Parks 1 - Zion Canyon National Park

I'm back!  Vacation was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!  I was going through my pictures and my friend's pictures and I realized I have so many pictures I want to share that I cannot possibly do it in one post.  I decided to do a post for each park instead.   That means I won't be talking about the new house for a while - which is probably all to the good.

The first park we always go to is Zion Canyon National Park, so I'll talk about Zion first.  Zion is in the southwest corner of Utah so it's usually hot and this year was no exception.  One of my absolute favorite hikes is in Zion though and it's become something of a tradition to go to Zion first and start out with the  Angel's Landing hike.  This year that hike almost kicked my ass, but I went into this vacation tired and stressed, so I shouldn't be surprised.  Luckily, I'm coming out of it rested and only minimally stressed, so that's an improvement.

Anyway, Angel's Landing is one of my favorite hikes because the last half mile is more of a climb or what I call a 'scramble' than it is a hike.  There are steep drops and chains set in the rocks to help you get up in places.  It's great fun although it takes some energy.  I nearly didn't have enough this year.  I think I'll try to be a little less tired going into this vacation in the future.  Anyway, the first picture is taken near the start of the point where you begin the scramble, looking up toward Angel's Landing itself, with me crossing one of the narrower points of the trail which has significant drops on both sides.  The second picture is looking back down on that narrow ridge from further up the trail.  It's just a great hike, but you definitely need to be okay with heights to do it.

Once you get to the top you're greeted by multiple small rodents.  This little guy is one of the chipmunks, but there are also rock squirrels up there.  All of them have become very used to people, especially in places like Angel's Landing, which is a popular place for people to go.  Actually, come to think of it, the parks were all very full of people this year.  Last year we went a little later and had more places to ourselves - including being first up on Angel's Landing - being the first to reach the top.  This year we were about the fourth or fifth group to get to the top, and it stayed busy with people up there.  

The view from the top is amazing in both directions.  This picture is looking down canyon and you can see we had some clouds.  We had rain in Zion one day this year, but even with that helping, it was miserably hot.   We pulled out all of our beat-the-heat tricks, including shopping for long periods of time, eating inside in restaurants, and driving up to Checkerboard Mesa, pulling out at all the pullouts to stop and take pictures.   The drive to Checkerboard Mesa and back can last around 2 hours if we take our time, and that's 2 hours in an air-conditioned car.   My friend and I have actually seen bighorn sheep on this drive on two occasions over the years and this year we got a real treat.  Not only did we see a small flock of sheep again, but my friend got a video of them, including two of the rams hitting head on - with a sound like a cannon shot!  It's an amazing piece of video.  This picture is of one of the rams and one female.  

Other wildlife we saw in Zion besides the  bighorns and chipmunks and the ubiquitous lizards included tiny toads along the trail where it runs by the river, which I've seen in Zion before but not on the Angel's Landing hike.  We also saw a white rock squirrel near our campsite, but it was camera shy.  The pictures I got were not good.   And of course we saw lots of little bats at sunset and sunup.   I'm not good enough to get those on camera either.   

So we arrived in Zion on Sunday, set up camp and did shopping, hiked Angel's Landing on Monday and did more shopping and touristy driving, and then broke camp on Tuesday and went to Bryce Canyon National Park.  From Zion we begin working our way back north and east across the state and Bryce comes next so Bryce will be the subject of my next post.  See ya.

Still moving in!!

Geez!  Yes, I had forgotten how much STUFF a person can accumulate in 11 years.  That would be a LOT!  I'm convinced that that's generally why people don't move often.  What a pain.  I'm leaving for vacation in less than a week and I still am not fully unpacked and situated.  Still, I'm slowly making progress.

Time for a few pictures of the new place I think.  This first one is right after they finished painting, when the house was still empty.  This is a view of the second living area, looking out into the  back yard.  I should mention that the wood floors here are not yet replaced.  The flooring people and I decided that waiting until after I'm back from vacation worked better for all concerned.  It also gives the cat-kids a little more time to get used to the place,

Addy and Zoe are adapting finally.  This second picture is of Zoe in her favorite place when I'm in the house - which is under the dining room table.  When I'm gone she still spends most of the time under the bed.  They are both eating and drinking fine again though.  They won't be happy with me leaving them for 2 weeks, but at least they pretty well accept that this is their house now.    Addy even goes outside in the backyard with me, although Zoe still runs when a door opens.  


In this picture you can see the new living room furniture.  I don't think I'm done buying new furniture yet, but the main living room is pretty well set.  I'm still re-arranging things in most of the house, and I have nothing up on walls yet.  No pictures, no small display cases, etc.  It's going to take me awhile to decide where I want things - both on the walls and elsewhere.  I hope I eventually stop deciding things should go somewhere other then where I originally put them.  I'm already having trouble remembering where I put things.  I need to stop deciding they should go somewhere else before I even remember where they are.


