AZ Pictures

I went through all the pictures of our recent trip to AZ and I tried to pick out a few that summed up the different parts. I'm not sure how great these will look to anybody else, but I can look back on them and remember my MIL's 80th birthday.

We ended up leaving a day earlier than planned, so we could drive a bit and then stay for a night in a hotel. The plan was to arrive nice and rested. Or at least not too exhausted from driving that we'd have to use a day or two to recoup!

We ended up staying in Palm Springs for the night. It was dark when we got there and the wind was reportedly blowing in 50-70 mph gusts. At one point I thought we were driving through a bad gnat bunch but it was the blowing sand. Shortly after that we actually got pelted very briefly with large marble sized rocks. They were blowing horizontally across the freeway! That was very wierd.

And speaking of wierd, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant called "Wang's In The Desert". The food was very good. There weren't a whole lot of people inside, but after walking by the bar and through the dining area we figured out why it was called "Wang's". I'll leave the rest to your imagination...

We had a really great time visiting with all my husband's sisters and their husbands and of course his mother and her boyfriend. I'm not sure "boyfriend" is the proper term. He's older than she is by a few years and they've been living together for some 15 years, I think. It's like they are married but they aren't. "Companion" sounds either like it's a gay relationship (Wang's?) (definately not) or it's platonic (definately not). Whatever.

Their house is in a nice development that overlooks a golf course. The views are fantastic. They certainly get an abundance of birds, as you will see, as well as other wildlife.

One thing is certain, I could never be happy living there. In the desert, I mean. There is way too much cactus (cacti??). I would forever be plucking cactus needles out of my animals, and quite possibly out of myself!

We'll start out today's pictures with the birds.

Some kind of hummingbird.

We have mourning doves at our place. Here they had lots of white winged doves.

This is a curve-billed thrasher. It's too bad you can't see his "golden eye" in this photo.

I believe this is a female red cardinal...

...and here is the brilliantly colored male red cardinal.

Tons of quail. I think these are Gambrel's quail.

MORE TOMORROW!