ATVing on a very cool Arizona Day!

Our good friends the Cadden's from BC, (he worked at CPR with Doug) are in Mesa till the end of December and we have been wanting to take them out for an ATV ride. Our Alberta friends have gone home for the Christmas season so they lent us their ATV while they are gone. We planned to go for our ride this past Wednesday and it turned out to be one of the coolest days so far this year. We were supposed to head off first thing in the morning, but due to the cold, we decided to wait and go out after lunch. We met up with our other friends Ann & Trent and out we went about 1pm in the afternoon. It was still cold and I had 4 layers of clothes on and still wasn't completely warm! I know I'll get no sympathy from you people at home but it really was cool! We had just had 3 days where it had rained and Apache Junction received over 2 1/2 inches of rain. The most rain they have had in a long, long, time! As you will see in the pictures, it was muddy!

 

Elaine and I were riding in our ATV and as we have new tires with deep lugs, we were slinging mud like crazy and as we still don't have our new canvas top ready yet (Elaine and I kept thanking you Catherine for providing us with this experience), the mud was slinging from both the front and back tires and flying into the air and down through the top right on top of us, it was going down our necks, all down our backs. We were laughing so hard as there was nothing we could do about it!

We are still smiling so all is okay!

 For the life of me, I can't figure what my problem was when Doug took this picture because if looks could kill, I think we would be attending his funeral right now! From left is Elaine, Ann & myself

 That Doug and the camera, as we were following behind him at this time, he kept clicking that darn camera

 Ronnie sitting in our friend's ATV, Doug was probably visiting a P-tree!

 Part way through the ride, we noticed Doug;s back left tire was almost flat so we had a short stop to pump the tire up.

 We were all pretty muddy by then but having a great time. It was sunny and we had a beautiful blue sky and as long as the sun was high on the horizen, there was a bit of warmth to it

 It was amazing to actually drive through water in the washes!! In the 4 years we have been ATVing, we have never had water in the washes in December. There was a good 12 - 16 inches of moving water. Quite fun to us as it was so unique.

 The scenery is gorgeous as usual. We never get tired of it.

 You can see the weather was gorgeous even though cool

 That Doug and the darn camera

As you can see, there is a lot of water in this wash we are crossing

Our backs as we go around the corner

 We can't believe we are crossing another creek!

Another creek, more water but we're loving it!

 

Doug took a short video  of Elaine and I coming down a hill behind him and Ron

 Hard to believe there are flowers in the desert at this time of year!

 We took Ron and Elaine in to see the Native American corn grinding holes. These are a few hundred years old.

You can see how bundled up Elaine and I were. Here I thought I would layer on the clothes and by now expected I would be peeling them off - never happened! We had an excellent day and ride in the beautiful outdoors. We ended the day with all of us going out for an excellent dinner. Good day, great company!

This is the next day. Doug and I are sitting out on the patio at the back of our place. It was a blazing sunny day and we could see two army helicopters hovering low on the horizon just above the roof line.

The helicopter just hovered overhead in the open desert just beyond our community

Would have loved to have known what the heck those helicopters were doing but they certainly entertained us!