Sort of a Catch Up Post

Here is my last photo from Tucson.  It was very early in the morning on the day we loaded the U-Haul.

We have opened all the boxes except the bikes we had packed, and the framed art.  That can wait.  It's been a slog.  Going from living in your basic shoe box to a two story with stairs has been hard.  However, we have internet, Jim has his loveseat and I have my recliner, so life is good.  We had to order a desk, since our previous one was a built in, and a filing cabinet since it, too, was a built in.  I also ordered a sewing machine table.  That was almost stupid because I don't sew very much at all, but I needed the table to use the machine even rarely.  Amazon, baby.

People here are friendly and will stop and talk on the way to the mail box.  The lady across the street is very nice, she put pizza in the refrigerator for us on the first night.  Is that nice, or what.  She has the code to the garage, which is good because she was able to let the sprinkler guy in before we got here when our grass was dying due to a mis-aligned sprinkler head.  Anyway, nice people.  (I need a synonym for nice.)  The next door neighbors have three little kids who are vocal.  Oddly enough, they don't bother me, nor do the dogs down the street who bark a lot around 4pm.  We have lived in places that were utterly silent for so long, it's actually nice to hear life around us. 

Today we took out a large honey suckle that was leaning on the house, it was attached to a rusting iron trellis.  Tomorrow, if our neighbor has a chain saw, we're taking out a giant hibiscus.  It astounds me that they can over winter here, I thought they were a tropical plant.  Anyway, it drops dead blossoms everywhere, so it must die.  

The trip up was predictably awful.    

Tucson to Kingman:  307 miles of slow driving on two lane roads.

Kingman to Orem:  491 miles of mostly freeway

Orem to Butte:  453 miles of freeway, almost all of it in the rain

Butte to Spokane:  314 miles of freeway

Jim drove the truck, towing the Jeep on a trailer the entire way.  It was hard enough for me in a car, the truck was really tiring.  When you're as tired as we were, Subway makes an acceptable place for dinner.

In Kingman we stayed at a very nice La Quinta which had decent truck parking out back.  The truck stayed with some heavy equipment.  This is a big truck on a landoll.  What's interesting is the amount of hydraulics involved in lowering and raising heavy equipment.

This is a crane on the back of the bed of another truck. 

And this is the Caterpillar engine that will be craned off when it reaches its destination.

I think Orem was not too bad of a hotel, because I can't actually remember it.  Jim had to park the truck on the street which was nerve wracking.  Twenty six foot truck and car carrier requires space.  We got there while there was room was available and so all was well.

Butte was a different story, we stayed at a Red Lion Inn.  It's a decent chain, we chose it over the hotel across the freeway  because they're an ok chain - right?  Nah.  People were living in that hotel, some of them looked like meth heads.  It was so bad we got in the car to see if we could get a room across the highway and just eat the $200 fee at Red Lion.  But no!  They're sold out,  and so was the Red Lion.  I guess it's because they're at the convergence of I15 and I90.  Anyway, we're never going back there again.  It was the only night I expected the mountain bikes to be stolen off the back of the Jeep.  But they weren't.

Since I was driving, there are few pictures, and they're pretty awful.  I was holding the camera up and shooting without looking.  I think these were on the way to Butte.

People here spend time on their yards.  We will, as well.  One does not want to become that neighbor.  This is the next door lot, look at those flowers.

This was taken standing in the kitchen.  It gets me up high enough that I can see more of the sunset.  The yard is too low, and the trees block it.  So, that was a nice thing to see.

This was taken somewhere in Spokane.  It's a poignant thing to write on your car.

So, we're here.  There will be much organization in the garage and painting of base shoe in some of the rooms.  The house was built in 2005, and there are a few dings and nicks, but nothing that spackle and paint can't cure.