2020: The Year of the Virus 💩😥

 Sat. May 2nd - Thur. Dec. 31st

We left Bullhead City, Arizona early on Saturday morning, May 2nd and spent the night somewhere in Idaho.  We arrived in Helena around noon on Sunday and we were so excited to be back with the kids again and, of course, all the critters, too!

Tally taking Carter for a ride.

Benny and Keira climbing in the critter run to chase the ducks and chickens, a favorite pass time.  Oops, they forgot their chicken boots.  They must be just watching them.

Benny doing school work on the deck.

Daffy Dallas and his duck.

Benny and Toppy.

Tierney with one of her new bunnies.

Tally feeding one of the bunnies.

And last, but not least, good old patient Digger.

Hilary fixing up the bunny hutch their friends gave them along with the bunnies.

Benny was so excited about the four new bunnies, Paisley, Luna, Bazzil and Cocoa.

One day we had four ducks missing and found a pile of feathers out in the field, so we had to start a pet cemetery.  It's still a work in progress, but a few weeks later we had three bunnies get sick and die.  I think Kiera also buried a couple grasshoppers and a worm here.  We had to visit and bring flowers and stone markers.  There were a few sad days in there, but they did eventually get the bunnies replaced, so all good for now.

Three little baby robins hatched under the eave on the porch, so we were able to watch that whole event from the window for a few weeks.

We heard from friends that they had just opened up Yellowstone and there was hardly anybody there, so we packed up the RV and went up there on June 3rd to join them for a few days.

We had a really good time.  No waiting in line.  Hardly any traffic.

Tallia.

Dallas.

The whole gang.  Well, minus Carter, of course.  We don't see too much of him. He has a busy life with school, job and girl friend.

Bison right outside our car window.

Tally, Dallas and Kiera doing a good imitation of mountain goats at Sheepshead Rock.  We had a picnic here and this was our last day at the park.

The kids had great fun chasing this little chipmunk in and out of the rocks.

Oldest and youngest, 21 and 3.

Back home again, the kids worked up another one of their little skits.

"Pardon me Ma'am, would you care to dance?"

Meanwhile Digger says, "Not another play again.  Can't a dog ever get a nap around here?"

The writers/directors/producers.

Lady Godiva.

Mowing the lawn with Dad.

"Look at the big green caterpillar, Grandma!"

Benny in a bucket!

"Dallas, be careful. Please come down."

"I'm okay, Grandma."

"Maybe so, but I'm not!"

Baseball in the backyard, pretty much a daily event.

Riding horse on the hitchin' post. " Too bad we don't have any real horses to tie up here.  We already have a tack room, a hay shed and a corral.  It's a shame to see them go to waste.  We might as well get a couple horses, don't you think so Mom and Dad?"

We had a little hail one day, the first time we have seen hail in the ten summers we have spent here.

We left July 11th to visit Dawn for a few days.  Then we went up to Mom's and spent about six weeks with her while she had knee surgery and rehab.

Mom working hard at her rehab.  I think she was getting tired of my cooking and wanted us to be on our way.

We missed Keira's 5th birthday party, but we made it back just in time for Benny's 3rd birthday.

This is where the addition will go to connect the house to the garage.

Yeah, Mike is here to move the little apple tree today!

The gardening gurus.

Taking apart the deck, so it won't be in the way when they start putting in the addition.

Yeah, the floor is done and we are having so much fun biking, scootering and rollerblading.

Hilary, the carpenter, working on getting the deck put back together.  Jeff in the background behind her putting the cross braces back in place.  Notice the original part of the house was a small log cabin!

Bros chillin' and watching Mom and Dad finish up with the deck.

And, of course, more plays and concession stands and so on.

"Mom can you stand on your head?"  "I don't know.  Let's see."

"All right!  Dad made us a ramp!"

"My chickens love to go for bike rides.  They love me.  But why do they scratch me sometimes?"

Skateboarding buddies!

"Yeehaw!  Giddy up, horsie."

"Why can't I climb on the roof like the big kids? Please Mom!"

Great new playground!

"Mom, are you really just going to let them play on the roof?"

One nice day the workers showed up and put up the walls.

They got the trusses up and roof on about five weeks after we left in mid-December.

The windows are supposed to be in before Christmas.

Carving pumpkins.

They call me the fireman!  That's my name.

Benny the shark and Tallia Pressley.  Halloween's a comin' even if we can't go trick or treating anywhere except Grandma and Grandpa's camper.  As Dallas says, "I wish that dumb corona virus would shut up and go home, so we could go someplace!"

