The weeks keep flying by and I find myself having a hard time keeping this blog up. I used to post daily – or nearly so. Nowadays, once a week is about it. That’s mostly due to our winter digs – we spend an extended period of time in San Diego followed by a long stint in Arizona.

Mesa, in central Arizona, is a great place to winter. When we lived here in a sticks-and-bricks house, we found many of the snowbirds to be a nuisance. Out-of-state drivers often had annoying habits on the road and the stores were often crowded compared to the number of people here from spring through fall. The snowbird season peaks in January-February-March, then begins to taper off in April. I guess we’re part of the snowbird crowd now.

One of the things we like about staying in east Mesa is the easy access to open country. We’re only a few miles from Usery Regional Park and the Tonto National Forest. It seems a little strange to be calling the desert landscape National Forest, but that’s the designation. The Bush Highway runs through the Tonto National Forest following the Salt River. It provides access to Saguaro Lake and miles of hiking, biking and horseback riding trails.

On Friday morning, I was up before the sun. Mike Hall came by at 8am and picked me up. We headed out Bush Highway to AZ87 and into the desert in his Toyota pickup. We spent the morning target shooting in the desert. It’s fun and a popular activity here. Getting out early to claim a good shooting area is always a good idea. We burned up ammo and plinked at his steel-plate targets for a few hours. I was back home by noon – I had a train-the-trainer pickleball session at 1pm.

On Saturday morning, Donna and I were up early again – I had an alarm set for 6:15am. We wanted to have ample time to hydrate and caffeinate before we competed in the Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort Valentine’s Pickleball Tournament. There were over 30 teams entered, split into two groups. Most of the teams were couples which made it interesting. We were in the early group which had 15 teams – 30 players total. We rolled through the round-robin matches and were undefeated after six games. We went into the playoff rounds along with two other teams, but our luck ran out on us and we finished in third place.

After the tournament we came home, cleaned up and had lunch. Then we headed out in Midget-San to Fountain Hills. There was a large car show there that ran until 3pm. It was a beautiful day out with blue skies and the temperature was in the low 70s. The drive out Bush Highway with the top down was very enjoyable. The car show was at the Fountain Park in Fountain Hills. I wrote a post about the fountain – you can read it here.

The area around the park was crowded and finding a parking place wasn’t easy. We managed to squeeze into a spot on the street about half a block east of the park. My interest in the hot rods and muscle cars has diminished lately. At the cars shows, I find myself more interested in the unusual and older cars. I learned about this show from a Facebook post by the Phoenix Lotus Club. I wanted to check out some of the old Lotus sports cars.

When we entered the park, we saw the scope of this show. Cars were displayed all the way around Fountain Lake. There were crowds of people, food vendors and cars everywhere. It was so packed in many places that it was hard to take photos – but I didn’t let that stop me.

They kept the fountain running at low-power throughout the show.

It turned out the Lotus Club was set up on the far west side of the park. We hiked past display after display and made a complete circle of the lake. There were also a few oddities on display. This is the first car show I can remember that had helicopters on display.

As we made our way to the west side of the lake, we began to see British Car Club displays.

The cars on display were mostly privately owned and driven to the park. The sheer number of valuable cars is a testament to the wealth in the area.

We found the Lotus Club and saw a few old Elans that were cool and also spoke to a couple of club members before we continued our hike around the lake. Past the Lotus area, we found scores of exotic cars. I mentioned the wealth – the countless Ferraris and Lamborghinis that showed up was mind boggling.

We left Fountain Hills around 3pm and drove down AZ87 to Gilbert Road – making a loop out of our route to and from Fountain Hills.

Sunday was another gorgeous day with the temperature in the mid-70s. It was a mostly lazy day for me. Donna never seems to slow down. She rode her bicycle over to Orangewood Shadows RV Resort to visit with our friends, Lowell and Debi Hartvikson. We met them several years ago when we stayed at Orangewood and Donna often hiked with them. Donna’s also keeping up with clarinet practice, tennis lessons, pickleball and hitting the gym here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort.

Last week, Donna prepared a dish that we really liked in the past but haven’t had in a while. It was coconut curry chicken. For some reason, it seemed to be lacking the curry kick we remembered. I don’t mean to be critical of the meal she prepared, but we both were puzzled by the relatively bland flavor. The ingredients were fresh and the recipe unchanged.

The great weather held up until yesterday afternoon. Rain moved into the area around 4pm. I came in from reading outside with a cigar about five minutes before it started raining. I made a marinade for another batch of jerky. I bought two pounds of pre-sliced top round beef at Winco. The meat was sliced about 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick across the grain and all I had to do was cut it into strips – and it was only $3.48/lb!

The rain continued off and on overnight but it’s dry this morning. We still have clouds and the expected high temperature today is only around 60 degrees. Things should warm up to the 70s again by Thursday. It seems like we’ve had working man’s weather – rain and cold Monday through Wednesday or Thursday, then warm, sunny weekends over the past few weeks.

*Just so you know, if you use this  link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!