April 13 2008

Dan wrote:

April 13 2008

I took this picture to cry over my stolen generator.

The night after we had the generator stolen I didn’t sleep very well at all in part because it was too hot and in part because every time there was a noise I found myself wondering if my propane tanks or spare tire were going to go missing.  The next night we found a wonderful little county park about 20 miles south of Maricopa that allowed free camping.  There were only a couple of other trailers in the area and it was totally quite.  We were able to open all of the windows and doors to get a nice breeze through.  The desert nights with the saguaro were simply amazing.  The sky was simply full of stars.  Places like that touch a special part of my soul.  I was also pleased to find the park road made a wonderful jogging trail.  I am sure the county park will be a standard stop for us on our future visits to Jen.

We really enjoyed camping in the desert.  The nights were simply amazing with all of the stars out.

The visit with Jennifer and Wade was a lot of fun.  They had an extra room in which I was able to setup an office and work on game development.  I was able to get enough of my game completed to be pretty excited about it.

During the week we were able to find an amazing sale on the same model of generator that was stolen.  The normal price of the generator is $350 but they were on sale with a $150 rebate to make the net cost $200.  Not as great a price as the pond scum that swiped my last one got but much better than the $550 price tag I saw on the same model at a Kragens on my way south.  It is very nice to have a remote source of electricity again.

We drove into town Thursday night to camp at an RV park in town.  We ran into a couple of issues with it.  First Microsoft Streets and trips was somehow wrong by about 15 miles on its location so we got to do a little extra in town driving with the trailer.  The second was sewer hookups at the park were for permanently parked trailers so they didn’t interface with my equipment.

Our reason for being in town was to go to the Arizona Science Center.  We missed a couple of turns on our way to the science center but were still able to find it in a reasonable manner.  We were a bit befuddled however when we tried to park at the garage we parked at the last time only to find that with the bike on the top of the Suburban we were too tall for the garage.  The attendant told us of another garage close by which we quickly found and noted a sign about the garage being closed during the 9th inning of the Diamond Backs game to get the fireworks ready.  It didn’t take a degree in logic to figure out from the information on the sign that there was a baseball game with fireworks taking place that night.  With the parking already paid for we decided to add the game to the day's agenda.

The museum was excellent.  There were lots of displays including an open heart surgery display which was a projection of the surgery onto a mannequin patient.  There were also different 15 minute lecture and demonstration sessions through out the day.  The ones we made it to were, extracting DNA from a strawberry, combustion (how and why things burn), dissection of a cow eyeball and finally a demonstration about the states of matter centered on liquid nitrogen.  The last demonstration was far and away my favorite.  They ended the demonstration by blowing up 2 liter bottles to launch a trash can.

We learned how to extract DNA from a strawberry.

Ty examines a very large model of skin.

The house building display was probably the kids' favorite. They were excited when I told them I might let them do some plumbing for me some day.

Natalyn and Dallin play a communication game.

We were pleased to find that there were $6 dollar tickets to the game.  We were extra pleased to find that we got free t-shirts at the game.  We were extra extra pleased to see the Diamond Backs score 8 runs which meant that we got free chulupas from Taco Bell.  Davey especially enjoyed the fireworks after home runs were hit.  Ty and I kept cheering for a “pool ball”.  Part of the spectator area in the right field section actually has a swimming pool from which fans can watch the game.  Ty and I thought it would be a really cool splash to see a ball go in the pool.  We were excited and then disappointed when the short stop doubled hitting the wall just 2 feet under the top of the wall.  For a while it looked like we really were going to get the “pool ball” we were yelling for.

We were happy to get free T-Shirts

It was fun to see my first major league game.

We enjoyed fireworks after each of the 3 homeruns hit and a big show after the game.

Friday was tied up with errands.  Our second Suburban failed its emission test so we decided to drive them both to Flagstaff.  We are hoping we can get the Suburban sold here in Flagstaff.  It feels a little strange to be back at the scene of last year’s accident but other than that we are really enjoying ourselves.  It is very nice to be near pine trees again.

We went to the 1:00 session of church with the Lake Mary Ward.  The people were very friendly and it was interesting to talk with them.