December '03 Newsletter
December '03 Newsletter |
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What an unusual fall and winter we are having here in Black Canyon City! The weather went from scorching to chilly in a day's time and we missed being able to have dinner on the back patio. Now here we are in December enjoying mid 70 degree days and hiking in shorts and tank tops! Christmas week promises temps close to 80 and we are enjoying it.
Our tiny community hosted its first annual Veteran's Day parade and fireworks show in November. Susan, along with her clown mom Bubblelee made her debut as Rosebud the clown in the parade. It was a great way to dispense with our leftover Halloween candy and both had a good time harassing the parade watchers. Traveling buddy Blue watched along with Bob's son Scott and wife Tennille, who came from Tucson to attend. The fireworks display timed perfectly with a lunar eclipse surpassed everyone's expectations. As if that wasn't enough a small subset of our javalina herd, including two wee babies visited at the same time!
Susan's older sister Joy and brother-in-law Kim visited for a few days in October. We enjoyed showing them around. We christened our new fire pit with them one evening and were surrounded by the entire javalina herd as we enjoyed the fire. Scott McCollough dropped in for an evening. We walked him around the historical site on the property the first day and then took him on one of our extended foothill hikes the next morning. He really enjoyed the washes and commented that they were scenically comparable to some of the areas we visit on the Colorado Plateau. We are hoping that Susan's brother Kev will pop in from Nevada within the next few months to visit. Susan is also expecting her high school buddies for a few days in March for a 50th birthday celebration.
Bob recently spent some time setting up a new and faster computer and scanner. Blue is thrilled to have our older Dell, a fine upgrade from her old Mac system. The walls of our home are rapidly filling with pictures from our travels that Bob has been printing. In the coming year we hope to scan and catalog a bunch of our slides and negatives from all of our wonderful trips. We came home from Charlotte's memorial with quite a number of prints from her walls to duplicate.
Susan bathed and clothed 43 naked Barbie's, 4 Ken's, and uncounted miscellaneous other dolls for Rio Vista's toy give away that is almost over for this holiday season. Thank you family, friends, and neighbors for helping round up the necessary clothing! Between donations from Susan's niece Leah and the 23 brand new outfits provided by a generous neighbor, she was able to make them all decent if not totally fashion conscious. Another generous neighbor mended a bag full of items that Susan couldn't mend.
Our holiday plans are quite simple again this year. We will spend our traditional Christmas Eve with our dear friends the Coles back in the old neighborhood. Christmas Day may well be a day of lazing around eating pb&j sandwiches. Susan was planning to bake her traditional gingerbread cookies this week, along with an assortment of holiday breads to distribute to her meals-on-wheels friends. Since we travel frequently, she is only able to volunteer as a relief driver but is often called on an emergency basis when we are in town. Three of her dozen or so deliveries are to people in their early 90's who are still living independently in their own homes. She has yet to send her Christmas letters with less than a week to go, so anything could happen or not happen.
Be reminded that the season for applying for '04 permits is here! Get your permits in! We want to run the Middle Fork next year!
We currently have only one non-rafting trip planned for 2004. The September newsletter introduced the Havasupai Basecamp for next April and it was immediately heavily oversubscribed. The February trip we had planned to the Florida Everglades had to be cancelled because of insufficient interest. When Susan and I did a trip there in January last year we thought the unique Everglades environment would be a popular winter get away. This fall thirty people expressed interest in the trip but much to our surprise only five people signed up. And then the Islamic bombing began in downtown Istanbul and the US government recommended that American citizens not travel in Turkey. Recognizing that few of us are into being blown up we pushed that plan out of our minds as well. The basecamp popularity seems to indicate people are planning on staying closer to home this year, we only wish that had included a spring Florida trip.
In June we plan to spend most of the month boating rivers in Idaho. Our preference is to raft the Middle Fork for a week in the early part of the month followed by another weeklong trip down the Main Salmon. The key missing item in these plans for a group trip is a permit. If you want to go boating on a group trip with us this year, please help with the permit situation by entering the lottery. If no one is successful in drawing a launch date, we will be joining other people's trips or hanging out at the put-in as we have in past years hoping to make some new friends by joining their trip.
Further out the two of us are planning a September scouting trip to Italy. We expect to begin in northern Italy and venture south as the fall cool down occurs. We'll be collecting data for a future group trip there.
If you need more specific information on any trip we have planned, please contact us. We always generate a trip description with itineraries and all of the information one would need to help make a travel decision.
Over 90% of the people who travel with us frequently have email so our newsletters are only placed on this web site. Usually we don't include trip information in the newsletters (upcoming trip dates, expected costs, planning information, etc.). This information is generally emailed to our regular traveling companions first. If you haven't traveled with us you must completely fill out our emailing application online and satisfy us that you have the necessary physical conditioning and experience to join a self-sufficient trip before we will email this information to you. Having a mutual friend is very helpful in making that kind of determination.
To be considered for inclusion on one of our trips we must receive the required deposit and a completed Q/AR form. You are not officially on the trip until that happens. If you are thinking of joining one of our trips and haven’t done this, do it now. If a trip is popular enough to require a waitlist, we will use five criteria to determine who will go. Initial preference will be given to those who have a current mailing application on file, have paid any required trip deposit, and have promptly returned the necessary Q/AR. If this isn't sufficient, we then compare trip deposit dates and lastly Q/AR postmark dates.
Best of luck in your 2004 adventures, whatever they are, and wherever they may be. We hope you can join a trip next year so we can spend some time traveling with you.
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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Susan & Bob |
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Updated on Thursday, December 8, 2006 @ 4:30 MST © 1995-2006 by Robert R. Marley |
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