With an ever changing lifestyle, employment status, and address, I'll stick with the picture book format to fill you in on our lives over the past two months.
A refreshing long weekend in June was spent with Tarah and Lucas after they decided to fly down to Phoenix to meet us. We rented an immaculate guesthouse and spent nearly the whole time playing HORSE in the pool, cooling off with adult beverages, and an evening at Chase Field.
While at work on June 15th, Micah texted me that he could see smoke from our back patio. The Cedar Creek fire grew tremendously over the next few days, and we were on evacuation notice for almost 2 weeks. One of the many times we felt fortunate to own so few belongings that it wouldn't take long to load up the car. My biggest concern was where we could evacuate and keep Mobi, my cat, with us, but numerous coworkers offered their parent's homes, garages, and backyards for tents for the three of us. Thankfully we were able to continue watching the fire from the safety of our patio, for the three weeks (and 10,000 acres) that were affected.
Mark, Micah's dad, had a conference in Phoenix and Micah drove down to meet him for the weekend. They spent their time in Green Valley with extended family, and the boys played golf in 100+ degree weather.
I finished splitting my time between the Cub Lake clinic (in Show Low) and Holbrook (one hour north) at the end of June and transitioned to full time in Holbrook for our remaining four weeks. CL and Holbrook clinic were so very different from each other; from the physical layout and feel of the facility to the types of the patients. CL was always full of laughter, yelling at each other across the open gym, and over sharing personal stories. This picture was from a luncheon we did together on one of my last days at CL, which included a competition to see if anyone could pick up a dollar bill in their mouth (gross, I know) from the floor without using hands. No one succeeded.
Over the weekend of July 4th, Micah competed in the "Top of the Pines" disc golf tournament at our local Woodland course. I was impressed simply in the fact that he played in the Advanced Amateur division; he didn't place but enjoyed testing the waters. The second half of our time in AZ, he played disc golf nearly 4 times per week. He also purchased or found enough discs that he easily tripled the supply he started with. We ended the weekend with some bright explosions to enjoy on the 4th.
One of the main reasons we chose the 4 corners area for our first assignment was for weekend access to National Parks and desirable hiking adventures. We realized that the weekend of July 8th was our last 3 day weekend to really get out and explore the area. Canyon de Chelly National Monument was 2.5 hours NE of Show Low and was high on our "to do" list. We hiked down into the canyon to the White House Ruins (once inhabited by the Navajo tribe), saw Spider Rock, and drove from the west to the east end of the park. We camped in a nearly empty campground just inside the west entrance to the free park.
After Canyon de Chelly, we spent the next night in SE Colorado at Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde protects some of the best preserved ancestoral Puebloan cliff dwellings in the U.S. We did a beautiful sunset hike that allowed us great views over the valley of Cortez, Co....
...and the following day we partook in two tours of the cliff dwellings, Cliff Palace and Balcony House. It was surreal to climb around and imagine the homes and the people that lived in these settlements from the 1200s.
On the 3rd day of our 4 Corners Weekend Exploration trip, we drove through the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, which is less than 30 minutes from the clinic I worked at in Holbrook. Patients consistently asked if we had visited yet and it was good to be able to check that off the list.
Slightly last minute, we decided to fly to Portland for a 4 day weekend. There were many goals we hoped to accomplish in our short time home: fly Mobi with us to avoid making her endure a long drive home, visit with Micah's family and cousins who were visiting from out of town, but predominately we were hoping to nail down a venue and date for our wedding. We were successful in all these tasks, including booking this adorable garden for a killer party, Labor Day weekend of 2017!
I finished working with Summit HealthCare on July 28th, after fulfilling my extended 19 week contract. We enjoyed many BBQs and goodbye hugs with coworkers that may have ruined all future travel jobs, since my expectations are much higher than when I began this journey.
On July 31st, we loaded our 13 year old Honda CRV (that has 230K miles and a newly broken AC) with all our AZ belongings and began a 4 week long road trip. Our first stop was in Amarillo, TX, where we found a sweet surprise of partially buried Cadillacs and a few half empty spray cans of paint. We left our marking on one of the rusty vehicles, like millions before us have.
After an overnight in Tulsa, OK, we found ourselves in St. Louis. We did the typical St Louis activities; walked as close as we were able to The Arch, stood in line for 90 minutes for BBQ food, and thanks to a recommendation from a friend, we spent a few hours at the City Museum. If you haven't been, GO. It's a 10 story fun house that hates dead ends, stairways, and rules. You can touch anything, climb in any opening, and choose to descend to the lower floors via a spiral cage instead of the boring stairs (as seen in picture above).
And if going crazy on the inside and roof of the building (the roof had a ferris wheel, lily pond, slide) wasn't enough, the exterior of the building allowed all sorts of fears of height to be dealt with.
Our next stop was Chicago for two nights. Again, we hit the popular spots; selfies in the Bean, cooling down near the Spitting Faces fountain, and an afternoon observing Monet's work and Grant Wood's American Gothic painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. We met up with an old friend of mine for dinner the first evening, and spent the second evening with Micah's cousin Kara and her family in Evanston. We had our deep dish pizza and watched her three energetic kiddos play baseball in the park with the neighborhood.
The reason for our detour east was to celebrate the marriage of Micah's cousin, little Micah, and his beautiful bride, Kellie. We made it to Milwaukee, WI, on Friday night for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding took place on Saturday. I think an evening of dancing and celebrating with family could never go wrong, and the Hoelter family definitely didn't disappoint. Micah and I may be considering a photo booth for our wedding after the results of the Milwaukee photo booth fun.
A night in Des Moines and the following day (yesterday) landed us in Lawrence, KS, Micah's birthplace. He was quite the tour guide, showing off the church where his dad was a pastor for 13 years, the home he grew up in, his elementary school, and of course, everything Jayhawks.
That summarizes our picture storyline. We are currently in Emporia, KS, where Micah was able to observe the first day of the Disc Golf World Championships. We have three long days of driving ahead of us before we arrive in Mequite, NV, for a week long vacation. We're feeling pretty confident with our future plans, although the driver side mirror has a few rubber bands holding it together, the visor is held up with velcro, and apparently the starter may only have a few clicks left on it. Portland is in our near future and, pending that our vehicle makes it, we're anxious to be near home and family for a few months.
