back yard, due to the several nights of below freezing weather we had while I was back in Kansas...

Sunday, I never left the house....  Except to go about a mile to church in the morning.  Oh, and to the car wash to make the Jeep white again...

I do think the Jeep made it here without too much fanfare even thou it was less than stellar road conditions...  I would have probably made it in a more normal car, but not as quickly, as I would have had to wait for the roads to be plowed..  That probably wouldn't have hurt me any, other than my ego...  LOL

Retired Rod