DEMING, NM 2/8-11/11

 We left Thatcher, AZ Tuesday, Feb. 8th and drove through major wind and a huge dust storm as we headed towards, Deming, NM.  The flora of this section of desert is different than others, except we are seeing more purple cactus.  These cactus are well protected with 1"-2" spines.

  But the local rabbits are able to nibble around the spines for a delicious meal.  We have seen many of these rabbis and they are huge!  Far from suffering nutritionally!  We have also seen many long horn cattle, seemingly thriving in this open range desert.  Here you see a rabbit dinner table.

 Crossing over into New Mexico.  Do not let the blue sky convince you it is warm!  We stopped in Lordsburg to mail some Valentine treats to the grandkids and then moved on to Demming.  We spent the night of the 8th in a Walmart parking lot with a dozen other RV'ers.

 On the 9th, we drove out 10 miles on a dirt road to an RV park that boasted about its seclusion.  They say, "If you want to be in the country, you have to drive on a country road to get there!"  That we did!

 This is the road leading into the ranch.  The one on the left is a wash and the one on the right is the road.  It is a small working cattle ranch of 18,000 acres plus an RV park, called Hidden Valley Ranch.  It is surrounded by miles and miles of open range land.

 Wayne hiked up on a hill west of the RV park to take this view.  The ranch goes out to the mountains.

 Self portrait.  Notice the jacket?  There is an Alaska beanie under the hat, protecting his ears!

 A close up of our rig, taken from up on the mountain.

A closer close up taken from the same place on the mountain as the last three pictures.

It is beautiful here, though it has poor cell phone reception, we plan to spend a couple nights here so Ann can pay bills.  Oh, we bought a Vizio 32" LCD HDTV for the rig.  Roy and Wayne installed it in the trailer while we were in Thatcher.  It works great, but we have found that it will work much better if we get a fancier DVD player.  But, until then, it is great and we enjoyed its use while here in the evenings.  Oh, the stars are amazing out here!!!
When we leave here on the 11th, we will head towards Roswell and see if we can see any aliens!

THATCHER, AZ 2/3-8/11

We left St. David, AZ on February 3 and headed northeast through beautiful rock formations and desert.  To say it was cold was putting it lightly, but the sky was beautiful and the company grand.  Here we are stopped at a rest area where the wind was blowing quite well. 

 Balanced rocks like these were quite a common sight as we drove along.  It really made Wayne want to stop to climb them and try to push them over, but it was too cold!

 Just a peak at the dry desert scenery.

 Later in the day, Feb. 3, we arrived at our friends', Roy and Patty Curtis, home in Thatcher, AZ.  They were our fellow missionaries in Oakland, CA.  They lived in the trailer next to us behind the temple.  To say they are good people would be under stating it.  It was fun to reunite and share fun times together.  They were gracious hosts that allowed us to park our rig next to their house while we visited. 

 While there we were treated to and shared tours, family introductions, meals and a football game.

We visited their son's business that had big outside furniture.































We taught them how to play canasta and dominoes and even allowed Patty win once!!  We taught her the standard "Cowley Winning Chant" of  "I win! I win! I win!" which she used quite well.  Cliff, you would be proud of her!

 Thatcher is a wonderful little town that is quite well suited to us as a place of settlement.  We will keep it in our notes as to potentials for the future.  Our requirements for where we might settle, have narrowed to the following:  There must be near by; a temple, a major airport, a church and a regional family history library, a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot and a Subway sandwich shop. Thatcher has all but the major airport (Phoenix is 3 hours away).  For you history buffs, Thatcher was the home town of Spencer W.Kimball.
It also has a really dangerous woman that growls at you when you interrupt her cooking!!!

  It was a nice relaxing time for us all.  here is Ann knitting some baby booties.

 Wayne had harvested 24 hiking sticks from Alaska and Canada on our trip last summer.  He has been debarking and sanding them as we travel since then.  Roy volunteered his tools and help in drilling holes with his neighbor's drill press, varnishing them and frapping them.  We used their grandchildren's play room as the workshop.

 We hung them on bailing wire, laid down old rug padding and away we went!

 The finished products prior to preparation for shipping to our five sons and their families.

 Roy and Wayne went to a local furniture store and went dumpster diving in their recycling bin for cardboard to ship the staffs in, then packaged them in the Curtis' living room before shipping them at a local UPS location.

Thatcher has a new temple so we went there and did some initiatories and an endowment session.  Roy and patty were serving there the evening we went.

 It is a smaller temple, similar to the Twin Falls, Idaho temple.  It is much bigger than our Medford Oregon temple though.

 We stayed a day longer than planned because we were having so much fun.  We left on Tuesday, February 8th and headed southeast towards Deming, NM.

TOMBSTONE, AZ 2/1/11

 After we left Sandie's place near Nogales, AZ we drove to St. David, AZ.  We stayed in a Western Horizons RV park under our Coast to Coast membership from Saturday, Jan. 29 - Thurs., Feb. 3.  It was a nice park.  We did not get to use much of its wonderful outdoor amenities because of the arctic cold weather that struck the south.  We are experiencing record breaking cold down here in the still sunny south.  The coldest it has gotten thus far is 14 degrees at night.  Usually it will warm up to the 70's around here, we are told.  But while here in St David it has not warmed up above 40 degrees.  We went to church here in a newly dedicated building and then on Feb. 1, we went to tour the famous western town of Tombstone.
It was a very sunny, but windy and cold day.  We bundled up and first toured the famous Boothill Cemetery.  Several famous people of western lore are buried here, including the ones that died during the gunfight at OK Corral.

 Here are the three "bad guys" that were killed by Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holiday in the gunfight at OK Corral.  They are Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton. 

It was fascinating to walk in the area that has been made famous by so many western movies.

 Then as we walked into the streets of Tombstone, it was like walking into a time warp.  Surrounding the old original town were newer places, but the 10 or so square blocks that made up the original townsite was as it was.  Most of the buildings were originals, complete with bullet holes.  There were many era dressed people walking around.   When Wayne approached some to take their picture, he was challenged.

 "You wanna take my picture or you wanna fight?"  Wayne explained he just wanted to take his picture.  We were then invited to watch a reenactment of some of the events that took place in Tombstone.

 For a fee, we joined others that were there to watch the action at a movie set nearby.  It was so cold, there were very few there!

 There were gunfights......

....fist fights and stories told.

 Then as we walked through town, looking in all the era like and tourist stores, we came across an original saloon from the Wyatt Earp days called "Big Nose Kate's".  Kate was the girl friend of Doc Holiday.  Wayne had read about the place before going to Tombstone and it was supposed to be a really good eatery, so we went inside.

 It was an amazing museum piece.  We listened to a couple old guys sing western songs, shared a Reuben sandwich and fries and relaxed out of the cold.  Very interesting place to visit.

 We walked around town more, exploring and reading the history.  It was fascinating to walk the streets we had learned so much about in history and movies.  We walked past the place where the famous gunfight took place and we were tempted to go see the reenactment, but by then it was too cold, so we took a picture of the place and went back home to our trailer.

When we got back home and turned on the TV, we noticed on the cable channels we had that the movie "Tombstone" was going to be on.  So, we fixed dinner and watched the Hollywood version of what we had just visited.  Fun.