Second Day on San Juan Island

 We started out the day cooking cinnamon rolls on a stick on the grill.  (Originally we were supposed to do it over a campfire, but no fires were allowed.)

 It was taking a long time to cook them with the top of the grill open, so we closed it and made it more like an oven.  You can see the 4 sticks sticking out of the "oven".  They actually cooked very quickly that way and were very good!

 After breakfast, we went down to a beach where they have a canoe and a rowboat  Ken and Tim got the canoe ready...

 ...so they could paddle out to the rowboat.  Tim left Ken with the rowboat, then came back and got Mary Beth and I.

 After dropping Tim off in the rowboat with Ken, Mary Beth and I started out paddling the canoe.  Ken started out rowing the rowboat (the guys are on the left in the rowboat).

 The rowboat was a lot harder to row than the canoe was to paddle, so we quickly left the guys behind, until Tim started up the motor on the rowboat.  Then it was our turn to be left behind, until we got a tow from the guys.

 A shark in Puget Sound??

 There was a lot of boat traffic as we made our way around Pearl Island...

 ...there was some air traffic also!

 The view from the rowboat.

 When we went to the American Camp, we found out that an osprey nest was on the top of a tree, that could be seen through a telescope in the Visitor's Center.  Ken was able to zoom in on the nest and get a fairly good picture, you can even see the baby osprey's head to the left.

 We went back to Lime Kiln for a picnic lunch...

 ...and this time the whales came by!  They were really spread out, so it took quite awhile for them to pass by, but it was exciting any time one surfaced.

 Our last stop, before heading back to the campground to play games until time to leave for the ferry, was at an alpaca farm.  The woman in the gift shop told us that there were some baby alpaca's in one of the pastures, so we went out to see the babies and their moms.

 We think this one was the youngest one, it was supposed to be only 1 week old.

 A short walk above the campground is a mausoleum for the McMillan family, who owned a large part of the island and mined limestone.  In the center was a table with 5 chairs around it, one for each family member and each chair had the family members name on it, plus holding their ashes.  When we got to the mausoleum, there were several teenagers sitting in the chairs, eating snacks and playing card games on the table.  I thought it was very disrespectful for them to be doing that there!  They left a little while after we arrived, so we could enjoy it without the noise they were making.

Tim and Ken pretending to be Samson.

Overnight on San Juan Island

 Last Thursday, we took the ferry over to San Juan Island and stayed overnight with our friends, Tim and Mary Beth, who have a camping area by Roche Harbor.

 While I was watching the cars being loaded onto the boat, this seagull squawked and startled me.  I took it's picture nestled on top of a post and didn't know until later that...

 ...there was a little gull hiding behind it.

 Leaving Anacortes.

 We had walked onto the ferry with our suitcase, so Tim and Mary Beth met us at the ferry dock in Friday Harbor and took us to their camping area, after a short stop at  Lime Kiln Point to see if there was any report of whales in the area.  Ken headed down the rocks to see what he could find, since it was a very low tide.  (He found a huge muscle clinging to the rocks.)

 Lime Kiln lighthouse.

 Time for a drink before lunch by their camper.  (They also have a big tent for visitors to stay in.)

After lunch we went on a hike to an overlook by Roche Harbor, followed by some ice cream, then walking on the docks at Roche.  A yacht at the docks was having an open house, so we toured it.  It was an amazing boat, with 4 bedrooms and each bedroom had it's own bathroom.  (We found out later that it was for sale for 8 million dollars.)

Ken's First Pedicure

 I got a gift certificate to get a pedicure from MOPS for Christmas and wanted to wait until it was sandals season before using it.  I didn't want to go by myself either, so I was waiting for a time when I could have Annika go with me.  Unfortunately that never worked out when she was here.

 I started asking Ken if he would go with me.  He wasn't to excited about going, but said he would if I really, really wanted him to.  When we were at Tim and Mary Beth's house on Sunday, we started talking about pedicures and Tim said he really liked getting them.

