It finally occurred to me that I was retired the other day when I woke up from a mid day nap and had to decide whether to go metal detecting or four wheeling. The weather was sunny and high sixties here in central Arizona. Metal detecting won that day and four wheeling was great the next day.



These are a few of the metal detecting finds from the last month or so. Four rings, three silver and one gold with a diamond (small) but a diamond nonetheless. A couple of balloon pins and a pin from South Africa.


On a personal note, We are both working on separate writing projects now that we are a two computer family again. I bought some computer based learning software and am learning to read music, something I always wanted to know. We are learning how to live simply in a lot less space that we are used too.

In October we did tourist things traveling through Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah then back to Oregon doing the things we thought we never had time to do. The weather turned colder in Buena Vista, Colorado in mid October. We visited the kids in Denver for a few days then followed the sun south into Bandoleer National Monument for a week to visit with some dear friends traveling from Oklahoma.

Bandoleer is located in the beautiful Jemez Mountains in Northern New Mexico near Los Alamos, the home of the first atom bomb. We hiked along the Frijoles River where, a thousand years ago, indigenous Anastasia people grew beans, corn, and squash while living in cliff dwelling and carving pictographs on the canyon walls around them. For me, the pictographs are the most amazing things in this landscape. Carving Rock Art was no simple task with the tools available at the time. These people wanted to express something that is lost to the current civilization. One can not help but wonder what that message was.

We toured the science museum in Los Alamos where we learned the story of the creation of little boy and fat man, the A bombs dropped on Japan that ended the second word war. The first day of power shopping in Santa Fe was enough to last me for another twenty years. I declined power shopping outings after that, opting for solitary walks and practicing with my five hole flute under the towering Ponderosa Pines. Our friends left us after five days to continue their vacation visiting family in Arizona.



We then spent a couple of days in Albuquerque during the balloon festival, sampling the local restaurants and starting our Christmas shopping. Then to Arizona for the Painted Desert, the petrified forest, meteor crater, and the Grand Canyon. Meteor crater is of special interest to me feeding into a hobby of meteorite collecting, and yes I do have a 100 gram specimen of the meteor crater fall called Canyon Diablo. Meteor crater was caused by a relatively small 200 foot diameter rock from space traveling at cosmic speed of 26 miles per second about 50, 000 years ago. That creator is over a mile wide and 600 feet deep. The dinosaurs were wiped out by a mile diameter asteroid striking near the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago. That crater is over 20 miles in diameter.





The Grand Canyon visit was a first for both of us.. It was Susan’s birthday, so, we celebrated with a flight over the canyon. I think flying over the canyon is the only way to get a perspective of the magnitude of the gash the Colorado River cut through this landscape in the past couple of billion years.

The next stop was Paiute ATV trail system in south central Utah. This 275 mile trail system forms a big loop through several small towns that are ATV friendly allowing ATVs on the city streets. Many riders make the loop in a week or so, supporting the local restaurants and motels. We couldn't make the loop because we were late in the season with lots of snow above 8000 feet. Maybe we can make the loop next year.

It was time to return to Oregon to deal with some details around Janice’s estate, our house that is still on the market, and to see our doctors to renew prescriptions. We spent a couple of days with good friends in central Oregon then back to Eugene. We spent about a week in Eugene where we stayed in the mobile mansion in some good friend’s driveway, not wanting to hinder the marketability of our house. We spent another night with our good friends in central Oregon on the way out. Then back across Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. We stopped in Laramie, Wyoming to do some scouting for a home base. We ruled out Wyoming for a lot of reasons and are centering our home base search in central Colorado near Buena Vista in the Arkansas River valley. We made it back to Golden for Thanksgiving with the kids running in front of a snow storm. Next was a trip to South Dakota to move our no state income tax residency forward and dinner with some good friends. We spent a few days in Denver then headed back south in front of another snow storm. That satellite TV weather channel is great for planning dry pavement trips. We spent another few days in Albuquerque sampling the local cuisine hoping to get the mobile mansion repaired but the parts were delayed so we fled to Arizona to find some sun. We are in Camp Verde, AZ enjoying the warm days and cool nights. We plan to be back in Denver for Christmas then back south to warm weather for the winter.