Green Valley New Year's Eve

We arrived in Green Valley on December 29, just in time to rest up for a bit before New Year's Eve. We spent that illustrious evening at our favorite eating place, "Chez Cisneros" (or should that be "Casa Cisneros"?). Whatever. Grandchildren and their parents were visiting. Here's Scott with Lauren (yeh, sorry Scott, I had two pictures - a good one of you or a good one of Lauren - what would you do?). And then the ever-photogenic Quint. Here's the rest of them, Susan, Amelia, Scott (good one!), Sandy, and Quint, with the scrumptious New Year's Eve dinner on the table. Let's eat! Of course, we did play a bit of Mexican train later on.

Time passes .......

We are once again at our favorite dining place, and look out to see SNOW! Surely you jest! This is southern Arizona! Nope, no jest. Here we are getting ready to head home, no top down tonight. Next morning I took this panorama of shots from the outer end of the driveway, and this one back toward the house.

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

In late January our friend Linda came (somehow I got no picture of her, or us, only these from when we went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum). We went to the hummingbird aviary, where I got a shot of a hummingbird at rest and a hummingbird feeding. Then we mosied over to the Harris Hawk demonstration area, and this is always a crowd pleaser. I got a nice sequence of shots as they flew nearby.
  • Going away, just over the ramada
  • Circled, then heading back my way
  • Close approach
  • Landing on the roof of the ramada
  • Taking it easy
  • Then, back in the air

    Going on around, we saw lots of Palo Verde trees, this being a nice one showing the green bark. Here's another with a scene of saguaro in the background. One more nice example of the Arizona State Tree. Then there is this curious looking Boojum tree.

    Albuquerque visitors

    Becky and Don came from Albuquerque on February 9, and drove out east to Willcox and met them, and then stayed overnight. After checking into our motel, we went out to the Cochise Stronghold. Here's most of the crew. There are some good picture scenes, nice one with the sun shining on the rock formations. Here is (perhaps) a more interesting one, and another with plenty of places to hide. Cochise's body is out there somewhere, they say. From there we drove over to the Playa Willcox Refuge where we hoped to see some sand cranes. However, we were apparently too late in the season to see any, although I did take this shot of doves in a tree. However, now that I see it, it is most interesting as a bare tree against sky and clouds as sundown approaches, with doves an incidental thing in the picture.

    The next day we headed out to the Chiricahua National Monument. It was a hideout for Geronimo, and is a spectacular area of towering rock formations. Naturally, I took a few pictures of them, some following:

  • distant balanced rocks
  • a closeup balanced rock
  • green moss on balanced rock
  • sentinels, some with balanced rocks
  • a field of sentinels, with snow
  • another view
  • they go on
  • and on
  • here's an interesting lichen covered rock with a hole in it
  • this wins the hole race hands down
  • continuing along the trail more sentinels
  • finally, one last balanced rock