March 5-6, 2012

Today, Marilyn got to visit an old teacher friend, Nancy Olthoff, from Iowa Falls Schools who with her husband Craig, winter here in the valley at Sun City West. Only a 45 minute drive from our condo in Scottsdale to their place, we arrived at about 10:30 AM this morning. After a quick tour of their lovely home, we jumped in their van and Craig showed us every facet of each of the areas within Sun City West. We saw many beautiful golf courses and lots of recreational areas where residents could swim, play tennis or pickle ball and enjoy a host of many, many other activities. In the midst of the tour, they showed us where other mutually known Iowans live such as Jim and Cindy Herr, Joe and Sue Lynn Stiner and we stopped and visited Sharon and Dr. Bob Treinen from Ackley for just a few minutes.

After the tour of Sun City West, Craig drove us to the Phoenix Stadium area just off Glendale Blvd for lunch at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, where we had tasty margaritas and a great lunch. Before stopping back at their home, they showed us one last Sun City West village.  Thanks to Nancy and Craig for a wonderful day and tour of the Sun City West area!

Yesterday, with 7,756 other people, we watched the Colorado Rockies beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-5 with a solo home run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Not only did we see the DBacks skipper, Kirk Gibson, right in front of us signing autographs, we caught sight of Brett Butler, Alan Trammel, Don Baylor and Matt Williams, all former baseball greats. The Rockies have some former stars too but they were on the other side of the field and we did not get to see them. We sat just beyond the dugout on the 3rd base side and enjoyed ourselves very much. The vendors were very entertaining and colorful!  Never saw a purple beard before.

February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 just happened to be Gary's 16th actual birthday making him 64 years old. I was rudely awakened at 6:30 AM with a phone call from friend Tom Dougan but did not answer the call right away. We had a big day starting with stopping at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick just off the 101 on the east side and bought tickets for a spring training game between the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks. We are looking forward to the game on Monday March 5th as the temperature is to be in the low 80's and the field is beautiful, having been completed just over a year ago.

After spending some time enjoying the area we kept driving south to the Bass Pro Shops where we strolled around for two hours and bought a few little things for the the upcoming fishing season. After lunch we drove north up the 101 to the Gateway Trailhead and walked for two hours in the McDowell Mountains. Although we have been there on many occasions, we picked a different trail this time and had a very nice two hour hike and saw some vistas we had not seen before. As we came back down, I asked Marilyn to take a picture of me next to the dead Palo Verde tree and commented that as least at my advanced age I looked better than this old dead snag. Her comment was that it was a toss up!!

After returning to the condo for a quick rest and clean-up, Marilyn treated me to dinner at Maggiano's, a nice Italian restaurant just south of us on Scottsdale Blvd. Great dinner and great day. Thanks for the cards, e-mails and phone calls from everyone, including you Tom.