The Kid is OLD Now...

My son turned 16 years old the other day, and it was a great feeling.  Each year in September I'm reminded of the difficult beginning we had with him, with the premature birth and time spent in the Neonatal ICU.

He was given an awful diagnosis by the neurologist in Phoenix, which turned out to be erroneous.  We scooped up our little guy and slowly took him home to begin dealing with our special needs son.

After several months of dealing with social services, specialists, and therapists, we began to figure out that we had a perfectly fine kid on our hands.  I think it was when Shay was six months old he had a follow up visit in Phoenix and the doctor who'd diagnosed him realized his mistake.

It's been just fine ever since.

He rides motocross, practices MMA fighting at a local trainer's place, lifts weights, and helps out mom whenever he's requested.

He's a good kid, always behaving, and he's respectful.  Couldn't ask for a better son.

Not long ago we found a great deal on a project truck, an S-10 pickup that someone was turning into a "pre-runner."  We bought it and began working on the essentials.

For Shay's birthday, I thought of a great gift idea; real race seats to go in his project.

It was pretty cool to see him smile when he saw his presents.  He went to school that day, proclaiming that he'd ride home on his bicycle that afternoon and install those new seats.  He did just that!

I would give the world for him, he's a great kid.  I'm glad all I had to do was shell out a little bit of money for seats!!

People Watching

Most times we enjoy getting out an experiencing things.  Once in a while, though, we find a good opportunity to just sit and watch other people enjoying life.  We found such a spot, on the Colorado River up north of Lake Havasu.
It's called Devil's Elbow, and my friend from Iowa saw a photo of it once and declared that it was her favorite place on Earth.  It was neat to show it to her in person.  She loved it.

We pulled the boat over to a small beach, hiked up the rocks, and watched the people float by on their boats.  It was comical, because the sound of their voices carried up the rock walls so well. We could hear every word, see everything they were doing.  One small boat was full of young partiers (we assume they were young) and we watched them jump around, dancing on the deck.  Occasionally someone would hop in the water and we'd see them drift away with the current. Eventually the party boat had to run over and rescue their swimmers.

The way the water reflects the blue of the sky is just gorgeous.  I really love the upriver area, with its clean cold water and beautiful views.  

We mosied up near Topock and Pirate's Cove to check out the beaches, usually traveling 70 mph or so.  

We were surprised by a train overhead at the I-40 crossing, and it was really creepy to be underneath the bridge as it went over.

Watched the local kids playing around under the train bridge:

They had a rope and were swinging around over the water.  It's deep, fast moving water right there so they're nuts!!  I spotted one or two kids who had climbed way up underneath the train tracks. They were sitting with their legs dangling off the steel beams.

We went further north and beached on the Arizona side of the river. 

I've always wanted to poke around up on that side to see if there's any ruins.  Old mining camps used to exist there, over 100 years ago.  All I could find were rocks and mud.

While we walked hand in hand along the beach, we found a disturbing site.  Couldn't figure out what we were seeing, either!!

We saw these periodically along the shore and we were too scared to touch them.

Finally, we found one in the final stages of whatever it was doing:

Aaah, okay! It's dragonflies who are molting!!  Apparently they are larvae in the river, and when it's time they crawl up into the sand and go thru their changes.  

We learned a lot.

We also discovered the crawdads. Crawdads! Oh okay, I'm sure you're thinking of something else...Crayfish. Whatever...

There were a few of those, and I was happy to get them back to the water where they could scurry away.

We took our time going downstream to get home, taking in the beautiful scenery.  The number of boats on the water had decreased to almost none, so it was quiet and peaceful.  Instead of racing past the red rocks and dry waterfalls, we drifted past them slowly and admired them.

And of course we dreamed of how we could get a four wheeled vehicle to certain locations so we could possibly look for gold....

Exploring the Desert

So nice to have a guy who enjoys the exploring as much as I do.  We had a couple of days off together, so each day we'd get on the computers and figure out what part of the state we were going to conquer.
On this particular day, we went north thru Kingman toward Meadview. We live in the 5th largest county in the U.S., so the two hour drive to Meadview covered a lot of territory.  We were still in the same county!!

In Meadview, there was a mine called the King Tut.  It was a HUGE placer mine, it was situated in the mountains that border Lake Mead.  We read about it in one of my history books, and hoped to find it up there. We got close, but then learned the old mine is on private property and the signage wasn't exactly welcoming.  So we climbed to the top of a nearby hill and took a photo of Lake Mead:

We then looked to the north, and could see the "terminus" of the Grand Canyon.  It's where the Canyon ends and Lake Mead begins:

We drove past Gary's lots in town, he has about 2 acres on a dirt road.  The whole block is empty, a reminder of the boom and bust that Meadview experienced a few years ago.  Real estate developers had their eye on that area because they were convinced it would be the next "Havasu," but then the economy fell apart.  New construction stopped to a grinding halt.  It's a beautiful area, a bit isolated, but nothing happening right now.  The convenience store closed!! Can't even buy an aspirin in that town.

So we drove around, taking in the sights:

Found a large white onyx deposit:

Walked around checking out remote ranches and washes:

Found ourselves in old Chloride, and discovered the "Chloride Murals," outside of town in the nearby mountains:

Visited an old copper mine near the murals.  

We were surprised by a huge white owl who was perched down in the mineshaft.  I was poised to take a photo but didn't want to flash him in his enormous black eyes!  He was not happy to see us.

By the time we returned home it was late at night.  Our loop around Mohave County had taken us all day, and the dogs were not happy with us.  After all, we went out the door with our cooler and lunch packed, promising them we'd be right back.

