3/30: I went to Lowe's to photograph the flowers, to the Desert Museum and to Pima Prickly Park.
We also got a letter from Nathan's pediatrician. She will be leaving the practice to start up her own practice, but she be utilizing a monthly fee based system as opposed to health insurance. We are already paying for health insurance and Nathan only has a couple of more years left of needing a pediatrician so we are switching to another pediatrician in the current office.
3/31: I went to the Lord's Supper at church.
4/1: I went to Tohono Chul Park, Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens, Reid Park Rose Garden and Prima Prickly Park/
4/3: I went to Tohono Chul Park, Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens, Green Things Nursery, Mesquite Valley Growers and Pima Prickly Park.
4/5: We went to church for Easter. I got myself some honeybaked ham. I made mashed potatoes, deviled eggs and cookies.
4/6: I went to Tohono Chul Park, Tucson Botanical Gardens, Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens and Pima Prickly Park.
4/8: I went to Home Depot to photograph the flowers and to Pima Prickly Park.
4/9: I went to Home Depot to photograph the flowers.
4/11: I had flowers that bloomed in the yard.
4/13: More flowers bloomed in the yard. I went to Pima Prickly Park, Green Things Nursery, Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens and Reid Park Rose Garden.
4/16: Nathan went to the dermatologist. We decided to do another 5 month round of the Accutane.
4/18: Nathan and I went to the church picnic. I made Hawaiian salad. There was good food and it was a nice social event. They didn't really have any activities for the adults, but Nathan had fun playing ball with the other teens.
4/21-4/24: Paul went to Charleston, SC for work.
4/25: I had more yard flowers. I went by Oro Valley Hospital and the Argentine Giant "Big Bertha" was in bloom. I also went to Home Depot to photograph their flowers.
4/29: I went to the Reid Park Rose Garden and Reid Park Zoo.
5/4: I went to Wildlife World Zoo. It was so much nicer being there on a weekday because it was much less crowded. I got to see Jellybean, the baby hippo and the baby giraffe. The cheetah cubs were not out, though.
5/5: I went to Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens, Green Things Nursery, Tucson Botanical Gardens, Reid Park Rose Garden and Mesquite Valley Growers. I also had some yard flowers. I examined my camera settings and realized that the image size was set to small which could explain why my pictures were not looking that good for some time. I am not sure why it was set to small or for how long it had been that way, but I changed it to large. Image quality was set to Fine so I was good there. I'm still just trying to learn the technicalities of photography and to improve because I haven't been happy with my photos the last several years.
5/6: I had more yard flowers including two First Lights and two June Noons. I went to Lowes and Home Depot to photograph the flowers.
5/7: I went to Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens, Green Things Nursery and Mesquite Valley Growers.
Nathan took his AP World History exam. He ended us scoring a 3 so he should get college credit for it.
5/8: I went to Green Things Nursery and to B & B Cactus Nursery. I bought Neon Dawn and a Peaches and Cream cactus at B & B.
5/9: I went to Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens.
5/10: Nathan and I went to church on Mother's Day. He made me a nice graphic design using one my photos and wrote Happy Mother's Day on it. He has had two years of Marketing so he is pretty good at graphic design.
5/12: I went to Lowes and Home Depot to photograph their flowers.
5/14: I had more June Noon and First Light flowers bloom in our yard. I went to Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens, Green Things Nursery and Mesquite Valley Growers.
5/17: I went to the dessert auction after the evening church service. I made a butterscotch pie which the Almeters ended up buying. I bought a pineapple pie that Mr. Gaines made and some other goodies like cookies.
5/20: I went to the Desert Museum to see the prairie dog pups.
5/21: It was Nathan's last day of school. He is officially a Junior now. He got a B for Q4 and an A for the semester in Pre-Calculus, a B in German, an A in Marketing, an A in AP World History, an A in Pre-AP English and a B in Pre-AP Chemistry. His German teacher said he Participates/highly motivated and is a Pleasure to have in class. His AP World History teacher said he is Excelling in class and his Pre-AP Chemistry said he is a Pleasure to have in class.
5/27-5/29: Paul went to San Diego for work.
5/29: I went to Pima County Cooperative Extension Gardens and Mesquite Valley Growers.
