The weather here is now changing drastically, with the day-time temps down into the mid-60's. As this follows some weeks of WELL above average temps for the time of year, this is welcome relief - although the locals are walking around all wrapped up, and shivering - they don't know what a winter is here! It does make it much easier doing all the work outside - and there's plenty to do. The land hasn't been mowed for at least ten years - so that's slow going with the mower running at max height, and slowest speed for the first pass.

The land has old fencing around three sides, which has to be renovated, and then the fourth side fenced from scratch. None of this is cheap - and isn't something that can be done too quickly.

Then I am looking forward to getting my shed, so that I can finally get all my tools out of the house and more readily available - and gain brownie points from the wife at the same time (fellas, you know what that is all about!).

But now is not the time to be sitting on a computer - work calls.

The end - and the beginning

Well, the house was moved on June 1st, and now, more than 4 months later, the contractor has finally finished his work. It's hard to believe that about 3 weeks work can take this long. Is this the end for us - no chance. Now we have to build a deck on this side of the house. We bought the deck way back in the spring with the expectation of building it during the summer. Oh well, perhaps we will collect the wood from the woodyard soon, and get on with the building work - so it's still going to look like a construction site around the house!

Apart from the house it has been quite busy subbing on the buses. There is one particular route that is a headache - largely because the regular driver doesn't bother to control the kids. It makes life very difficult when you only drive the bus one day a week, particularly when I expect good behaviour from any kids that I drive. A few days of verbal warnings didn't seem to do the trick, so I went for the write-ups to their principals. This seemed to have the desired effect - for the time being anyway. In this country it seems to be the norm to carry all ages of students on the buses (and I can understand why - but that's another story). Strangely, it's the young ones that are the biggest problem - they completely ignore the driver - but as I say, that is largely the fault of the regular driver.

A Home at LAST

Well, the house is in position, and the contractors have NEARLY finished - after 3 months, so they might manage to get all the shimming and trim finished sometime in the next month!!! Not bad for a job which should have been done and dusted in 3 weeks. The air conditioning has been connected up, so we can now live in the house, and start getting some order both inside and out. I have to say that whilst the work done by the concreting guy is really neat and tidy, he has to be the most untidy slob there ever was - his litter just left on the ground to blow around, the same with the empty cement sacks - not weighted down or thrown away. I guess we just have to bite the bullet and live with it!!!

Summer's heat is still with us, so we have sought out another 'cool' location, this time in the 'sky islands' surrounding the Turkey Creek caldera. This locale is known as Pinery Canyon, which whilst being fairly remote, has a number of primitive campgrounds. We stopped for lunch at one of them - amongst the tall pines. It's high, it's cool, and it's very pretty - sadly photos cannot do it justice. This whole area was formed when a volcano erupted thousands of years ago, followed by irregular erosion.

Well, we were going to have a fun day today, and had a few things in mind, when a brainwave had us changing things around. We live only about 1hr from Mt Graham which reaches some 12,000ft towards the sky. With temperatures by us at around 100 degrees, any respite is to be welcomed. So, we packed some food and plenty of liquid, dived into the truck and headed off for cooler places. The road goes pretty much to the top, but it's a long way uphill - some 29 miles. We stopped off at different campgrounds that we came across (just to assess whether we could / would bring our own caravan (RV) along one day. As we were going along, we were seeing signs for Riggs Lake, and sure enough, at the end of the road was a beautiful lake. It was so inviting that we got out the folding chairs and set them down beside the lake and ate our food. With a temperature of 71 degrees, it was extremely comfortable (the temperature had been 100 degrees at the bottom).

Even in a modern truck on good roads for at least two-thirds of the way, it is hard work to get up there, and yet we find that over 100 yrs ago there was quite a sizeable community existing on top of the mountain. They grew potatoes, worked the lumber, had sawmills, kept milk cows, and made cream. It would have been a very pleasant life during the hot summers, but the winter would have been a different story. At the end of March, my wife and I flew over Mt Graham whilst travelling from Dallas to Tucson, and we could clearly see an awful lot of snow still there even then, and if anything, it would have been harder still 100 yrs ago.

Still, we have found, and noted a very beautiful hot weather haven to which we hope to return to often.

Well, the good news for today is that the inspectors came and 'green tagged' the electric line into the house. This means that the local electric company will turn on the electric to us, which in turn means that the air conditioning guy can connect up the air conditioning - which given the nearly 100 degree heat will make us VERY happy.

Now it's just the gas and water to go..........

But, it's independence celebrations on Sunday, so no-one wants to work until Tuesday, so, we're waiting again!

The good news is that the monsoons are holding off - so there's no mud around to make everything messy.

Well, if nobody else is working, we've decided to take a relaxing day travelling the back-roads of this 'high desert' country, and enjoy the sights for the day.

Back again

Well, it's been a long time since my last post on here. Many things have happened in the mean time. We have bought 5 acres of land about 10 miles away, and we have just recently moved the house there. It's been in place for about 10 days now, and all of the work is nearly completed to connect up to the utilities. It has been a very frustrating couple of months trying to get all the paperwork done correctly, then getting the contractors moving. We had hoped to have the house moved during the last week of May, which would give us some 10 weeks to work on all the projects that we had lined up - oh well, we'll just have to deal with it!!

This whole idea of putting a house on wheels and moving it was completely new to me when I came to the US, but it seems a very common thing out here.

The good thing is that in August, the new school year is going to be a 4-day week, so I will have plenty of time to work on the 'honeydo' list.

I'm unsure what will happen driving-wise next year. Several drivers are retiring or departing, so I may end up doing more driving to cover the gaps - we shall see!

Long time since I have posted, what with Xmas and the New Year, and the fact that we have to find some land to buy. Anyway, last week-end was the one that I wait for during most of the year. The nearest town (about 30 miles away), and the one where I work has a big birding festival each year when lots of people come into town from all over the US. They have tours scheduled over three days, and this is where we come in. The local Chamber of Commerce hire in buses from the school where I work. Then all the driver's names go into a pot and are drawn to drive. This year I got a geology tour taking in some really beautiful country, and an early morning visit to see thousands of Sandhill Cranes taking off for there morning flight. This one involves picking up the passengers at 6am, so maybe I wasn't so worried when I got an e-mail to tell me that the organisers only wanted one bus instead of two.