Rock Hound State Park – Thursday October 23, 2014

When we got up this morning I found this small brown bear in our campsite.
Hank gets groomed every 6 weeks, it’s been 14 weeks and we still have another 4 to 5 weeks to go.
This is his normal mid grooming look.  We where at Henskin Lakes with Brian in July.
This is shortly after a grooming, notice the size of his paws.     I like his new look, Jean is looking forward to a grooming.

Very Large Array – Friday October 3, 2014

Still camped at Datil Well Campground at the old folks rate of $2.50 a day.

This morning we drove over the the Very Large Array and took the self guided walking tour.  Tomorrow we’re going on the first Saturday guided tour where you get to go into the buildings.  Hank got to go today but he cannot go tomorrow.

He just wanted everyone to know he was there and it is really cool.

Cathedral Gorge State Park, NV – Monday September 8, 2014

We are still at Cathedral Gorge setting out the weather.  This seemed like to be a good place to be with all the potential flooding the weather channel was talking about over the last several days.  I talked to one of the park people and he said he hoped we’d get some rain but we would not have any  flooding here in the park.
This place does have a of interesting formations.
It has been a little hot for Hank, he really wanted to play with one of these bones but it was just to warm to move.

This was the clouds a hour before it started to rain.  Started at 12:30 and lasted 15 minutes, nothing like they got in Phoenix this morning.  The ground got wet and cooled things off a bit and that’s about all the rain for now.  Still a nice day in my book.  We got some wind Sunday at dinner time with a little rain.  The wind did help to coat the inside of the motorhome with a nice layer of dust.  Still have some thunder so we may get more rain, we’ll see.

We may leave here Tuesday if the weather clears up and definitely on Wednesday.

 

 

Crystal Mt. – Monday July 14, 2014

Hank and I hiked into Hen Skin Lake today. This was my view of Hank for most of the day.

Here is the lake, however the Mosquitos did not show in the picture. The first time I hiked into HenSkin was in 1957 with my dad (small tear). Anyway Hank and I had a good time and hiked 9 miles. Weather is still holding so summer has arrived.

Wrote this off line so we will see how it posts.

Here is an InReach track of our hike, Added this with WordPress program on my IPad.

Fort Flagler – Saturday June 7, 2014

Hank and I are spending the weekend at Flagler.  Nine months ago I made reservations for all the weekends in June.  I’ve had to cancel the next two weekends and Jean has to work tonight so Hank and I came out to enjoy the great weather.

Hank rode shotgun for a while:

Retirement count:  25 calendar days 18 work days, Jean had 12 work days.

One of my retirement goals to do a lot of hiking.  GPS technology has advanced to the point where I could buy a unit which will transmit my location to a satellite every 10 minutes and post the position on a website anyone can access.  This is posted in real time.

Some of the cool things: as I said transmits location every 10 minutes, stores location inside the unit every 15 seconds (this is uploaded over web later), will sent and receive 160 character texts, can create stock text for quit transmit, confirms a text was received by satellite, has SOS button, operates for 100 hours, can set the location transmit at up to 4 hours, the unit can be pinged to give it’s location, pairs with smart phone for topo maps, and other cool things.

This is a screen print I took from Ipad.  The drive over here on Friday, the way points are every 10 minutes so this will also show where the traffic was the heaviest.
Couple of walks around the park.

The long line going to the bottom of the picture is from the drive in Friday.  It looks like it will be a cool tool we can use to show where we are whether we have internet or not.  This just needs a clear look at the sky.  Oh, by the way it is Delorme inReach Explorer.

It is also summer time.

Strawberry daiquiri time, had two.  I bought some frozen strawberries and put them into serving size zip lock sandwich bags, had three in the freezer (thinks for the GREAT idea, Jean).  Hank and I are both tired, we were up and at it early this morning, did a walk around the park before PBS’s Car Guys and Wait Wait.  Tanya gave me a FitBit at Christmas and today was the first day over 20,000 steps, 21,356 right now.

That’s it for today, no more motor home trip before retirement.

 

Penrose – Monday May 26, 2014

After yesterday’s rain this morning was nice and sunny.  Hank and I went for a walk but didn’t get to far, the wind came up and it looked like it was going to rain.  

Hank decided he’d get some practice in for our future retirement (this picture was taken before we took our walk).

37 days  AND COUNTING.

Here’s today’s walk –

 

Penrose State Park – Sunday February 16, 2014

This is a late post however the weather at Penrose was nasty all weekend.  It RAINed all day on Saturday with wind and heavy rain Saturday night.  Hank and I did not get out at all on Saturday.  We left at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, I wanted to get across the Narrow’s bridge before the wind got to bad.

I took this campsite picture as we were leaving Sunday morning.
On Saturday Hank has been with us for six years and I think we’ve turned him into a dog.
Not a very good picture however he’s a happy dog.  We’re glad he’s part of our family.

Zion Natl Park – Saturday September 7, 2013

Hank had a tough afternoon.

I think he stepped on a bee with his right hind paw.  He did the same thing last spring.  Starting hobbling his paw and licking it really hard.  This time I gave him a Benedryl and he did not go into as much distress as he did in the Spring.   In the Spring we packed up and headed to Hanks vet in Hurricane.  Yes, Hank has a vet in Hurricane.  A couple of years ago he started scratching and couldn’t seem to stop.  We found him a really nice vet who gave him a cortisone shot and it took care of the scratching.    Dogs and children.  In the Spring by the time we got to Hurricane he was doing much better we hung around town for a while and he was back to normal.  This time his paw REALLY hurt for about an hour and he started getting better.  After two hours he back to normal.

Jean wanted to play ball with him this evening.  She got a ball out of his basket and throw it into the bedroom.  He ran into the bedroom got the ball and put it back into his basket, guess he didn’t want to play.

 

Here’s another picture of the arch.

A couple of years ago when I got my new camera I also got 150 – 500 mm lens.  This picture was taken with the 500 mm.  It’s a great lens and I’ve been disappointed I have not had any  birds to take pictures of this year.

Had a thunder shower in the late morning right after Hank and I got back from our morning walk, went all the way to the junction but had to be back for Wait Wait.   Having some lightening this evening but not the projected rain storm.

I think we’ll go to Sand Hollow a Utah State Park on Monday.  It’s not to far from here by Hurricane, Utah don’t know where we’ll go from there.