Visiting Friends in Snowflake

With our early departure from Spring Training, we took advantage of the opportunity to visit friends in the small town of Snowflake, AZ. We left our home at around 9 AM yesterday, and arrived at Snowflake shortly after noon:

We always thought that the town was named after the white stuff, but discovered that the name is derived from two individuals, both Mormon, named Snow and Flake.

The drive was beautiful as we drove from Phoenix to Payson on the Beeline Highway which is a road that we haven't been on for many years. It was perfect timing as the wildflowers were in bloom, and we took these photos, all of which show the large population of saguaros:

We were pleasantly surprised as Caroline and George had prepared a huge meal for us for lunch when we arrived:

After stuffing ourselves with steak, baked potato, beans, asparagus and rolls, we went outside to chat:

They have lived in their home for about five years now. They moved to Snowflake from a small town called Trona which is close to Death Valley National Park in CA.

Their son, David, lives not far from them and we drove to his home which is on 2.5 acres and is where Caroline grows all her vegetables for canning. They also raised a cow and a pig there which occupies their freezer at this point.

We had a wonderful visit and enjoyed talking about our days working together at 49'er Ranch in CA in 2010. We left their home at 4:30 and arrived home close to 8 PM.

We are now set to line up our schedule to get everything done before we leave for Wyoming in mid May...

Settling In

We left the fifth wheel at about 8:20 yesterday morning as we drove to Out of Africa for Josie's first day on her new job. We were met at the gate by her new manager, Sydney (a woman) and off she went to work.

I went to the post office in Camp Verde to get our PO Box and to try to find a FedEx drop box to return Josie's replaced phone. As soon as I got to the door at the post office, I realized that I locked the keys in the Jeep. Oh, well. We got the PO Box, finally, and I asked the clerk if they had a taxi service in Camp Verde since I locked my keys in the car and have another set at the campground, about 5 miles away. He suggested AAA. We discontinued our AAA membership before we left Surprise and joined the Good Sam Emergency Road Service instead since they would cover the Fifth Wheel in addition to both vehicles, and for less money than AAA. This was a chance to try them out.

A gentleman showed up after about 40 minutes, with his flatbed trailer in tow, and he had a "kit" that he uses to sort of "break" into vehicles to retrieve keys. It looked liked he was going to do some damage to the door, so I suggested he stop the effort and just drive me to the campground, get the spare set of keys, and drive me back to the car. He agreed, and by 11 AM I was on the road again. I would rate the new service a C+ for the first time. The guy that showed up drove from Mayer, near Prescott. I was disappointed that the Good Sam service had to go all the way to Mayer, 40 minutes away, to find a person to respond to my service call. We'll see how they perform in the future.

I then drove to Cottonwood to run a few other errands and got home at about 2 PM to rearrange our reservations for the next four months. It turns out that we can stay 21 days at each of the parks, so we don't have to move as often. We now have reservations until the first of March which is as far out as we can make them.

Josie's first day was a success. She said the work is fun and the biggest thing to learn is how to react and respond to people's stories for obtaining discounts. An example is a woman approaches the Admissions window and states that her son is only three years old and he is nearly as tall as she is. There are many different scenarios and she said that, in almost all cases, they let the people in with the discounts even though they are clearly lying. Good customer service, I guess.

Until tomorrow...