Phoenix (02/27/2005)

This week Rich and I spent a lot of time taking advantage of the park amenities. I took the water aerobics class and used treadmill and/or the bikes at the fitness center every morning, and Rich used the bikes at the fitness center every day. I bought fabric at a local shop and made a quilt using the machines in the sewing room. It was a little one but it is already almost complete. I also went to the weekly ice cream social. Next week will be our last week here. Next Saturday we are planning to move to Tucson. We plan to be there about a month, then go on a Caribbean cruise for our anniversary the first week of April.
This week we also visited our second Trilogy and Robson active adult communities as well as our first Dell Web community. The Robson had absolutely awesome activities: sewing room with available machines, ceramic room with kiln, painting classes, university classes, separate fitness and aerobic rooms, indoor heated lap pool, and outdoor fun pool. The Trilogy was part of an award winning community with both active adult and multi-generational communities. Both Dell Web and Trilogy had house plans that we liked and may develop the more complete activity centers over time. Both Rich and I enjoy looking at model houses and we are getting pretty clear about what we want. Many of the houses are too big for us, we really do not want or need both formal and informal dining and living rooms, but we do want a nice master suite, an office, a guest suite and a quilt room. We are looking at houses since the housing market here is crazy and we are afraid to be out of the market too long. We may buy a house and then finish our travels during the summers when it is too hot here.
Saturday I went to a quilt and artisan show at a neighbor RV park with a group of women from our quilt group. The other park is much larger than the one we are staying at (2000 spots), has 70 quilters (many very talented), major woodworking facility (they had bowls they had made with 200-400 separate pieces of wood glued together and then carved), a ceramic center with a kiln, and stained glass classes.
Sunday Rich and I went to the Desert Botanical Garden. They had amazing cacti; some huge, some small, and some just creepy. See the pictures.
On one of my walks with Max I met a man with another Bichon. We were talking about the origin of the breed. He said he had read that in the middle ages the queen kept a Bichon on her lap so the fleas would leave her and jump on the dog. Max - our little flea bait.
Average daily steps for the week: 14,007