Among the many things I like about this house, I am really liking the location.  The amount of time I save in my commute and the lower stress from not being in traffic for so long makes it well worth the move.  It's just really nice.  Now if I can just get everyone to change my address, I'll be set.  I've called the City twice to get the address changed, and even though I asked my insurance guy to make this house my main house and put rental property insurance on my old house, they continue to send my bills and stuff to the old house.  Doesn't make sense does it?  That's what I thought.  I hope they have it straightened out now.


The aloe vera and peaches made the move well thanks to family transport.  I sent four of the seven peach seedlings to new homes with my sisters.  The three I still have and the aloe vera are really happy in this new back yard as you can see.  Not so much direct burning sun, but plenty of morning sun.  They seem to like it.


This last picture is one side of the kitchen before I began moving in.  Everything was so clean and spacious before the move started.  Now, as my friend says, there's a lot of debris scattered around.  Things I can't decide where to put; things that don't have a place to go yet - like figure for display cases that aren't hung yet; things that I need a new piece of furniture in order to put away.  There's quite a bit of that last group.  I left behind an old dresser, a desk and an old entertainment center (which I had quite a bit stored in!).  So all the stuff that was in those items has nowhere to go until I get new items.  So yup, it will be awhile before I'm settled.  I'm settled enough though to go on vacation though.  I'll be leaving next Saturday, so this blog will be quiet for the next little while.


See ya when I get back!

House update 3

Probably you're tired of hearing about the house, so, sorry about that.  I'm actually currently in Los Angeles at a convention, so I have a little house break going, but I thought I'd catch up on what's happening.  I figured I have a little time this afternoon, and when I get home I won't have time to blog again for awhile, trying to get settled into the new house.  And I still have no new house pics or freaked out cat pics.  Instead I opted for a hummingbird pic from last summer.

Okay.  Last time I posted I was expecting to move on July 5th.  Didn't happen.  The carpet people called and wanted to install carpet on the 5th.  I moved the moving date to the 7th to accommodate them.  On the 5th, they began and then discovered they had erred in ordering the carpet and did not have sufficient to finish the job!  Yup.  They left the master bedroom un-carpeted, and had to re-order more carpet.  I had left the cat-kids vet appointments for the 5th, so they spent July 5th at the vet and then the cats and I lived in the empty, semi-carpeted house for 2 days.  To say the cats were unhappy would be putting it VERY mildly.  I created a hiding place for them using a cot and quilt and they stayed there pretty much.  This house is bigger than my last one so they are struggling to adapt to it. 

Anyway, Saturday, the movers came and had me moved in just under 6 hours.  They were a really efficient and thorough group.  So that was nice.  I also had family from east Texas come over and help me by moving plants and fragile things.  Everything was moved in and stacked in boxes and piles by mid-afternoon.  There was a fair amount I couldn't unpack  because the carpet people had to move it when they came back to finish the job.  And there's still a fair amount not unpacked.  I'm hoping to achieve normalcy sometime this next year. 

The cats were beginning to adapt that week after the move - they at least had my bed to hide under, until Friday when the carpet people came back to finish.  The cats have been off their food since the move and I was just seeing some progress in returning to normal when the carpet people came on Friday and disrupted them again.  And on Saturday I left to come to LA for this meeting.  Poor babies.  I'll be glad to get home to them tomorrow and begin again to help them adapt.

Or start to adapt.  I hate to say it but next week I'm having the wood flooring replaced, so the poor cat-kids will be disrupted AGAIN!  I'm lucky cats generally have a relatively short memory, or they would never forgive me.   But I'll be there every day, not leaving them alone in a new house for five days, so I'm hoping they do better about it.  

That's the update.  I've had a good meeting, but am really ready to be coming home tomorrow. 

Later.

House Update 2

Again the picture in this post doesn't relate to the post at all.  These little guys kept us entertained last summer on vacation.  Hopefully by the next time I post I'll have pictures of the new house.

Let's see, where to start on the house update.  Well, the beginning might be considered to be the closing so I'll start there.  The closing happened on Tuesday, June 19th, but at 4:00 pm rather than 9:30 am.  The mortgage company finally got my loan approved and to the Title Company at 2:30, so they cut it kind of close.  Luckily, I had bugged them and the Title company enough on Monday that they gave me an estimated closing costs and I got a cashier's check for that amount.  Otherwise I couldn't have made it to an open bank before the closing, especially since even though they had gotten paperwork to the Title Company, they still hadn't gotten my final closing costs to me.


Anyway, the good news is I have a new house.  I somehow figured that once it was mine, things would calm down a little and I'd be less stressed.  In fact, the house is still consuming my life pretty much.  So much to do and to get done.  And I now am a firm believer that construction-type jobs never happen on an actual schedule. 


