Great Horned Owls and more

Daddy owl taking an afternoon snooze

Barr Lake State Park has one Bald Eagle nest and five Great Horned Owl nests around the park reinforcing it's role as a wildlife sanctuary. Sadly, this years eaglets did not survive the extreme cold earlier in April.  On Sunday I walked the path all the way around the lake, putting on 9.5 miles, in a quest to see and get pictures of all the owl nests. During nesting season the rule is to stay on the path and some of the nests are too far off the trail to get good pictures with the meager zoom on my camera.  Fortunately two of the nests are real close to the trail for good viewing.  I hope you enjoy the pictures.

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Can you see two babies? 

Juvenile eagle - white coloring
hasn't come in

Mom keeping watch with babies
in nest

         

                                                      

Osprey nest

Red-tailed hawk nest

Back in Colorado

April 23 snow welcomes us back

Here we are back outside Denver at Barr Lake State Park.  It is fun to see things in the spring as new life is budding versus being dried out and winding down last fall.  We were promptly welcomed with 3 inches of snow and night time lows around 20. Coming back up here in April may be nixed in future years. We haven't been here long enough to get a lot of pictures but I plan on walking all the way around the lake on Sunday.  There are several owl and hawk nests reported with babies so I hope to get some good pictures.  They think the baby eagles may not have survived the extreme cold that hit a couple weeks ago.  I hope the other babies survived last nights cold and snow.  I'll get pictures posted as I get ones that are worthy.

Barr Lake now has water.
Rockies in the distance.

This pheasant hangs out around us
all the time.

Tucson

We spent the last month in Tucson.  It was pretty low key but active as we visited the Desert Museum, hiked in Sabino Canyon and Tucson Mountain Park, had maintenance done on the motorhome, and visited with family and friends.  I feel kind of bad for the non-Arizona readers that I didn't take pictures to include here.  We've been to these places before so it didn't dawn on me to take the camera along.  I'll just say that if you are in the Tucson area, you need to go to the Desert Museum, Sabino Canyon and Saguaro National Monument.  They are a must see.

We are now on a brief stay in the Phoenix area again for annual doctor appointments and so I can fly to the Frozen Four.  We will start heading north next week to spend a few weeks near Denver.

Lake Havasu City, AZ

We moved down to Lake Havasu City to spend a week checking out the area. We had a beautiful day that actually had a calm wind (unusual in this area) so we decided to go for a hike.  We went to Sara Park on the south side of the city and went for a 5 mile hike that went across BLM land all the way to the lake.  It was a great hike.

The only real attraction for Lake Havasu City is the London Bridge.  In case you don't know the story, the city of London (yes England) built a new bridge across the Thames River and decided to see if they could sell the old one. The Lake Havasu City founder Robert McCulloch placed the winning bid.  Each block was meticulously numbered as the bridge was disassembled. The blocks were shipped and hauled to Lake Havasu City where it was reassembled.  The bridge has become Arizona's second-biggest tourist attraction after the Grand Canyon.
Link to London Bridge info: http://www.golakehavasu.com/activities/more_to_do/london_bridge.aspx

Bullhead City AZ and Laughlin NV

After two months in the Phoenix area we moved to Bullhead City, Arizona which is on the Colorado River across from Laughlin, Nevada.  The desert here (Mohave) has much less vegetation than the desert around Phoenix (Sonoran) which makes it much less appealing here.

We made it to a casino where we played video poker and slots for about two hours and broke even so that proved to be cheap entertainment.  We might go back this weekend and see if we can make a little money.

We went to Oatman, AZ to check out the old mining town with "wild" burros roaming the streets.  With all of the petting and attention the burros get from people it is hard to call them wild.  The town is very small and crowded with tourists, so much so that it was hard to move around and see well.  Overall we weren't overly impressed.  Here is a link to the town website:  http://www.welcometooatman.com/

Our first 5 days were sunny but crazy windy (constant 20-25 mph).  It was very unpleasant to be outside at all.  When the wind finally broke on Saturday we went for a hike in Grapevine Canyon. It was a fairly short walk but the boulders were neat and there were lots of petroglyphs.  It was a nice walk.  We wanted more exercise so we went back to Laughlin and walked on a trail along the river.  It was a nice, paved trail and very enjoyable.

There doesn't seem to be much else to do around here.  It's a great place to be if you are into gambling, or have a boat, otherwise it is low on activities.

2012 year in review

I figure everyone else is doing a year in review so I might as well do one too.  We had an awesome year traveling and experiencing new places.  We weathered a lot of rain and a couple of bad storms but when it really mattered, we had some great weather too.

We started 2012 in southern Alabama after we flew out of Mobile to Denver for Christmas.  We spent the rest of the winter in Florida beginning with a week at Disney World Fort Wilderness Campground. We visited the Everglades, the Keys, Tiger's spring training in Lakeland, and finally St. Augustine as we started our trip north.

Some favorite highlights as we went up the coast are:
- Outer Banks and Kitty Hawk, NC
- Lewes, DE
- Hyde Park, NY
- Mystic, CT
- Boston, MA
- Acadia National Park, ME
- Fundy Provincial Park and Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick, Canada
- White Mountains, NH
- Coolidge Homestead and Weston, VT
- Hall of Fame month (baseball, hockey, football, rock and roll)
- Niagara Falls and Erie Canal near Buffalo, NY
- Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

An extra bonus of this traveling is being able to visit friends and family that we haven't seen in a long time.

Here is an updated map with our travel route over the last 2.5 years.

December update

View along Broken Arrow Trail
It is surreal

We spent two weeks near Camp Verde which worked great to revisit Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well after many years.  We also did some hiking near Sedona which is always amazing.  We met a young man from Denmark (the country) on one of the trails and he was just standing there looking at the view in awe.  He summed it up by calling it surreal. I'll share that view here because he was correct.

We are now back down near Fountain Hills at a RV resort that we love.  It is great to see the eagles and roadrunners, listen to the coyotes at night and take long walks in the desert and around Fountain park. We are looking forward to spending Christmas with Alex and visiting friends over the next month.  In summary, we are enjoying our time back in the Valley of the Sun.

Montezuma Castle

Montezuma Well