February 2017
February has been a busy month.  My brother and sister in law were here for a week and our friends from Custer were here the next week.  We spent lots of time exploring.

Had to check out the old jail in Clifton....

Tried to leave Doug there......but

Ginny and Bill, our friends from Custer, spent a month exploring our route here in Arizona from last years Huffy Trails, plus they added a few spots we have never been too.  While they were here we went up to Tonto National Monument up by Superior, AZ.   There are several cliff dwellings up in this area, with one being open to the public. 

We had a beautiful day for exploring! 

On our way home we stopped in Globe, AZ to check out Besh Ba Gowah which is another type of settlement the early inhabitants lived in.  We all found it interesting that these early inhabitants were so good at building their dwellings and cities.  Not like todays builders whose buildings will not last hundreds of years.  These dwellings have been here a long time!

The locals have been telling us that with all this rain we have had this winter the spring flower show should be awesome.  Well it is starting!  Right now it is mostly the Desert Poppy blooming in all shades of yellow to orange.  But they are not the only ones blooming....so the couple weeks off we have been out traveling looking for spring blossoms.  That is in between laundry and grocery shopping.. 

I like the rock, see the face???Quit groaning!

Oh one of the things we have never seen or helped with before is the removal of cattails from the lake! 

The lady in charge of maintenance drives the machine into the cattails.  The cutting bars go down about 2 feet below the water and cut the cattail off.  The mud hens were going nuts eating the broken pieces.  They had no fear of the machine and all the activity! 

Next the cut cattails are pushed over to the shore.

 At the shoreline the guys grab the cattails with a backhoe and put them into the back of a truck and they haul them away.

Looks like a full load...of cattails...ahem....

The weather was a bit cooler and rainy for this area.  The lake here is very full!  Some of our winter waterfowl birds are already heading north, but more are arriving from their winter homes further south of us as they start heading north again too.  Well back to work tomorrow.  We work Friday through Monday.  Weekend crew.  The park has pretty much been full every night this month.  Time has been flying fast.  We have been here 3 months now and pretty soon some of our coworkers will be leaving and new ones arriving.  We are here until April 18th, understand Easter is crazy here!