Keeping busy and relaxing, too ...

What a great past couple of weeks we've had! Beautiful weather. And we've kept busy, with our usual routine of going out to do something one day then spending the next day in town resting, doing chores around here, shopping, watching movies on Netflix, or taking walks to keep us active. There's a clubhouse on the grounds with a really nice workout room and W. has been over there. They have just about any type of exercise equipment a person could want. There's a nice outdoor pool but it's unheated so everyone says it's still too cool to use. (But we have had about 2 weeks of sun so who knows ...)  But the spa is heated and people are using it.

We've really enjoyed the church we're going to -- SVUMC. Great minister, friendly people, beautiful buildings. This Sunday will be their annual old-fashioned cowboy service with special entertainment followed by a barbeque dinner at High Noon. Also, the Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival is going on in SV this weekend and we're going out to the auditorium on Saturday for some of that. In fact, today at the farmer's market several of the singers/poets were there performing! It was neat; we took our egg roll lunch to a picnic table and were able to listen some.

Let me find some pictures to show you where we've been and what we've seen ...

Last week we drove out to the Millville-Charleston ghost town site. We hiked a long trail, back to the foot of the peak on the left, on what they called the petroglyph trail. Yes, I did that with my cane! Interesting thing about this site was that all along the way were old pieces of metal such as tin cans, corrugated metal roofing, etc. -- all protected -- you can't collect these ghost town artifacts. We only saw one other person out there that day; a border patrol officer on foot.

This trail is on the Millville (ghost town) side of the San Pedro River. It was a mining town (Charleston was on the other side of the river, not open to the public).  Those are overburden piles and shored-up work areas. No buildings left, just foundations and the mining remnants.

One of the many glyphs we saw. I took LOTS of pictures! Some were right along the trail on large rocks and some you could see up on the side of the mountain but I couldn't climb up there to see them better.  Darn!

 

Also last week, we visited the Sonoita Winery south of Elgin & Sonoita.  Had a tasting and bought several bottles to take home.  It was a great experience!  The owner helped us and was so nice! we talked with her for quite a while and I learned a lot about their life.  They live over the winery (right side)  and to the side (white) is the production area. Home and business all in one! And the wine was/is delicious!

And here's the view from the front of the winery.  This is what we love about being here -- the wide open spaces.  The dark area you can see is the edge of their vineyard.  It was pretty extensive, much more than you can see in this picture, and though it looked dead, it's dormant this time of year.  Some wineries in the area (of which there are many) have babydoll sheep in their vineyards to keep the weeds down.  They're too short to reach the grapes!

 

Here's the gate into the Santa Cruz rodeo grounds in Sonoita. It's a neat little town!

This week we went to Ft. Huachuca, the army base here in SV, to visit the museum.  Although we'd been there before, I'm glad we went back because they changed lots of the exhibits and in this particular building, the old movie theater, they changed it completely. It now contains the history of the Army drone program. Ft. Huachuca houses U.S. Army intelligence and technology units. Also, it was interesting to go through the process of getting a temporary 30-day visitor's pass (only took 20 minutes). Now we can go back on base whenever we want to.

There's an old post cemetery on Ft. Hauchuca. Lots of interesting history here ...

We stopped at the Burger King on base and got some sandwiches. Went up to the top of reservoir hill for our lunch; this is the view of the base with the mountains in the distance.

Well, enough for now.  Just wanted you to know what we've been doing. I wish every one of you could be here for a day to just sit outdoors with me and soak up the sun! It's fabulous. I'll close with this picture, taken just after sunset. God is so good to me and I don't know why!