What’s summer without road trips? Well, we mostly know the answer to that question now, don’t we? A summer without road trips is a summer at home. Luckily – there are quite a few acres here for us to roam around on. Sue is really the one that roams around though. We did take a short road trip last Saturday out to Naco and back, with a quick stop at Patagonia Lake, where they simply turned us around because even the day use area was full. I think there is a great deal of cabin fever going on right about now. Let’s talk about some other trips going on.

Sunday we took another trip to Oaks of the Wild West right here in Hereford. We’ve talked about Oaks and the owner, Gary Foss, a couple years ago in one of our posts. He is a small grower who tries to specialize in native plants and trees as well as near natives (from New Mexico, Texas, and California) that will thrive in our region. We went to him again because we received the final grant from the Monument Fire Tree Fund that was being administered by the Real Wishes Foundation in Sierra Vista. This fund was set up for the sole purpose of replanting in areas that were hardest hit by the Monument Fire in 2011. This property just happens to be right in that area. They needed to close our the Fund as it has been almost 10 years, and Sue and I agreed to find homes in our neighborhood for as many trees as we could get with the remaining funds. We came home with 30 trees and bushes! We picked up everything from Pinon Trees, to Arizona Black Walnut, to Desert Willow. Pecan trees for us, as well as some beautifully large leafed oak trees. We have homes for many of them around the neighborhood already. That was a good trip.

Tuesday, our favorite Handy Man, Trent, came back to fix the gate again. I broke it. I admit it. This time we took it off the fence, brought it up to the house so he didn’t have to string 100 foot of extension cord, so that he could get more power to his welder. Then we switched the north gate with the one he fixed, so the one we use all the time is wholly in tact and almost brand new. Works so great! We are immensely please that Trent was willing to take a little trip down from Bisbee and put us back aright.

Our last trip of the day is sort of a virtual trip. David was selling this drone for $25 at the shop the other day. I sent a photo to Sue and she said snatch it up! So we did. We thought, if we could figure it out well enough, we could take aerial photos for the blog… but since I still haven’t got my go-pro look-alike going, not sure how soon you should be expecting those. That’s be for a future update sometime in the next 6 months to a year. 🙂

Finally, while not exactly trip related, I wanted to share this little map with you. NRCD (Natural Resource Conservation District) shares this each month; it’s the state drought report. At this time, only 6% of the state is free from drought- one of those areas being Yuma, if you can believe that. Luckily, Hereford is in one of the small yellow zones that is labeled “abnormally dry”, so – not quite in a drought condition. (If you’re wondering where we are located, look for the square at very south east portion of the map; the little spat of yellow in the left hand section of the County is Sierra Vista/Hereford area.) Bottom line, the majority of our state is in moderate to severe drought conditions. This year’s monsoon season has been hotter and drier than usual, July being one of the worst on record. These conditions are expected to continue through this month. If you are the praying type of person, we’d ask that you’d send your requests for some relief in the form of wet stuff falling from the sky. We appreciate your support, your kind thoughts, and your prayers whenever you can spare them.

You know, we always say that you are welcome to visit… we do have some friends coming in October and, perhaps, my parents after wards… but there are many other visiting opportunities available. Let us know! Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!