Home stretch . . .

Up at quarter past six, on the road two hours later. Not sure what to expect at home but Leslie tells me the snow dumped by a late winter storm is disappearing quickly. Most likely it has created some havoc with my spring bloomers and undoubtedly spelled doom for our peach crop.

Nor did the widespread storm do a whole lot for our last day down south - Saturday was gloomy with nearly constant rain, no sunshine at all, cold and windy. Today, though, we are blessed with lots of blue overhead and calm for our drive.

A last look at Mount Wrightson beyond surrounding communities shows it skirted in low clouds. A bit later, we see the entire desert floor seeming to smolder as the mist rises eerily out of the ground. North of Tucson, a break in the clouds reveals Mount Lemmon’s snow-covered summit.Despite the extreme drought in Arizona’s southland, I am happy to see the palo verde trees beginning to burst forth with their bountiful yellow-green blossoms. I’m still surprised to find how dry the winter has been here in sharp contrast to one our most moisture-laden seasons for a long time.

We filled our dreary Saturday with preparations for today’s departure and worked some more on our Hoppes genealogy before spending the afternoon and evening at Barb & Jim’s. They will head back to Michigan soon; we likely will not see them again soon so the time together was appreciated, as was the great supper Barb prepared.

We also set up for me to begin doing a bit of research on Barb’s Beebe ancestors. Now that I have begun doing genealogy research commercially, I find that I am even more excited to be home and back to “work”.

Seems that Rowdy knows we are heading home (I did tell him so, after all); he has plenty to say today about how long it’s taking, keeps coming up front to urge Chris to put the petal to the metal and get us there.

Our drive northward astounds us with the wintry scenes - snow-covered mountains everywhere we look: east of Phoenix even and near New River, notably non-snowy locales, and of course our region is also sporting whitewashed peaks.Final birds for the trip were Anna’s hummingbird and red-shafted northern flicker for a tally of 71 - not too shabby.

An appropriate end to this trip journal is a picture of Rowdy urging us forward as we approach home.