Goodyear AZ – Rosepoint Publishing

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Sunset to Sunrise

CFFC Over at Cee’s Photography, she runs a Fun Foto Challenge. This week’s challenge is Sunset to Sunrise (including any nighttime photography). This challenge is basically self-explanatory. As my little old cell phone camera is definitely not nighttime photography quality, I’ll stick with sunset or sunrise and I do have a few of those, the most spectacular being in Arizona. Go find your favorite sunrise or sunset picture, or grab your camera and submit. Go click on Cee’s website and check it out. It’s a very simple procedure. Have fun. Let’s see how creative you can we can be with this challenge!

Herewith my late night skies (I don’t do mornings):

February sunset

Goodyear AZ golf course (while walking the dog :))

Goodyear AZ golf course

V Williams

Winter May Be More Attractive South of I80

Just over 30 years old, Interstate 80 runs across the United States from San Francisco, California to Teaneck, New Jersey, which is actually in the New York Metropolitan Area, according to Wikipedia. The interstate is the second longest in the US (after Interstate 90) at 2,899 miles. Started in 1956, it wasn’t actually completed until 1986!

From California, the highway progresses over the Sierra Nevada range, through the barren, windy desert and over the Rockies, where it finally drops into the plains. This time of year that means everything from more rain in California, blizzard conditions in the mountains, and treacherous driving and flying most everywhere else.

More than half the country is expected to receive a major wallop in the next week with three successive storms. Meanwhile, there has been a wild variety of temps along the I80 corridor demonstrating what an expansive, topographically diversified country in which we live.

Around here they can’t remember a recent winter with this little snow (18″), but they are expecting small amounts from these systems. Meanwhile, it was 75 degrees in Goodyear AZ today. ©2017 Virginia Williams

From the Desert to the Rust Belt

From the southwest to the midwest. It’s a given that fall comes earlier to some areas faster than others. While we enjoyed a slow decline in morning temps in Goodyear, there were not all the outwardly signs of the slide into winter as we are currently beginning to note in northwest Indiana. I love the landscape of Arizona, the cactus, the beauty of sunrises and sunsets and I never tired of the artistic parks crafted with the perfect balance of sand, rock, and arid vegetation–there is an amazing variety of plants and trees in the desert. And so many hiking trails! There is a bounty of hiking trails for everyone from short to long or level to climb. Continue reading “From the Desert to the Rust Belt”

Freaky Friday Features

Goodyear–Where Did the Name Come From?

Goodyear, a smaller suburb of the Phoenix Metropolitan area with a population of approximately 65,000 is coming into summer with a cooler than average spring. Normally experiencing the highest average July temperatures of any U.S. metropolitan area, our days in the 70’s are coming to an end. We don’t experience too many cloudy or rainy days. Obviously, it must be time to leave.

Continue reading “Freaky Friday Features”

My Life As A Nomad

Maybe I was a Gypsy in a previous life. Or, perhaps the lifestyle created when a child is still the one that resonates into adulthood–and if so–as usual, I can blame my mother. We led a rather nomadic life when I was a girl, sometimes attending three schools in one year. Those years were fairly confined to California and Oregon. (I can’t say anything about Oregon schools, but California schools definitely took a dive.)

So it was after hubby and I sold our home in Idaho back in 2013 that we took off in the RV. Our destination then was the east coast as we dreamed of tasting the lobsters in Maine north to running down the Keys in Florida to the south. As many of you will remember from my previous posts, we made it as far as Indiana where our son lives before the RV and the Tracker both threw up their radiators and surrendered. goodyear

I mentioned in my last post that we weren’t getting any younger and probably needed to locate near either our son or daughter. Plans have changed from one day to another and continue to evolve. Hubby is looking for work and it is hoped he may be successful shortly. Leaving Goodyear AZ will be bittersweet as was leaving the Yuma Foothills. Of course, the attraction of both locations is the winter living. Summers in either city are pretty brutal and you wouldn’t want to be there then. But winter? Beautiful! Continue reading “My Life As A Nomad”

The Mynah Birds Are Mocking Me

Good Grief! Those sounds–what are they?

Every day that I walk my dog, I am greeted with myriad sounds of birds that are way beyond my ability to identify. Every area has it’s contingent of indigenous birds–but in Goodyear, Arizona, what would they be? Guess I’d have to bring in an avian expert as even perusing the web for some idea, I’ve still come up with no clue.

Because of the water features associated with the golf courses, I see a number of water related birds, but these don’t have the call I’d like to identify. I’ve confronted a pair of ornery (burrowing?) owls on more than one occasion. They became rather aggressive when they spied Frosty from aloft, but circling and landing just feet away apparently decided against tackling her as she came with strings attached (me).

Perhaps if I could catch a glimpse of them, it would help to identify if they have a squatty body with short tail, or slim body with long tail, short beak, long beak, colorful body or black. They make a dreadful mess of the sidewalks, but trying to spy them in the branches has been futile. Of course, we have our sizeable population of doves, pigeons, quail, hawks, killdeer, hummingbirds, mocking birds, mud hens, widgeons, blackbirds, sparrows, finches, and even roadrunners.

The cactus wren is the state bird of Arizona. That certainly makes sense, but what sound do they make and are they actually in the neighborhood next door where the cacophony near evening is almost deafening?

Which bird is it that is making me wonder if I’ve teleported to Africa? The only bird I can imagine making all those sounds might be a mynah bird. But is that even possible? Surely they aren’t common or wild around town. Or are they?

Who Said The “Golden” Years?!

I’m not sure if this is becoming another of those very long chapters in our lives (we’ve had others), or if this is a blurb cluster. (Okay then, consider it the third in a series.) I’ve written before of the RV disaster in the summer of 2014 pitting our Forest River Windsong home on wheels against the finest RV mechanics west of the Rockies. Or maybe not (the finest). (See previous RV related posts.)

After the better part of two weeks parked near Findlay’s RV where we waited for parts and they ran the gamut of fixes, including the new radiator, it was determined that the engine was still running hot. Certainly too hot to make it to Pahrump NV (our original Fall destination); and was cautioned by the mechanic who installed a separate temp gauge at the insistence of dear hubby not to try to pull those hills, especially with the “toad” (our little Geo Tracker–also not the healthiest engine block on asphalt). After being offered under $10k for the RV as she sat, said dear hubby in a fit of unfathomable defiance threw the last of our groceries and water inside the tin can and we headed south for Yuma AZ–our Winter destination–the Yuma Foothills: Golf cart, ATV and sand rail heaven. Continue reading “Who Said The “Golden” Years?!”