“Everything waits to be noticed.”

June 16, 2016

This is the name of a song by Art Garfunkel. This is the theme of the short time we spent in Marana, AZ – the very first stop in our 3-month journey. We are now in Las Cruces, N.M.

We stayed three nights in Marana, about 30 minutes outside of Tucson. You will probably never spend even one night in this tiny little town. I never imagined I would. It was just as hot in Marana as in Phoenix. We stayed in a very basic RV Park, certainly not an RV resort. Little shade.

We arrived and set up on Sunday, June 12. Monday, June 13 was my 64th birthday. (Last year I spent my birthday in Madrid, Spain at a Flamenco show.) Monday  and Tuesday nights were spent in Tucson with friends. This year Peter and I spent my birthday evening   with a dear RC friend, Catherine. I couldn’t imagine a more lovely evening. Tuesday night was equally as memorable. We met Minnie at Sinbad’s, a small Arabic restaurant near U of A campus. Not only did we get to know Minnie better, we had authentic Arabic food. And, of particular interest was that they were celebrating Ramadan. We learned more about this Muslim tradition and met some very gracious and hospitable people.

Back to the theme of this blog. In Marana we reveled in the mundane and ordinary and not so ordinary. Tuesday on our walk around the RV park we spent some time with  a roadrunner. It was the first time I was so close to this iconic AZ bird. We had time to reflect on our time in the southern AZ desert. We got to notice everything, thus the theme of this first post.

Last thoughts for our short time in the AZ part of the beginning of our journey. It’s been a year from our pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. I can’t help but draw on some correlations from that journey to this southwestern U.S. journey. Of course the location and experience is different, but I hope to maintain the attitude of a peregrine (pilgrim). For me it was one of expectancy. Living in the present and looking forward to each new experience – big or small.

June Yvonne (JY)

Here we are are on our journey – so much planning and preparing – I thought it would never end so we are just happy to be on the road – Mad Max style.  Oh ya it’s going to be 119 in Phoenix this weekend and we are going to miss it (darn).  We are just getting the blog started so there is some work to do on the site so for now just bear with us.  So far I have spent a far amount of my time either doing nothing, reading or establishing a daily routine.  This is all about my “relaxation re-programming”.

The RV is working out very well and the improvements we have made and the preparing is paying off.  You have to have a plan when two people live in such close quarters.  I cook and clean one day and JY the next day.  We share the workload when we set up and break down camp.  We have great discussions in the truck while driving and “Trivial Pursuit” cards are always fun.  As many people know happiness takes work.  There are three of us in this marriage – me, JY and us – some days I want to do what’s good for me – some days she wants to do what’s good for her – on many days we do together what’s good for our marriage.  Happiness = Compromise.

We do have a mystery however and I am flummoxed about what is happening.  Two nights in a row I’ve set up the coffee pot with filter, coffee grounds and ten cups of water – set the timer for 7:00am and go to bed.  The problem for those two nights was that we heard the coffee pot start making coffee in the morning but when we finally got up there was no coffee.  There was no water in the reservoir, no coffee in the pot and the coffee grounds in the filter weren’t even wet – where did the water go.  I checked everywhere – still haven’t found it.

PRC  zzzz