Sunday was a full day, full of nephews, four of them. One, a twin, turned 60 in January and his brother a senior by two years, share a house in Tempe, on the eastern edge of Phoenix. They are Gail’s sister’s sons. The other two are my sister’s sons, one a residence of Cave Creek on the northwest edge of Phoenix and the other a Wisconsinian (Is that a correct label?).
Their jobs or occupations were vastly different and interesting. Steve, who moved to Alaska and lived with us for a while, the eldest, inspects houses for buyers hoping to buy. He has had a life of extreme lows and highs but is doing awesome with a daughter in Juneau studying to be a marine biologist and the older about to graduate from Johns Hopkins in nursing. His 60-year old brother, Cameron, works for a company that creates gases such as oxygen for hospitals and hydrogen for vehicles. He’s involved in the design and installation of the equipment that uses these gases.
On my side of the family Craig designs the inflatable escape ramps for airplanes. Yes, you read that correctly, the inflatable ramps of airplanes. Intriguing! His wife suffers from continuously uncontrollable pain and therefore no longer works as a psychiatric. Craig’s younger brother, Kevin, gathers wind data for companies which install wind chargers. He’s visiting his mother, my sister Ruth, during a break from a job in New Mexico.
Saturday evening after leaving our friends and a fresh welcomed shower in Patagonia, Arizona, we found the nephews' house and stacked a claim on their driveway for a night of land electricity. Steve took us to an Italian dinner that evening and Cameron treated us to breakfast at US Eggs. The afternoon meal at The Creek was shared with the other nephews, a spouse, a mother and a mother-in-law. What a delight to see and meet them all.
That evening we parked on a gravel pad just off an Interstate exit along with about half dozen other overnighters. One knocked on our window almost as soon as we stopped looking for help with his RV battery which quit working. After he explained the problem I knew the issue was way over my head. A friendly chap he was.
On the way to Flagstaff we stopped by to visit with some cliff dwellers but no one has been home for several hundred years. I wonder how many children fell off the edges.
Just before Monday noon we arrived where the pavement ends and the trail to my sister’s home starts. She met us there and we discussed whether the van could make the drive. The worst was the first one hundred feet, a rutted steep twisty stretch. The next 25 minutes were level but the best and well defined wash board trail we have every driven. The last 10 minutes consisted of extreme S-turns which we had to exaggerate to avoid the close juniper trees most of which were dead for lack of rain. She has ruins of a Native American village on her property.
After swapping stories and laughs, eating fish tacos made by her son and playing a couple rounds of the game Clue – the original one that we played on as children 60 years ago – we sauntered off and crept back out to the pavement and down the road to a rest area for a early stop and rest.
Charlie’s doing awesome although today was tough because he had to stay outside in some miserable wind. BYW, we also shared a hug and a fresh drink of water with Shirley and Jim Morehouse a couple days ago.
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