Summer's Almost Over!

School is almost ready to start, Fly Boy has finished his school shopping and is ready for his junior year of college, and Fly Boy will be leaving for Tennessee on Friday. Summer is almost over. I'll miss Fly Boy.

Since he's been here, we've had a lot of fun, done a lot of things and really had a great time spending time with Fly Boy. The latest adventure we had with Fly Boy was taking him (and Mike) to Flight Deck, a place where you can go fly in a jet simulator and have dog fights in an F-16. Mike and Fly Boy really had a blast doing this!

We drove over to Anaheim to this place that a guy that works with Mike told him about. He was supposed to come and fly too, but ended up having other things to do around his own house. At Flight Deck, they put you into flight suits, give a 15 minute briefing on how to fly the F-16 and then give you a 15 minute free flying period before the Dog Fighting begins. I took my camera and got several shots of Mike and Fly Boy having fun.

When everything was said and done, Fly Boy won the Dog Fighting with 28 kills and only being killed 12 times. Yea, Fly Boy!

It sure is going to be a lot quieter around here when he leaves.

Fender Guitar Museum

Since Fly Boy is visiting with us for a couple of weeks, I decided to take him over and check out the Fender Musuem in Corona. It was (and wasn't) anything like I thought it would be like! It was rather cool in the fact that they have all these Fender guitars from various rock n roll muscians, but it was MUCH smaller than I had expected it to be!

It's a two story building, but the downstairs is where the museum is located. There is a fairly large lobby and from there, you can visit the two rooms of exhibits. One room is for the Fender guitars and the second room is for a visiting exhibit showing the life of Johnny Cash. The upstairs is used for offices and rooms for music lessons which they teach there to many of the kids in Corona. I just guessed from passing by the building that it was "all" museum. It's not!

The first room that houses the Fender guitars is really interesting in that they have many guitars owned by rock n roll artists and photos, letters, and other memoribilia from that artist. They have the guitars of Jeff Beck, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, etc. Really pretty neat! They also have the "voice box" that Peter Frampton used in his "Frampton Comes Live" album! There were two of them- one is in the Cleveland Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and the second one is here in Corona. There is also an exhibit showing how the Fender guitars are made.

The second room is an exhibit showcasing the life of Johnny Cash. I was astonished with all the things that they had in this exhibit! They have the very first pair of custom made boots that Johnny Cash ever bought! The man had HUGE feet!! Size 13D! There were also hand written lyrics to some of his songs and several of his gold and platinum albums. The photos were very interesting and one showed him as a very young man with Elvis! For some reason, I never put those two together, but they were!

I thought I was taking Fly Boy to the museum because he has an interest in music... and a Fender (acoustic) guitar, but I think I probably enjoyed it as much (if not more) than he did! Very cool day trip!

Photos!

Today I received the photos that I had uploaded to Snapfish of my vacation trip... I uploaded several hundred and I'm ordering copies in two segments. I got the 4th of July family reunion photos and the Grand Canyon photos back today... all I can say about the Grand Canyon photos is that I will be looking at them for quite some time! They turned out wonderful!

The family reunion photos, I got duplicates so I could send a set of them to Mom and Dad. They wouldn't know what to do with a photo CD that I sent to all my siblings! At least this way, they can look and have photos made if they want them and I don't have to pay for several sets of photos! Love digital photos!!!

Anyway, just wanted to say I got some of my photos today!

Cross Country Trip

Vacation time has come and gone and all I can say is: "Wow- what a trip!"

I left CA a couple of days after my birthday and drove to Tennessee. It took me two and a half days straight driving to arrive there, but it was OK. I spent the 4th of July in Tennessee with the family and friends. My older sister got married on the 4th and my parents celebrated their 58th anniversary on the 4th... along with it being my Mom's birthday on the 4th! That night, we went to Manchester to watch the fireworks, but that day we had a family reunion down in Normandy.

It was great spending time with family and I enjoyed taking photos while I was there... and taking photos on the way up there... and when I left there! More on that later!

As far as we know (and that's not much) there wasn't a family get together on the 4th for Mike's family. We took Michael and Melissa out to visit Emmett, but he wasn't feeling very well.

I spent five hours mowing our 3 front acres at the house. It was hot as all get out, but it was really not very bad spending that time on the lawn mower... sort of a decompression chamber for all the antics family members were up too. Could it be any worse?!

