Florence, AZ

Yesterday we drove to Florence and met Dave and Gayle Ode, friends from the Brighton/South Lyon area. They have a winter home in Apache Junction and we met half way at the L&N Mexican Restaurant. We ordered our meals to go and took them across the street from the restaurant to a nice city park where Sunshine joined us for a picnic. It was nice seeing them again because it has been a long time. The day was warm and sunny and the picnic table had a roof to block the sun. After talking with them, we are pretty sure that Arizona will be the area where we will settle the Montana on a lot when we feel we can travel no more. We can either drive or fly to it in the cold weather and "weather out the snowstorms!" After lunch, we decided to look at the snow topped mountain that we had seen in the recent past and wondered about. In the west, with the tremendous high deserts, it is difficult judging distances to the surrounding mountains. We drove for over twenty miles and finally realized that this was part of the range in Tucson that includes Mt. Lemmon, where we had visited a couple of weeks ago. This is the mountain where the kids take their pickup trucks and cars up to the snow cap and bring down loads of snow, trying to get to the bottom before it all melts. This area is so vast and one can see seemingly forever here. On the way to see this mountain, we discovered a monument to Tom Mix, one of my cowboy heros. When I was a kid, we used to go to the Saturday matinees at The Strand Theater and see double features. I loved Tom Mix. He was killed in an auto crash near this monument in 1940. The monument is old but it brought back many pleasant memories to me! Carol's "Christmas Tree" cactus, Cholla, is here and looking good!. We are pleasantly surprised every day about something new and much different to us. Took the last shot of Sunshine sleeping on the couch with her head jammed into a hedge hog toy that was given to her before we left Michigan by our neighbor, who has two greys. Wanted Zoe to see that her gift is being used well!