After Desert Hot Springs for a month, we headed East toward Arizona stopping at the famous "Quartsite" for a night in the "Boondocking" capital of the nation. The stars were unreal where there were no lights from a city to screw it up. We then left for Mesa and spent 2 weeks in a park with all the "fluff" including a telephone line hooked directly to our RV. It was a great time and we used it as a "base camp" to see lots of neat places, including: The Apache Trail, Tortilla Flats, and The Salado Indian ruins. We hiked a lot in the "Lost Dutchman" State Park and saw zillions of wild flowers that hadn't been around for years thanks to "El Nino."

We took a day trip to just North of Tucson and saw the "Biosphere II"project (very interesting), hiked in the Santa Catalina mountains and saw the "Old Tucson" town where "High Chapparel" (old tv series) was shot and many John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movies were made. We then left for Sedona where we met up with Paula and Dan (Good friends. Paula worked with Jim at DVA and Dan was his ex-running buddy) who just happened to be there celebrating their 25th anniversary. We had 4 different hikes in 2 days and had a great visit. We hated to see them leave.

Sedona is a very "Artsie" place with shops galore, including a section named after Talaquepaque (pronounced Ta-lak-a-pak-ee) patterned after a village in Mexico where there were lot's of galleries and great restaurants.

After Sedona we headed West to "Chino Valley" just North of Prescott AZ where Jim's sister has moved and is building a house. She's a horse "nut", and this gives her 15 acres and lots of BLM land to roam. It got very cold there while we were visiting but the rig provided all the comforts. It was good they had a generator close to us so we could recharge our batteries when we needed to.

We stayed with them for 10 days and headed West to Laughlin and Bullhead City, AZ to get warm. We timed it perfectly as the weather began to warm as soon as we arrived. Still not as warm as it normally is at this time of year but perfect, in the 70's each day. We ate good with all the buffets but Jim ran each day to try and keep the weight under control.

Tomorrow we head North to Utah with hopes of seeing Zion and Bryce Canyon for a few days before continuing North to Idaho where we"ll spend two weeks at our "home park" (Lewis & Clark in Kamiah, ID) before continuing West to Oregon. There we will stay for a couple to three weeks to visit with our daughter, Amy, who returns from Bangkok Thailand, where she's been teaching for the past year.

Gwen must see her doctor for a follow up visit for her Thyroid surgery she had during the Christmas holidays. After that, it's on to Canada to visit the Okanagan Valley, Lake Louise, and Banff. We'll visit with our new Canadian friends we met while at Desert Hot Springs. They already have a "Progressive Dinner" planned in our honor. We'll stay in Calgary and leave our trailer with one of their friends who has a farm where we can store it for a week while we fly to Kentucky for Gwen's big, no make that "huge" family reunion on the 4th of July. We'll then return to Calgary, pick up our trailer and continue our journey East across the Provinces, heading South at Sault Ste Marie to Elkhart IN where we will have some work done on our trailer before touring the Eastern States. We plan on being in the New England states during the fall.