When we returned from a hike on Friday, Jan. 6 we were pleased to see our neighbors the desert tortoises. The reason we named this site we’ve camped at before is because we met these two, probably the same, tortoises we saw 2 years ago. They were busy grazing on the sprouts growing in the wash between our campsite and the hill.

The male eventually wandered off down the wash, grazing between spurts of rather quick hiking.

While the female finally had her fill and hiked up the hill to the same hole she retired into when we saw her last.

For some reason I bake double chocolate biscotti only when we are out camping for an extended period of time. It is a great accompaniment to a beautiful sunrise viewed from our ‘deck’.

Rain fell in the desert in December creating conditions that allow us to enjoy the desert abloom with ocotillo flowers at the tips of the long branches that are covered in verdant leaves.

Happy New Year!! I decided to start the new year with a new head of hair. Yep, I went all GI Jane, Sinead O’Conner, Sandy Baynham (for those who really know me) and cut off all of my artificially colored hair. I want to know the true color and texture of  my hair. I’ve been coloring it for so long I don’t know what it really looks like.  And at least now I know I don’t have a misshapen head!

We left Hiwasse, Arkansas and our friends late afternoon on March 9. We were packed to the gills and feeling like the Beverly Hillbillies with the new golf cart loaded on the trailer and with various parts of the new garden cart screwed or stapped down to it. We headed slightly south and directly west to find good driving weather and turned north and west at Gallup, NM into Utah then Idaho and finally Oregon. It took us three long days and three short, restless nights to get ‘home’.

Our modern day Model T with a golf cart rather than 'grannies rocker'.

A loose horse crossed the road in front of us past Shiprock, NM on Navajo lands.

An interesting rock formation and scenery on the way towards Moab, Utah.

Near Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, an arch seen from the highway.

It'a a genuine Roadside Attraction!