The homeless life!

Well, while not official, it’s darned close. We have an offer on 178 Wentworth Drive, our Vegas home for more than 20 years, and we have accepted it. Escrow has been opened. Now we await inspections and appraisals. Soon the worries will be over – at least those worries.

We met Robin’s sister Barb in San Diego to visit our son Nick, and to spend some time on the beach. Barb brought Robin’s niece Mallory so we had a pretty full coach for a week. Kona cooperated a bit – he didn’t tend to wake up before about 5:30 AM, and even slept in till 6 a couple days. Despite the early Kona alarm clock, Barb and Mallory had a great time. And we spent as much time with Nick and Val as they could stand.

San Diego was unseasonably chilly in February, at least the weeks we were there, so not a lot of beach time was had. We did, however, manage to get Kona to the dog beach several times, so he got to savor the stinking sand that Niko used to live for. He didn’t have the cojones to dip a paw in the water, but he had a great time.

We managed to get together with the Woman’s brother Kevin and his entire family. Kevin and Teri have relocated back to the Santa Barbara area with their daughter Hannah, and both their sons Will and Jake are living in LA. We split the difference and met them for lunch in San Clemente (Nixon hangout) and had a great time catching up.

We are now in Arizona visiting friends and checking out some of the quiet National Monuments – the ones managed by the BLM. Today we drove through Ironwood Forest National Monument, established by Bush Jr. in 2000. I swear there are more saguaro cactus here than in the Monument’s neighbor to the South, Saguaro National Park!

There are no services at all in the 130,000 acres of wilderness. The road is borderline 4WD accessible only – no visitor center – no marked hiking trails. Just acres upon acres of spectacular desert scenery. We are quite glad we spent the day roaming around this gem.

We were pretty sure we maybe weren’t going to even find any proof that we were actually in the Monument – just dirt road and Saguaro. However, we finally found this “No Hunting” sign that confirmed we were where we wanted to be.

Then we found it! The sign! Every Monument we have been to has a sign like this at its various entrances. We suspect, however, that there may only be one of these here. A 25 mile loop that you can only navigate at speeds of maybe 10 MPH means slow going.

Talk to you soon!