Road Trip - days 12, 13, 14

Day12 (Tuesday) - Phoenix 

-  We spent the morning with my College friend (1961!) Stan Baltzo and his wife JoAnna. JoAnna has just had back surgery and was house bound, so Stan went to breakfast with us, we then dropped Nancy off to spend her day resting and shopping as Stan and I spent the entire rest of the day together, including dinner. We really got to catch up with each other and had a blast! Guess who forgot to take his camera...no pictures...SENIOR MOMENT!!!!!

Stan, I guess I need you guys to visit us in Oregon so I can get some pics.

Day 13 - Phoenix

When Nancy was very little her family would pack up and spend the winters in Mesa, AZ. She would attend school there, so we decided that it was a must on our trip to visit Mesa and try to find her landmarks...we had a pretty good lunch downtown and began our search.  Here is the school...

so she took up the pose she had in her 3rd (?) grade picture

 We then searched for the motel...the landmarks were a Dairy Queen and the Mormon Temple. We found the DQ, but it was not near the Mormon Temple, soooo, we had to buy a blizzard and found out the oldest DQ was on the other side of town AND was near the Mormon Temple! Here is what Nancy THINKS might be the motel...she did not want me to say it IS the one (but I think it is...it is the only one that old and right by the DQ...duhhh)

 And guess what...she says that this is definately the DQ. So...

 She had to make sure it tasted like it did then...yup.

 We headed back to our place, changed and went to (surprise...) Surprise, AZ to see our SA school chum, Jerry Dalke and his wife Julanne. They have a very nice home on a lake. They remodeled the entire place and did an AWESOME job.

 It was 106 degree's, but they, like almost everyone, have their own swimming pool and hot tub. What a life. As you see, I did remember the camera...aren't they a great couple!

 Julanne fixed a delicious dinner for us...

 We had a great visit, and headed back to our place.

                                                           Day 14 - Travel day.

 We left a very hot Phoenix and headed for our 10 hour drive to Santa Fe, NM. At one of our "bladder" stops, we saw a sign with an arrow pointing up the road..."Meteor Crater". So, curious as we are we went the 6 miles to see the crater..we had no idea it would be a mile in circumference!

At the bottom was an area where they had mined the earth for more evidence...

 Here is a close up of the camp...

and here is a meteorite...the biggest piece is in a museum in Chicago.

Here we found that the astronauts actually trained here...

I thought this "hole in the wall" was actually a picture, but no, it was just a HOLE IN THE WALL.

We ended the day at Santa Fe. Interesting downtown square where we ate our dinner

We'll do our exploring tomorrow, headed to the motel to "crash".  See you tomorrow!