This week I've been having the entire interior painted and I had a plumber put in a new water heater.  Monday I had cable and internet connected.  Today and tomorrow, I'm having the three bathrooms and the laundry room re-tiled with ceramic tile.    So that's where I'll be tomorrow all day, baby-sitting tilers.   Actually, that's what I'm doing right at this moment, but I haven't been here all day.  A friend of mine has been sitting with them while my sister and I worked on getting my current house and garage packed.  I began at 5:40 am, she arrived at 6:50 am, and the two of us worked straight until 2:00 pm.  Can you say "exhausted"?  I'm going to sleep well tonight.  I just hope I can get out of bed tomorrow.  Packing is hard work!


I wish I could say that we got all the packing done.  We did make quite a significant dent in it.  And we did get the garage mostly packed.  We just gave out at 2:00-ish this afternoon.  I'll still be doing some frantic packing before moving day, which is July 5th.  And the poor cat-children. They don't know it yet but they'll be spending moving day at the vet. 


After my sister and I had all the packing we could take today we came up here and looked the house over, and I stayed while my sister and my friend went about their businesses.  The tilers are determined to get the tile in all four areas laid today so tomorrow they can grout, so they'll be here awhile yet.  That means I'll be here awhile yet.  And currently I have no working toilets in the house.   They're laying the third area now.   It's going to look GOOD when it's done.


Too bad the new carpet won't be installed before I move in.  It's going to be kind of a pain to leave everything on the wood floor areas until they can get the carpet installed.  Can't be helped though.  If the carpet doesn't get here, it doesn't get here.  


So that's the latest house update.  Everything is coming together, even if it's in a slightly more disjointed manner than I would have liked.   I'll be so happy to have it all done.  

House Update

It's been awhile since I blogged and after this weekend it will probably be longer, so I figured I'd better get one in.  First of all the pictures in this blog have nothing to do with the blog itself.  They're just pretty pictures my sister sent from her place last Fall when the aspens changed color and then the first snow on October 9th.  They are also serious wishful thinking because I just mowed my lawn and the temperature on my thermometer is 98 degrees.

Anyway, today's blog post is a house update.

The closing on the new house is Tuesday.  Three days away.  I'm finally feeling like it's actually going to happen, so I've started trying to schedule things.  I met with a painter to measure the house and talk about having the entire interior painted.   I've set up to have a carpet and tile installer come next week after the closing and measure for and schedule the carpet and tile.  I've picked out carpet and tile and have a pretty good idea about the paint.  Things are moving.

My real estate agent almost gave me heart failure yesterday.   She left a message on my cell phone (I was drinking margaritas and floating in my friend's pool.)  The message started: " I'm sorry to have to tell you . . ".  My heart just stopped right there.  I just knew she was going to say the seller had decided not to sell.  Instead, it was that the seller wanted to be out of the house by 5:00 pm Tuesday instead of being out by the closing Tuesday morning.  *heart starts back up*  Before I could call her, she called me again saying, never mind, they've decided they can be out at closing.   Good thing I was mellow from margaritas or I might not have survived that initial jolt.

So even though the mortgage company is STILL dragging their feet, the title company has the closing scheduled for Tuesday morning.  Hopefully the mortgage company will finish up their end by early enough on Monday to give me time to get a cashier's check.  I don't want to push the closing back.  I have a refrigerator being delivered to that house on Wednesday.

*grinning*  Yes, I went and bought a refrigerator/freezer this morning.  It's just a small one, for in the garage.  I've been meaning to get a garage refrigerator ever since my house refrigerator died that time and left me without one.  So I figured I'd get one and put it at the new house.  The move won't be for another couple of weeks after closing so it will be nice to have a way to keep things cold for the workman, and for me or whoever hangs out there with the workman until my big refrigerator gets moved.

Lord, there's so many details involved in moving.  I had forgotten.  And I haven't even really started packing, though possibly I should get serious about that now.  I have another project for today.  Call moving companies and get some quotes and schedule the move.  Right now, I'm hoping to move the days right after July 4th.  Sometime between Wednesday July 4th and Sunday July 8th.  From talking to the painters - they can be done by then.  Hopefully the flooring people can be done by then also.  

This week I also met with the owner of a lease management company about leasing my current house when I move out.   That meeting went very well, and I was very favorably impressed by him.  I'm no longer worried about leasing this house.  I told him I'd want to start leasing it August 1st, so that's another thing that's moving right along.  

Anyway, that's what going on with me these days.  You can see why I might not get around to blogging for the next little while.  See ya on the far side!   

June?

Wow.  That's hard to believe.  It's actually June.   2012 is speeding by at the speed of light.  

I don't have much to talk about today, but I figured I'd blog anyway.   I'm about as motivated today as the cat-kids.    I'm still waiting to hear from the mortgage company about the appraisal and loan.   I suspect they're not in a huge hurry since the closing date isn't until June 19th.   Still, I really wish they'd let me know something.


