Catching up: Ghost Town and Diamondbacks

Tonight I'm catching up a bit. I've been sick for the past week or so, off and on, but I've managed to squeeze a little bit of living into my days, along with the coughing and sneezing. I started feeling much better yesterday, and continued feeling good today. I'm going to give you a bunch of photos, and I hope you find them interesting! This first one is me on my bike:


"Ghost Town" would be good for describing the Village right now... or for describing the adventure I went on yesterday with Jack! Cameras in the back of my car, and armed with a book about AZ ghost towns, we headed north, past Oracle Junction, and past a minuscule town called Mammoth. After we crossed a bridge, we turned off on a small road, which got smaller and smaller. Eventually, we arrived at a road that was "not maintained." That was a polite way of putting it!




About 8 miles down this road, the road went downward into the canyon, and we saw evidence of the long-abandoned copper mine.


Along the way, we saw gila monsters! Two of them, in different places. Of course, we got out of the car to photograph them!



I think that he thought he was hiding from us here:


The desert is beautiful right now, with so many lovely flowers in unexpected places.




We came to one point in the road, where there was cliff to the left, cliff to the right, and COWS in the road ahead. We stopped the car, and Jack was going to get a photo of these cows. I thought that they were .. big.. so I stayed behind. Yes.. this cow is actually peeing:


Eventually, the cows turned around and walked the direction we were heading, so we walked along behind them.

More cows were down in the canyon, following the coppery stream.


Backing up in time a bit, on Tuesday, May 6, I went up to Phoenix to meet Ron. Actually, Jack went up with me, because the trip home was going to be quite late, and he had things that he wanted to do up there.

Ron took us on a tour of the university, and I got a few shots.



We went to a seminar, where they were talking about a weak premise and even weaker conclusions, punctuated by reasonably good pizza. Then we went back to Ron's house and Jack took off to the museums while Ron and I took in some ice cream.

Then came the ballgame! Ron took me to see the Diamondbacks meeting the Phillies in Chase Stadium. What fun this was! We were in Row 9, but we were not 9 rows back, since we were right behind the Diamondbacks' dugout! I had a corndog and Ron had a burrito, and we enjoyed some libations along with the game. Ron keeps score on the program, and this was interesting to me. And the Diamondbacks won!