We picked up chicken dinners at the Suds Hut and a six-pack of Miner's Gold for Grandpa, and also got to have ice cream cake for Grandpa's birthday a few days before heading south.

The neighbor's horses come up to the fence right next to their driveway.  Benny always goes right over to see them.

One day he came in the house crying and said the horse ate his mitten.  I said, "Let's go look."  Of course, it was just laying in the snow where the horse dropped it.  As you can see it's already past time for us to head south.  We weathered two very cold snow storms before we left on Thursday evening, Nov. 5th.  We spent the night at a rest stop near Butte and John took off very early from there while I was still in bed.  We spent our second night at a rest area near Cedar City, Utah and the next night at a casino south of Vegas and pulled into Bullhead City about noon on Sunday.

Our campsite in Bullhead City.  There was a roadrunner that came by to visit me every afternoon when I sat outside to read.

Views from our campsite.

We could see all the casinos lit up at night across the Colorado River in Laughlin, Nevada.

In normal times you can ride a tour boat down the river from the casinos to Havasu City.  The real highlight here, at least for John, is that they have an In-and-Out Burger, his favorite!

Cool mailbox I walked by one day when I was out hiking.

We stayed in Bullhead City four weeks and moved to Yuma Lakes on Sunday, Dec. 6th, where we have a little hummingbird that hums and flitters around us in the eucalyptus trees.

Views back toward our campground while we were out hiking.

Friday we went into town and John dropped me off at the bike path while he went to run some errands and have lunch at In-And-Out.  Just a few blocks into my bike ride along the river, this Great Blue Heron flew across right in front of me and landed about 20 feet from me.  So awesome!  I biked a few miles through the Yuma East Wetlands Park, a restoration project of over 350 acres along the Colorado River with, cottonwood, willow and mesquite trees and lots of hiking paths.

The Colorado River winds 1,700 miles through Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Mexico to the Sea of Cortez draining an area of 246,000 square miles.  Dams were constructed and forest cleared to create one of the largest, most productive farming regions in the world.  A large system of eight dams was put in along the Lower Colorado that irreversibly altered the eco-system, brought an agriculture boom and enhanced the ability of people to live in the desert.

Here the bike path continues on under the Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge, the first road to connect the southern U.S. from east coast to west coast.

The bike path continues on through the Yuma Gateway Park under the interstate, past playgrounds, picnic areas, an old train engine and the Yuma Visitor Center and Quartermaster Headquarters.

Looking back at the Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge, which is really pretty at night when it is all lit up.  The Gateway Park is just a couple blocks from the old original downtown where, in a normal year, we would go out to lots of movies and lunches.  In this picture you can see the old Spanish Mission on top of the hill on the far left.  Just outside the picture on the far right is the old Yuma Territorial Prison on top of a hill.  There is a museum there and a cemetery and sometimes re-enactments.  The local sports teams are called the Criminals.  From here, I continued through the Yuma West Wetlands Park.  The three parks connected make a total of about 8 miles of bike path along the river.  In the West Wetlands there are several awesome playgrounds, a fishing pond, a boat ramp, a burrowing owl habitat, butterfly gardens, hummingbird gardens, beach and picnic areas and a really nice monument to the Mormon Battalion Trail and the 500 troops who walked from Council Bluffs, Iowa in July 1846 to California at the request of President James K. Polk during the Mexican War.  They marched to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to be equipped, on through Santa Fe, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona to the Pacific coast, more than 2,000 miles in six months, contributing to opening new roads to California.  This park used to be a a huge garbage dump along the river and all three parks used to be overgrown with non-native, invasive plants and trees.  The restoration they have done along the river is absolutely amazing.

I rode a few more miles through the nearby neighborhood and along one of the canals until John returned to pick me up.  I went by this rather clever Christmas wreath made out of a tractor tire.

We have gotten several calls from the kids saying they missed us and asking us to come back.  So sweet, and we can hardly wait till spring, so we can see them again and hug them, and hug anybody and everybody, for that matter.  I am saving up all of my hugs for all of you for then.  But I have to say that we feel pretty safe hunkering down here in the desert by ourselves.

 We will be staying here in the Yuma area the rest of the winter just waiting for the vaccine to slow down the virus.  We hope you are all being very careful and staying safe and healthy.  Hang in there for just a few more months.  You know what they say. "Hind site is 20/20" and we can't wait for this year to be in the rear view mirror!  We are looking forward to a much better and brighter year in 2021.

Merry Christmas to All

and

A Very Happy New Year!

Tarra and John