Last weekend I went browsing.   Not shopping, because I was looking for stuff for the new house.   I'm not going to actually buy anything until I know for sure I'm buying that house.   Buying things now felt like a good way to jinx everything and have it fall through.   But I did visit six furniture stores and the furniture departments in four department stores.   I didn't find anything that just said, yes! I need this for the new house, but I got a lot of ideas for how I can arrange furniture in there and what type of furniture I want in there.  


Besides the furniture browsing, I also went and made decisions about paint colors, carpet and tile.   I really do want to have some fix-up done before I move in, and although again I didn't buy anything, I figured it would save time later to have already decided on colors and styles.   So I spent a lot of time driving around and looking around and almost no time buying anything.  That's actually highly unusual for me since I love to buy stuff.   I did buy more packing boxes but that was all.


Nope, haven't done any more packing, but I'm ready to!   I now have a good stock of different size packing boxes, but again the only thing worse than packing them, would be unpacking them here if the house falls through.


So I guess I'm ready and poised to go forward.   Which is probably why I'm not being very patient about waiting to hear from the mortgage company.  


We got some rain this last week, so my lawn will need mowing soon.   It also cooled it off a bit.  We haven't officially hit 100 this year (yet!) but we've come darn close and May was DRY!!  This week's inch+ of rain was all we had in May, which is considerably below the monthly average for May.   Luckily we were very wet in December, January and February, so we're still above normal for this area for the year, but I really hate extended periods without rain.   Brown is not my favorite color when it comes to growing things.


I realized that if I don't sell this house, I'm going to have to come over here and maintain the yard - water and mow, etc.   Which means either buying another mower or lugging mine between the two houses.   And if it's a dry year, that also means coming over twice a week to water the yard.  Okay, I'm kind of slow, but I didn't think about it before.   Guess I need to see if a rental management company will also do that kind of thing, or make sure the renters do.


Anyway, I'll worry about that later.  That's about all I have to say today.   

Lake Tahoe

Amidst all the house stuff I've been dealing with lately, I had a board of directors (BOD) meeting last weekend.  The last one I went to, which was at the end of February, was in Palm Springs, and I never actually got to see Palm Springs.  We have a new CEO and we spent two 9-hour days in a hotel basement conference room doing strategic planning.  We worked HARD.  They did feed us well and we had receptions the three evenings, but we never saw the sun or Palm Springs.  So I wasn't that excited about going to Lake Tahoe for this BOD meeting because I figured I'd miss seeing Tahoe too.  But this first picture is the view out my hotel window.   The place is simply unbelievably beautiful.

On top of that, luckily we managed to finish mid-afternoon on Saturday and all took a sailboat cruise on Lake Tahoe. This little picture is the back end of the boat.  The cruise was awesome.  Beyond doubt, Lake Tahoe is some of the most beautiful country in the world.  As pretty as my pictures are, the reality is much more amazing.  And the water is so clear.  They say they measure it, and you can see a white dinner plate that's 70 feet deep in the water.  Really, I am not equal to the task of describing the place.

It was funny too.  I didn't take any warm clothes with me.  According to my agenda and schedule, I should have been outside exactly 5 minutes, walking across the street to the restaurant.  Who needs warm clothes for that?  But if the daily high temperature is 65, and you're going sailing out on a BIG lake with a pretty good wind - well let's just say, I knew it would be too cold for this Texas girl.  Luckily for us, the hotel gift shop was having an end-of-season sale on their hooded sweatshirts - two for $40.00.  So about 2/3rds of the BOD went in pairs and bought sweatshirts.  We were all so cute in our Lake Tahoe sweatshirts, but they were warm and make a nice souvenir of the trip. 

The boat we were on was a catamaran.  We weren't the only people on it because the thing was big enough to easily hold 50 people, but we made up the majority of the people on board.  The crew served us wine or beer or non-alcoholic drinks if you were so inclined.  And they served fruit and cheese and crackers.  And the sun was brilliant, the sky was clear blue, the lake was deeper blue, and the pines were a deep green.  Really just so lovely it almost makes your heart hurt to see it.

We looked at the houses along the shore when we were close enough to see them.  The local people say that a high end house at Lake Tahoe runs between $10 million and $100 million!  I cannot even imagine.  Below $1 million is considered low end.  It's pretty likely that I will not ever be owning a house there.  On the other hand 45 minutes away in Reno, the housing market has crashed about the worst of anywhere in the country.  A shuttle driver told me his friend bought a house there for about $800,000 at the height of the market and sold it after the crash for $350,000.  I can't imagine having to sell my house for less than half of what I paid for it.   

 Anyway it was a fun trip, and it was nice to get away from my own housing stuff, if only for a few days.