6/13: I had the upper body pain again so I went to urgent care. I had tachycardia and I thought a possible UTI. Their test indicated a possible UTI, too. She pressed on my stomach and it was tender so she said it could be the appendix or something like that so she suggested I go to the ER. I went to the ER at Northwest Medical. They did urine tests, blood tests, EKG, chest xrays, a chest CT scan, etc...and could not find anything wrong. The doctor said he thinks it is muscular/skeletal. I asked why this keeps happening, though. He said it could be Fibromyalgia. I am starting to think that myself and I think stress is what brings on the pain. I used to think I had chronic fatigue syndrome because I am tired all of the time, but with the pain I am now experiencing I think it could be fibromyalgia.
6/15: I went to Aeris Dental for the first time to get a cleaning. My former hygienist April is there so she cleaned my teeth. Her husband is also working part time in the office and Kim, Nathan's former hygienist, it also there. April reassured me that my gums are fine which was great news. That is one less medical problem I have to worry about! She said about 1k patients from Cortaro Dental Care have moved over to their office since the new dentist took over. That indicates that a lot of the patients were not happy there because they are probably scamming the patients.
6/20-7/4: We took our Pacific Coast Highway trip.
6/20: We arrived in LA and went to a Dodgers game. They lost to the Orioles 2-3, but Ohtani got a home run.
6/21: We drove to Santa Barbara. We ate on the pier and went to the small aquarium there. They had a cool octopus. We went to see the sea otters at Morro Bay. Then we drove to see the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas in San Simeon.
6/22: Paul had to work in our Monterey hotel room. Nathan and I went to the Monterey Aquarium. A few years ago I went there for the 1st time and loved it. This time it was very crowded and not as enjoyable. We couldn't even get to the window to see the sea otters the entire time we were there. We went with Paul later to see the sea otters and seals at Moss Landing.
6/23: Paul had to work from the hotel room again. After he was done, we did the 17 mile drive to Pebble Beach. That is a very pretty drive with cypress trees, ocean views, deer, etc. That evening we ate at a small Irish pub where I had some delicious chicken piccata!
6/24: Paul and I did a short hike in Point Lobos State Park. Then we drove to Big Sur and took some pictures of Bixby Bridge. We went to Pfeiffer Beach where there was beautiful purple sand. We stopped at McWay Falls which we had actually never stopped at before. Unfortunately, they had the trail down to the falls closed for maintenance. You could see it from up above, though. We did a short hike in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park where we saw a polar bear! Nathan was excited to meet a white English bulldog named polar bear. She really was a cute, sweet dog. When we got back to Monterrey we ate dinner at Bubba Gump.
6/25: We started driving toward San Francisco. We stopped at Shark Fin Cove. We stopped to take a few snapshots of Pigeon Point Lighthouse. We made another stop at Moss Landing to see the sea otters and seals. Once in San Francisco, we attended a Giants game. It was actually quite warm at the game which is unusual. Giants lost to the Athletics 6-9. After the game, we took some pictures of the Painted Ladies and went over the Golden Gate Bridge to get to our hotel in San Rafael.
6/26: We took the ferry over to San Francisco. We walked to Pier 39 and Fisherman's wharf. We saw the seals and went to the Aquarium of the Bay. It is a pretty small aquarium, but they had a cool octopus and a couple of river otters. We took a short cable ride to get near our lunch spot at The Stinking Rose, a garlic restaurant. I love garlic so we always eat there when we are in San Francisco. We had bruschetta for an appetizer and I had the 40 clove garlic chicken. I even tried the garlic ice cream which I thought was surprising good and not over garlicky. After lunch we took an Uber to the Conservatory Gardens. I went in by myself, but I was surprised to find out that their corpse flower was in bloom. Then just outside the conservatory they had a beautiful dahlia garden. We ate dinner at Applebees near Fisherman's Wharf and had ice cream at Ghirardelli's. It was foggy that day so we couldn't get good pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge.
6/27: We went to Muir Woods. The redwoods are beautiful and we spotted two banana slugs. From there we went to a couple of vantage points to get pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge since it was a clear day.
6/28: We drove from San Francisco to Santa Rosa. We stopped at Point Reyes National Seashore including the cypress tunnel (too many people to get decent pictures) and the lighthouse. You have to do a short hike just to get to the lighthouse. Then there are 313 stairs to go down to get next to the lighthouse which can be dangerous, especially because there is a lot of wind. I did about 1/3 of them and decided to turn around. We arrived in Santa Rosa in the early evening, which was home to Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts. I am a big Snoopy fan. There were Peanuts statues all over town. We went over by the Museum and the Ice Rink, both were closed, but we took some pictures by them.
