Oklahoma City

Since Albuquerque, we traveled through Amarillo, TX and arrived in Oklahoma City where we are visiting Betsy's cousin Nancy (and Al, her husband). Our first night here we got to visit with their son, Andrew and meet his son Alex. Alex is two so it was a fun, busy evening.

The second day we got to go to the National Cowboy and Western Museum AND have lunch with their daughter, Emily. The Museum was really neat with lots of western paintings and a whole section about rodeos (that was pretty cool!)

This morning we went to the Oklahoma City Memorial. They have done a wonderful job letting the public at least partially experience parts of the tragedies of the Oklahoma City bombing and remembering all those who lost their lives and the workers who worked so long and hard to not only rescue and find people in the rubble, but to bring the perpetrators to justice. It is a very moving exhibit!!!! The only picture I have remembered to take was just as we were entering the Museum at the Oklahoma City Memorial and it isn't my greatest work, but I really liked the saying.

Phoenix, AZ to Albuquerque, NM

Within hours of leaving Phoenix, we started seeing Humphrey's Peak, which is north of Flagstaff. They got a lot of snow in Flagstaff this year and still have a lot on the ground, especially for the 27th of March! Skiing is still open on Humphrey's Peak until the first week of April!!
Getting closer to Flagstaff. Still quite a lot of snow on the north side of the mountains.
This was taken really close to Flagstaff. What is so impressive about all the snow on the peak is that this is a picture of the south side of the mountain and that's where it melts off first.
This was such a typically western stormy day. It was raining, but the rain wasn't reaching the ground. We could see storm cells moving all around us, but none of the rain was reaching the ground. (There's a reason they call this desert, huh?!)
Driving into Albuquerque from the west is really spectacular. This picture doesn't do a great job showing how the mountains just dominate the horizon. We'll be in Albuquerque just until after church in the morning then we'll drive to a little town on the New Mexico/Texas border. On Monday, we'll hopefully get into Oklahoma City at a decent hour. We're looking forward to visiting with Nancy and Al and their family for a few days, then we'll travel to Memphis for Easter/Conference weekend. Should be fun!

Desert Flowers

Only one really good picture that I think captures the essence of the desert in bloom. This was taken on our way to Saguaro National Park outside Tuscon. Some things are starting to bloom, but not a lot as of yet. We are enjoying our last week in Arizona as the weather begins to warm up some. (It's sure windy here though!!!!!)

Cochise County

This was the view from our coach for a week -- not bad!! We were also camped next to a conservation area so there were birds all over the place. Our first visit here was to Karchner Caverns. No pictures allowed so can't post them. It is worth seeing though, it's only been open for a few years and they are doing a lot to preserve the integrity of the cave so there isn't so much damage like in other caves.

Bisbee is the county seat of Cochise County. It's a really neat Victorian town and was fun to walk through. We also got to ride on a rail into an old copper, silver, and gold mine here. That was really interesting.

Howard walking the streets of Bisbee.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Doc Holiday giving the cowboys a bad time (he was really good)

Here Lies Lester Moore four slugs from a 44. No Les, No More.

The results of the shootout at the O.K. Corral

Famous saloon with cowboys and horses out front.

Stagecoach going by.

Huachua Mountains south of us.

It started raining Saturday night and rained most of the day Sunday. Sometimes it was coming down pretty hard! The finale was this beautiful double rainbow that lasted for quite a long time.

We did have some flooding around the coach for a short time. The water puddles up really fast in the desert and then runs off really fast so all the creeks are running for a short time and roads are flooded for a short time, then amazingly soon -- everything is dry again.

This picture is especially for all our grandchildren. We came out of eating lunch on our way to Tombstone and there was a roadrunner right by our car so I took pictures of it. This one was the best shot. Pretty cool! (It ran REALLY fast!)