Willcox Chuck Wagon Cookoff

What do you do on a Sat. that there is nothing else planned? Well of course you head out to a Chuck Wagon Cookoff - so off to Willcox (about 70 miles east of Tucson) anticipating a history lesson. There were about 6 Chuck Wagons set up and they were just starting their cooking when we arrived around 11am. It took us a total of 15 minutes to walk around and gain our history lesson for the day. Not a real exciting event.

 So what do you do when you drive that far and are disappointed in the event you went to? Well of course you head out to visit wineries and taste wine. The first winery we stopped at was Passion Winery and it wasn't that good, so on to some wineries that we had not visited the last time we were in Willcox, which is quite a ways out of town. We enjoyed our time at Bodega Pierce Winery, the hostess (owner) was just wonderful and gave us tastes of new wines that are not quite available to the public yet. We ended up with purchasing 4 bottles.

Then on to Pillsbury Winery, where we left with 3 bottles. Let me also explain that to get to all these wineries you need to drive on dirt roads. The Lincoln is absolutely filthy, and of course on the way home it sprinkled off and on to make it worse.

 After Pillsbury, we went to Zapara Vineyards where we were greeted by some beautiful poppies. We left there with 4 bottles.

Our last stop was Golden Rule Winery, where the owner came out to greet us as we were walking into the tasting room. Most of these wineries are so friendly that makes them so pleasant to visit.  After tasting 10 wines there, we were ready to head home, walking out with 6 bottles. We were pleasantly surprised on the quality of the wines that we tasted. AZ wines have sure improved.

Even though we didn't get to experience Chuck Wagon food, we sure enjoyed the Willcox wines.

Idyllwild Excursion

OK - so I'm a little slow in posting our little excursion to Idyllwild last Monday the 20th, but (and isn't there always a "but"?) I was having difficulties with the new Photo App on my Mac in downloading the photos from my iPhone without wifi, so had to wait till I got home with wifi to get everything straighten out (and learn how to work all this technology).

Anyways - we decided to take a trip to the small village of Idyllwild up in the higher country to get into some cooler weather and it was cooler up there at an elevation of over 5000 feet, at least 20-25 degrees, but it was quite pleasant and pretty. We walked around and looked at all the touristy shops. It's a very little town with some beautiful scenery.

The Lumber Mill Restaurant was recommended for their hamburgers.

So of course we needed to check this out - Jim ordered the Mile-High Burger - one whole pound of beefy goodness.

The beef patty was bigger than the bun and bigger then Jim's mouth! He finished the whole thing along with some of my fries. Needless to say - dinner that night was very minimal. I had a regular mushroom burger which was quite tasty also.

Here is a view of the peaks from a little on further up the mountain.

On the way back we stopped at Lake Hemet to take a few pictures. The water is really low.

Then we headed back down to the desert floor into the heat.

We traveled back to Tucson on Friday, and have been enjoying a quiet weekend at home getting ready to get back to reality on Monday. All in all it was a good time, ate a bit too much great food, probably drank a little bit too much great wine but enjoyed every minute of it.

Temecula Friday

Last Friday we headed over to Temecula (about a 75 mile trip towards San Diego) to do a little wine tasting (also to break up our daily schedule of walk/golf/boat). We've been to Temecula several times and not really been that impressed overall, only found a couple of good wines. This time Jim did a little research and we started out at Briar Rose Winery where you need to make a reservation for their tasting.

We had our own private tasting in their beautiful yard, where they came out and served each of the tastings. It was a pleasant and relaxing experience. The weather was great, the scenery was great and best of all the wine was pretty good. We ended up purchasing 6 bottles to take with us.

We drove around the area and tasted wines from several different wineries and only found a few that were any good. I believe our first stop the Briar Rose was the best.

At one of the wineries, even though their wines weren't any good, they had this old tractor parked in front, a memory for Jim from the 40s & 50s.

One of our last stops was the Doffo Winery, which we were impressed with their wines, so purchased several from them.

Towards the end of the day, we realized that we were so engrossed in wine tasting, that we didn't have lunch, so after our last stop we decided to indulge in a pizza. Of course it was the middle of rush hour and the traffic was quite congested, I dialed in the closest pizza place on the Lincoln's GPS, drove there to discover, there was no pizza place at that location. Jim finally found us a pizza place to eat on his iPhone and it turned out to be a great pizza.

