Saturday, March 31, 2012

Indio Invitational In Progress

Timely posting of this blog was delayed due to a technical oversight of our internet service parameters. Our internet service is through HughesNet through a MotoSat Satellite. Contacting them after our internet was non-existent yesterday to find out what was happening, I found out we are limited to less than 425MB per 24 hours, which we exceeded quite easily within the first three hours of waking Thursday morning. So we had to eliminate usage for 24 hours to get back into their good graces to get back on line.

Our trip to Indio from Tucson on Wednesday was non-eventful (which is how we like it). Arrived late afternoon at our lot, which we quickly setup then headed over to the restaurant for a prime rib dinner. Conversation was geared toward the opening day of our 2nd annual Indio Invitational, which will start the next afternoon.

The 2nd Annual Indio Invitational brought back all the tournament players from last year - Greg Rolling, Linda Moon and the defending champion, Jim Moon.  Will he keep the title again this year?  The champion after 10 days of play will take home the traveling trophy.

Day one brought a beautiful 80+ degree, minimum winds and bright sunshine.  The game of the day was regular stroke play.
There was first day tension in the air, many choice words describing shots and just plain ole good fun.

The competition was stiff. After nine holes Greg was at even par and Jim and Linda were tied at +3.


The end of the round found Jim and Greg tied at +7 and Linda at +11. Jim and Greg headed for the next tee box for a sudden death playoff.  Greg prevailed and got the win for the day.

After a hard first day on the course, a round of a good brew was in order.  Congratulations to the winner and to quench a mighty thirst.

The evening rounded out with a boat ride then up to the restaurant for dinner.  Our special requested spaghetti and meatballs (their spaghetti and meatballs is the best I have ever tasted) was waiting for us to devour, which we did.

The 2nd day of the Indio Invitational brought excellent weather, with slightly heavier winds, but not too bad.  We played a round of match play, which for the first four holes we were pretty much even. Then on the fifth hole, both Greg and Linda faltered and Jim won the hole. With that momentum, Jim took off and ended up winning 5 holes, Linda 2 holes and Greg came in last with zero.  Better luck next day Greg!

Now we are up to our third day of play and it has determined that Bingo Bango Bongo will be the game of the day. The winds are up presently at 8am with 10-20mph winds forecasted for this afternoon which should bring interesting results. Who will prevail today?

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Mystery Wildflower Identified

In my Friday post, one of the wildflower pictures I was unable to identify, but thanks to the Sabino Canyon Blog Site the mystery is solved. The following flower is the Silverpuff Seed Puff.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Wildflower Search Resumed

We're back in Tucson after a great trip once again to Indio.  Had great weather there except for two days where the wind blew and it was cold.  Arrived in Tucson just in time to experience the great weather here.  It's been in the 80s and just beautiful spring weather. So I have resumed my search for wildflowers.

Thursday I packed up the camera and headed out to discover the Esperero Trail located in Sabino Canyon. This is a new trail for me and it turned out to be an excellent choice.

The trail meandered along hillsides with a gentle up and down in the beginning, then got steeper the farther along I went.
You never know who you might meet along the trail.

The bees provided a constant buzzing song as I hiked.
I have never seen this flower before so am unable to identify it for you. Would appreciate a comment from someone who does know the name to this flower.  I only saw 2 in my trek. It was quite unusual.
I hiked up to a 3100' elevation point (from 2700' elevation at the parking lot, so not too bad of a climb). The further I went up the mountain the flowers disappeared. So I stopped and took a few pictures of the view then headed back down to find more flowers. 

See the area of green in the middle of the picture below? That was my next destination.
Found more flowers along the way.
With the warm weather over the past weeks, a good majority of the flowers have already dried up, but did find a few Mexican Poppys left along the trail.

Here is the green along the Sabino Creek that I showed earlier that looked so far away.
Just a shot heading back to the parking lot and my vehicle to rest my hot, tired feet.
This coming Sunday and Monday the forecast is for rain, so if we get enough the wildflowers might extend a couple more weeks. I hope so. This quest for wildflowers is quite enjoyable.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Plans Change

I've had a bit of a schedule change from my searching the Tucson area for wildflowers to hopping in the RV heading back over to Indio last Thursday. On the trip over we unfortunately got behind a cement truck that didn't clean out his shoot very well and dropped some cement which ended up on the front of the motorhome. Then a truck went by in the opposite direction and flew up a rock which chipped our windshield.  Luckily the chip didn't spread out and we had it repaired on Friday, so hopefully it will not spread and cause us to replace the windshield.  (We've already replaced the windshield once back in 2009, it's not an easy task and costs over $2000, which the insurance covers, but still I don't want to turn in another claim.) The motorhome got washed on Monday and all the cement came off with no major damage done.

Since we have been here, we are back on our usual routine of morning walk, afternoon golf, evening boat ride and then relax on the patio watching basketball.  We have been up to the restaurant two times and plan again for Prime Rib night Wednesday.

As you can see the Canadian Geese are still here, I caught one here moving from one side of the lake to the other.
 Below is a little friend we met along the path as we went for a 3 mile hike with a 425' elevation change at the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mtn Visitor Center. 
 As you can see the area is quite desolate and a true desert, not like the Sonoran desert around Tucson. This picture show some of the path we climbed up to the top.
Then came along this energetic soul - mountain biked up to the top and went around two times that we saw. 

There we quite a few cute little cholla's along the way. 
Just another view from the path. 

After our hike we drove about 10 miles more up the mountain to find a place to have a picnic lunch.  We pulled over at a vista point and hunkered down behind a rock to block the wind and had our sandwiches.   We are now back at the RV, the wind blowing so much that the RV is rocking and rolling and needless to say, we are not going out to play golf.  Right now the winds are probably gusting up to 30-40 mph.  Hopefully they will go away overnight so we can get back to our normally scheduled routine. No boat ride tonight either and we will be staying inside out of this wind.