Vacation

Grand Canyon Weekend Gridlock

Yavapai Point Webcam — South Rim, GCNP

There is no doubt that vistas like the one above are scenic wonders that beckon most people to come see for themselves in person. That attraction to tourists, however, often results in traffic lineups as depicted below. Both images were saved from the web on Saturday 11/19/2022 at about ten AM AZ time. Click to enlarge.

GCNP South Entrance Station Webcam

We regularly visit the website of the Yavapai Point Webcam when we look at our weather report and forecast each day. That also prompts us to look at the South Entrance Webcam that shows the lineup of vehicles waiting to pay the fee (or show their pass) for admission to the park. We see that these two images were taken when there were a lot of folks headed into the park on a weekend. In contrast, we have seen the South Entrance stations at off hours when there are NO vehicles visible.

We checked the webcams again today and note that there are a lot of cars and campers waiting; this being the Thanksgiving holiday week, that is understandable. Last Monday, the queue to get in was very light.

Verna and I have been to the Canyon many times, and these days, as beautiful and spectacular as it is, we do not wish to compete with the millions of park visitors flocking there. So, we’re content with viewing from a distance courtesy of the NPS Webcams.

Old Tombstone Wagon in 3D

I found myself rummaging through some old photos in the archives today and found an image pair that I took in Tombstone, AZ back in 2009. This is a very old buckboard wagon from the 19th century that was sitting along one of the Tombstone side streets. I found the image pair I took back then and today merged them into the anaglyph image above (click to enlarge).

If you don’t happen to have a pair of red/cyan glasses handy, you can view the 2D version of the image here.

Retirement Day!

palazzo rvOn this day, October 1, 2021, we’re celebrating our twelfth year of permanent retirement. I say permanent because this date is actually my second retirement, the first being ten years prior to 2009. To make a long story short, we retired rather than take a layoff in 1999 due to a manpower reduction. I immediately found another job at a competitive company to the one from which I had retired which eventually was acquired by my first company. Thus, I retired from the same company twice and now receive two pensions from them.

IMAGE: Thor Palazzo Motorhome ready to roll. Click on the image to enlarge.

In our retirement post last year, we mentioned hitting the road sometime in 2021, but that has not happened (yet). We did not go anywhere in the spring or summer in the big RV for various reasons, but the thinking now is to at least have a two or three-day excursion semi-local somewhere in Arizona. Since I am still healing up from hernia surgery, we need the surgeon’s go-ahead for that, but plan to get it done before it gets too cold for camping.

As far as keeping the RV ready for our next excursion, we have a routine where the engine gets started up and run for a while every week. We run the 6KW generator about once a month with a load, like both A/C units running. We currently have the black and gray tanks filled with a water-bleach solution which will be purged and prepared for use prior to our next run.

We’re thinking that our destination might be in the high desert north of the Mogollon Rim, perhaps Winslow, Holbrook, Homolovi SP and Petrified Forest NP. More on that when we make final plans.

So, join us in celebrating our twelfth AND twenty-second retirement anniversaries!

Last Desert Sun Ray of the Day

Last Desert Sun Ray

The last sun ray of the afternoon shone through some of the natural desert vegetation on the west side of the house just before the sun went behind the hill over that way. There wasn’t a lot of pastel colors or any brilliant desert sunset, but a nice, mellow sepia-like photo portraying the brief event before fading to dark.

We had a great trip home from our August vacation to Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. It was a lot of fun and we accomplished our objective of setting memorials on the graves of some of our ancestors. We came away with a good feeling.

Southwestern Rose

Southwestern Rose

Our current location is in Albuquerque, NM. We’re in a nice campground west of the main part of town where we have a nice view of the Sandia Mountain Ridge to the east. In camp, there are several rose bushes. I took the above photo of one of the nicer roses open today.

We will be going west from here tomorrow setting up camp at Holbrook, back in our Home State of Arizona. On the next day, we will be back home in Wickenburg.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Roadside Wildlife in Colorado and Wyoming

antelope-herd-grazing.jpg

We’ve had several sightings of wildlife as we traveled across the West on our trip. We see the usual horses, cattle goats and sheep in rural areas, but we also have seen bears, deer and this small herd of antelope. The latter were grazing along a stream near one of the highways on which we traveled. Click on the image to enlarge.