OK, so the return trip from TN was absolutely awesome! Mike's aunt, Bettie and her friend, Katherine drove back to CA with me. It took us 6 days to get here, but we stopped and did the tourist thing along the way. We visited the Cowboy Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City; went to the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo; Palo Duro Canyon south of Amarillo; spent the night in a haunted hotel in Las Vegas... New Mexico; visited the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert in Arizona; spent three days/two nights at the Grand Canyon; and then made a run for Corona!

Once we reached CA, we did the typical tourist stuff here, too. We did a tour of "the Stars Homes" and saw the Hollywood sign; there was a movie premiere going on (G Force by Disney); and the beach. We planned on going to the San Diego Animal Park, but the weather didn't cooperate with us... it was in the triple digits here! We did manage to get the shopping in though!

Well, all for now.

Short Hiatus

I will be doing some other things for the next few weeks, so I won't have access to the internet. See you when I get back online!

Pioneertown & Joshua Tree National Park

Mike & I went out to Pioneertown for Father's Day and to get out of the house for a while. He's been working 7 days a week for a couple of weeks now and needed a break. He did go in to work on Father's Day morning, but only for a couple of hours. After leaving behind the city and getting into the rural areas, I noticed that the speed of the car reduced and he didn't look near as tense as when we left. I took that for a good sign.

As we approached the I-10 and Hwy 62 intersection, there were the giant wind mills that create electricity out of the wind power pushing them. They are awesome to see for the first time and we were suitable impressed with their size and the mountains in the background. We stopped and took pictures and listened to the wind mills as they rotated their "fins" above our heads. They were much noisier than I expected them to be!

On to Pioneertown. What a really cool old place! We were the only ones there for quite some time, then someothers showed up and joined in the exploration of this small town! What really surprised me was that some of these buildings are private homes! Go figure! There are live shows that are done the first and last Saturday of each month... we were there on neither of those Saturdays, so we got to explore without the "ambience" of the old west! There were horses to rent to ride, but I had on shorts and wasn't about to chap my legs just to go riding and get saddle sore on top of it!

Since Pioneertown didn't take near as long to explore as I thought it might, we decided that since we were within a couple of dozen miles of it, we would explore Joshua Tree National Park, too. I'm so glad we did! The National Parks in California were promoting the National Parks and we were able to get in free! They will be doing it again two more times thru the summer, but they didn't tell us the dates they planned on doing it.

The High Desert is something to see and these Joshua trees only grow in two places in the entire world... California and Utah, with most of them in California. We drove thru the park and found a rock outcrop that was HUGE! We stopped and walked around it and while out, I got attacked by a bush that had thorns! Son of a gun, but those things hurt! Tore up the upper left arm and I have several scabs there now! Anyway, onward we went! We saw chimpmunks and lizards, Scott's Orioles, wrens, and crows. We were both on the lookout for rattlesnakes, but none were to be found... Thank Goodness! The Joshua trees grow all around you and you can walk inbetween them and around them as you explore the rock outcrops. These are some really amazing looking trees to look at up close. They are so unusual looking at first glance you think that they are ugly, but after a bit of observing them, they are incredibly neat looking!

After wandering around Joshua Tree National Park for the better part of four hours, we decided we were both thirsty (already drank the water with us) and hungry, so we turned around and headed back for Joshua Tree (the town) to find something to eat! We stopped at Applebees and had a late lunch. Not only did the meal taste good, but it cured our grumpy attitudes! So for hints if you are planning a trip to the High Desert: take plenty of water and snacks with you!

Looking forward to my next Californian Adventure!

Coyotes and Lilies

Today I was out taking photographs and after finishing up at one park in the neighborhood, I wanted to stop at the bottom of the hill and take some photos of the lilies there that were a different color than the ones at the park. I'm so glad I stopped!

I was getting out of the truck with my camera when I noticed a movement in the flowers that I wanted to take photos of. All I could see was ears and thought that it was a German Shepherd puppy.... boy, was I wrong! It turned out to be a coyote!

Not sure of what to do at first, I watched her climb the rise behind the flower bed and stop at the top to look back down at me. We watched each other for a few minutes before we both decided that we weren't going to do each other any harm and we both proceeded to do what we were going to do.... she wandered over to a bush and laid down, I walked over to the flowers and took pictures. Of course I was keeping an eye on her, just as she was keeping an eye on me! I took several photos of her and the flowers.

After a while, she finally stood up and watched me for a few minutes then started to make her way down the hill towards the field on the other side of the road from us. She took her time, not starting to trot until she hit the pavement and trotted to the other side of the street. She ducked under the fence and with a last look towards me, she was gone.

Incredible!