Well it is winter here in Arizona, 30’s and 40’s at night and 60-75 day time. NO SNOW! YEA.

Last night we went outside and were surprised by this moving light in the sky, it was amazing. It turns out it was a SpaceX Launch from Las Angeles about 400 miles from our campground.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Today we visited the Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa AZ, the performance was wonderful experience and the pizza was very good. $8.00 each for a pizza buffet and an hour of the music.

Here is the description from their website.

 Organ Stop’s Wurlitzer theatre organ was built for the Denver Theatre and was installed in 1927. The organ was used regularly until the early 1930s. With the advent of the talking picture and the 1930s depression, the organ was rarely heard. It was silenced when a fire in the auditorium caused extensive damage to the organ’s relay.

In the theatre, the organ was a style 260, having a three-manual console and 15 ranks/sets of pipes. Organ Stop purchased the instrument in the early 1970s and undertook the mammoth task of rebuilding the instrument. Several additions were made to the instrument by acquiring parts from other ill-fated Wurlitzers. The resulting 23 rank organ was installed in our original facility in 1975.

The building’s design is expressly for the enjoyment of patrons, with the organ installed in four chambers at one end of the restaurant. Forty-three-foot ceilings provide unparalleled acoustics. The console is “presented” on an 8000-pound rotating hydraulic elevator. Many of the percussions (such as the xylophones, glockenspiels, drums, etc.) are installed in the dining room for greater audience appeal.

The enlargement and improvement of this instrument has been an ongoing project… In 1997, a larger four manual consoles were added to the instrument. The new console is an exact replica of a “Fox Special” French case, ornamented to match the famous Brooklyn Paramount Wurlitzer. This is the largest console type ever designed and built by Wurlitzer. Through the years, several rare sets of pipes have been added to the organ, including a massive set of 32′ wood diaphones (visible from the front of the building). As of today, the organ has nearly 6000 pipes. The massive quantities of wind required for operation are provided by four huge turbine blowers (visible from the outside of the building in the blower complex). The resulting instrument boasts 82 ranks, 17 tuned percussions and innumerable traps and effects.  It is not only the largest Wurlitzer theatre organ in the world, it’s the largest Theatre Pipe Organ of any type to ever be assembled!!!

We have been here in Eloy Arizona for a month now and are enjoying it. We are still getting oriented to the area and are camped next to friends who have been here for three seasons and have been helpful with tips and info on the area. It took a while to get used to camping in the desert without trees like the east. We are still organizing the new camper, Karen is reading a lot and doing some craft projects. I am just finishing a stained-glass window for one of our club members. The weather has been wonderful in the 80s and starting to get cooler in the 70s. We have been watching skydivers frequently and yesterday we saw a hot air balloon have jumpers and we watched the balloon land and take four more jumpers up, COOL.

Today we made our first sightseeing trip, from Eloy, and went to Tombstone Arizona, home of the OK Corral shoot-out and Boot Hill. We walked and shopped the town on wood sidewalks and dirt streets. There was a reenactment of the OK Corral and had lunch at Big Nose Kate’s, had a good meal and enjoyed the décor and entertainment. Our evaluation on Tombstone was that we were glad we went but not worth the 100-mile drive to get there. If you are in the area, it is worth a stop for a couple of hours. Everything has a cost to it and could be considered a tourist trap. We drove up to Boot Hill but did not pay the entrance fee to go in.

We have been enjoying the sunrise and sunsets and the area has been without rain for over 100 days. We have several more places we will be visiting. We have visited two churches and the second, Compass Christion Church (not Disciples of Christ) we will return to and it may become our church here. They did have communion this last Sunday and we were pleased with that.

Karen and I are in good health and are keeping up our daily walking. As of today, we have decided to return to Arizona next November to March and be in Ohio May to October.

We wish all or our friends a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Nice view of the super moon

Sunrise like this almost every day

Tombstone Arizona

OK Corral exhibit

The shoot-out reenactment

Our lunch stop was a neat experance and good food!

For our last week in Camp Verde we made another trip to Sedona and Oak Creek through the Red Rock area. We drove into some housing areas and could see why people chose this area to live. The views of the Red Rock are incredible. We made a stop at the Chapel of the Holy Cross and sat inside for a while and meditated, then headed into Sedona to walk the town again.

The rest of the week we finished organizing the new camper, made another trip to Goodwill to drop off my bike. I don’t feel comfortable riding alone as I tend to get light headed so it is a safety thing. We are walking together and trying to get in 8 to 10,000 steps a day on our Fitbits.

Chapel of the Holy Cross

These formations are named, on the right, Two Sisters and in the center Madonna and Child

This past week We did a lot of walking on a trail through a wooded area and along Clear Creek. The trail is a little over 1 mile and we will do it several times a day going in different directions and stopping at the creek/river to listen and watch the small rapids/waterfalls.

We visited three National Monuments, Montezuma Castle, Montezuma Well and Tuzigoot as well as a walk-through Jerome where we purchased a throw and pillow for our sofa.

Our favorite stop along our daily walk.

Montezuma Castle National Monument was occupied by the Southern Sinagua about 1125. It was a five- story apartment building with 20 rooms 100 feet above the valley.

Montezuma Well National Monument is a limestone sink still being fed by continually flowing springs It is somewhere between 55 and 65 plus feet deep.

We loved this little cactus growing on top of the ruin

Tuziggoot National Monument (Apache for “crooked water”) Rising 120 feet above the valley two stories in places and 87 ground floor rooms.

All three of these were small compared to places like Mesa Verde National Park but well worth the visit and it did not take long to walk the short trails and read the trail-side exhibits.

Jerome is an old historic town built on the side of a mountain. The narrow road switchbacks its way up the mountain and through the town. It is an artist community which made for an interesting walk.

Jerome across the valley from Tuziggoot

We bought this throw and pillow at one of the Jerome shops

This is the rug Karen bought in Waco, forgot to post earlier

This was a very interesting week as we visited the area around Sedona and Camp Verde. The temperatures during the day would be between 80 and 90 and nights 45 to 50. Arizona does not use daylight savings time so it starts to cool down about 5:30 and dusk at 6:00. We have been sitting outside before dinner, Karen with a glass of wine and me with a bottle of NA beer or a cup of coffee.

This is what retirement is all about for us.