Week 6 and 7

I'm heading for Yuma Arizona and will work back up to Kingman. I love the sunsets here and see why the retirement magazine of Arizona is called "Sunset". I always thought it was for other obvious reasons.

On my way South I drove through Sedona and learned it's the "center of the universe", (just ask one of the locals, they'll tell you that's why they're there and it's true!"). Anyway it's a spectacular area and next time I go back I'm going to take some hikes in the area. This is the only photo I have until then.

I spent the weekend in Yuma and actually crossed the border into Algodones Mexico. A fellow worker has a wife that has bone on bone contact in her hip and they can't afford a hip replacement operation. I gave her some 800mg IB's I had once and she raved about them, so I thought I'd pick some up for her. Well, I've heard lots of folks talk about going to Mexico and coming back with huge jars of selected drugs so, I thought I could do the same. Not so fast. I went to a Pharmacy, found a bottle with 100 tabs for $2.75. I picked up 3 of those thinking, wow, Linda and Brad will so happy. I walked around a little more, had some lunch and decided, while I'm here I'll get a few more bottles for them, so I bought 4 more bottles and got in line to go through customs. one and a half hours later I finally get to the customs agent counter. The guy says, "what ya got in the bag? 800 milligram Ibuprofen sir, Oh yea, how many? 7 bottles or 700 hundred tabs". His eyes rolled along with his whole head. "Mr McNally, are you aware of the laws for bringing medications into the US? Well the sign on the way in said - some restrictions on certain medications...   We allow 100 tabs Mr McNally but I'll let you bring 200", crap. Well okay, I'll just throw those 5 bottles away, Thats fine if you do but you must return to Mexico to throw them away", double Crap! "I will however give you a pass to come to the front of the line on your return",...I'll bet thats going to go over big with all those hot tourists out there. Well anyway I did it and learned a valuable lesson for future travel into foreign country's. My friends obviously drove and hid extra bottles or used very large purses/bags. I will be better prepared in the future, guaranteed. After spending time around that area, I found I could learn to love the desert. It's a really beautiful area with a huge amount of farming. Check out these workers in the field and notice they cut and box the product while there.No processing the food!

These guys are harvesting chard

Looks like a lot of stooping and standing. They're harvesting lettuce.

After leaving Yuma I started going North and the only pictures I got were at Lake Havasu City. Maybe some of you have heard of McCullough chain saws. They were huge back in the 70's. Anyway the guy that invented them lived in Havasu City and had more money than he new what to do with. He heard about a bridge in London England that was going up for auction so he bid on it and won. He had the bridge taken apart brick by brick and shipped it to California, then to Havasu City where he assembled and spanned it from the town to an Island in the lake. The neat thing is there was very little development on the island before the bridge and very little since. Just a long walking path around the island which is I'd estimate 3 or 4 miles in distance. Anyway here is the final picture for this trip.

London Bridge at Lake Havasu City

Off to Texas next week.

Week 5

This week I went back to Utah which I am getting very tired of. Beautiful state but, it can get old. These first few pictures are for those of you who are "Big Love" followers. Colorado City, it's actually in Arizona but we include it in our Utah trip, fascinates me because it's a very different culture living within our own culture. I took some photo's of some of the homes to give you some flavor of the community.

Our dealer is also the local town dairy. When I come here it's not uncommon to see huge cargo vans parked here getting gallon after gallon of milk and cheese. It's funny cause the driver goes in the store and when you walk past the vans and look in, they are full of sister wives.

 Other photo's of interest.

Notice the dirt piles on the graves, that seems so old time to me.

Only church in town, complete with signs that forbid camera's recording equipment and visitors unless prior approval of authorities. I didn't get a close up picture of it, but the most popular morning establishment is a coffee kiosk next to the dairy, a sign of the times even here.

Parting shot of Colorado City. This is the center of town which also includes a gas station, bowling alley, restaurant and grocery store. Now a parting shot of Utah.

What's wrong with this picture?  A clock on an LDS Church... Hmmm, I wonder how popular that is.

Week 3 & 4 2011

I traveled to Washington which is one of three of my favorite destinations. I have been fortunate enough to claim the peninsula as my turf for this company and love every aspect of it. I generally start in Tacoma then move up to Gig Harbor, Port Orchard, Bremerton, Port Townsend, Sequim, Port Angeles, Clallam Bay, Neah Bay, Forks, Ocean Shores then a few other towns on my back to Olympia. This trip I stopped between Hood River Or. and Portland to takes some shots of some water falls.

                                                          Horsetail Falls - Columbia Gorge

                                                                     Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls was really amazingly beautiful as Western Oregon usually is. From there I moved up to Port Orchard and took a few shots of the ships docked at Bremerton across the bay.

Then I went up around the peninsula which is a trip through Olympic National Park and Ho Rain Forrest
to Ruby Beach which is usually crowded with tourists but because of all the rain this week, no one else was there. The Ho River meets the Pacific Ocean here and brings large logs with it that are very dangerous to swimmers because of the river current going out and waves coming in, it's easy to get squished by the logs.