"On the First Part of the Journey"

We left our AZ home on Friday, April 19 for the trip back home. I had hoped to stay long enough to see our saguaro in bloom but that was not to be this year.

Our house is across a wash on a rutted, dirt road and yes, we have a barbed wire fence. I think I may have mentioned that we live in the country. It runs along the road and I suppose is there to deter trespassers...of whatever species they might be!

I'm posting these next two photos to show you two very different species of Prickly Pear Cactus. The first on is a Blind Prickly Pear and you can see that there appear to be no spines sticking out from the glochids (those reddish brown tufts). Don't be fooled by this one, there are many short barbed spines emanating from each tuft.

This next one is the most common; it's an Engelmann's Prickly Pear which you see everywhere. Notice that it has very long whitish spines making it much more obvious that you want to keep your distance.

There's not a lot to see on this section but even the most desolate stretches of highway can offer surprising sights...like these four dust devils dancing across the land in the distance.

My favorite part of this drive along I-10 in eastern Arizona is Texas Canyon. The rock formations there are awesome!

See that round rock above the car? I can never shoot it when we're traveling west and this time I was so excited and ready...then this car appeared in front of it...geez.

We spent the first night of this journey in Lordsburg, NM. A decent day's drive since we didn't leave home until about noon.

Saturday, April 20th was a good driving day, a long driving day so I was able to work on photos and a blog post as we drove through small towns with internet access. We left the I-10 at Las Cruces, NM driving HWY 70 well into Texas.

This is the dry-as-a-bone Rio Grande River in Las Cruces...one big sandbox!

The Organ Mountains overlooking Las Cruces.

Of course we stopped at White Sands National Monument for lunch. It's a favorite stop along this journey because it is such a unique natural landscape. If you follow me on FB, you've already seen these photos.

Before the pavement ends, driving into the park.

Yes, kids of all ages bring saucers or other flat items and go sledding down the huge dunes.

Rich and The Girls, of course.

A Soaptree Yucca in the foreground.

Dunes and sand pedestals with plants growing out of them.

Driving out we saw this professional photo shoot. I have no idea what it was for but, after seeing this, whenever I see models standing in the snow I'll wonder if it was really shot here on the white sands.

Continuing on through NM, this is Sierra Blanca Peak, northwest of Ruidoso, with an elevation of nearly 12,000 ft.. It is such a lovely sight, framed as it is by the pines.

As afternoon turned to evening, we saw deer...

...and pronghorns.

We stopped in Roswell, NM just long enough to pick up a few things at WalMart which was a first for us because we enjoy spending time there. It was nearly dark when we left Texico, NM and crossed into Farwell, TX with another 100 miles to go. By the time we got to the KOA in Amarillo, TX we were feeling every one of the 522 miles traveled that day. That's a pretty typical day's drive in a car, but that's one very long day in a motorhome!

Lovin' Life ~~ On the Journey

Riverwalk's Museum Reach

After driving around downtown San Antonio this morning to locate the best place to park on Friday, we went back to The Pearl, the site of the old Pearl Brewery. It is an amazing development!

We walked through a large building named Full Goods. Curious about the name, I just learned this online...Full Goods Warehouse, a 67,000 square foot mixed-use building, is one of the jewels of the Pearl Brewery Redevelopment project. The Pearl Brewery master plan, also designed by Lake|Flato Architects, transformed a 26-acre abandoned brewery site into a vibrant mixed-use development situated downtown along the San Antonio River. The Full Goods project is a modern re-telling and reflection of the 1974 building’s industrial past as a brewery warehouse (filled bottles = full goods). The building itself is two floors containing office and retail spaces connected by a series of catwalks.

Here are a few photos of this modern, industrial style building. I especially loved the huge fans and the light fixtures.

These doors are the entry to what appeared to be a conference area. Rich was fascinated with the door handles, they are car pushers. Car pushers were used to manually move rail cars along tracks in the rail yard...long ago, when men cost less than machines.

From there we walked along the newer Riverwalk Museum Reach section from The Pearl to the Museum of Art and back. What a lovely place to walk. Here's a taste of this beautiful area...

This is a Yellow Crowned Night Heron...we had not seen one of these before today.

Which brought us back to the Pearl where we had a delicious lunch outside at the cafe affiliated with the Culinary Institute of America.

After lunch I walked across the street to the Stable. This was the home of the horses used in the brewery operation for many years.

This is the lobby. It has been beautifully restored and can be rented for special occasions or events.

Walking back to the car, I got this peek at the Brewery from the cafe sidewalk.

This area is still under development but the buildings that have been completed are magnificent.

Lovin' Life ~~ Exploring New Areas in San Antonio

Brown Pelicans and a Great Blue Heron

This morning we decided that there was no reason to stay a second night in Panama City Beach since we awoke this morning under cold gray skies...have I mentioned that weather before? haha! We decided to move farther west and, after settling in again, drove over to Pensacola.

Today's blog photos are single topic. I'm not going to show you pictures of folks in parkas walking along the street that parallels the beach as we were driving out of town this morning. I'm not going to show you photos of the lovely beach communities we drove through, the pine forests and white sand beaches we passed, the rivers, the bays, the bridges, the fountains, the parks, the restaurant, or our meals.

What I am going to share this evening are the following photos of what has become a favorite bird of mine...the pelican. These were all taken at Palafox Pier in Pensacola. There was a man fishing nearby; the pelicans were just hanging out on the pier...hoping for an easy morsel I suspect. Enjoy...I certainly did!

A couple of times something would cause one or more to fidget, like you see above. Oh, you wanted to see more action shots?

In addition to these gorgeous pelicans, a stately Great Blue Heron was hanging out there. I was within a few feet of him too, until a young chocolate lab just couldn't resist chasing it, in spite of the training its owner had apparently felt pretty confident about...teehee. It flew several yards away but stayed on the edge of the pier, behind a fence.

It's always fascinating to watch such ungainly looking birds take off, fly, glide, dive, land.

Lovin' Life ~~ Watching Water Birds