There and back again

I’ve got Hobbit on the brain because I ate breakfast at Denny’s every day last week.  For some reason Denny’s is running a promotion in conjunction with a new Hobbit movie that has apparently been released.  For those of you who don’t know, “There and Back Again” was the full title of Bilbo’s original book of adventures.  We haven’t seen a show in a theatre for so long I can’t remember when the last time was but I’m tempted to go see Bilbo’s excellent adventure.

I was eating breakfast in Denny’s in Cottonwood, Arizona because I was down there on a cattle project.  We’ve been in that area several times so this trip was easy to plan.  When I get an email saying that I need to go to East Bumfuzzle, Montana it can be hard to figure out where I should fly into or where I should stay.  This time I knew right away that I would fly into Phoenix and stay in Cottonwood.  We’ve stayed in the Thousand Trails park between Cottonwood and Camp Verde and I wrote about it here.  In fact it was the Thousand Trails at Cottonwood that we went to after Clifford gave us our awning & I had some parts shipped there to finish up the installation.

It was great to get away from the Regina cold and still have sunshine.  I could get away from the cold by going to the boat but I’d get no sunshine on that plan.   I flew into Phoenix on Monday, picked up a car and drove up to Cottonwood.  I always enjoy driving in Phoenix because their freeways are so well laid out.  Everything is on the square and you don’t have lanes that just suddenly disappear or suck you off into an exit without warning.  One time we drove into Phoenix from the west and drove right through town and out the east side.  We arrived in town in the right hand of two lanes and exited town in the right hand of two lanes.  In between we were frequently in 6 or 8 lane traffic with multiple lanes either side of us.  I never once changed lanes.  That’s really good road design.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay in the warmth until spring so I flew back to Regina yesterday morning.  Last night we went to Marilyn’s staff party at the Queensbury Centre on the exhibition grounds.  The band was …….  shall we say ……. not good.  We did however manage to get in some dancing.  We think Kerry’s wedding was probably our last dancing occasion. 

We’re in the midst of an unseasonably cold snap here which makes it really easy to think up reasons not to go outdoors.  Despite that I need to put brake pads on the Exploder so I’ll likely tackle that project this week before I make a few local road trips.  I’m planning to sit it out here until after Christmas when we’re booked to fly to Guadalajara to visit Karla.  Then I’ll go back into the gray warmth of BC.