Correction on 4/4/06 - cholla, not saguaro

Third time's a charm on 4/6/06 - ocotillo, not cholla (I'm from Oregon, what do I know?)

This won't be in any particular order, for the most part, so endure it or skip it! When we arrived in mid-December, our friends Ron and Linda had been here about a month. Here is a shot of the four of us in front of the townhouse with the "nth" hole in the background. In January other friends came to visit, including another Linda, and we went to see St. Phillips Church. This large tree was pretty interesting (sorry, I don't remember what it is, but someone will tell me, and I'll post the answer here: _________). A few days later we went to Bisbee to see the sights. This picture shows (at least certain) animals can be taught nonviolence to their fellows. Happened to catch this mural at the Jonquil Motel.

When Eric came in late January we took some time to go down to Tumacacori Mission. While passing behind the Mission about noon, I had the inspiration for this picture. Here is a shot taken from the east side of the Mission showing the mountain in the background.

When our friends Bob and Kathy were visiting, Bob and I went to the Franklin Auto Museum (more later on that) and then on to the Old Tucson Movie Studios. Here is a picture of Old Tucson Movie Studios out in the desert west of Tuscon. Kind of interesting, especially looking at pictures and posters from the movies that were made there over the years, but all-in-all, a little pricey.

Just around the house one evening I took some interesting pictures. Here is the moon over palm tree. Later I took some pictures of a small tree (with flash), a ocotillo (no flash), and a ocotillo (with flash).

In early March, Tanna came to visit and we went to the Desert Musuem. Here are Amelia and Tanna enjoying the view and the 250 million year old rock. Here's a desert plant. The Arizona Rainbow Hedgehog cactus is just about the size of a hedgehog, I guess. In addition to desert plants, they also have desert animals, such as mountain lions, javelinas, birds, and coyotes. But, back to the cactus, this is a pretty one. Following that, my cousin Bob, and Alice came to visit. We took a ride up Madera Canyon after the snow on the Santa Ritas. Kids were having a great time throwing snowballs, building building snowmen and more snowmen. Coming back down the canyon, we stopped for a small hike and this picture of Green Valley with the copper mine in the background mountains.

More recently, our friend Joan stayed with us for a week.

Now we come to birds. We have a pair of cardinals that come to feed. Here is the female cardinal at the seed bell. Not to be left out, here comes the male flying in and picking up a few scraps below. Here are other shots of the male and the female. We had a dove nesting (if you can call what doves sit on a nest!) on the pillar of the carport, with one dovelet showing. Here are both of the hatchlings. But, the most exciting was the Goshawk we saw sitting in our bottle brush tree. Not too many other birds around while he was there. Late breaking news (3-28-2006)! We happened to notice a Golden Eagle sitting on the lower branch of our big palm tree this morning. I didn't want to lose any of my time to look at him, so I didn't run for the camera. He stayed a couple of minutes, and even turned around so we saw both the front and the back.

Our friends from Ashland, Ina and Richard, rented a Villa for March. Ina and Amelia played bridge. Richard and I went to a Diamondbacks (vs. Royals) baseball (cactus league, preseason) a couple of weeks ago. A pretty good game, but not really the excitement of a game at a big league stadium. Price is right, but they still had a lot of empty seats. We were seated in the eleventh row right off of first base. Here's a Royal's batter reaching for the fence (didn't make it). A little later, a Diamondback's batter was doing the same. He got a base hit (ball can be seen going toward left fielder). Royals won. There was one late homerun by a Royal's batter and there was no doubt it was going well beyond the fence when it went.

Finally, down to the important stuff. The annual Santa Cruz Valley Car Nuts car show in Tubac was in mid-January. There were several hundred cars there, a very few of which I took pictures of. Here they are:
Falcon Ranchero, ~1960
A "made" Ford, ~1940
DeSoto convertible, ~1949
International pickup, ~1938
Willys coupe, ~1940
Another Willys, but notice the "hardtop" styling. On the passenger side, at least, the window is one piece (can't think how that would work on the driver's side).

As I mentioned above, Bob and I visited the Franklin Automobile Museum in Tucson. Franklins were pretty interesting cars. Here are a few shots from the museum (NOTE: If you want to see it in Tucson, act quickly. It will eventually move to Cazenovia, N.Y.):
1925 coupe
Closeup of the V-12 engine
1934 Cabriolet
1904 Franklin that went coast-to-coast
Franklin Poster