All in all it was a great adventure, but a long day.

Relaxing in the Sun

We arrived at our lot in Indio this last Wed. around 6pm after an uneventful trip from Tucson. This will be our last trip for the season to Indio before the real heat hits the area. We arrived in the 80's and today it will get up to the mid 90s and will stay around mid 90's for probably the rest of our stay which will be a couple of weeks.

We have been eating at the restaurant to finish up our minimum amount we need to spend there, except for Friday we grilled some chicken and enjoyed our view from our lot.

 We've just been enjoying the golf, boat cruises and relaxing time. That beer sure tasted good after our round of golf yesterday with the temps in the 90s.

 On our walk this morning, Jim found some pretty lilies so I had to grab my camera and go back and take some pictures. I'm thinking this one would make a great painting.

Not much on our agenda, just kick-back time and enjoy the beautiful weather (as long as it doesn't get too hot).

Picacho Peak or Bust!

Well, we busted. There is no way we can hike (or at least I am unable to hike) to the top of Picacho Peak at an elevation of 3,374' with an elevation change of over 1400' in a little over 3 miles on the Sunset Vista Trail on the South side of the mountain. A little too steep for me.

The wildflowers are at their peak or probably a little past peak, so an area that is noted for plentiful blooms is Picacho Peak State Park, so Jim & I took off this morning to experience it this year (our first time to this area even though we drive by all the time).

Most of the flowers are Mexican Poppies that are on the North side of the mountain.

We hiked back in from the DeAnza Loop looking for patches of poppies.

We did discover other color blooms beside yellow.

After the photo op, we had our picnic lunch we brought. Great view while having our lunch.

Here's Picacho Peak from the South side, we hiked about an hour to get to this point, to reach the peak it looks straight up. No thank you, it looks great from here.

A beautiful day except for the 15-20 mile winds with gusts to probably 30, but it kept it nice and cool for a hike. The temp was probably in the upper 70s. Just a great day out in nature and AZ beauty.

Now we're enjoying our back patio with a corned beef brisket on the grill to celebrate St. Patrick's day (maybe a couple of days early) with a corned beef, cabbage, red potato dinner.

Wildflower Time

The plentiful rains this winter has produced an abundance of wildflowers. Unable to resist this bounty  for a photo op, my hiking partner, Cindy Klinge and I set out this morning to the Phoneline Trail in Sabino Canyon. The day was overcast, so some of the flowers were not open, but we had plenty others that were performing their annual show, the desert just comes alive this time of the year. Here are some of the 89 photos I took. Maybe you will see some of these flowers in my paintings. Hope you enjoy.

Fords on Fourth Car Show

The 2014 GT500 Super Snake and the 1967 GT500 were shined and polished arriving at the Fords on Fourth Car Show Sunday (March 8th) before 7am to become part of the many wonderful Fords on displayed on Fourth Ave in Tucson. After getting our registration packet and some finishing touches on the cars, we were ready for the crowds.

Of course we had to display our Cops and Rodders "Best in Show" plaque on the Super Snake. I don't know which car got more attention, but the '67 does attract people, but so does the wide body on the '14.

This year we were parallel parked on the West side of the street being able to show the cars off better from all sides. And we definitely attracted attention with these 2 cars. Chuck, Kim, Allie, & Rob came out to support us for a while in the morning. We appreciate their company.

The day turned out beautiful with the temp climbing up to the high 70s, which in turned brought out more of a crowd to see all the great cars. The show had 230 cars registered.

 The voting for the best cars in each category is done by the entrants and Jim walked away with two first place plaques.

 Here are the two plaques that are added to our "Wall of Fame".

It was a great day, but for some reason just sitting/standing around talking to car people all day is tiring, so it was great to get home after putting the '67 back in the shop building (I counted that there are 9 locks/alarms/doors that need to be undone to drive the car in the building, then 9 to lock everything back up again). So once we got home and hit the patio with a NBA game on, we quenched our thirst with a beer. Then since we won 2 first places, of course we needed to open a good bottle of wine to celebrate.