6/29: We drove to Point Arena Lighthouse and I got to go inside on a tour! I think this is the 2nd lighthouse I have been in (the other was the lighthouse in South Haven, Michigan). Then Paul and Nathan dropped me off at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens while they spent a few hours in Mendocino (Paul found another lighthouse). I got in the gardens for free with my reciprocal Tohono Chul Park membership. I liked the gardens, especially their dahlia garden! I also saw a lily with a tiny frog in it! After the gardens, we went to Glass Beach in Fort Bragg. The glass there is very small, but all over. It was fun trying to find different colors of glass.
6/30: We drove through the Chandelier tree. We drove through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We took a tour through Ocean World in Crescent City. It is a small aquarium that you only go through by tour, but it was cute. We got to pet a leopard shark. Nearby we stopped at the Battery Point Lighthouse to take some pictures.
7/1: Paul and I took a short hike through Jebediah Smith Redwoods State Park. We spotted another banana slug! We briefly entered Oregon and then back to California. We stopped at the Bunny Flat trailhead in Shasta Trinity National Forest. It had beautiful views of Mt Shasta which still had some snow on it. We did our good deed for the day when a family approached us and asked if we had jumper cables. Their vehicle ran out of battery about 1/2 mile away. We didn't have jumper cables, but we had a portable battery pack. We let them borrow it. They came back within an hour to return it. They tried to pay us for letting them use it, but we told them to use the money to buy one themselves! That national forest also had an area with the most thistles I had ever seen together. I took a few pictures of course.
7/2: We went to Lava Beds National Monument. There are a lot of caves there. Paul and I just went in a short easy cave, Mushpot Cave. The rest of the caves require a permit (which the visitor center did give us) and proper equipment (flashlight and the such). We were fortunate to see two bald eagles on top of one of the trees within the monument. After Lava Beds, we drove to Mammoth, CA.
7/3: Paul and I got up early to drive around and look for bears in Mammoth. We didn't see any (we did see deer and even a coyote). Ironically, we saw a bear from the shuttle on the way to Devil's Postpile National Monument. Neither of us got good pictures of it. The day wasn't planned very well. We weren't prepared for hiking. We thought the shuttle would take us right to Devil's Postpile and Rainbow Falls. Both required hiking, however. The hike to Devil's Postpile was only .4 miles, but we took the wrong path which went up over the Postpile and was 1.1 miles. It was a tough hike with stairs and we had no water. My feet and knees were hurting (especially after days of walking/hiking elsewhere). You couldn't even see the Postpile from that path. Then the hike to Rainbow Falls was another 2 miles away. We went about a mile before we decided to turn around. We didn't have much time that day and we decided to go back and see the Devil's Postpile that we missed. Nathan then started getting dehydrated and dizzy. So we didn't go to Rainbow Falls and we also didn't do the gondola ride that we had already paid for that morning. We ate lunch and headed out of town. We started making our way back to Arizona, stopping at Hoover Dam to see the patriotic light display and large American Flag. It was very busy there. We stayed the night in Kingman, AZ.
7/4: We went to Bearizona. It was warmer there than expected and crowded. They changed things around a lot since we went last. They no longer had the turkeys that Nathan loved (the reason he doesn't eat turkey to this day). Nathan was hot and complaining the whole time (which he did for most of the trip because he never wants to go anywhere). Toward the end he and Paul went back to the car while I saw the best part in my opinion, the river otters. There were 4 of them and they were very playful with each other. They even let guests feed them fish. On the way home we stopped at my favorite pizza place, Grimaldi's, in Chandler to eat lunch/dinner. That night Paul and I just watched the Marana fireworks from our back balcony.
So that was our long, very busy two week vacation. The last couple of days involved a lot of driving and so I was tired of being in the car! It's nice to be back home, but I actually miss California. California has its issues, but the weather was perfect and it is a beautiful state, especially along the coast. Nathan didn't really like the vacation, but we tried to plan things for him. We went to two different baseball games. We went to four different aquariums to look for pufferfish, but none of them had any (ironically, Arizona has two aquariums that does - Wildlife World Zoo has a ton of them and OdySea has some). Nathan got to see a turkey on the side of the road with some babies (I had never seen turkey babies before). He got to see several English bulldogs during our trip, including polar bear (he wants an English bulldog so bad). We also bought him a nice soccer jersey when we were in San Francisco. The boy is such a homebody and never likes to go anywhere. I think we are going to do a European vacation next summer and he sort of wants to do that. We will see!
7/22: Nathan has his school registration and he will find out what his classes will be there this year. Then he starts school on 8/3!
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