Tourist of Life

We headed up to Forest Lakes on Friday afternoon and watched with joy as the clouds piled up on top of the mountains that would be our final destination.  You’ll find that many of us who’ve lived in the Phoenix area for a long time are weather starved.  We have so many days of clear blue skies that any meteorological change is cause for attention and quiet celebration.  Especially for me…I grew up right on Lake Erie in northern Ohio where, even then, I loved all the changes in the seasons and the blustery storms that blew in from the lake.  So the anticipation of a mountain summer storm kept my mind and camera busy for much of the 2 hour drive to our getaway location.

As we were finishing up our Beeline Café meal, we got a call from our friends Randy & Linda.  They were already at the cabin!  What?  They had finished up things early at home and decided to just drive on up.  Fortunately, we were just paying the bill, so we were only about a half hour behind them.

When I say that we stayed at our friend’s “cabin”, I use the term “cabin” loosely since it’s really a full size 3-story, 3 bedroom home.  Take a look at the picture that Linda took of the place on her blog.

Friday night we all enjoyed a glass of wine on the deck, catching up on each other’s lives then enjoying the sounds of an evening storm from inside the house.

Saturday we took our time getting up and out, had a cup of coffee on the deck, then decided to drive to a spot that Linda had heard about north of Strawberry.  It was a bit of a drive, but was fun to explore a part of the state that we hadn’t seen before.  It turns out that Milk Ranch Point is not a specific “point” or overlook, but a relatively remote area of the rim with camping and hiking.

Cool thing though is that Linda found a Manzanita branch to bring home for decoration in her house.  You may remember my branch in my family room.  Well, she’s been looking for something similar for quite a while and now it will be so much fun to see what she ends up doing with it.  I imagine that you’ll see more about it on her blog when she finds the perfect location for it.

For now, I’ll leave you with a few nature shots that we took while we were at Milk Ranch Point.  Have you ever been there?  Do you have any secret getaways that few people know about that you love to visit?

Next I’ll share about our visit to Bear Canyon Lake near the little town of Forest Lakes, AZ, so be sure to come back to hear about the hail storm.

The Handiwork of God in Nature