March 11 & 12, 2005

March 11 & 12, 2005

Mesa, Phoenix, & Apache Junction, Arizona

DAYS 266 & 267

 

Friday ; Today was sunny and hot. Temperature in the mid-80's.

After morning coffee and socializing, the rally group left for the Landmark Restaurant in Phoenix. Joanne and I "car pooled" with Marcel and Louise. Louise's English is a bit weak, and she appreciates having Joanne around to converse in French with. The road sides are all abloom with blue, orange, red, and yellow wild flowers. The late brunch / early lunch at the Landmark was nice. A very nice salad bar / buffet. It was a teensy bit over priced, I thought, and most everybody in our group thought that the 18% gratuity built into our bills was a bit outrageous. Over lunch we chatted with a couple from Idaho, who belong to the Alberta Roamers Chapter 44 because it's the closest Escapee chapter to them. She was his third wife. He lost his first wife to cancer, after 25 years of marriage. He lost his second wife to cancer, after 7 years of marriage. Sheesh ! I hope his third wife outlasts him.

From the Landmark we headed to the America West Airlines Training Centre at Phoenix Sky Harbour International Airport. America West ( Air Traffic Control call sign "Cactus" ) is a regional air carrier based here in Phoenix, flying "hub and spoke" routes all over the southwest, as far north as British Columbia and Alberta, and as far south as Costa Rica. One of the members of the Alberta Roamers Chapter 44 has a son working for America West as a flight attendant, and he arranged for our group to be able to tour their pilot training centre, flight attendant training centre, systems and operations control centre ( flight planning and dispatch ), and emergency command centre. I found it very interesting, as did the other pilots in our group, of which there are quite a few, but Joanne was bored to tears. We drove back to Usery Mountain Park from Sky Harbour International during afternoon rush hour. I'm glad Marcel was driving and I could be just a passenger. Gee ... Montrealers drive the same no matter where they are !

We had a late "Happy Hour" when we got back to the campground. Joanne was one of the women who provided today's "Happy Hour" snacks. I taught Marcel and Louise 2 magic tricks, and they taught me some duo juggling. There's a number of different ways for two people to juggle together. I was able to marginally grasp a couple of the techniques. A new juggling technique is not the sort of activity that can be mastered in 5 or 10 minutes, even when one knows how to juggle. Marcel "tortured" a couple of women around a picnic table with my "magic genie bottle" routine, a trick I usually reserve for only young children. I didn't think that adults wouldn't "get it". Apparently I was wrong.

We had a light supper back at our trailer, then I went back to the group area about 7:00 to get the campfire started. I was tonight's campfire "host" again. After the campfire, one of the rally attendees brought out a telescope and we did some star gazing. I got to see Saturn and its seven moons.

 

Saturday ; Today was sunny and hotter. Temperatures in the high 80's.

I went to the group area fairly early this morning for coffee and toast. At 10:00 A.M. Joanne and I left for the 17th Annual Arizona Renaissance Festival & Artisan Marketplace, about an hour east of here at Apache Junction. The rest of the group left about 9:45. We were late this morning. We spent a long, hot day at the festival. The Arizona Renaissance Festival is a big event here, on each of eight weekends every February and March. The festival site is a huge venue. I would estimate it to be between 5 and 10 acres of parking lot, and an equal size of festival grounds. The theme is, of course, medieval times. The site has about 6 stages scattered throughout its grounds, with continuous entertainment at each stage, rotating every half hour. From stage area to stage area, are vendors, craftspeople, and artisans, all selling their wares. There's a variety of food and beverage booths, and children's carnival rides. The main arena stage has 3 performances a day of a jousting tournament. All entertainers, vendors, and employees are dressed in medieval costumes, as are a significant number of the visitors. Many of the local people attend this festival year after year, and are attired appropriately. Kind of like how those of us from St. Boniface dress up for the Festival du Voyageur every winter. The entertainers are comedians, jugglers, magicians, musicians, dancers, etc.. We attended a few comedy type shows, a magic show, an exhibition of tame, trained raptors such as falcons and hawks, and a ventriloquist act with his irreverent skeleton dummy named Ded Bob. We were surprised to see a magician with less magic skills than me, performing professionally. Marcel and Louise later told us they feltthe same about a juggling act they watched. The best show was a young husband and wife comedy team, performing as Ima Nutt and Mark Ease. We saw their 1:00 P.M show, and returned to their 4:00 P.M show which included their Border Collie, Bonehead. They had a gumball machine with a large lever. It was filled with dog biscuits. Whenever Bonehead performed as expected, he was allowed to run to the side of the stage and flick the lever, dispensing a biscuit to himself. Bo would like one of those !

We stopped at a Wal-Mart for a bit of grocery shopping on the way back to Usery Mountain. In the Wal-Mart parking lot, we bought some Girl Scout cookies. I referred to the little girls who were selling the cookies as Girl Guides, and their product as Girl Guide cookies. They looked at me as if I were from Mars. Down here they're called Girl Scouts. Talk about branding myself as a "foreigner" ! We got back to the trailer around 7:00 P.M., just at dark. We weren't hungry, so we headed over to the group area for an evening of musical entertainment, and a campfire.

I just returned from taking Bo for his bedtime walk. As we walked by a neighbouring motorhome, the 2 German Shepherds inside began to bark. That started a pack of coyotes howling, just a couple of hundred feet away in the desert. Needless to say, I walked Bo on a pretty short leash ! ! !

DSK