Alice & Deana Bring Rain (and Bob & Ken) To The Desert

With visions of sun, warmth and Cubs spring baseball, Alice Vandersteen, Deana Welch, Bob Jensen and Ken Reinhardt headed west to Arizona on March 16th (actually Deana headed east -- coming from Hawaii, but that's another story).

The next day (sunny and warm) they took in a Cubs - Giants game in Scottsdale (the Giants' park) where they cheered the Cubs on to victory.

On Saturday, they headed up Interstate 17 to visit Carolyn and me in Prescott. We were anxious to see everyone again. We gave thought on how to use the time to show everyone our new hometown. We considered hikes in the mountains or forests, kayaking in one of the lakes or site-seeing geologic landmarks in Yavapai County.


It hadn't rained in 149 days. In fact, we are in year 11 of a prolonged drought. Nearly all winter had been short sleeve weather. So guess what happened when everyone arrived? ... Well, that was a good guess but actually it snowed.

As Alice and crew drove up from Phoenix, clouds were rolling in from California bringing precipitation that on any other day would have been gratefully welcomed.

Despite the clouds, falling temperature and a complete change of plans, we had a great visit. It was good to see IEA friends again. We spent the day taking an abbreviated tour of Prescott and surrounding areas. We walked around the downtown area and visited a few of the art galleries.


(Alice bought a painting from our favorite local artist, Charles Huckeba.)


Ken was able to photograph a hummingbird feeding at a feeder on our deck in the snow!

That evening we capped the day with dinner at one of my favorite haunts, the Iron Springs Cafe. (We spent most of the evening extolling the virtues of retirement for Ken.)



The next day we all met up at Hohokam once again to see the Cubs play the Texas Rangers.


The rain followed us to Mesa and the Cubs lost but we followed Harry Caray's advice and had "fun at the ol' ballpark" anyway.



Ken took some great shots, getting pictures of Ron Santo and ...



... and Pat Hughes who were broadcasting the game that day.


As soon as the game was over, of course, the sun broke out and it was a beautiful late afternoon.


As were were taking the picture above, Ronnie Woo Woo walked by and was gracious enough to take a picture with us.


Cub fans need no explanation of who Ronnie is but for everyone else, he is the unoffical mascot of the Cubs, often heard yelling during games, "Cubs woo! Cubs woo! Cubs woo!"

The picture above has actually been doctored. This is the original. The guy on the right (who we didn't even know) jumped into the picture when he saw Ronnie. So, I took him out.

(I took another person out of the picture too. Can you find her?)


In this version, I put myself in so I could say I had my picture taken with Ronnie Woo Woo.







The visit with Alice, Deana, Bob and Ken was all too brief. We had a great time seeing them. We loved showing them a bit of our newly adopted state. We look forward to seeing them again and all of our other IEA friends.