Desert Exploring

It's over 110 degrees these days, but we knew we needed to get out and get some exploring done.  My dear beloved Gary was informed by his boss that he's being put on 24-hour call, and he's getting fewer days off, so we decided to use a couple of days to spend time having fun.  Who knows when we'll be able to do it again.
We started by going up Route 66, where we knew there would be old gold mines to check out.

Of course we immediately found a rattlesnake. He didn't even warn us of his presence.  He just sat and stared at us.

But our persistence paid off, the more we drove around and looked, the more mines we were able to locate.  The Route 66 area became a gold mine boom in the mid 1800's, and the holes in the mountains are certainly evidence of that.  We found many areas with ruins:

The stone walls were foundations of little homes in the "Gold Road" district.  It was neat to see all of them lined up, especially after looking at photographs in the history books showing what they looked like over 100 years ago.  I couldn't imagine the hardships of those who came out to look for gold.  It's a difficult area; isolated, extreme heat, and back then there were no proper roads!

Some of the mines were closed off, unfortunately.

Down the road we visited a mountainside that has an underground spring seeping out.  A small dam was built with rocks at some time to encourage pooling of the spring water.  It's about 3 feet deep.

When I peered into the water I just about choked: a jokester had placed a couple of goldfish in there!

We happily encountered some Big Horn Sheep:

And of course there were plenty of wild burros:

On our way back thru to head home we stopped to look around the old mining town of Oatman.  The tame burros live there, they hang around begging for food.  Gary was getting something out of the cooler in the back of our car and a begging burro immediately wandered over:

Funny little guy.

We went south from there, and discovered many more mines off to the side of the road.  We climbed up to take a look, and we were stunned by the 70 degree breeze blowing out of the first one.  After investigating, we found that this particular mine shaft went way back into the rock, and then had an enormous hole that reached up to the top of the mountain.  The air was cooled as it made its way thru the rock.

The next mine was about 300 yards away, so we walked over.  Gary went in first with both our flashlights to check for snakes.  As I stood outside waiting, I suddenly heard him yelling.  Apparently he'd nearly stepped on a rattler who was hiding among some rocks.

Can you see him? Nope, not really! The way he was hiding was very sneaky.  He didn't move, either.  We watched from a safe distance, wondering if he was even alive.  Finally his tongue flickered and we got our answer.  Upon our arrival home I looked up this particular kind of rattler, and they are known for just staying still when they're approached.  They will only rattle or strike when they're really being messed with.  We left him alone since he was being quite polite with us.

Poor Gary.  He came so close to stepping on that deadly snake.

Beautiful Days

How about that? An ordinary day turned into an extraordinary sunset here in Arizona.

 This is what I'm driving now. It's a German Smart Car, made at Mercedes Benz. Yeah, they're available in the U.S. now but the ones they make here are not Mercedes products. I wanted the real deal. It only took me 6 years or so to locate one for sale. The owner bought it in Germany, had it modified and upgraded at Brabus (who does tuning and specialty work for Mercedes) and then when he immigrated to the U.S. he had it shipped over here. He had to sell it, and I was in the market for a car. His loss, completely. I was so excited to see this car for sale I was really not able to contain myself. So, it's turbo-charged. It has custom body panels. It only has 25,000 miles on it. If I behave while driving, I get 40-45 miles per gallon. It will easily do 75 or 80 mph on the Interstate, it doesn't feel unstable or anything like that. Because of the turbo it really moves when you want it to. I love it almost as much as I loved my former car, the Vette:

 

 But, alas, this is what happened when Gary used the Vette to go see a friend in Phoenix one day:

 

 Turns out, Chevy products do not function well in this position. Gary's fine, but the Vette was totaled. After searching for a replacement car for several months, I managed to talk him into a Smart. Don't know how, I only sent him one link---and it was to the Craigslist ad for my new car pictured above. Well, bless his heart, he has certainly warmed up to my little go cart. While test driving it, he had his nose crinkled and a sour look on his face. Now, he drives it every chance he gets and he is quick to tell friends and strangers how awesome our little tiny car is. I've got to agree. I love my little Smart.

 

Shawna, Where Do You Stand On....

Politics is absolutely positively a dangerous hobby and it's conducted in shark infested waters. I love it, though. It's a challenge to remain involved and NOT get your head chopped off, so I suppose that's my motivation. A challenge. But I do believe if the wrong people are out there blabbering their crazy talk about important things, then we normal folks need to get out and counter that. Conspiracy theories. I'm so tired of them. I've said more than a couple of times, "I wish the whole Area 51 thing would become prominent with these conspiracy theorists once again so they'll leave our politics alone. This is how they work: if it's on the internet, then it must be true. Never would they get in their car, go talk in person to someone who knows the truth. Never would they do something as logical as that. They send out inflammatory emails. They post garbage on social networks. They never get the real story, just the one that feeds their scandal starved brain. Next week the Lake Havasu Republican Women are hosting the Arizona State Schools Superintendent of Public Instruction, John Huppenthal. The conspiracy theorists are telling people that Huppenthal received a bribe from CHINA of all places, and this bribe was a part of his whole plan to enact a Federal learning curriculum that will inevitably indoctrinate our children. Proof? No proof. But it was on the internet, so it's true. Mr. Huppenthal will be talking about the curriculum in question, and presenting the facts at our meeting. One interesting note; the curriculum is already a done deal, and has already been implemented into our public schools. The only "Common Core" portion being used by our schools is the math and reading standards. All the other subjects were rejected. Any questionable materials being utilized in Lake Havasu was actually chosen by our local school board. Our local school board was questioned about their choices and they of course blamed it on "Common Core." Meanwhile, we have these so called activists running around giving speeches about how our perfectly dedicated and upstanding school superintendent is enforcing a tenet of the Obama administration because China gave him a bribe. Get real! Join the rest of us in the REAL WORLD!!!!