Revisiting Familiar Places

One place that we always enjoyed visiting while here is the Outlet Mall in New River. Since we both still needed some things for the winter, yesterday was the day for that visit. It is so much easier and faster to get there now with the new highway, Loop 303, completed from just up the road from us to the I-17 just down the road from the Mall. We parked by the Food Court as we wanted to grab some lunch before walking around. We noticed the huge tree that we saw featured on the news the night before where they cut off most of the (lower) branches because it was too heavy to hoist into place:

The work crew was busy preparing the branches to insert back into the tree trunk to prepare it for decorating for Christmas on November 17:

We spent several hours walking around the Mall, shopping and stopping for some frozen yogurt. The strangest thing happened while watching the activity around the tree. A woman walked up to Josie and recognized her from working with her at Cactus Flower Florists back in 2001 or 2002. She actually recognized her voice, of all things.

Following our fun trip to the Mall, we decided to take an early evening trip to our pool at the Town Center here in Happy Trails. It is the main pool in the Resort and Josie felt like using the hot tub to help relieve some muscle strain from our workout at the fitness center in the morning and the walk around the mall in the afternoon. The hot tub felt great:

followed by a dip in the pool:

We were the only ones using the hot tub and pool at this hour and we noticed a huge party across the fairway in the back of one of the homes:

Maybe there weren't any people at the pool because they were all at this party - who knows. It is still a little early in the season though, so many more people will be coming into the Resort over the next several weeks.

There are no plans yet for today which is OK for us. It's nice not to have everything planned out for the day and is a welcomed change from a work schedule...