 We convinced Ken to try it, so we scheduled it for this morning, so I could get it done before going to a wedding over the weekend.

We all enjoyed the pedicures and now I have...

...pretty feet for the wedding!

2015 Arizona Trip - Day 4 & 5

 Our 4th day in Arizona was a low key day.  We went to an olive oil plant, had lunch there and went on a tour of it.  Then in the afternoon, Ken and Tim went on a bike ride, while Mary Beth and I read and relaxed.

 Our last full day in Arizona, we had more fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast from oranges picked from the tree in their yard.

 Then we headed north of Phoenix to the Sedona area.  We stopped at a National Monument called Montezuma's Castle which is some cliff dwellings, that are around 800 years old.  People used to be allowed to climb ladders to get up to the dwellings, but they had to stop letting visitors do that in 1951.

 There was a nice grove of trees at the monument also.  I liked the white trunks of the trees.

 There were some bird nests hanging down from some of the rocks...

 ...and a honey comb in a crevice.

 This pretty stream was by the cliff dwellings and might be the reason they built their home up high on the cliff, so they would be up away from any flooding.

 Our second stop of the day was a place called Montezuma's Well.  I copied this info from a website about it, which I thought explained it better than I could.  "Montezuma Well, a unit of Montezuma Castle, is located 11 miles from the park. Formed long ago by the collapse of a limestone cavern, over one million gallons of water a day flows continuously into the Well. This constant supply of warm, fresh water provides an aquatic habitat like no other in the world, and has served as an oasis for wildlife and humans for thousands of years."

 There were some cliff dwellings on the side of it also.

 Lunch time!  We had a picnic, in the sun, but still needed our jackets on!

 Next, we visited the red rock area of Sedona.  This is Courthouse Butte and...

...this is Bell Rock.

 We drove around to the back side of Bell Rock and hiked up it a ways.

 The view from part way up Bell Rock.

 Mary Beth and I, as we hiked up the trail.

 Our last stop was at the Chapel of the Holy Cross.  The chapel is set into the red rocks, and this is the walkway up to the chapel.

 I liked this sign sitting in front of the pansies, which was my sister, Deanna's favorite flower, and whenever I see them, I think of her.  It's a little hard to read the sign, but it says, "Please don't pick us, we're smiling at God...

 This is the front of the chapel.  I love the big cross set into the rocks!

Our last night in Arizona, we had dinner together, then played a new card game that we had learned while we were there.

2015 Arizona Trip - Day 2

 Our second day in Arizona started with a tour of one of the areas of the Kartchner Caverns, which is under the Sonoran Dessert.  I was disappointed to learn that cameras weren't allowed in the cavern, so I have no pictures of what we saw there.  We saw lots of stalactites and stalagmites of different shapes and sizes in there, and enjoyed the tour a lot.  After lunch, we headed to Tombstone, Arizona.

 It was mostly a bunch of tourist shops with old west store fronts on the buildings.

 A stage coach was available for rides if you wanted to pay to ride in it.

 A cowboy's bathtub.

 There was also a reenactment of a gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone.

The audience was instructed before the play began to boo the "bad guys" and cheer for the "good guys". If the audience didn't do what it was supposed to do, the actors would stop and let them know they weren't reacting properly.  The play took about 45 minutes and explained how the gunfight came about.

 The one in red is playing the part of Doc Holiday, and the other 2 are 2 of the 3 Earp brothers.

 The "good guys" starting to gun down the "bad guys".

 The "bad guys" are losing the fight.

Before leaving Tombstone, we made a stop at the Boothill Graveyard.

 I thought this sign was funny, it was leading to the graveyard.

 A lot of the gravestones had the name of the person killed and how they died, sometimes listing who killed them, like the one above.

An interesting epitaph.

These are the guys that were killed in the play reenactment that we had just seen.